Working with Type One in Therapy


Enneagram Type One, often called “The Perfectionist”, “The Reformer,” or “The Improver” is characterized by a strong sense of right and wrong, having high personal standards, doing things “the right way”, and being driven by a deep desire for constant improvement. They tend to internalize their anger and find fault with themselves — and eventually with others and the world.

Their patterns include doing the right thing, being responsible and aware of problems, taking care of things, and protecting others. In unhealth, they can be critical, judgmental, rigid, over-working, cold, and unempathetic. They may also resist perspective-taking, lack humility by believing in their importance and authority to set standards for others, and fail to notice the impact of their judgment.

The goals of therapy should include encouraging Ones to experience more pleasure and play, accept others, tolerate differences, be compassionate with their own and others’ mistakes, choose curiosity over judgment, and detach their self-esteem from adherence to high internal standards. Growth is indicated when Ones change what can be changed, accept what cannot be changed, and develop the wisdom to know the difference.

Core Messaging & Key Characteristics

Lost Childhood Message: “You are good.”

Wounding Message: “It’s not okay to make mistakes. I’m not good.”

Wounding Message Development: The world is broken. If I do the right thing, I can try to fix it and I’ll be good and okay.

Grounding Message: “I am good and what I’ve done is enough.”

Wants/Needs: Peaceful and extraordinary world, but will settle for control. This control goes inward as self-contempt or self-criticism and outward towards others, especially at those who don’t pull their weight or who do harm.

Basic Fear: Being corrupt, defective, or flawed
Basic Desire: Be good, have integrity, and strive for improvement
Basic Need: To be perfect in order to avoid being wrong or criticized by others

Values: Improvement, Honesty, Responsibility, Conscientiousness, Integrity, Idealism

Motivations: To refine, reform, and be right, to improve self and everything, to be consistent with their ideals, to be beyond criticism, and to justify themselves

At Their Best: wise, honest, models of integrity, discerning, reformers, objective, and noble

Strengths: Honest, fair, equitable, responsible, committed, dedicated, concern for improvement and making things better, maintaining high standards, being self-reliant, and holding integrity

Challenges: inflexible, opinionated, resentful, self-critical, critical and judgmental of others

Mental Habit: Attention goes to right vs. wrong and correcting errors and inadequacies

Emotional Habit: Anger, resentment, and frustration

Emotional Survival Strategy: I do everything perfectly or according to the rules. I am always fixing myself and others and try to make things “right”

Patterns of Behavior

Patterns listed below are based on average to below average levels of functioning within the Type, which is typical for clients entering therapy. Behaviors may vary from client to client, so it’s appropriate not to assume every client displays all of these behaviors.

  • Try to do “the right thing” and fastidiously
  • Take care of things and fix things
  • Often drivers of reform in their jobs, communities, and relationships
  • Protect others who need it and believe they can definitely do that
  • May choose correction over connection and rightness over relatability
  • Being exacting and judgmental in relationships and with themselves
  • May impose their values, principles for living, and high standards onto others
  • Do not typically withhold their perspective or observations, especially when they believe they’re right
  • Find it difficult to consider alterative perspectives vs. the one “right way”
  • May fail to recognize the uniqueness of others’ paths in life, priorities, or abilities
  • Strive for continuous improvement in all things and in all people
  • Become emotionally detached when facing or solving problems
  • May tend to lack empathy, sensitivity, or compassion for others
  • Tend to be serious, no-nonsense, and hard-working kind of people
  • Determined to follow their conscience no matter what
  • Possess a strong inner judge of others and irrepressible Inner Critic
  • Try to be good and perfect, oftentimes at great personal cost
  • Their meaning in life stems from living into their principles and high ideals
  • Become angry with and frustrated by people who don’t carry their weight
  • Good at getting things done, organized, methodical, and thorough
  • Often driven by a personal sense of mission or calling towards betterment
  • Struggle to let things be as they are, imperfect, or undone
  • May demonstrate a pattern of over-responsibility and over-working

Impact in Relationships

  • Overly-focus on correcting, rather than connecting, which tends to push others away
  • Over-value accuracy, exactingness, criticism, and analysis in their relationships, which fosters insecure attachment, promotes unnecessary perfectionism, and adds tension
  • Self-criticality makes it difficult for them to have compassion when others make mistakes
  • Assume that others are intentionally oppositional to their principles for living without recognizing that not everyone shares their standards for living or values
  • Struggle to appreciate the benefits of forgiveness, grace, and acceptance for cultivating relational flexibility, closeness, and authentic connection as well as engendering greater trust, safety, and ease in their relationships
  • Tend to make comparative judgments between themselves and others based on their personally-determined standards
  • May fail to recognize they may not know or understand everything about a person or situation before criticizing or judging them or it
  • Don’t often leverage the healing power of curiosity to gain greater understanding of others
  • Resist seeing how criticism is not likely to engender the improvement they are seeking
  • Often experience defensiveness from others or may notice others distancing from them
  • Find it difficult to accept others as they are because they struggle to accept themselves
  • Tend to project negative qualities onto others as a way to offset self-criticism

Goal of Therapy: Scathing to Surrender

Therapeutic Interventions

Therapeutic interventions should focus on taming the inner critic, cultivating compassion for self and others, engendering curiosity over judgment, encouraging the integration of pleasure and play, developing emotional awareness, increasing their willingness and ability to consider different perspectives, and opening up to the possibility of projection when seeing faults and flaws in others.

Conclusion

By integrating these interventions, Ones can gain self and emotional awareness, cultivate more authentic and rewarding relationships, and balance their quest for improvement with qualities of being that have the potential to not only provide a comforting sense of belonging, but also create fulfilling opportunities to live a meaningful life and apply the gifts of their type.

While this brief collection of themes and therapeutic interventions for Ones is by no means exhaustive, I invite you as the counselor to bring in whatever you think could be helpful to your Type One client as they are likely to share desires, fears, and challenges that are common to all of us.

Finally, in my work with clients, I also find it helpful to not only consider interventions that are relevant to the client’s primary type, but also interventions that are specific to one or both of the client’s wings, especially the dominate wing.

Trainings

Enneagram for Counselors with Leslie Bley, LPC-S

Resources

Enneagram Institute
The Narrative Enneagram

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