http://ow.ly/lfhUs The #Enneagram and th

http://ow.ly/lfhUs The #Enneagram and the DSM-5 in my #Psychology Today blog. #mbti #coach #dsm2013 #hsp #therapy #psychiatry #APA2013

http://ow.ly/kFa0H EastWestBooks May 25,

http://ow.ly/kFa0H EastWestBooks May 25, 7:30 Eliz. Wagele on #ENNEAGRAM OF DEATH. 324 Castro St., Mt View CA 650-988-9800 #mbti #coach

“I Won’t Be Able to Tell My Neighbors” Part III

Living a Productive Life While Coping with AIDS

John had fierce itching nothing would stop. It would get so bad he tried to kill the bacteria on his skin by taking baths with large amounts of Clorox added to the water.

 

When he regained some strength, he set up his will and durable power of attorney, bought a new dishwasher though the old one still worked, and volunteered to visit men in his AIDS support group in the hospital or at home when they became ill. This gave him goals and the sense his life had hope. He found joy every day and lived by “Do not possess what you can never really own.”

 

John improvised on the piano to work out his complicated relationships. He photographed patterns in the sand and in eucalyptus bark. Once we took a walk deep in the woods near St. Mary’s College in Moraga, hopped on a lone picnic table, and shouted the lines of a play we made up to the attentive oak and bay trees. After John quit his job as an English teacher at Monte Vista High School in suburban Danville, he wrote me a note, “I know everyone around school is going to be talking about me in hushed tones. I’m irresistible gossip. Students too. God, what a choice bit of rare flesh to sizzle on the grill of public discussion.”

 

As a teacher, his goal was to instill a lifelong appreciation of literature in his students. He would occasionally show them movies, too. Hopelessly playful, John threw little pieces of liver at his students one day. They were watching “The African Queen” and he wanted them to know what leeches were like.

 

We formed a support group of about 12 friends, AIDS volunteers, and medical volunteers to fill John’s needs. He named us the Herlinettes. My main job was to take him on adventures, the scarier the better, to cheer him up. Sometimes he surprised me by wrapping my head in a large towel and driving me around in his car, it seemed in circles. After he took the towel off, the schoolteacher in him would charge me with telling him where we were. Once we were parked on a corner facing a house about three miles south into Oakland, and I was completely disoriented. Another time we were near a reservoir in the middle of a herd of goats. Sometimes we’d take the train to San Francisco and go where we weren’t allowed in the Transamerica Pyramid Building or wander about in Chinatown’s darkest alleys.

 

This is Part III of an expanded story from Chapter 4, The Enneagram of Death. Part IV will appear on April 30. Read reviews of The Enneagram of Death – Helpful Insights by the 9 Types of People on Grief, Fear, and Dying and Elizabeth’s 6 other books and CD: http://www.wagele.com

 

Also, Elizabeth will give a talk on The Enneagram of Death May 25 at 7:30. East West Books, 324 Castro Street, Mountain View CA 650-988-9800 http://www.eastwest.com

 

A Valentine for You (plus Saturday’s workshop and more)

   I. This will help you find out what to give each special person for Valentine’s Day according to their Enneagram type.

And if you want to give them this Valentine itself, you can. Just go to my website and you can download two different size for your own website or e-mail or Facebook or wherever you want.

Happy Valentine’s Day everybody!

http://wagele.com/cartoons/ValentineEnneagram.html

II. For this coming Saturday, 2-9-13, I’ll be in Chicago celebrating the subject of Finding Our Way Home using my book, The Enneagram of Death, as a taking off place. Ruthie Landis is my partner for the day-long workshop and has worked hard to make it a successful day. We have actors, including Ruthie, and dancers signed up to read and perform one story from each chapter and I will play piano pieces to accompany them—Bach, Chopin, jazz, a little of everything. Some of the stories will be Facing the Fear of Death: The Gift of Dying by Jan Conlon (type 1, the Perfectionist), Helping Isn’t Always Easy by Darlene Yarnell (type 2, the Helper), The Death of Overdoing by Lee Estridge (type 3, the Achiever), Balancing Grief and Celebration by Suzanne Arcand-Gawreluk (type 4, the Romantic), and Thinking of Death by Marilyn Margulius (type 6, the Questioner). The 7 is by John Stabb, the 8, Two Guns, is by Mario Sikora and the 9 story, Belaram Bulai Was Dying, is by Tom Rosin.

Finding Our Way Home

Co-presented by Ruthie Landis and

guest author, artist, and musician Elizabeth Wagele

Saturday, February 9, 2013

9:30 a.m.- 4:30 p.m.

Our tango with Loss, Grief, and Dying offers us a

poignant opportunity to know our True Self more fully,

explore how we Love, and how we engage with Others and with Life itself.


Come join us for a “happening”; a safe, playful, and provocative day of learning and connecting with others, while we find ways of looking at that which we fear and avoid, our own mortality.  As the centerpiece of the day, prolific author, artist, and pianist, Elizabeth Wagele will offer her latest book, The Enneagram of Death, as well as her live music and comic perspective to the facilitated workshop experience. Coming together, actors and dancers, people of all ages and backgrounds, with curiosity and open hearts, will share an unforgettable and truly enlivening day as we each continue to

Find Our Way Home.

at The Ethical Humanist Society, 7574 N. Lincoln Ave. Skokie, Illinois

Register – $85

(includes signed book and light lunch)

To register email ruthienergy@ruthlandis.com  or PayPal at ruthlandis.com

III. And one more thing – I’m looking for interviews about adolescence either from adults about when they were adolescents or adolescents from ten to 21 themselves. Please write to me at ewagele@aol.com with YOUR BOOK in the title bar if you’re interested in writing something yourself or having me interview you.

Is Empathy Growing or Slowing?

With the emphasis on civil rights and feminism in the past few decades, are we becoming more aware of the way we treat each other day to day?

I think we are. The following examples happened a long time ago. I think and hope people are more empathic and sensitive about equality now. What do you think?

• When I was growing up in the 1940’s and 1950’s, my father was a scientist. I would occasionally visit him at his workplace. I’d see him figuring out problems on paper and the experiments in the laboratory next to his office fascinated me. I wanted him to explain to me what he was doing but he’d say, “It’s too technical. You wouldn’t understand.” I’m pretty sure if I had been a boy he would have found a way to satisfy some of my curiosity.

My best friend’s mother had a PhD in chemistry, but that was rare. In those days, girls almost never studied science. I went on to major in music in college, but I still wanted to know what my father was doing and I asked repeatedly. If I could go back in time, I fantasize, I would take him by the collar and hold him there until he took me seriously. My father was usually a kind person. If society said my curiosity didn’t matter because I was a girl, I wish he could have used his empathy to rise above society’s standard. A generation before, my best friend’s grandparents may have encouraged her mother when she showed an interest in chemistry.

• Around twenty years later, some older relatives offered money to one of our young sons for good grades. One of our daughters was in the room. Where was their offer to her? To my amazement, it didn’t come. Why didn’t their empathy trump their belief that only boys matter? This happened about forty years ago. Do things like this still happen? I couldn’t let it stand, so I raised my voice in behalf of my daughter and (it felt to me) all women everywhere and got them to extend the same reward to her.

This blog is short because I’ve been wrapping up my book on The Enneagram of Death this week. Write to me on my web site or through WordPress with stories about empathy.

Famous Perfectionist: Ex-Senator and Basketball Star Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (born July 28, 1943) is an idealist and a hard worker, two prime characteristics of Enneagram Perfectionist types. He was an American hall of fame basketball player, Rhodes scholar, and three-term Democratic U.S. Senator from New Jersey. He ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic Party’s nomination for President in the 2000 election, beloved especially by many college students who admired his stance on anti-materialism. He was an Eagle Scout, played all-county and all-state basketball in high school, and was offered 75 college scholarships. At Princeton University he earned a gold medal as a member of the 1964 Olympic basketball team and was the NCAA Player of the Year in 1965. He attended Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship.

Bradley spent his ten-year professional basketball career playing for the Knicks, winning two championship titles. Retiring in 1977, he ran for a seat in the United States Senate and was re-elected in 1984 and 1990.

Bradley is the author of six non-fiction books, including The New American Story, and hosts a weekly radio show, American Voices, on Sirius Satellite Radio.

On Meet the Press he said he believes people are searching for some meaning in their life that is deeper than the material. Being only interested in material things is a reaction to the hollowness of life, he said. “To these young people who believe that America can be just, I say, never give up and never sell out. You don’t have to give up your idealism to be successful in America. You don’t have to become complacent. To the contrary, you should be angry with the state of our democracy, the conditions of poverty, the absence of universal health care, the continuation of racism; and if you get angry enough and are smart enough and work hard enough, you can change things. You don’t have to give up what you truly believe so as not to offend power, for real power lies within each of you-the power to mobilize an army of citizens who want to change the world. … you can triumph over ignorance and spitefulness, corruption and greed. You can take the high road and succeed, if enough of you take it together.” -The Journey From Here by Bill Bradley

This is also typical of a Perfectionist: During his high school years, Bradley maintained a rigorous practice schedule, which he carried through college. He would work on the court for “three and a half hours every day after school, nine to five on Saturday, one-thirty to five on Sunday, and, in the summer, about three hours a day. He put ten pounds of lead slivers in his sneakers, set up chairs as opponents and dribbled in a slalom fashion around them, and wore eyeglass frames that had a piece of cardboard taped to them so that he could not see the floor, for a good dribbler never looks at the ball.” Another sign of the Perfectionist is that he felt uncomfortable using his celebrity status to earn extra money endorsing products as other players did.

My last blog was on Robert Reich, who spoke eloquently at a University of California rally on the Occupation movement. Bill Bradley makes a good spokesman for the ideals of the 99% as well.

See more Famous People Enneagram examples on my Psychology Today blogs, my web site, and in each chapter of The Career Within You and Are You My Type, Am I Yours?

Robert Reich, Spokesman for Equality

Robert Reich (born June 24, 1946) has much to offer the Occupy movement as it is finding its way: “I have dedicated my life to ensuring that the economy works for everyone. A central tenet of my writings and the policies I put into place as labor secretary is that our ability to thrive as a nation depends on the capacities of our people who work productively together – both as participants in an economy and as members of a society.”

He spoke to the students who were both protesting fee hikes and supporting Occupy Wall Street on November 15 on the steps of Sproul Hall at Cal in Berkeley:

“I urge you to be patient with yourself because with regard to every social movement in the last half-century or more, it started with a sense of moral outrage. Things were wrong and the actual coalescence of that moral outrage into specific demands came later.

Some people say we cannot afford education any longer, we cannot as a nation provide social services to the poor… Well how can that be true if we are now richer than we have ever been before? Over the last three decades this economy has doubled in size but most Americans have not seen much gain.

The problem with concentrated income and wealth…is an education system that’s no longer available to so many young people… We are losing equal opportunity in America. We are losing the moral foundation stone on which this country and our democracy were founded.

All of you understand intuitively that if we allowed America to go in the direction it was going, with the wealth and the income and the power and the political potential for corruption that all of that represents, that the bullies would be in charge.”

Reich served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton. He is currently Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He was formerly a professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Heller School for Social Policy and Management of Brandeis University. He was also chairman, founding editor, and contributing editor of The New Republic, and contributing editor of The American Prospect, Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

Reich is a political commentator on Hardball with Chris Matthews, This Week with George Stephanopoulos, CNBC’s Kudlow & Company, and APM’s Marketplace and other programs. In 2008, Time Magazine named him one of the Ten Best Cabinet Members of the century, and The Wall Street Journal placed him sixth on its list of the “Most Influential Business Thinkers.” He was a member of President-elect Barack Obama’s economic transition advisory board.

His 13 books, include best-sellers, The Work of Nations, Reason, Supercapitalism, and Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future. He is chairman of Common Cause and writes a blog about the political economy.

Regarding a fair and sustainable income and wealth distribution, he recommends, “Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit — a wage supplement for lower-income people, and finance it with a higher marginal income tax on the top five percent. For the longer term, invest in education for lower income communities, starting with early-childhood education and extending to better access to post-secondary education.”

With little information about his personal life, I’m sticking my neck out and calling him an Enneagram Peace Seeker who makes good use of his Achiever and Questioner arrows. Please let me know if you know him well and know the Enneagram well and you have a more accurate guess.

See more about famous types on my Psychology Today blog and my web site.

Dept of Labor photo.

Capitalism: Does Planning on Infinite Growth Make Sense?

        

Infinity by E. Wagele

    Capitalism is: a system in which private capital is used in the production or distribution of goods. – Oxford Dictionary.

Capitalism has made Europe and the United States wealthy. It has also led to huge debts, exploitation, oppression, unemployment, poverty and ever-increasing waste. Is the main problem the materialism, greed, and selfishness capitalism creates? Or could capitalism work if most people under capitalism had good characters, that is, a sense of equality, fairness, and the desire to do the right thing? Could capitalism be stable—not have to depend on constant growth or inflation?

            Long ago I told my parents, “People buy bigger and bigger houses so they need to make more and more money. They need their companies to produce more and more so they need more and more people to buy their products. Pretty soon there will be too much of everything, including too many people for the earth to support. How can we and our leaders endorse an economy based on infinite growing?”

What does infinity mean?

            When I was 7-9 years old, every few months, I would hear a flute-like sound in my head. Then a voice of authority would order me to hear this tone rise to infinity. I would try to obey.

I would imagine the tone going higher and higher, and when it got as high as I could imagine it, I would try to imagine it going even higher. I would suffer because I couldn’t obey the authority. When I tried to hear the tone go even higher, I might be able to stretch it a bit more, and maybe a tiny bit more than that. I knew it was far away from infinity and had to admit defeat.

At that point I would feel so stressed and frustrated. I would shake my head and arms to make the whole thing go away.

I didn’t tell a soul. I didn’t want anyone to think I was crazy. Nobody else seemed to hear rising flute-like tones in their heads and authoritarian voices demanding things of them. Never mind that the authority was asking for the impossible.

A few years ago someone introduced me to the idea that I could have said No to the authority and the tone. I liked that thought.

60-something years later, I realize that trying to push a musical tone to infinity is something like an economy built on infinite growing. They’re both illogical. At some point, it’s bound to crash and people will be shaking their heads.

Just like my rising tone had an end, so do the resources of the earth. We need to slow down our population and take better care of our planet or it will become too crowded and too polluted. And the economy… what about it?

But how will we get from here to there? Someone who understands economics and governments better than I do might explain how to achieve an equal distribution of wealth and resources. And how to convince Americans it would be positive to have a saving attitude instead of consuming way beyond their need. The propaganda from banks and advertisers for decades has been to spend and borrow frivolously.

I’m taking time out from my Famous Personality Types series to write about something that’s been bothering me for a long time. It feels like The Emperor’s Clothes—something obvious that people don’t talk about. I’ve gotten it off my chest. Thanks for listening.

My last blog on Famous People, Psychology Today, 10-18-1. Tony Bennett.

See All Nine Posts on Elements Types Look for in Jobs

The series on elements the 9 Enneagram types look for in jobs is finished. There’s no new blog today.

This SERIES is based on the book, The Career Within You by Wagele and Stabb. You can read them all on my two blogs below.

See my Psychology Today blog of 5/17/11 for Perfectionists,  http://www.psychologytoday.com/

my WordPress blog of 6-14-11 for Helpers, http://ewagele.wordpress.com/

my Psychology Today blog of 6-21-11 for Achievers,

my WordPress blog of 6-28-11 for Romantics,

my Psychology Today blog of 7-5-11 for Observers,

my WordPress blog of 7-12-11 for Questioners,

my Psychology Today blog of 7/19/11 for Adventurers,

my Psychology Today blog of 8/2/11 for Asserters, and

my Psychology Today blog of 8/16/11 for Peace Seekers.

To buy: The Career Within You

To buy: The Career Within You e-book

Elizabeth Wagele

Stuck Sisters

Stuck by Elizabeth Wagele

The cover of the New York Times Magazine Sunday (5-29-11) is a poignant photograph of two smiling four-year old girls joined at the scalp. They share a thalamus so there’s no possibility of their being separated. Amazingly, it seems that what one sees or tastes is transmitted to the senses of the other. In some ways, they’re separate identical twins and in some ways they’re one person.

I saw this cover just before my birthday, today, when I turn the same age my father was when he died.

When I saw the photo of the twins in their twisted position, I immediately thought of my relationship to my sister, my only sibling, who’s three and a half years older than I am. I think of this scene often: our little beige bodies taking a bath together when I was 2 and she was 5, seen from a corner near the ceiling. I remember having argued about which of us got the faucet end of the bathtub, my mother scrubbing us and pulling us out to dry us off, and sweet soap smells. That scene must represent to me the innocent days of how I felt about her.

At that age, I idolized her. She and my parents were my whole world. But she was like a twin, one of me; they weren’t. I thought I knew her well, maybe like these joined twins know each other. We were made out of exactly the same stuff and our parents weren’t. Maybe it was narcissism on my part, but I preferred her. She did kid things and played with toys and they lived in the world of grownups, which I didn’t relate to at that age.

It began to slowly dawn on me in the next year or two that revering her as a wonderful sister, who could do everything I hoped I’d learn how to do, wasn’t anything like the way she felt about me. And after I finally accepted that she actually disliked me, I began to dislike her back. So we limped and crashed our ways through our childhoods and our adulthoods and after our parents died that was the end of it. Our twisted relationship ended in a kind of death.

The little joined girls, who sometimes refer to themselves as stuck, have an accepting family. The article about them said they’re closest to their positive and loving grandmother, who lives with them. They have supportive parents, other relatives, and a medical system as well.

I wish I knew what really happened in my family and what might have happened had my parents sought professional help for us. Was our sisterhood doomed before it began? Could it have been saved?

I’m happy that my two daughters grew up being fond of each other. All four of my children have good feelings about one another.

So today on my birthday I’m thinking of all of my family, all of my friends, and two little girls I don’t know. To the birthday messages waiting for me, I want to say Happy Birthday back.