I was in therapy/counseling off and on from my mid-twenties until my late thirties. It was invaluable. There were a few therapists I saw only once or twice and decided it wasn't going to work, but for the most part, I found great people. If you're confused or anxious or depressed or need a sounding board, I highly recommend it. Find a therapist you can work with (which isn't always the first one you see), and let them help. *advice over*
There have been some definite trends in therapy over the years, and since I'm not a therapist, I only understand them as someone who has been to therapy, not from the other side. But during the eighties, when therapy was still relatively new, even as it was helping me, there were things we were all figuring out.
For example: You, as the client, were always told you were the innocent victim and (whatever had happened to you) wasn't your fault-- which just seemed sort of absurd. All the good people are in therapy, and all the bad people are not? No. Children can be innocent, but with adults, it's always complicated.
There was an undercurrent to the therapy that I received that more-or-less gave the impression that all problems could be solved. If you learned to think rationally about your situation, you could always figure out what was the right thing to do, way to be, how to act. There was a big emphasis on rational problem solving, which is a useful skill, but it only goes so far.
And then there was an assumption that mental health should look the same in everybody. Remember, this is back in the eighties. It seemed to me that there was an unspoken assumption that anyone who was mentally healthy would be ready for a lifetime monogamous commitment, raising children, and "settling down" in a single location to sink deep roots in a community.
So if you went to therapy and started to work out whatever it was that you were working on, pretty soon your life would look like The Brady Bunch. We've had some tough times in the past (weren't Mike and Carol Brady both widowed?)(did that ever get discussed?), but everything's coming up roses now!
But of course nothing is that simple, and people are different, and complicated, and wildly and blessedly diverse. We think differently, we have different strengths and weaknesses, we interact differently with the people around us, we process information differently. Mental health looks entirely different from one person to another.
Therapists are by and large pretty smart people, and they've figured it out. By the nineties, I could even joke a little with my therapist about what therapy had been like in the eighties. Remember back when we thought it was possible to have a perfect childhood? And if you didn't have one, you'd been robbed?
The reason I'm telling you this is because I've continued to read and learn and listen to podcasts about the Enneagram, and for the most part it has been an amazingly, astonishingly helpful thing. But from certain quarters of the widely diverse Enneagram community, I'm starting to pick up this same old thing. If you pursue the path of growth for your personality type, your personality type will disappear. In other words, that same old saw: mental health looks the same in everybody.
Since this seems like a major step backwards to me, it has really surprised me. Really? We're going back there again? I mean, maybe there is some ultimate, transcendent way this is true, but in my own experience, it's just not true. Happiness and contentment in my life may look entirely different than how happiness and contentment will look in yours.
The thing I've found so valuable about the Enneagram is that it has helped me figure that out. You figure out your dominant personality type, and when you understand that, you can learn to manage your needs and preferences. And you become aware of your shortcomings and the ways you can be blind, and you can manage those better, too.
I started out trying to say something specific in this post, and I don't think I got there. But I don't have time to start over, so here you go.
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