Instead Of ‘Let Me Know If There Is Anything I Can Do’

How to help and be helped when it feels impossible

Do you know your Enneatype? Someone once described the Enneagram to me as “Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, but for wise lesbians,” and that legitimized it for me — although, in fact, the Enneagram is ancient, and its similarities to MBTI begin and end with “they’re systems of personality typing.” The existing Enneagram literature spoke to me — particularly when it came to breaking down what different types could look like when the person wasn’t emotionally healthy. (I, like so many people, respond with more receptiveness to criticism than I do to praise.)

I am a Type Two: The Helper. I identify strongly with this type, although I’ve been told it’s cloyingly on-the-nose for a woman to be a two. When twos are at their best, they’re unselfish, humble, altruistic, and unconditionally loving. Who wouldn’t want to exist as a Healthy Two? But, like I said, I identified more with the average and unhealthy levels listed on The Enneagram website: average twos start people-pleasing, and grow overly friendly, giving more compliments than they can possibly mean. Then, they need to be needed; they meddle. They want to be depended on. They become martyrs. At the hard opposite end of the spectrum — the most unhealthy end — twos excuse and rationalize themselves by naming themselves as victims. They have chronic health problems as they fall apart rather than burden others.