In this opening episode of the Healthy Relationships series, Tyler Zach sits down with renowned Enneagram teacher and author Suzanne Stabile. Suzanne shares one to two practical insights for each Enneagram type to help you cultivate healthier relationships. Note: This teaching originally appeared at Tyler’s first Enneagram Summit in 2023.

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📑 FREE PDF Download: Healthy Relationships Podcast Notes
Get the bullet-point notes for all 6 episodes—key insights, no fluff, easy to revisit.

👉🏼 Download here: https://witty-atom-266.myflodesk.com/e2ch69d9k0

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🎙️ Episodes in the Healthy Relationships Series

• How Each Enneagram Type Can Create Healthy Relationships | Suzanne Stabile (Ep. 1)
• What Each Enneagram Type Looks Like in Love | Steph Barron Hall (Ep. 2)
• What May Not Be Serving Your Relationships for Each Enneagram Type | Sarajane Case (Ep. 3)
• Relationship Tips for Each Enneagram Type | Ashton Whitmoyer-Ober (Ep. 4)
• 3 Ways Each Enneagram Type Can Improve Their Marriage | Christa Hardin (Ep. 5)
• Healthy Communication for All Enneagram Types | Dani Cooper (Ep. 6)

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⬇️ More FREE Type·ish Resources

• Self-Typing Guide: https://view.flodesk.com/pages/63139ecac861f3e7c8c81f4a
• The 27 Subtypes Guide: https://witty-atom-266.myflodesk.com/jrxnj0j1o9

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👉🏼 Follow Suzanne Stabile

Website: https://suzannestabile.com/

Books by Suzanne Stabile:
• The Road Back to You
• The Path Between Us
• The Journey Toward Wholeness

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Transcript:

Tyler Zach (00:05)

Welcome to Typeish, an Enneagram podcast where we explore how your personality shows up in all of life. I'm your host, Tyler Zach, and in each episode I connect you with leading experts on how your personality impacts your relationships, mental health, spirituality, and everything in between.

Starting this week, we're kicking off a six-week series called Healthy Relationships. If you want the bullet point notes for all six episodes right now so that you can start to see improvements in your relationships right away, you can click the link below in the show notes and download that PDF as a free gift.

Over these next six weeks, you are going to get to hear from amazing speakers like Christa Hardin, Dani Cooper, Ashton Whitmoyer-Ober, Sarah Jane Case, and Steph Barron Hall. And today, to get us started, I sit down with the Enneagram godmother herself, Suzanne Stabile.

Suzanne is a world-renowned Enneagram teacher, author, and speaker. She has several best-selling books — I have all of them — including The Road Back to You, The Path Between Us, and The Journey Toward Wholeness. Please go get her books. They are wonderful. If you want to find more ways to learn from Suzanne, please check out her links in the show notes.

During my conversation with Suzanne today, I asked her to share one to two things for each Enneagram type that would make the biggest difference in cultivating healthy relationships. So join me and Suzanne now, and be prepared for some amazing mic drops along the way as she goes around the circle.

Suzanne Stabile (02:02)

Well, I don't start with Ones very often, but I can with this question, so I think I will.

The one thing I would say is that Ones need to ask themselves: how much is your desire for perfection affecting the people around you, and affecting your relationship with the people around you?

Can I say two things?

Tyler Zach (02:36)

Yeah, one or two.

Suzanne Stabile (02:38)

Okay, thank you. The second thing is: recognize that your critic — your inner voice, your critic that you hear all the time — is a third person. It's a third voice in relationships. And you need to share that with people, because they don't know where things are coming from if you don't.

Tyler Zach (03:04)

That's good.

Suzanne Stabile (03:06)

Twos.

It's interesting to me, because Fours say to me a lot, "I always feel like I'm either not enough or too much." And I have so much compassion for that. And then I realized that part of it is a concern for me as a Two.

In intimate relationships — meaning the people closest to me, my children, the people they're married to, my grandchildren — it's possible for me to love them too much and to be too willing to express that love for them through suggestions, or answering questions they haven't asked yet. Joe sometimes just needs more space as a Nine than I need as a Two. And that's a Two problem we need to work on: not being more for the people we love than they want us to be.

The second thing I would say for Twos is that it's really important to recognize that you don't feel your own feelings — you feel other people's feelings. So in a one-on-one relationship, when you're picking up on somebody else's feelings and feeling them yourself, be careful that your motivation is to help them, and not so that you can feel something different. Because a lot of times we get into something and we problem-solve for other people when they haven't asked us to, because we don't want to feel their feelings anymore. And that's not good.

Since I'm a Two, I could give you 45 examples, but we'll move on.

Tyler Zach (05:20)

That's good. I think people should latch on to the idea of "too much," because we're all blind to the fact that we can have too much of the thing that we really want, and it causes us to sacrifice other things. For me, it's Type Three. Let's go there next — too much efficiency, too much work.

Suzanne Stabile (05:37)

That works. But the thing I would say first — and you're doing really good work, so I really hope you'll listen to this, and everybody can listen in while I say this to you — Threes have a tendency not to stick around for when the confetti falls. Whether it's working on a project with your family at home or working on a project with colleagues, you are so good at setting goals and then reaching them that you sometimes don't bring along the people you love the most, or you don't wait until the confetti falls — when there is success that is being celebrated by the people who were involved in reaching that goal.

So just remember: if there's going to be confetti, stay with your people, whoever they are — your sons, your family, the neighborhood book group — stay till the confetti falls, and then go on to the next thing.

The second thing I would say is that it is really to your advantage in most areas of your life that you are personable but not personal in many of your relationships. That's kind of not fair. Because if you want people to be personal with you, then reciprocity is kind of important in that.

Tyler Zach (07:21)

I wish I would have heard that in pre-marital counseling 16 years ago. And as I was starting my pastoral journey, it was so easy to turn on the Type Three performing, to be personable with people I was counseling at church. That reciprocity — that's huge. So good. We'll keep moving here to Type Fours.

Suzanne Stabile (07:49)

The first thing I would say is that I know that relationships are of primary importance to you, and they always will be. That's not going to change. And so for Fours, if we just said ultimately relationships are everything — then the first thing I would comment on is that you tend to want to go too deep too fast.

And so you need to pay attention to how people are responding to you. Are they backing away from you? Are they uncomfortable because of what's happening? And then think about yourself — what you're saying, how you're saying it, how intense it is — and see if it wouldn't help if you shared that over having coffee three times instead of all in the third time you have coffee.

The other thing is that Fours have been coming up to me for years — especially college-age Fours — saying, "Nobody gets me." And because I'm a Two, back when I had first started teaching the Enneagram, I used to say to them, "Well, it's going to get better." But it's not going to get better. People don't get you and they're not going to.

So you have a responsibility to teach them how you see. Your Enneagram number, for all of us, is determined by how you see. And you can never change that. You can change what you do with how you see, but you can't change how you see. So Fours are going to have to figure out a way to read the room, know how people are responding, and give people some space to catch up with where you want the relationship to go. And if you find one or two people who do get you, then that's fabulous and a great thing. Be mindful that they see differently than you do.

The third thing I would say for Fours — I know I'm cheating — is that you put so much beauty in the world and we desperately need it. We desperately need it. So don't give up any of that creativity — music, poetry, prose, writing books, painting, whatever it is you do. Don't give up that beautiful creativity for any of the day-to-day stuff that's calling you.

Suzanne Stabile (cont.)

And the first thing I would say for Fives is: too often you're observing life rather than participating. And participation is the whole deal. The gospel stories are all about participation. If you're not going to participate, you don't see many observers who are really exciting as you learn about the ways that we could do life together.

I would also say: I get it that you have a diminishing amount of energy as you go through every day. Be careful not to waste too much of it gathering information that you'll never use, and instead spend it learning from other people — in conversation and in relationship. And it doesn't have to be a deeper relationship than you want.

The second thing I would say for Fives — my mom was a Five, and she was really quite something. I didn't know the Enneagram until she was in her mid-eighties, maybe eighties. My dad was a doctor in a small community of 5,000 people by choice — he turned down other opportunities to do that. And my mom was the doctor's wife. And for a Five, that's hard. It's like being a pastor's wife in some ways — also hard. And she figured out a way to do it by going slow and by making space for different people on different days and in different weeks, so that she expanded her relationships without depleting so much energy that she felt more vulnerable than she could handle.

And the second thing is: Fives tend to want to know about you and don't want you to know about them. And that's not okay. That's not a fair way to be in relationship. So don't ask questions of people you're in relationship with that you're not willing to answer if they ask them back to you.

Tyler Zach (13:43)

Type Six. My wife's a Type Six, so...

Suzanne Stabile (13:46)

I think there are more Sixes than any other number on the Enneagram. And I'm very thankful for that, because Sixes are most concerned about the common good. And we certainly need that. Sixes are also the people who do the stuff behind the scenes that other people don't want to do, and they seldom get credit for that. I don't love that reality. So I think we can all try to do better in relation to Sixes in that way.

Having said that, I would say to Sixes: you are not good at knowing how long something is going to take. You don't know how to prepare your time well, because you think you can get more done than you can — which leaves you behind a lot of the time and with a long list. And sometimes your list of the things you still need to do gets in the way of relationships that you need to build.

So I would suggest that when you have a list of seven things you want to accomplish in a week, take one thing off the list. That'll give you a little breathing room for the other six.

The other thing I would say is that we're losing our ability to build community as a culture. And you're a community kind of person. So start modeling community in the ways that you can. One way that will make you feel very vulnerable — but I challenge you to do it anyway, for the sake of relationships — would be to share with people you're in relationship with about the communities that you belong to, so that they will initiate community experience for themselves.

We are isolating ourselves to the point where we only spend time with people who think like we think and say what we say. And Sixes have space for difference once they get in community, primarily because of the next thing I'm going to say — which is something I hope you will work on.

When you're brushing your teeth in the morning, you don't trust yourself. And you need to. We all trust you. And when you don't trust yourself in relationships, sometimes you're not saying what is yours to say, and you're not doing what is yours to do.

Tyler Zach (16:45)

So good, Suzanne. What would you say to Sevens — including Joel, who's with you as well?

Suzanne Stabile (16:53)

Sevens.

The first thing I would say is: stop. Just stop. You think so fast and you have so many ideas and you're so creative and so capable, and it's great — and you need to stop. Stop and read. Stop and think. Stop and do a contemplative spiritual practice. Stop, because once you do, you will not only see the goodness of what you bring to relationships, but you'll see the things that you bring to relationships that are hard for other people to accommodate.

And the second thing I would say is: you may not know this, but we rely heavily on you. We enjoy you when you come in the room, we're glad you're here. You uplift our spirits. You make us feel more hopeful. And one of the responsibilities that goes with that is understanding that when you're doing something out of a sense of duty that you don't want to do, it sucks the air out of the room.

So you can't fool people into thinking you want to be there — you don't have that in you. So be careful about signing up for things that feel dutiful. And if you do sign up, you may need to fake it a little so that everybody else can figure out how to manage the loss of what you usually bring — one on one, one with five, one with many.

Tyler Zach (18:42)

Type Eight.

Suzanne Stabile (18:44)

One of the things I say to Eights when I'm working on relationships is: when you're absolutely positive that you're right, you're probably wrong. And it's hard for Eights to make space for that. So I would suggest that you take a look at that.

The second thing I would say — a woman on a church staff that I taught for a number of years, who was an Eight, came in one day and said, "Suzanne, I want to talk to you about something. I had the weirdest thing happen. My friend, who never takes me to coffee and never buys coffee, invited me to go to coffee — and she paid for it." And she said, "The weirdest thing. She said, 'You know, if the drum major is too far ahead of the band, the music sounds terrible.' What in the world do you think that means?"

So I told her. And here's my shortened way of saying it: you can't lead a group that you don't belong to. So find a way of belonging, and then you can step into leading.

And then here's the third thing — which you'll probably just dismiss, I'm sure, but it's the best of all. It's for every number, and I've saved it to say to you because I think the change and the transformation is often most apparent in Eights. And that is: learn contemplative prayer from somebody. I would suggest you learn it from Joe Stabile. He teaches it, I think he's the best, and you can get it on our website — MP3s, you can get it on the app, all around.

Those of us across the board — all numbers — who are not doing a contemplative prayer practice, like a 20-minute sit a day, are not who we could be. Period. And when Eights give into that ritual of doing a 20-minute contemplative sit every day, early in the day, it changes everything. That's a big statement, and I know it is, and I'm sticking with it. It changes everything. Every number needs to do that.

Tyler Zach (21:15)

I love that. And then — Type Nines.

Suzanne Stabile (21:21)

The most important thing in relationships for Nines is: "later" is not a point in time. All the things you say in your relationships that you're going to do later — most of them, you have to be reminded over and over. So just understand that later is not a point in time. Don't say "later" to yourself or to other people. And if you can do it right now, then get up and do it right now. That will change your relationships.

You may need some motivation behind that. So let me tell you what Joe decided to do. The year before COVID — we just looked this up — I was away 33 weekends that year, teaching somewhere in the country. Which notably is too much. I was too old then and I'm way too old now, but I did it. And it was hard for all of us. It was hard for our ministry, but good for it. Good for the book writing I was a part of. It was good to meet people from across the country and learn from them. But I didn't love being away from home that much, and Joe didn't love having me away either.

So he decided — as a Nine who puts things off — that whatever was written on the list we both keep that sits on the bar in our kitchen, he was going to do those things to honor the fact that I was traveling. And it changed a lot for us. Now that's habit for him — to just do what needs to be done.

And Nines — speak up, sign up. You can always change your mind later. But you are the only number on the Enneagram who sees two sides to everything, and often more than two sides. And along with Sixes, who I've already spoken to and about, right now our country and our culture needs Nine voices and Six voices more than any other. Because those are the two voices and the two ways of being in the world that will help us stop the dualistic work that we're doing.

We are just dividing and dividing and dividing. It isn't serving us well, and it's not going to serve us well. And I try not to speak anywhere without suggesting that we need to really work on that.

There are more than 40,000 distinctively different Protestant denominations worldwide. How can that be? Well, that has come about because we didn't like the color of the carpet in the fellowship hall. We didn't like moving from individual cups to communion. We didn't like worship time. We didn't like whatever. That's not being a follower of Jesus. That's not what that's about. And it's kind of embarrassing if you lay it out like that.

There's been a big discussion in our church about whether worship was going to be at 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock. It used to be at 11 o'clock; for technology reasons, it was moved back to 10 o'clock during COVID. And people who went to 11 o'clock said, "I'm not going to keep coming to 10 o'clock. It's time to move it back to 11." And people who liked 10 o'clock said, "If you move it to 11, I'm not coming to church." And I can hardly bear either one. My response to both is: daylight saving time will handle the whole thing. You'll get your way half the year. Stop.

So Nines — you don't generally get caught up in things like that. You see the value of both, and you find a way. And we need you to speak up, and we need you to model that for us.

And then the last thing for Nines is: your presence matters. And if the people around you aren't showing you and telling you that, then ask them how your presence matters to them, and tell them to please remind you — because you are the easiest number to take for granted. And I don't want that for you.

Tyler Zach (26:30)

If you benefited from this episode, please make sure to give us a five-star rating and write a review so that this content will be placed in front of more Enneagram enthusiasts like yourself.

Now before you leave, let me ask you: what's one small thing you could try differently this week in one of your relationships based on Suzanne's advice? Remember, every one of us can become a little more present, a little more honest, and a little more loving this week. And that shift, however small, can change the whole tone of a relationship.