My Enneagram Model: Introduction to the Instincts—Self Preservation
Posted on July 01, 2019 by Misha Bogart-Monteith, One of Thousands of Leadership Coaches on Noomii.
My work with the Enneagram starts from the bottom up—the Instincts. The instincts are the tie at the bottom of a balloon holding the type together.
The first instinct that we’ll talk about is the self-preservation (or self-prez) instinct, which is our drive to preserve and sustain our foundations for life. These foundations include: physical health and wellbeing, home and domestic affairs, and monitoring resources such as energy, food, time, sleep, and money.
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A terrarium is a helpful metaphor because it shows how the self-prez drive creates a contained and self-sustaining eco-system of sorts, where it regulates the existing resources to support life. Self-prez is also constantly monitoring the body—doing a kind of scan—to identify needs.⠀ ⠀
The terrarium is also a useful visual because the glass of the terrarium is a good metaphor for creating boundaries, which is the intelligence of self-prez: to know/sense what one needs and when and to separate from what’s happening in order to meet those needs. ⠀
*Link in bio for free 20 min individuals and couples consultation to dive deeper. . .
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