Figuring out your “stack” and how to work with the instincts
“The insincts” are somewhat of a hot topic in the Enneagram world — but there are a few different takes on them, which often gets confusing. Cicci has taken a special interest in these biological drives and studied them for many years with Russ Hudson, in working with people and within herself in inner work. Now, she offers individual sessions for exploring your instinctual preferences. (You might also want to check out the online course Understanding the Instincts.)
The instincts and our innate preferences are not a typing system, where the goal is to find your order of priority and classify yourself as to what kind of person that makes you. Sure, understanding these preferences explains some things and sheds light on our inner processes, but the point is then to use these insights for increased self-awareness and growth, not just categorising ourselves.
I took this session and want to share my feedback.
Want to book this session? At present, I haven’t got an online booking system, so how it works is you drop me a message with some information about yourself. Be sure to include your time-zone and what parts of the week/day you are generally available, and ‘ll come up with a couple of suggestions. Once we agree on a date and time, I’ll send you a link where you confirm your booking by paying the fee (€167). Read on to see what the session entails.
Isolating the biological drives
One thing to observe about this session is that it is about instinctual preferences as they stand aside from type. A common reason for confusion is usually the attempt to understand instinctual preferences within the Enneagram type, which is going about it backwards, as the instincts in themselves is not a function of our personality. It’s true that we can put the two together to gain a lot of insight into ourselves, but this can only be done productively once we understand both our personality type and our instinctual preferences, separately. This session is for the instincts bit of that, and whether you are sure about your Enneagram type or not does not matter.
Looking at the instinctual zones
Another that tends to get a bit boxy and clumsy in instincts work is that trying to ascertain a stack of the three — self-preservation, sexual and social adaptation — can be difficult. This is because a) we do in fact have and use all of them, and b) each of the three instincts come out in a number of separate ways, which at first glance can seem almost opposed to one another. To clarify aspects around this, Russ Hudson devised three “zones”, or area of focus, for each drive, and when we start discerning those, our understanding of both the drives and ourselves gets both clearer and more useful.
Preparations and structure of the session
For this individual session to be the most beneficial to you, it’s recommended that you have read Aspects of you, have taken part in Cicci’s course about the instincts, or both. When you sign up for the session, the first thing that will happen is that you get sent a test and an interview sheet which you fill out and send back a minimum of five days before your booked session, so that Cicci has time to process your responses and prepare for your session. The session itself is typically 60 minutes, during which you go through your instinctual profile together. Cicci will also give you helpful hints about how you can incorporate your insights about the instincts into your inner work, and after the session you get a follow-up pdf (usually around 5 pages) where your instinctual test-scores as well as the pointers for inner work are summarized.
If you would like to book this session,
please drop me a message with some information about yourself.
Be sure to include your time-zone and what parts of the week/day you
are generally available, and I‘ll come up with a couple of suggestions.
Once you agree on a date and time, you will receive a link where you
confirm your booking by paying the fee (€167).
Client ratings and reviews
Finally! An entry to a deeper understanding of my own unique relationship with each Instinct
I booked a session with Cicci after seeing her Instinctual Preferences Sorting recommended by another student of the Enneagram. I found her test enjoyable and helpful as I reflected on my own behavioral preferences. Even more so, the session with Cicci where we explored my test results, and she patiently answered my questions, helped me to tease out how I relate to each of the three zones of each instinct. This provides me with an understanding as to why my particular relationship to the instincts may lead to different interpretations depending on whose theory I am exploring. Most importantly, I finally feel like I can settle on my stacking so that I can begin the real work towards greater acceptance and growth.
Cicci followed up our session with a written report complete with color coded bar graphs of my test results which allows me to visualize my instinctual priorities in a new way. The report contains a personalized summary of our session, as well as Cicci’s feedback on my type + instinct, and suggestions for growth including how to begin to effectively work with compassion and patience on my instinctual blindspot.
While I had not read Cicci’s book Aspects of You before the session, I was intrigued to learn more following our session. I immediately purchased the book and I have to say, I now have a better understanding of the instincts than I have ever had. I revisited my test to see if I might change any of my answers based on the deeper understanding I gained. While I changed a few, I don’t believe there was enough variation to make a significant difference. Still, if you have the chance to read Aspects of You prior to a session with Cicci, I would encourage it. But either way, you are sure to benefit from the session.
If you are finding it difficult to land on your own Enneagram instinctual stacking/sequencing, or if you are not sure how to make sense of the various approaches to the instincts as taught by different teachers, I wholeheartedly recommend a session with Cicci!
Something new has clicked into place
I really enjoyed the session and it’s helping me to see myself in a new way as far as how my instinct dynamics are at work. Your followup report has given me lots of things to explore and I’m excited to begin that work.