Feeling Into Type Two
Twos are helpful and generous souls. However, while Twos are very good at seeing and meeting the needs of others, they often have trouble both identifying their own needs and believing that those needs deserve attention. Their constant giving helps them to feel loved and accepted by others, but their feeling of having to earn love can also leave Twos feeling undervalued by and resentful of the very people they are helping if they don't feel their self-sacrificing is being appreciated.
With Twos out of touch with their own needs, caretaking others - especially when help is not actually needed or asked for - can leave others feeling smothered and guilty.
Can you begin to feel into some of the key struggles for a Type Two?
Here are a couple of poems and explorations that might help...
The Journey
by Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voice behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life that you could save.
Clearing
by Martha Postlethwaite
Do not try to save
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is yours alone to sing
falls into your open cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself to the world
so worthy of rescue.
EXPLORE:
In a world that demand so much of us...how do we recognize our own voice, and - having done that - how do we say what needs to be said?
How do we recognize our own life, "the one that is our alone to sing", and then sing it?
EXPLORE:
We all have (at least) a bit of Type Two in us – wanting to care for others in healthy - and sometimes not so healthy - ways. Here are some questions to help you explore “Two-ness”. (You may want to go through this round of questions a few times, noticing how your answers deepen as you do.)
How do you show up for other people in healthy ways? In unhealthy ways?
How is the balance between your giving to and receiving from others?
In what ways might you over-use flattery?
How does pride show up for you?
What does it mean to be a separate-self?
What does humility mean to you?
Holy humility confounds pride
and all the men of this world
and all things that are in the world. - Francis of Assisi