When I worked in leadership development, we understood that growth required some degree of stretch, challenge or pressure.
We deliberately created experiences that would take people beyond their existing capabilities. But we didn’t just throw them into difficult situations and expect them to emerge as better leaders.
We provided support, encouragement, feedback and opportunities to experiment with different approaches.
Because challenge alone doesn’t necessarily lead to growth.
And yet, when life throws something difficult our way, we often expect ourselves to simply get through it.
A relationship ends. We lose a job. Our health changes. Someone we love dies. Or the future we thought we were building suddenly becomes uncertain.
These experiences don’t feel like developmental opportunities.
They feel like life is working against us.
And unlike in a leadership programme, there’s no guarantee we’ll have the support, resources or guidance we need to find our way through.
Which brings me to an idea I’ve been thinking about for a while.
Growth needs both love and friction.
The conditions we need to grow
In Neurosis and Human Growth, psychologist Karen Horney compared human development to an acorn growing into an oak tree.
We don’t need to teach an acorn how to become an oak. It already has the potential within it.
But it does need the right conditions to grow.
And Horney argued that human beings are much the same.
We need warmth, emotional security, the freedom to express ourselves, and people who encourage us to become more fully ourselves.
But we also need what she called healthy friction.
The experience of encountering other people’s needs, wishes and perspectives. Of being challenged, questioned, and sometimes discovering that our understanding of ourselves or the world is incomplete.
I love that combination.
Love and friction. Support and stretch.
Not one or the other. Both.
When there’s too much friction
We often hear that adversity makes us stronger.
But I don’t think that’s necessarily true.
Difficult experiences can help us grow, but they can also leave us more frightened, overwhelmed and defended than we were before.
When life becomes too much, we tend to fall back on whatever has helped us feel safe in the past.
We might work harder, make more plans, withdraw, take control, seek reassurance, or try to rescue everyone around us.
These are the protective strategies our Enneagram types help us recognise.
And sometimes, when we’re overwhelmed, those strategies become even stronger.
Which is why I think we need to be careful about treating every difficult experience as an opportunity for transformation.
Sometimes what we need first is rest, stability, connection, or someone who can help us feel safe enough to acknowledge what’s happening.
We may need to develop more inner resources before we’re ready to engage with the challenge.
Growth doesn’t happen simply because we’re stretched. We need enough support to work with what’s being stretched.
When there’s not enough friction
But the opposite can also be true.
Sometimes we have plenty of support, but nobody is willing to question us.
Our friends reassure us. Our colleagues agree with us. We find people who validate our experiences and confirm what we already believe.
And that can feel wonderful.
But sometimes what we really need is someone willing to point out what we’re not seeing.
I’ve received some of the most valuable feedback of my life from people who cared enough about me to say something uncomfortable.
That I interrupted people when they were speaking. That my relationship with money wasn’t quite what I thought it was. That some of my habits were less helpful than I’d imagined.
Did I receive that feedback with grace?
Absolutely not.
I was often indignant, frustrated and defensive.
But once I’d settled down, I started wondering whether they might be right.
And that curiosity helped me recognise patterns I hadn’t been able to see on my own.
Of course, not all uncomfortable feedback is helpful. And not all criticism is an invitation to grow.
But when feedback comes with care, respect and a genuine willingness to understand us, it can help us see something we’d otherwise keep missing.
Sometimes love and friction arrive together
Recently, I spent an entire day trying to perfect an email.
I kept writing, editing and rearranging, convinced I was just one more revision away from making it work.
The next morning, I was still tinkering.
Eventually, I explained the whole thing to a very patient friend.
She listened, asked questions, and gently challenged what I was trying to do.
And suddenly I realised I wasn’t really trying to write a better email.
I was trying to avoid feeling helpless.
All that thinking, explaining and organising was an attempt to regain a sense of control.
I needed her patience and willingness to listen. But I also needed her questions, her different perspective, and her willingness to challenge my thinking.
Without the support, I might not have felt comfortable exploring what was happening.
Without the friction, I might still have been editing that email.
And that’s what I find so interesting about growth.
Sometimes the most loving thing someone can do is challenge us. And sometimes the most challenging thing we can do is allow ourselves to receive support.
What do you need to grow right now?
When we use the Enneagram for inner work, we’re learning to recognise the strategies we’ve developed to protect ourselves from uncomfortable experiences.
But seeing those strategies isn’t always enough to loosen them.
Sometimes we need someone to help us recognise what we can’t see ourselves.
Sometimes we need support to stay present with an uncomfortable feeling rather than immediately reacting to it.
And sometimes we need someone willing to challenge the story we’re telling ourselves about who we are and what we’re capable of.
That might come from a therapist, coach, teacher, trusted friend, or a supportive community.
And what we need will change depending on where we are in our lives.
If you’re going through a period of significant upheaval, you may need more warmth, stability and support before you’re ready for additional challenge.
If you’re feeling safe but stuck, perhaps you need someone who can gently question your assumptions and help you see beyond your familiar patterns.
Or perhaps you need a combination of both.
I’d invite you to consider two questions:
Where in my life do I need more love, safety or support?
And where might I benefit from some healthy friction?
Because growth isn’t about pushing ourselves through as much discomfort as possible. Nor is it about staying comfortable and avoiding everything that challenges us.
It’s about finding the conditions that allow us to become more fully ourselves.
We need enough love to feel safe enough to grow, and enough friction to discover what else might be possible.