Hitting Walls & Wake-Up Calls
Yesterday, I hit a wall.
I reached the limits of my ability to continue the go, go, go of the last couple of weeks. Between my free coaching project, out of town visitors, embodiment work and camping with strangers who are now friends, softball games, rock climbing adventures, working with clients, taking an intensive Enneagram class, celebrating friends' birthdays and weddings, hosting an anti-racism deep dive with Holistic Resistance, doing a full day of collaboration on my business with my amazing coach, and adopting a new puppy (you can find pictures of Penny on my Instagram or Facebook), I had to get honest with myself about my energy levels.
I may be an extrovert, but I've been totally zapped.
I've been thinking a lot about myself as a teenager; hearing songs that remind me of her; dreaming as her. She always wanted a summer like this. One with a flexible enough schedule to say yes to all of the things. With friends who thought of her; invited her to dinner; came over just to hang.
I'm realizing I can't fully handle what she thought was her dream. She probably couldn't have either. At least, not in the "yes to everything" way. Not without boundaries.
In the midst of living out what I thought was my fantasy, I'm learning, yet again, that it's much more important for me to meet this moment, not some perceived lack from the past, or even the excitement of the future.
So yesterday, I skipped a Zoom call I usually look forward to and took a nap instead.
I replied "I'd love to, but not now" to people asking to get together.
I went home after my softball game instead of hanging out with my team.
None of these things sound like that big of a deal, but they were still hard for me to do. We live in a world that glorifies busy-ness, fun adventures, and constant motion, and my younger self is still in there, terrified that I might miss out.
If I led with Enneagram Type Eight, I might have pushed through my energy depletion and done even more things on top of what I've been doing. Eights tend to push themselves to excess with a lust for life that seems to provide unlimited energy. They overpower their limits to prove their strength. It's painful for them to not give their all, and then some.
Ignoring the warning signs in favor of a super-charged life, they are often forced to slow down only when they sustain physical injuries, get in car accidents, or experience extreme health issues. Even then, a willful Eight may not make many changes.
One of my teachers, Jessica Dibb, in a recent class talked about how we come to make big changes, specifically to the areas of life we tend to ignore. The two ways we do this are emergence or emergency.
An emergency can be a major wake up call. A heart attack may finally get someone to consider their physical well-being. Pregnancy is the number one most compelling reason for drug users to quit cold turkey. A bad accident or stroke may leave someone with no choice but to rewire their brains by starting over with the basics.
Emergence can also be a wake up call. When issues that have been ignored for years, decades, or even generations rise into our view, there is an invitation to change. Once we see something differently, we can build skills and tools to address areas in life that may be weaker or under-appreciated.
Eights are not the only people who miss these emergent invitations and wait until an emergency (or even refuses to take the cues long after). But the ego structure of an Eight is so dedicated to resisting any perceived weakness that it can feel like life or death to admit that slowing down is an option. Their sense of immediacy and urgency combined with their zest for life for life leads them to overdo things. They would literally rather die than be "terminally boring"... and in many ways, they invite us all to engage more fully with our power and aliveness.
In pursuit of living fully, and their ways of lashing out when they lose power and control, Eights are often misunderstood. These are people who had to grow up too fast and pushed their child-self way down, swearing to protect those they love from the pain they experienced. They may not want you to know it, but inside is a gooey heart that is so tender and innocent that it warrants all the protection they can muster.
I hope you'll join me and my panel of Enneagram Eights this Sunday at 4pm PST for my second-to-last panel in the series.
With Love,
~Caryn
For Reflection
Take these questions to your journal, your next deep conversation, your therapist, coach or counselor, or simply ponder them throughout the upcoming week.
What boundaries would help me experience more aliveness?
What childhood fantasies have I achieved, only to learn I want or need something different in this moment?
What have I come to learn by way of emergency?
What have I come to learn through emergence?
Development of what we have previously neglected will come through EMERGENCE or EMERGENCY. (Based on teachings by Jessica Dibb)
