Episode 1: the story vs. me

CHICHI AGOROM:

Welcome to From Armor to Ease, an enneagram podcast exploring how we return to our freest selves beneath the armor we carry. I’m your host, Chichi Agorom, writer, enneagram teacher & practitioner, author of the book The Enneagram for Black Liberation which is available for purchase everywhere, and a lifelong learner of what it means to be fully human. I’m so glad you’re here.

This podcast has been a long time coming for me, and I can’t believe we’re actually here! I didn’t want to do it for a long time because we know every millennial thinks they got something to say and has a podcast now, and let’s be real—a lot of people should get their microphone privileges revoked—but I’m really thankful that I got over myself and decided to make the show because it’s already been a gift to me. I get to have conversations that make me feel tingly and excited and curious and energized and more awake and more compassionate—truthfully, the only kind of conversations I want to be a part of.

From Armor to Ease is an interview style podcast, so this is the only time for the next few months you’ll be hearing just me on here. So I wanted to set us up for this first season of conversations will look like. Each week, I’ll be joined by a new guest and the conversations will alternate between armor-specific episodes, and what i’m calling expert episodes. For our armor-specific episodes, you’ll hear from someone who identifies with that armor about how it impacts their relationship to intimacy. And for the expert episodes, you’ll hear from a wide variety of people who have wisdom to share around the topic of intimacy. On this season that includes a therapist talking about attachment, a writer sharing about intimacy and joy, a researcher sharing about sex and enneagram types, and so much more! I want this to be as accessible and relatable to as many people outside the enneagram world as possible.

Some of you who might already know of me probably found me through my enneagram work. Maybe you’ve read my book (which if you have, thank you!), or maybe you’ve attended a course I’ve taught or been a part of my ease cohorts for Black women. Either way, based on the evidence, you might think I’m very obsessed with the enneagram! But in reality, I don’t really love talking about the enneagram. You know, so much of what we’ve done with it collectively is turn it into another set of reductionist boxes, or we’re so hyper-focused on talking about it as a concept but not utilizing it as an embodied tool for transformation. If you’ve listened to any conversations where i’m the one being interviewed, you might have heard me say that I am not passionate about the enneagram, I’m passionate about what it can help us do, how it can help us get free. I’m passionate about ease and liberation and joy. And to get to those things, we have to consider the barriers that keep us away from the ease and liberation and joy we desire.

So that’s where this idea came from. and while the tagline says this is an enneagram podcast, only half of the episodes will be about specific enneagram types. And even in those episodes, we’ll be exploring how the story or armor of type impacts the relationship to intimacy. Basically, this isn’t an podcast where we nerd out about the enneagram. This is a podcast where we nerd out about what it means to be fully human and fully loved, and all the things that get in the way.

Okay so, a little bit on how I approach the enneagram. I write and teach about the enneagram as armor, 9 different forms of armor we use to navigate the world and protect ourselves from both real and imagined threats. Our armor is necessary for protection in a world that is unjust and often unsafe. But what happens when we carry the armor around for so long that we forget who we are without it? We start to confuse the fullness of who we are with these survival strategies we use everyday. Eventually all I know how to relate to myself is through my survival strategies.

I really do believe that how we do one thing is how we do everything. In fact, that was the original tagline of this podcast. So, what tends to happen is that the more unconsciously armored we are towards the outside world, the more unconsciously armored we become towards ourselves. We become so identified with the singular story of our armor that in spaces where we actually don’t need to be armored, in spaces where care and love and ease is being offered to us, we don’t know how to let it in.

When I do enneagram work with Black women, the overwhelming majority of us have a hard time identifying and naming who we are outside of our armor or outside of our survival strategies. We can name the armor, but we don’t know what is left behind if we set the armor down. When we think about the need to armor up, we often think about external threats. But we hold ourselves to the same limiting beliefs internally. I become the one punishing myself and rejecting myself internally, even when I am alone. The story of my armor becomes the only way I know how to relate to myself. And if that’s the only story that’s true, then how do I experience ease? or care? or freedom? The nine different stories of who we believe we have to be to be okay (which is what I mean by armor), tell us that we have to distance ourselves from the parts of us that don’t fit that story. We have to avoid and destroy the parts of us that our armor sees as a threat to our survival. But if I’m constantly at war within myself, destroying parts of myself just to maintain a story of survival, how can I be free or at ease?

So, what I want to invite you into is exploring the ways we armor up for survival, and how that can sometimes keep us from the things that help us become free and at ease. Each season will have a different theme that we explore related to our armor, and in season one, we’re diving deep into intimacy in all its forms. I have so many incredible guests that I can’t wait for you to hear from this season. The conversations are so good and juicy and honest and rich. And unfortunately, I’m a person who believes in leading by example, in going first. And since I’m asking these incredible humans to get intimate with me on here, I figured I’d let you into some of my intimate parts to start us off.

Okay so, intimacy to me means being known fully. It means a close-up view of a person, who they really are not just who you think they are but the fullness of the humanity of the person up close. the parts that are astonishing and beautiful and breathtaking and inspiring and the parts that are ordinary and messy and frustrating. And being with all of that and seeing all of that up close. I think there’s also a part of intimacy that evokes care. So it’s not just an observation of a person from a distance but that there’s a closeness and care involved. I’m holding all these parts of you with care.

And because this is how I think of intimacy, it’s very scary to me. Because MY armor says that I am only deserving of love based on how well I hide the parts of myself that are messy and ordinary and not enough. if I can show the parts of myself that are shiny and enough and interesting, then you’ll stay and love me, then i’m deserving of attention and care. But if you see all the parts of me that are messy and ordinary and inadequate, you will know immediately that I am no longer deserving of love. So because intimacy requires the entirety of myself to be seen, historically I have run away from it. I let people in to a certain point, far enough where the other person feels like oh i’m getting to know her, but not far enough that it triggers my fear of you seeing my not-enoughness. But once I start to feel like you’re getting too close, I disappear. While I do want to be known at that level, i’m deeply terrified of being known at that level.

I used to say to people years ago that i’m shinier from a distance. Because I really did believe that the closer you got to me, the more ordinary I became. And I still believe that, because here’s the thing—I do think that if I zoomed out and looked at myself through the lens of how other people see me and the words others have used to describe me, it can be very shiny. And what that would do to me in the past—and this still happens, just not as frequently—is that it would introduce this level of pressure of like, oh if this is how you see me and if this is the shiny version of me you hold and you are proud to know me and be seen with this version of me, then that’s the version of myself I need to keep up. I need to maintain this version of myself that brought you to me. So then I put all my energy towards maintaining that version while becoming more and more distant from the rest of myself.

But anyway, I still believe that the closer you get to me the more ordinary I become. I think that’s true of my experience of myself, that the more I have gotten to know myself, in my entirety not just the stories I want to believe about myself but the more I have practiced being with and loving and accepting who I am as I am, what i’ve discovered is that I am pretty ordinary AND I am pretty incredible. It’s not either or. It’s both things. And realizing that has helped to relax my fear, because i’m practicing accepting and loving myself as the ordinary person I am. And interestingly, I have found that being able to celebrate and love and accept the parts of myself that are ordinary actually helps me celebrate and love the parts of me that are extraordinary. Not as a means to an end, not extraordinary because it’s what earns me acceptance or love. Just an offering of love for my extraordinariness in the same amount I offer my ordinariness.

And now even though I still think I’m shinier from a distance and more ordinary up close, what has changed for me is the story around what being ordinary means. Because before, that story meant that if you see me as ordinary I am no longer deserving of love. I have to be extraordinary, I have to offer something that’s unique, I have to give you something that you’re not getting from anyone else otherwise why do I have any value to you? You’re gonna throw me out, you’re gonna discard me, right? So I cannot be ordinary otherwise you will not think of me as valuable and you will not love me. But the more I work with that story, the more I say “what else could be true if this story isn’t always true?” the more I realize I can be ordinary as hell and still so loved. I can be ordinary and love myself. It took me awhile but i’ve come to love my basic-ness in the moments when i’m not trying to perform, where nothing’s happening, and I’m just being me. Nothing spectacular or unique is happening in those moments, it’s just basic and boring, but I feel so lovable in those moments. And being with that part of me helps me not be so scared of people getting close, because I have gotten close to my ordinariness, my inadequacies, and boringness.

What the singular story does, in 9 different ways, is it serves the function of distancing us from our full selves. We all have the story that we think we have to be, and then the parts of ourselves we have to destroy and avoid in order to maintain that story. And so when we loosen the grip of the story we get to come back to the parts of ourselves we’ve avoided for so long and we’ve tried to deaden and kill in order to keep up the story. For me, the more I become friends with those parts of myself, the easier it is (it’s not easy yet i’m still working on it), to allow people to get closer because I know how to be with that fear now that says: oh if they get too close and see you’re not as sparkly and shiny up close, they’re gonna throw you out. I think the fear will always come up for me, but i’ve learned how to hold it now, instead of immediately using it as my reason or excuse to run away from myself or to run away from love. Instead I say, “ok i’m noticing the fear, can I allow it to be there without criticism or judgment? can I notice it, treat it with kindness and say it makes sense that you’re here. There were so many relationships growing up where you didn’t feel that your ordinariness was loved, that you DID have to be extraordinary to have any value so it makes sense. I see and honor your experience, and i’m gonna remind you that your story’s not always true. i’m gonna leave some space for that.” Even just the sitting with it and the being with it allows my body to calm down and soothes my fight, flight, freeze response. And then I can say from this space with a little bit more access to groundedness and awareness, I can ask myself: what else could be true here? Is it actually true—do I have evidence that every single person in my life who has gotten close to me has decided I wasn’t deserving of love? I don’t have that evidence.

What I have evidence of is that when I let people in, they love me more. So I have to remind myself and help my body make that connection that says when you choose to be vulnerable and choose to allow people to really see you, they don’t turn and run away. People have left me, but for a variety of reasons not simply because I wasn’t enough. So helping myself ground back in reality, rather than just operating off of my story of fear allows me to stay present and accept care, love, intimacy where normally I would just be like “bye!”

I’’d rather you have your story of me than have me. Because at least I have control over the story. I’m good with words, chile i’m a writer! I have control of the story/narrative. So I’d rather you have the story of me than have me because me is unpredictable. Me is not edited and filtered and perfectly structured with perfect syntax. Me is messy, me is beautiful and a disaster, both at the same time. But the story I can create for you is stunning. It’s perfect, even in it’s imperfection. I can mold and shape that imperfection into exactly what I want it to be. So I’d rather you have that story because it gives me control. this is a transaction, I know exactly what product to give you to make you a satisfied customer and a repeat customer. But if I give you me….whew. I don’t know what’s gonna happen!

And it requires me to relinquish the control of trying to make sure you see me a certain way which is what actually frees me up to then live. If i’m not so concerned with how you see me, with the story I need to be telling you, with the product I need to be selling you about who I am, then i’m actually free to be present and to live. And, you know, living sometimes requires me to confront the things i’ve been avoiding. So in order to keep avoiding, I hold onto the story, I perfect the story.

As I was prepping for recording this season, I kept coming back to this Rumi quote that says, “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” It’s been a big part of my own growth work, and my biggest internal barrier to love is this story that the closer you get to me the more ordinary I become, and the more ordinary I become, the less lovable I am. I know now that that story isn’t true always. That story has been true in certain relationships. The story wasn’t manufactured from nowhere. And this is true for all 9 types. It’s not like we just decided to find these stories and use them for fun as if they didn’t come from real experiences and real pain. So there have been relationships where that story has been true. But just because it’s been true in a couple of places doesn’t mean it’s always true. And the more I learn to release the story and loosen my tight grip on the story, the more freedom and ease and intimacy I get to experience in reality.

So, that’s a little bit of what I’m bringing to these conversations this seasons. Thank you for holding space for that and for listening to me get a little naked over the airwaves.

I think there is something so beautiful and transformative about listening to each other’s stories. We discover new ways of seeing things, we realize we’re not alone in our experiences, we reconnect to that beautiful sameness in all of us when we show up with vulnerability and care. I hope this season makes you consider your own armor with curiosity and compassion and also the armor the people you love use to survive, and I hope these conversations encourage you to create some space between yourself and your armor so you can access greater intimacy, freedom and ease.

I hope that this becomes a space where you feel invited into being more human, into connecting with your freest, truest selves. I hope you learn something new about yourself, about how other people see the world, and I hope we all learn together how to embrace more ease in our interior worlds.

Thank you so much for being here. I know there are so many voices out there to tune into, so I appreciate you for taking the time out to listen to me and this podcast. I can’t wait for you to hear who I have on the show next week! She is brilliant, so don’t play yourself and miss out. Also, as a brand new show it would be so helpful to me if you would like, share, and subscribe. It helps boost the ratings of the show, and helps more people find us which allows me to keep making the show.

And if you would like to listen to the full uncut episodes or watch the conversations in video format, you can access all of that by joining our Patreon. For $5 a month you also get bonus episodes, access to Q&A, and a growing community with other listeners like you! You can sign up at www.patreon.com/FromArmortoEasepodcast . That link is also available in the show notes.

Alright y’all. Let the journey begin!