At Providence Treatment, our staff supports recovery in different ways. We encourage and facilitate active 12-step recovery involvement. We know that personality features, ways in which we have learned to relate to others, can be significant barriers to stable, long-term recovery. Self-exploration and self-understanding, while not sufficient for recovery, are an important part of the spiritual growth and transformation necessary for sustained progress. The Enneagram is a guide for self-discovery to nurture acceptance and expression of our true nature or essence. It is a personality matrix based on ancient wisdom. This matrix helps us see the truth about ourselves as well as let go of ego agendas and defenses. This helps to move us toward ongoing practices that support both personal and spiritual development.
The Enneagram offers a tool to engage our clients in a self-exploration process that is framed in spiritual, rather than purely psychological language. The concepts used by Enneagram work are non-pejorative, and affirm the individual’s ability to move from deformative expression of traits to healthy, spiritually formative expression. Because the Enneagram is offered for self-exploration, it helps engage the individual in a self-motivated change process, much more than psychological diagnostic instruments can do. The Enneagram is a useful adjunct to step work, especially in the 4th, 5th and 6th steps, as well as in the daily 10th step work of self-review.