The Island of Constant Talkers

Yesterday's Dr. Phil was about New Year's resolutions. Link here.

The first guest was Jeni, whose problem is that she talks constantly. Her mom said Jeni's been doing it since she learned to talk, and that if Jeni had been her first child, she'd only have had one. (!) Jeni says she's lost a job and several promotions over her talkativeness, that she rarely goes on any second dates, and that she is often late for appointments because she stops to talk with strangers in the street. Dr. Phil timed how long it took her to answer questions during the interview and compared it to the average length of time taken; I don't remember the specifics but there was quite a difference.

Dr. Phil had set up a buzzer for the interview and would hit the buzzer ("aaanh") when he felt Jeni had gone on long enough/answered the question/made her point. (He was a little quick on the buzzer in my opinion, actually.) Have you ever wished you could do that to someone? He asked her whether she had any idea why she was this way, and she said she had several theories. He asked her to give the short version of her strongest theory; she said she had ADD. Dr. Phil said he wasn't sure she had ADD, but he was pretty sure she had anxiety. He asked her whether she felt compelled to fill up any empty spaces in the conversation and she said she did. Phil said he thought she didn't perceive how the talking seemed from the outside, so his crew had filmed her talking and he sent her backstage to watch some of the footage, and then come back later after some other guests had appeared.

Jeni is a classic 7 (and she also seemed like maybe an ENFP -- she is clearly an EP, anyway.) I think a big hurdle with learning enneagram typing is trying to get the Gestalt of a type from words on a page; it took me a long time to realize (through induction) how talkative 7s usually are. And I believe that the 7s' talkativeness is understressed in the enneagram literature. To test this, I looked at the 7 description in Margaret Frings Keyes' Emotions and the Enneagram; it includes the sentence "They enjoy talk and entertaining gossip," but that's the only mention. The 1990 version of Understanding the Enneagram by Don Riso says of the average 7: "Begin to be hyperactive, throwing themselves into constant activity, doing and saying whatever comes to mind." and "Uninhibited, 'flighty,' flamboyant, outrageous, outspoken, loud and brash -- constantly talking, wisecracking, joking and 'performing' to stay in high spirits." (Italics mine.) Although it's there, I think it's underplayed in terms of how much it's talked about versus how much it's part of the 7s personality (from my observation.) I suppose I say this because it's a characteristic that is very apparent from the outside of a person. That being said, 7s usually have this trait to some degree, but many aren't nearly as bad as Jeni. Also, I would imagine that compulsive talking would increase as one goes down the levels of health. A couple of movies which showcase the talkative nature of the 7 personality are My Dinner With Andre and Big Fish.

I don't think Jeni is all that unusual in having been passed over for promotions because of this characteristic: overtalking gets really old for other people. In my experience, Jeni's most unusual characteristic is that she is seeking help for it. Cindi and I just had a discussion about this, and she pointed out that with many vices and character flaws you often hear the individual at least nod at wanting to change. Not so with overtalking, to the point that in some cases very direct statements such as "Let's talk about something else" or "I am tired of listening now" do not work, and neither do little employee "counseling" sessions on the job. I believe that Dr. Phil is onto something when he says Jeni is not in touch with how her behavior appears from the outside. As a 6w7 (and ENFP) myself, I can relate to how it feels differently from the inside -- it seems to you like everybody's having fun. Especially in my younger days, I felt very invested in being "interesting," and felt that having a lot to say was a marker for how interesting a person was.

I hope Jeni can get some help from the Dr. Phil show; she seems like a nice, and certainly a friendly, person. Overtalking is, at least on the surface, a well-meaning vice. I haven't watched the end of the show, and I haven't yet found out what happens when Jeni watches the tapes. I'd like to see some good advice given because I truly do think this problem is holding some good people back. I believe the enneagram answer would be learning to calm down rather than to develop self-control per se; I think Dr. Phil might be headed in that direction as well with his statement about Jeni's anxiety and I look forard to seeing what he has to say (and will report tomorrow.)

The title of this post, The Island of Constant Talkers, refers to the reality show Cindi and I are pitching in which we put all these people on an island together. (Go ahead and steal this idea.) Cindi also shared an interesting anecdote from the life of Rod Serling (she read his biography.) Apparently, he was one of these non-stop talkers. His family (when he was a kid) got together and decided not to talk to Rod during the whole car ride. I guess they were trying out various strategies, and thought maybe talking back only encouraged him. The strategy failed, however, and he talked non-stop all the way up and all the way back, and very likely didn't notice that they weren't talking.

How to determine your Enneagram type: some recommendations

Because I am such an Enneagram enthusiast, I often find myself emailing back and forth with new acquaintances, old friends, etc., to try to help them determine their type.

First, I send them the link to the Eclectic Energies Enneagram Tests. There are two tests there, and I recommend you take them both. The format of the questions is different, and I find them equally illuminating. Results are provided in the form of a list of potential types in their order of likelihood.

After the person sends me copies of their results and we discuss them (usually via email), I send them Riso and Hudson's QUEST. This one's good because it's quick to take, and it doesn't even try to pick out your type: it ranks the nine types into a top three, middle three, and bottom three in terms of likelihood. The prediction is that one of the top three has an 80% likelihood of being your type. This is a good check on the Eclectic Energies results; if, say, Eclectic Energies suggests a type but it's in the bottom tier of the QUEST, it's probably not the one.

After that, I recommend they read my favorite Enneagram book, The Wisdom of the Enneagram by Riso and Hudson. Other good introductions are Personality Types by Riso and Hudson and The Enneagram by Helen Palmer.

The subtext of what I've been saying is that determining your Enneagram type isn't always easy. Some people are able to figure theirs out immediately upon picking up The Wisdom of the Enneagram, but others have a harder time, and there are several people in our Enneagram discussion group whose types are still mysteries to the group.

You'd think it'd be easy to figure out -- you'd just take a test, like with the Myers-Briggs. But it's not that easy -- the Enneagram is not really a science. (Ignore for the moment that there are those who say the same thing about the Myers-Briggs!) In my experience, the MBTI will tell you your type, it'll be correct and it will stay stable over time. But the Myers-Briggs schema consists of continua between four poles. It's obviously much easier to write a test in the forced-choice format for four pairs of opposites than it is for nine types based on 7 deadly sins plus 2! This is why I've never been very impressed with the RHETI (Riso and Hudson's other test), which uses the forced-choice format.

Here's my story of figuring out my own type. It spans the decades:

In 1987, I saw Riso and Hudson's original Personality Types and just had to have the book. (I've always been very interested in both personality and testing.) I read it, and sort of enjoyed it, but didn't much understand it. The types didn't remind me of the people I knew, and I certainly couldn't pick myself out. I wanted to be a 5, cause that seemed like the smart one, but I didn't relate at all to the idea of the withdrawn observer. (My self-image at that time was of someone who was both talkative and needy.) I thought maybe a 4, because it seemed pretty interesting to be the artistic one, but that one was a withdrawn type, too, plus it just didn't feel right. Of all of them, I thought the 7 might be closest, even though I knew that wasn't right either, really, because I was the opposite of a compulsive do-er -- I was more of a compulsive non-doer. I just didn't see any of these patterns in myself or others I knew.

So 12 years pass -- 12 years in which I read every Enneagram book and take every Enneagram test I come across, and get a little better at seeing the patterns in others, and still I don't know my type, although I suspect 7w6. (The RHETI said I was either 7 or 2.) I have a friend named Jeff who likes the Enneagram too, and one day his sister Suzy and I are both hanging out with him on the same day, and we talk about the Enneagram. I told her I didn't know my type, and she says "Oh, you're a 6." I asked how she knew, and she said I just was, and she'd been to an Enneagram conference, and I reminded her of the other 6s, and she'd heard that 6s never knew they were 6s anyway, so if you don't know, it's a good guess. (Pretty good advice, by the way -- if you can't tell, consider 6 or 9.)

Two years later, I met Cindi. We started talking about the Enneagram, and she, too, said "Oh, you're a 6." I asked how she could tell. She said "friendly, funny, nervous." And she's right; I am 6w7.

My reading of profiles of The Loyalist hadn't really evoked "friendly, funny, nervous." That said, the 6 is a particularly hard one to grasp compared to, say, the 1 or the 2. But there's something to the idea that the types can sometimes be easier to identify from the outside. Not only are Enneagram tests just hard to write, but also, you need to see yourself fairly clearly in order to answer the questions correctly. And seeing yourself clearly is why you need the Enneagram in the first place!

Think about it: if you're in the "trance" of your style, and you saw yourself clearly, you wouldn't like what you saw, and you probably wouldn't be choosing those particular strategies. People at the unhealthy levels usually have justifications for their behavior, sometimes elaborate ones, that skew their perspective. [Example from the current news: Lori Drew (the 47-year old woman who pretended to be a 16-year old boy, had an internet flirtation with her 13-year old neighbor that ended in the 13-year old's suicide) thinks: I am a good person, good people don't do bad things, therefore I didn't do anything wrong, therefore why did you attack my Foozball table with an ax? I'm going to the police!]

That's all for right now.