ENNEAGRAM-INFORMED LIFE COACH
I’m an Enneagram Seven who gets anxious at parties. I prefer to curl up with a good book, a hot chocolate, or get artsy with my niece and nephew. I’m just a little obsessed with how the Enneagram can help us heal and grow into a life we feel at home in.
READS ROMANCE NOVELS AND LOVES THE DICTIONARY.
I’ve been a coach for over a decade, and an Enneagram practitioner for the past 5 years. Through a lot of painful trial and error, I’ve realised that it’s not what we do that makes our lives fulfilling, but how we do it.
THE THREADS BENEATH MY WORK
About my journey
I focus on overcoming inner resistance to change because I’ve faced it in key parts of my life: my career, health and relationships.
Wrestling with why I was thwarting my own healing and joy so intensely, eventually led me to combining the Enneagram with somatic support.
01.
I never felt at home in my life. I had this underlying anxiety that I was in the wrong place, at the wrong time, doing the wrong thing.
I thought if I could just find the right job, everything else would fall into place.
And I tried. I really did. I tried different jobs, started different businesses, played with different ways of working. But that anxiety never went away.
After burning out, I realised my job wasn’t the problem.
The problem was a belief I’d internalised in childhood.
A belief that said I had to have a serious job to be taken seriously. That (false) belief sent me on an endless (Enneagram Seven) quest for a job that could never be found.
This is true for every Enneagram type. Each type gets stuck in its own impossible quest.
For me, that was trying to find a job others would take seriously, while also rebelling against that requirement.
To change that pattern I had to face my fear of not having a “serious” job.
But I also had to face my fear of letting me be me. Of accepting that I’m a creative, intuitive, nerd who reads romance novels and loves the dictionary.
To accept I could be serious and silly, philosophical and ridiculous, all at the same time.
I had no idea how much pressure this internalised belief was having on me. But my body knew. It was doing its best to hold that pressure for me, but it wasn’t long before the cracks started to show.
02.
Chronic illness started in my teens. At first it was phantom pains, infections that wouldn’t heal, a tiredness that seemed to last forever.
At university I struggled with something akin to manic depression, with the highs of freedom, and the lows of sadness I had no way of tending to.
After being hospitalised for a kidney infection, being on high dose antibiotics for 6 months, grieving a relationship, and being homesick for a home that didn’t exist all at the same time, my autoimmune condition started.
Small at first, but eventually taking over a lot of my skin.
The worst of it lasted 10 years, but really I lived with chronic illness in some form for 30 years.
Health is complex. I don’t pretend to be an expert in all the ins and outs of various chronic illnesses, pain or autoimmune conditions.
But for me, there seems to be a clear connection between repressing my feelings, thoughts, desires, needs, instincts, intuition and creativity and that unfinished energy affecting the body.
There is only so much of that pressure the body can hold before it becomes dis-ease, dysfunction or illness in some form.
What helped me release that pressure was learning to listen to my fears, and express myself.
I did that in a number of ways. Dancing, painting, journaling, somatic and emotional therapies, meditation, rituals to help me grieve.
The more I learned how to listen to and trust, my inner self, the more the intensity of the dis-ease in my body lessened.
Which in turn, helped in my relationships.
03.
I blamed my partner whenever things felt hard, slow, unexciting, or difficult.
Caught in a story of what a relationship should be like, I couldn’t see how my reactions were keeping me from the kind of relationship I craved.
I wanted to feel seen. To be able to be my weird, nerdy creative self in front of someone else. I wanted to dance like no one was watching, even when they were.
But I couldn’t shake the sense I was constantly being judged.
I did my best to be sensible, but when that got too much, I blamed them for me having to hide parts of myself.
Once I realised it wasn’t all on them, I still couldn’t describe why I was reacting the way I did.
I didn’t have the words to explain why I went from fun-loving, light-hearted and spontaneous one day, to withdrawn and snippy the next.
This is where the Enneagram really helped. It gave me words to not just describe my patterns, but also viscerally notice my underlying fear and anxiety.
Without language, I was stuck searching for the “perfect relationship.”
Combining the Enneagram with somatic work helped me notice my anxious reactions as they arose.
With awareness, it became easier to spot blame and judgement before I got sucked into that story. I learnt I could speak and act from a grounded steadiness, which helped to increase compassion, understanding, and connection.
04. ENNEAGRAM & SOMATIC SUPPORT
There was a moment in my healing journey that changed everything.
Sensing another flare up coming on, I’d picked up the phone, ready to call a health practitioner to relieve the pain. As I gripped the phone, I saw a bigger pattern: continually trying to escape pain was keeping me trapped in a different kind of suffering.
So I paused.
I asked my body, can we sit with this pain for a moment?
It’s answer: Yes.
And we did. Just for a few seconds.
Then I made the phone call and booked the session.
But in those seconds a new way of living became possible. A how I didn’t know existed.
I’d had similar epiphanies in my career and relationships. When I found the Enneagram, it reinforced these insights.
But there was something crucial, something that almost no Enneagram book mentions.
I asked my body to participate in the process.
I wasn’t doing it alone. I wasn’t using my mind to control or dictate the process. I wasn’t outsourcing it. I was submitting to a process which I wasn’t in charge of.
As much as the Enneagram describes what our personality fears, it also describes the process by which we discover how to be with those fears.
It’s not by overruling, denying or pushing them away.
But making space for them, listening compassionately, without judgment. Just accepting they are real and important.
This is why I combine the insight of the Enneagram with somatic support. A process of observing and listening to the inner tension or conflict that keeps us trying to follow our Enneagram type’s “rules” and instead start to see there are other paths available to us.
TESTIMONIAL
After my first session, I joked to my friends that I had a “smile infestation.” I knew that I had found something that was going to profoundly enrich my life.
Over 3 months, each session has been engaging, revelatory, tangibly helpful, and actionable.
Samantha’s wisdom and sensitivity as an Enneagram coach have deeply improved my personal and professional life. If you are seeking an Enneagram Life Coach, Samantha’s expertise will serve you and your goals exceptionally well.
Alex, Social Six
BEYOND THE BIOGRAPHY
💃🏼 I love playing with my adorable niece and nephew. In the sandpit, on the trampoline, hosting dance parties with all the toys.
🐓 I currently live with 2 dogs, 7 chickens, and 4 horses (Definitely too much poo.)
🫖 Too much caffeine sends me loopy so I mostly drink decaf green tea and bancha tea.
🍫 I swear by Soma, Foundry and Loco Love, but I wouldn’t kick Whittaker’s out of bed either.
📚 I love books about books. Think People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks, Book Lovers by Emily Henry and The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown.
👩🎨 I can name five women artists. I love Hilma af Klimt, Pipilotti Rist, Barabara Kruger, Del Kathryn Barton, Grace Cossington Smith, Fiona Pardington, and Gretchen Albrecht.
🛫 I grew up in Sydney, Australia, and have lived in Canada, England and New Zealand.
💼 Before I was a coach, I was a leadership development consultant and before that, a litigation lawyer.
People ask me is inner work worth it? For me, I was driven by the need to be out of pain. And along the way I discovered that not all pain is bad. In fact, pain is an important part of life.
While I still have plenty of inner work to do, going through the crucible of inner work has made it easier for me to:
I feel grounded within myself. It’s a feeling that’s hard to explain, and I certainly couldn’t have imagined it’s what I was missing before I felt it.
If I hadn’t done all of that, I wouldn’t have been able to handle living with small people.
My niece and nephew, from babies to toddlers, have challenged and tested me in ways I never thought possible. At times I have faltered and reacted in ways I regret, but it’s also given me the capacity to stretch into a different type of Auntie or parental leader than would have been imaginable earlier in my life.
My inner work journey isn’t done, it’s just evolving.
