Working with Type Seven in Therapy
Their patterns often include a history of stops-and-starts, focusing on interesting information and stimulating activities, reframing negative experiences to positive ones, seeking pleasure, future planning, self-referencing, and focusing on what feels good. In unhealth, fear creates a concern that they might be stuck in pain or that a struggle will limit their freedom. To reduce fear and pain, they lean into experiences to ground themselves, yet doing so prevents them from being able to validate their pain, so they can metabolize it and move on from it.
The goals of therapy should be to provide a supportive framework for Sevens to face negative or painful situations and stay with uninteresting commitments or relationships, especially those that have the potential to provide long-term gain or gratification. Growth is indicated once Sevens are able to meet and experience the fullness of life – both pleasure and pain – in the present moment.
Core Messaging & Key Characteristics
Lost Childhood Message: “You will be taken care of.”
Wounding Message: “It’s not okay to depend on anyone for anything.”
Wounding Message Development: There is pain in the world, but I can create alternative options and escape frustration and pain.
Grounding Message: “I will be satisfied and it’s okay to depend on others.”
Wants/Needs: To live life fully and freely
Basic Fear: Of being deprived or in pain
Basic Desire: To be happy, satisfied, and fulfilled; to have needs met
Basic Need: To avoid pain
Values: Positivity, Possibilities, Pleasure, No Limits, Playfulness
Motivations: To maintain freedom and happiness; avoid missing out on experiences; stay excited, occupied, and busy; notice potential connections and make them; and avoid and discharge pain
At their best: Able to be present with reality, able to be with pain as well as joy, able to see the Intelligence in the ordinary, able to let go of conditions for happiness, able to focus their strengths on worthwhile goals, appreciative, joyful, and content
Strengths: Optimism, positive thinking, adventurous, fun-loving, quick thinking, playful, energetic, enjoyable, imaginative, inventive, creative, and open to new experiences and possibilities
Challenges: pain-avoidant, self-serving, uncommitted, scattered attention, dispersing of energy, difficulty with following through on commitments, self-absorbed, busyness, over-consumption of ideas and experiences, restlessness, impatient, and authority-rejecting
Mental Habit: Attention goes to multiple options, possibilities, and planning pleasurable activities
Emotional Habit: Fear of limitation and missing out and craving more
Emotional Survival Strategy: I distract myself through the accumulation of people, things, or experiences and keep all my options open at all times
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 these patterns.
- Commonly seek pleasure and exciting future plans and experiences
- Immediately reframe negative experiences or outcomes to positive ones
- Frequently self-reference and focus on what feels good
- Love discovering and planning for new experiences of all kinds
- Have a very full calendar and like to keep it that way
- Regularly express a Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)
- Prefer excitement and variety to comfort and playing it safe although will enjoy their comforts
- Tend to be thinkers and often thinking about several things at once
- Detest boredom and make sure they, themselves, are not boring
- Committed in relationships, but when it ends, they move on from them and with ease
- Curious and adventurous and often one of the first to try what’s new or interesting
- Quickly move on from tasks and goals once they are no longer interesting or engaging oftentimes culminating a pattern of starts-and-stops as well as a history of incomplete tasks or unrealized goals
- Identify as a “fun person”, yet may be able to acknowledge a more serious side
- Better with the big picture; generally, not good with details
- Enjoy brainstorming new ideas, but not engaging in the implementation of them
- Spend a lot of time planning for new experiences, possibilities, and activities
- Can usually find a way to get what they want
- Able to pop back up quickly after a setback or disappointment
- Easily distracted and often present with scattered energy
- Tend to be spenders, not savers
- Enjoy spending time with others as long as others want to go where they’re going
- Future-orientated
Impact in Relationships
- May present with a history of short-lived commitments with themselves and others
- Over-scheduling and a tendency to be involved with too many projects, plans, or activities make it difficult for them to be present not only in life, but in their relationships
- Resist noticing pain or challenges in their relationships, preferring instead to quickly reframe it in a positive way or avoid it altogether
- Tend to reject healthy limits and appropriate expectations in life, work, and relationships
- Overly indulge in an attraction to what’s new, stimulating, or shiny, which makes it difficult for others to experience a constancy of quality time, purposeful attention, and caring with them, especially if others are trying to share something serious or important
- Avoid difficult or darker emotions and resist communicating these emotions such that connection and having an authentic relationship becomes elusive because real relationship requires the exchange of the full range of emotions and shared vulnerability
- May not appreciate the importance of directly, but compassionately, addressing difficult emotions and conflicts that arise within the relationship or in their environment
- Since they avoid emotional truths and their inner landscape, they also find it difficult to face others’ emotionality or efforts to honestly explore or share their feelings with them
- Struggle with exploring, tolerating, and getting comfortable with their inner life, which may contribute to lack of self and relational awareness
- Prefer thinking to feeling and escaping their pain, rather than making space for processing difficult feelings and sensations
- Show patterns of impulsivity and distractibility, rather than offering their presence through undivided attention, active listening, and relevant follow-up questioning, which can be hurtful and feel dismissive to others and cause conflict
Goal of Therapy: Reward to Resilience
Therapeutic Interventions
Therapeutic interventions should help Sevens acknowledge their pain, slow down and be present, cultivate contentment with “what’s now”, rather than seeking “what’s next”, explore patterns of avoidance, acknowledge and integrate difficult feelings, balance pleasure with meaningful activities, increase comfort with relational depth, and question their constant drive to avoid stillness and keep moving.
Conclusion
By integrating these interventions, Sevens can gain self and emotional awareness, cultivate more rewarding relationships, and balance their drive to be pain-free and “up” 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 Sevens is by no means exhaustive, I invite you as the counselor to bring in whatever you think could be helpful to your Type Seven 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
Posted: by Teresa
Category: Enneagram for Counselors
Tags: counselors, enneagram, personality, therapy, type seven, typing