siblings and I left their dinner on the
table and followed the sound of my
father’s scream downstairs we stopped
short at the scene of my mother’s
suicide the night she hung herself my
mom must have decided that her life had
no worth and I decided as a child does
that her decision must have been because
of me
I would spend the next three decades of
my life telling myself versions of if I
was good enough
horrible things wouldn’t happen my
incessant obligation to improve myself
ran me like a junkie this became my own
personal prison in my 20s I married and
I had my first son and then a second and
a third and I promptly put myself into a
parenting class that introduced me to
something called the Enneagram an
incisive psychological tool the
Enneagram has taught at places like
Stanford and Harvard it showed me that
people’s neurological organization is so
patterned were actually predictable like
a map of ego structures this curious
nine pointed diagram pointed out the
cognitive emotional and behavioral
strategies we all use to survive our
childhoods
I very reluctantly recognized myself as
an anagram type one the perfectionist
reformer whose habit it is to suppress
anger and reframe it into something more
appropriate were utopian at heart but
type ones forget that our goodness is
inherent not earned and we set standards
for ourselves and others that leave us
eternally idealistic and chronically
frustrated for the first time I
understood that the contempt I held for
myself was directly related to my fury
at the world for abandoning me when my
mother disappeared from my life I could
temporarily suppress my outrage by
staying above and beyond my
approach until my ego caught up to me
with its self-critical judgment and
seething resentment there was nothing
wrong with me as it turns out just an
intelligent response to a massive hurt
and my fierce compulsion to avoid it
slowly I began to realize that in nine
different ways we all come to suffer
that were not enough not good enough not
special enough not successful enough not
unique enough not masterful enough loyal
happy strong or loved enough this is the
human condition I wish I could tell you
that’s when I became enlightened but I
wouldn’t find any lasting reprieve from
my inner critic until almost ten years
later when I found myself in a little
Texas prison as a newly certified
Enneagram teacher face to face with
about a hundred guys who were in for
everything from drug dealing to murder I
was hired to teach something that I
believed but I had yet to really learn
that we’re all in a prison of our own
making and the way that we suffer our
personalities I would spend months
stressing myself over the men I was
about to meet projecting myself right
onto them by imagining that they would
be too broken too damaged to hurting too
angry to get it the US prison system
gave me a convenient metaphor from my
own shadow side where I could
unconsciously take all the stuff I
couldn’t stand about myself and dump it
onto an entire population of already
hurting men I wouldn’t get away with
that for long the men that I met behind
bars were nothing like I imagined they
were so grateful that someone came and
they were starving to know the truth
about themselves they shocked me with
their transparency and but they were
willing to admit to having done and also
what they shared with me happened to
them during their childhoods
as I stood in front of a sea of men in
blue uniforms who reminded me of my own
children a little part of me said it
among them
arms folded foot-tapping waiting for
those tough guys to drop their defense
mechanisms waiting for them to find
their vulnerability and then they did
and I suddenly found myself up against
my own ego structure in ways that I did
not anticipate and I did not like
sitting with people at the unhealthy
rock-bottom of themselves as we found
our breath and we located an inner
witness to ourselves in a place like
prison was a miracle because their
practice of self sabotage and
self-hatred and self-abandonment
sheepishly realized were also mine years
of therapy and healers and self-help
books and workshops couldn’t rival the
extraordinary journey inward I received
from sitting in that prison with those
men over the next four years they showed
me that my story of being not good
enough was a tired one and what a fraud
I would be if I fail to take my own
teaching the teaching of the Enneagram
to heart right in front of me those
hurting men were waking up to who they
were and they as they did they literally
traditionally the Enneagram has been
taught and privileged white esoteric
circles but it has always been meant for
everyone in 2012 I founded a nonprofit
called Enneagram prison project in order
to bring this self awareness tool to the
people who seem to need it the most
together with a dedicated team small but
dedicated team we’ve been teaching the
anagram in California at progressive
facilities like Santa Clara County and
San Mateo County Jail and San Quentin
State Prison people told us you can’t
teach that thing to them they’re gonna
manipulate you with it but that’s not
what happens I’ll tell you what does we
give people this incisive psychological
tool and the loving support they need to
unpack what happened to them people who
have been practically thrown away
warehoused who have all but discarded
themselves do but hardly anyone believes
is even possible to do they
and to heal historically our approach to
correcting bad behavior in the US has
been to punish but punishment alone
doesn’t work we know this because we’ve
seen a 700 percent increase in
incarceration over 30 years in this
country nearly one in a hundred
Americans is behind bars sixty-seven
percent of them will return to prison
within three years we’ve been tough on
crime and we’ve waged a war on drugs but
the human beings targeted in our
campaigns are already among the most
hurting members of our society we put
them in prisons more destructive than
the lives that were living and then hate
them for not changing when they get out
every one of the women in our
maximum-security classes has been raped
many of them before age 10 most of the
men in custody have lost their fathers
through violence death incarceration or
abandonment mostly before they were
teens physical sexual and emotional
abuse for men and women is so normalized
that people list off tortures they’ve
lived through not even comprehending a
degree of emotional loss they’ve
suffered and the majority of men and
women in prison are in for drug-related
offenses dr. Gabor maté a the Canadian
Hungarian physician who specializes in
addiction says the most pressing
question is not why the addiction but
rather why the pain our system is broken
and so are the people in it
author Henry cloud says we begin to
change when the pain of staying the same
is greater than the pain of changing
we’ve come by our reputation as the
country that incarcerate smore people
than any other nation by perpetuating a
system that has long since failed those
it aims to correct we need to hold
people compassionately culpable for what
has gone wildly wrong on both sides of
the bars for those locked up in our
correctional system and for those of us
running it but we cannot change we
cannot see we must be willing to take a
look at what is actually
really going on on the inside on the
inside of jails in prisons on the inside
of families systems and inside of
ourselves
a man named John self-selected into our
eight week program at the local jail 18
months ago jacked-up tattoos everywhere
awaiting court and looking at some
serious time he picked a type overnight
and his cell with an any grande book
type 3 the performer achiever he got to
work on himself immediately type threes
are known for their hustle for being the
best for being successful but John owned
the hardest most defended part of his
type the chameleon-like deceit and the
violent aggression for anyone who got in
the way of his big self-image and the
tuff mask that he wore all of which we
helped him to realize for his good cover
for a very hurting heart for John prison
began in utero he was born to a Coke
addicted mother and a father who would
show up sporadically to beat his family
and have sex with his mother in front of
the children
Little John protested by Rooney’s moms
hi every chance he got hiding her drugs
being a menace starving for attention
when John was only four years old his
pregnant mother went to prison and John
was sent to foster care where he was
violently and repeatedly raped for years
by two older foster care kids with a
knife to his throat he was beaten often
until he was hospitalized when John’s
mom was released from prison he was
returned to her care so full of hate and
rage he could barely contain himself
when he was nine he found his mom stash
of crystal meth and instantly escaped
his childhood when John was 12 he came
upon his father beating his mother
nearly to death and her defense he saw
red and he beat his father into a
John was charged with assault with a
deadly weapon and
the rest of his childhood locked up in
juvenile hall until he was 18 how we
hold ourselves together when things
outside of us are falling apart is
learned in childhood
how much presence we can tolerate is
directly related to the relationship to
nurture we had when we were small for
John nurture is non-existent the
scariest part of his childhood were his
own parents under that kind of terror
our reptilian brain signals us to fight
to flee or to freeze it’s the only
Guardian we have it’s the only thing we
come to trust we teach students like
John and there are thousands of inmates
like John that what happened to him was
not his fault as the famous English
psychologist DW Winnicott says things
that happened during childhood should
never have happened and things that
should happen did not things like love
and nurture and holding but we also
teach that the holding that he did not
receive it is possible for him to learn
to do for himself now we taught him of
the intelligence behind his instinct to
fight to survive to the scene of the
radience we still see in him and that
his capacity to be as whole as he hopes
to become is undiminished and then we
watched as tears filled his eyes and
founded Enneagram prison project on a
leap of faith
naively believing that if we could just
help people to see the patterns of their
personality they would be freed to make
new choices over the last eight years
working with some of the best teachers
in the field I have come to see that
this is only partially true learning the
personality is a big part of the puzzle
but trauma resolution and recovering the
emotional losses of childhood are the
others adverse childhood experiences can
impair the very architecture of the
brain with negative effects that can
last a lifetime actually a prison made
for us in childhood is not our choice at
all Bessel van der Kolk one of the
world’s leading trauma expert says being
traumatized is to continue to organize
your life in such a way as if the trauma
were still going on as if every new
encounter were contaminated by the past
our work is about helping people to
excavate the highest parts of themselves
from the lowest places in their past
we need prisons John posed a real threat
to society and he needed to be contained
I have had many people tell me going to
prison saved my life but John was not
born violent or evil no child is human
beings do not come into the world as
murderers and rapists home invaders and
gang leaders addicts and thieves these
roles are fostered inside families where
were we when John was only four years
old how we live out our adulthoods is
eventually it ultimately our
responsibility but we need to come clean
to our own negligence and failing to
give children the chance they so
desperately deserve to ever learn how to
do this what we do with children when
they end up in our custody and our care
is our responsibility Carl Rogers the
humanistic psychologist said in order
for people to grow they must be held in
unconditional positive regard the people
in custody are not even allowed to hug
during intake when they’re booked
they’re put into a cold concrete room
called a holding tank people can spend
all day there and entire lifetimes in
prison without a single human being ever
helping them to understand how to hold
their pain imagine if our correctional
system were to add healing to its
charter what if we all started asking
because we all started caring what has
happened to you that led you here tell
me about your childhood John has been
sent to prison he’s scheduled to get out
in 2036 how the time served in his
tortured childhood does not somehow
count and his overall sentencing is
confounding John has a one-year-old
daughter he will experience her entire
childhood from behind bars when the
prison door clanged close behind him
John fell to his knees and sobbed
thinking he would lose his mind but then
he heard this little voice inside of his
head say can you be okay and then and
the most counter instinctual move of his
lifetime
John sat down in that prison cell and he
took a breath the people that we least
expect to change are waking up to the
pain inside of themselves ending
generational cycles of incarceration one
person one pod when prison at a time the
rest of us need to wake up to impacting
a pattern of this epic proportion
requires a radical massive paradigm
shift in consciousness a shift and
caring self scrutiny must happen on both
sides of the bars we need not insist
that the incarcerated bear the brunt of
our collective healing actually the
incarcerated are among the most powerful
willing agents of human transformation
that exists on a spiritual level their
healing lists the collective but in the
most practical sense their healing is
for the protection of society as a whole
the way they went in was bad enough
an eager imprison projects compassionate
application of the loving Enneagram
system allows people to leave prison
better off than where they started we
all benefit from this kind of expansion
and I know now without a doubt they are the ones who deserve it
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