Welcome to this blog! As you will notice, it’s not only about the Enneagram, but also on inner growth in general. However, since what I am exploring is the Enneagram, the centres and the instincts (among other things), I’m assuming that most of you know about these things. But if you don’t, there will be plenty here for you anyway 🧡
Cicci Lyckow Bäckman
The one who blogs 😉Latest posts
Get curious about your you-nique expression of consciousness
It’s a bit “duuh”, but also quite fascinating: There are no two people exactly alike. Yes, there are different types, instinctual priorities and even life experiences that we can pinpoint fairly well — but the specific combination of those things a well as the undefinable quality that makes you you, are unique for each individual. That’s why you, and your curiosity about yourself, are central elements in your inner growth. So, self-knowledge is to some degree about finding out where you fit in within types, preferences, et cetera (whether you’re aware of them as such or not, and regardless of…
Continue Reading Get curious about your you-nique expression of consciousness
Caring for babies — instinctual adaptation or self-preservation?
Sometimes I’m asked about my view of the adaptation (or “social”) drive and its role in raising a family. “Other teachers put this in the self-preservation domain”, someone said recently. “But you see it as a feature of the social instinct. Can you say something about this?” So here, I will. The short answer is yes, I can say plenty 😉. I’ll try and keep to this specific topic here, though, and my take on it. I would also like to give credit to Russ Hudson, whose insightful work on the instinctual drives spurred my fascination with them in the…
Continue Reading Caring for babies — instinctual adaptation or self-preservation?
The ego: Recruiter, isolater and general mess-creator
I keep coming back to the centres. The importance of allowing them all their space to be, to fulfil the functions they were designed to fulfil. We all have one “home base” centre — the one whose triad we’re in. But we possess all three centres. We are WHOLE individuals, not thirds. But even as we are whole, we tend to gravitate to certain aspects and away from others. The ego quickly realises that some areas pay better to focus on — as dictated by our environment or by inner preferences, tendencies and neurology — and others are best left…
Continue Reading The ego: Recruiter, isolater and general mess-creator
Finding your type — the forgotten art of letting things take their time
Let’s say you’re a freshly appointed Chief of Operations at a company that you haven’t previously worked at. If you’re at all sensible about it, you don’t start your first week by imposing a new regimen. Instead, you want to get to know the company, its processes, and its staff. Only then can you decide whether you want to make changes and if so, how. It’s not that you need to work at the company for years and years, necessarily. But you need to get your bearings. Same thing if you decide you want to learn to be a art…
Continue Reading Finding your type — the forgotten art of letting things take their time
When the need for love is the strongest
When I was a teenager, my mother — an enthusiastic Catholic who also happened to enjoy gifting her children with literature — gave me a book by Thomas Merton. I don’t remember the title of the book, or even what it was about. But one sentence had such a deep impact on me that I remember it to this day. The book was a Swedish translation, so I hope mr Merton will forgive my possibly inadequate counter-translation. It went something like: We reject love because it somehow, in our own obdurate imagination, implies some vague form of humiliation. That man…
The flip side of control and initiative
As an Enneagram Eight, most would agree that one of the good things is that you get things done. There’s the feeling that you are the doer, for better or worse, and whatever you decide will affect everything else. This light (or sometimes, not so light) hubris does come with perks, of course. I seldom get bogged down for long about How Stuff Is, but rather, something within me finds a way to make it feel like I chose this, grabbing the initiative back from fate, as it were; refusing to be on the receiving end of what happens and…
“Rainbow typing” — a note on Enneatourism
Sometimes, the introductory level of Enneagram knowledge is as far as it goes. Ones are rigid perfectionists, Threes workaholics who’ll sell out for success, Sixes anxious scaredy cats, Eights steamrollers with inch-thick skin — and so on and so forth. That, however, gets old quite quickly (and is not very useful for deepening personal growth). But then, in reaction to this, something interesting happens. We are told we are ALL types. People get their tritype diagnosed, complete with wings for each type, which, combined with relevant lines, basically covers the whole Enneagram. Which is of course equally useless. So, how…