The Instinctual Subdomains and Patterns of Expression

Creek: 00:01

Welcome back to Awareness to Action Enneagram podcast. My name is Seth Creekmore. But you can call me Creek and with me, I have Mario Sikora and María José, how y'all doing?

María José: 00:12

I'm good, Creek.

Creek: 00:13

Great. What is the weather like in the places you are?

Mario: 00:16

While I'm in Philadelphia, and or outside of Philadelphia, and it's actually a very pleasant 75 degrees here.

Creek: 00:24

Very nice.

Mario: 00:25

Yeah, really sunny 75. So all is good.

María José: 00:27

I'm in Santiago. It's cold. It's cold for me for my... For you it would be...

Creek: 00:33

So like 86?

María José: 00:35

No, no, no. Not that bad. But I do Celsius. So it's like, I don't know, 18 Celsius. Whatever that means in Fahrenheit.

Creek: 00:42

One moment, let me...

Mario: 00:44

It's probably in the 60s.

Creek: 00:46

59. That's my kind of weather actually. Awesome. Well, today, we are talking about the subdomains of the instinctual biases and the instinctual biases' pattern of expression, which is quite controversial.

Creek: 01:06

So we're going to start with the subdomains of the instinctual biases. That is just what is inside of each of these three - the transmitting, the preserving, and the navigating. So Mario, go ahead and take us through that.

Mario: 01:18

Like we talked about before, we're not just talking about three specific instincts. Okay, we're not just talking about three specific drives that influence a lot of different things. We're talking about many drives or adaptations, each of which is fairly specific to a particular activity. So for example, we could say that the need to create order around me is one of those drives, but not everybody who's preserving has that same impulse. And we'll see the same thing in all the domains. Not everybody does all the same things in each of the domains.

Mario: 01:56

So I like to think about these instinctual biases as three buckets of drives, and even buckets is a weak terminology, because there's some overlap. We can use some of the same behaviors to satisfy different needs. So we might do a preserving behavior for a navigating reason or something like that. But it helps to think of it okay, we've got these three clusters of behaviors. And in order to make this teachable, in order to make this understandable, it helps to put them into some order, some categories.

Mario: 02:32

And I always want to be clear. Even though we're specific on the categories we identify, this is just one way of thinking about it. So for example, Russ, I don't think he calls it domains. Anyway, I'm drawing a blank on the name he uses, but he breaks them down into smaller categories as well. And there's a lot of overlap between what Russ teaches and what we do. It's not exact, but I don't think he would disagree with anything we identify. And I don't disagree with anything that he has identified.

Mario: 03:02

It's just that we're clustering it. We're mapping it different ways.

Creek: 03:05

Zones.

Mario: 03:06

Zones. Thank you. Thank you. So Ross uses the word zones. We use the word zones in a different way that we'll talk about, you know, and this is, you know, Ross came up with his ideas independently, and I came up with mine. And so, we're talking about the same things, basically. Just using a little bit different terminology. So, what the subdomains are just ways of understanding how some of these behaviors clustered together more distinctly.

María José: 03:34

And I would add to that, that just as we call or use verbs in these domains, or in these subdomains, we don't have particular behaviors, but we continue to have kind of focuses of attention. So we'll see that some of them are, I don't know, security or reciprocity.

María José: 03:57

It's not a particular behavior. Because I think the moment you start talking about traits or behaviors, people say, Okay, I do that. I don't do that. And it's kind of on and off. Here, we're talking about what more specific things do I pay attention to? Do I care about? And that's what we're grouping here. That's what we're describing in more detail in these subdomains of each of the instinctual domains.

Creek: 04:26

So let's go ahead and jump into the preserving domain. What are the subdomains for preserving?

Mario: 04:33

So the preserving domain is all about nesting and nurturing again. That's kind of the broad label we put on it. And if you think, humans are primates. Primates are animals. We see the same behaviors throughout the animal kingdom. So it makes complete sense you'd see the same thing in humans. So the nesting and nurturing is all about how do I make sure that my nest is safe and secure and well protected, and that I am nurturing myself and those people that I care about. Okay.

Mario: 05:07

So if we start from that as a general idea, we go to three sub domains. Each of which is broken down into three, I guess we call them sub-subdomains, but we'll save those for when we're going to talk about those domains themselves in future episodes. But the three subdomains that we talk about in the preserving domain are security. Am I safe? Do I have what I need to protect myself? The second one is well-being and resources. Do I have the things that I need to feel healthy? To feel taken care of? To feel supported? And the third thing is maintenance. Am I fixing and repairing those things in my environment?

Mario: 05:50

María José and I were in Belgium a few years ago, doing a training, and we went to Bruges, a beautiful city. In the middle of Bruges, Belgium, there's this swan nest. It's this big giant area fenced off, where all the swans make their nests, and we were standing there talking to our friends. And there was this swan right on the other side of the fence, and it was mechanically pulling the straw in the nest up under itself. And it looked literally like a crane. You know, this crane going out and pulling the straw in.

Mario: 06:26

Now, if you've ever seen a swan up close, they're beautiful creatures, but they have really tiny brains. They have little heads, and they have little brains inside those. So the swan wasn't thinking, Oh, you know what, it's time to upgrade my nest, because...

Mario: 06:39

It would look better where the neighbors you know. They all their nests are a whole lot better than mine. So no, it was just doing something that it had a drive to do, a biological impulse to prepare the nest. So this is what we're talking about in this domain.

María José: 06:39

It would look better. It would look better.

Creek: 06:57

María José, why don't you... Why don't you describe to us the subdomains of the navigating instinctual bias.

María José: 07:03

Okay, so navigating is about orienting to the group. How do I understand the map of the people around me? And how I decide how I want to navigate it. And in that domain, we have three categories or subdomains.

María José: 07:21

One is trust and reciprocity. How do I know who is who, who I can trust? Who I can reciprocate with. What kind of relationship I want to have with them. Then it's the power and influence dynamics. It's understanding who has the power? Who do I need to reach out to in order to have more influence to get done what I need to get done? So it's understanding that part of the map.

María José: 07:50

And finally, once I've understood all of that, who I can trust, who has the power and influence, where do I want to position myself? What do I want my role to be? What do I need to do in order to accomplish that? So those three subdomains are part of the kind of orienting to the group in the navigating domain.

Mario: 08:13

And again, these terms are easily misunderstood by people. So when we talk about power and influence dynamics, people immediately assume we're suggesting that navigators want power and want to influence, and that's not necessarily the case. It's all about understanding those dynamics.

Mario: 08:30

And some of the types, again, we'll point out the Navigating Eight might want power, probably do, or some of the other types might want influence as well. But it's about understanding those dynamics rather than having them. Same thing with status, right? I mean, not every navigating subtype is focused on being high status. Some are and some are not. And, in fact, a lot of Navigating Fours are kind of anti-status, you know. They're the outsiders, the outcast, the people who are saying, you know, I'm not part of the group.

María José: 09:03

But it's deliberate. It's, I decide where I want to position myself. So that's the thing. It's, I understand that, and I decide where I want to be. It's not something that just happens to me.

Creek: 09:15

All right, next one, last one - transmitting.

Mario: 09:18

So again, transmitting is about attracting and bonding. It's about you know, we're always careful about saying this, especially in organizations, but it's about matters related to reproductive fitness. But again, either my genes being reproduced or my ideas, the things I've created and so forth, okay. So it's about replicating.

Mario: 09:38

And in order to replicate, we have to attract and bond. We have to draw the eye toward us, and then we have to establish a connection to that person, to whom we are trying to transmit. We can break this down into broadcasting and narrowcasting, which is this tendency, and again, in the last episode, Creek, you asked about intensity, right? And so people usually think oh, the transmitters want this deep, intense one-to-one interaction with others. That's not where it starts. It starts with a broadcasting, a sending out a message, like the peacocks' feathers. Just Hey, look at me pay attention. And then when somebody does pay attention, when somebody notices, then the narrow casting starts. Ah, I got her attention, Ah, he's listening to me, I'm going to zoom in on him. Okay.

Mario: 10:27

The second category or subdomain is what we call asserting. Transmitters are really good at asserting themselves. I have a son who's a Transmitting Nine. And we always think of Nines as easygoing and passive and you know, just going with the flow, not a Transmitting Nine. I mean, this kid goes after what he wants in life. But he's still very much a Nine. And then finally impressing, which is all about leaving a legacy, leaving an imprint. It's, you know, having people notice that I was there.

María José: 10:56

And that could take different shapes or forms, as we have said before. Could be I want people to notice my ideas, my values, my body, by home. It could look different, but it's always about making an impression of some sort.

Creek: 11:15

I've heard you say that, I mean, in some ways, all the instinctual biases are in an attempt to reproduce on some level, to maintain your survival and to continue your survival through having children. So what how would you differentiate between how you just described the transmitting, and what really all the instinctual biases are pointing to?

Mario: 11:41

Yeah, so let's unpack that a little bit. So when we say that all these impulses are about reproduction, what we're saying is that these are inherited tendencies that have been passed on to us, because for our ancestors, they increase the chances of reproduction. And this is how evolution works. It's a very simple algorithm. That which is adapted to its environment tends to survive long enough to reproduce and passes on those tendencies.

Mario: 12:16

Now, they may not be useful for us now, because biology always takes a lot longer to change than society and culture or our environment. So if there's a dramatic shift in temperatures, for example. Species dies out, because they can't catch up quickly enough. So all of these things ultimately increase the probability of reproduction. Now, we're not suggesting that there's a teleological part of this, an intentional end goal. Biology doesn't say, oh, I want to be this someday.

Mario: 12:59

It's just an algorithm. That which survives long enough to reproduce tends to get reproduced. So each of these inherited evolutionary adaptations is there because it helped our ancestors reproduce. Now, that's the ultimate end, but there are approximate ends, meaning closer ends. And this is where these clusters happen. And so what we, how we think of these is, number one, you have to survive long enough to not only reproduce yourself, but to ensure that your offspring are viable. So I have to raise my children to viable reproduction age.

Mario: 13:37

This is why it's not just about self-preservation, because we all die. All right, you know, when people say, Oh, we have this reproductive, you know, self-preservation instinct. Yeah, well, maybe, but we all die eventually. So it's about preserving things long enough to increase the probability that our genes get passed on.

Mario: 13:54

The navigating domain is all about behaviors that worked for our ancestors to help them be part of the group. Because for prehistoric groups, if you got ostracized and kicked out of the tribe, you are in trouble. You became lunch. You did not reproduce very much. And then finally, we have to do those things that increase the chances that we'll find somebody to mate with. So each of the transmitting behaviors is related to, in a way intentionally or not, attractiveness and desirability and mate ability.

María José: 14:34

Yes. So the things that worked for our ancestors that made them at the end of the day reproduce, those traits were inherited by their offspring. So we have those things. We're wired to do things that worked in the past. Doesn't mean that we're doing it in order to reproduce. We're just wired to do certain things that worked in the past.

Mario: 15:01

And the thing to understand about nature is that it tends to work indirectly. An example. This is very simple. We crave sweets and fat. We don't crave oranges. Now we might, but that's not the specific, you know, that's not the impulse. Because if we craved oranges, and then we were in an environment where we were out of oranges, we wouldn't have enough good sense of the impulse to eat an apple. So we crave things that are sweet. We crave things that are fat, why? Because that's where our ancestors found nutrition.

Mario: 15:29

And while that was great for them, it's not so good for us all the time. Because I can walk eight feet and get a candy bar and potato chips and all these other sort of things that are not healthy for me, but they satisfy this need. So again, all these things work indirectly. And with display behaviors, for example, that we see in transmitters. And one of my sons is a Transmitting Nine, like I said before, and he does not get up in the morning and say, You know what, I'm going to polish my Crocs, which I saw him doing this morning.

Mario: 16:02

I went into his room, and he's got these white Crocs, and he's polish and not polishing them, but wiping them down with a special cleaner and a rag. And he's not doing this because he's thinking, Yeah, I'm gonna go out and make some babies tonight. It's just he's wired to behave in ways that increase the chances that someday he'll make babies. So I want to be very clear, we're not suggesting that every transmitter is out there to make babies and a lot of transmitters don't reproduce, and a lot of transmitters shouldn't reproduce. But it's just they do the things that will lead to reproduction, as we all do.

María José: 16:42

That's why sexual. Again, it's not a good enough, I think, definition.

Mario: 16:50

Too small.

Creek: 16:51

So we've hit on the subdomains, and make sure to tune in a couple of weeks, I think, where we'll get even further into the individual instincts and lots more...

Mario: 17:02

Instinctual domains.

Creek: 17:03

Instinctual domains, and how those actually work with more specificity. But the final thing we wanted to cover in this episode is the pattern of expression. Why? Why? Why, Mario?

Mario: 17:22

Okay, so...

Creek: 17:23

Okay.

Mario: 17:24

María José, you want to comment before we go into this? I can see you brimming with thought.

María José: 17:28

No, I just think that it ties together with what we were just talking about evolution. And I think that there is an evolutionary advantage in people having some characteristics that are different, that distinguish themselves from other people. Some things where there have an advantage over other other people.

María José: 17:53

And so I just want to frame this as a good thing. I think that the pattern of expression, we see the fact that we have one of these instinctual domains being more present active or that we value more, is a good thing, most of the time. It is good for human nature to have advantages in different areas, and not have all of us be the same or as good in everything as everyone else.

Mario: 18:24

Yeah, so there's two dimensions to this question. Number one, why are there these biases? Why is there this differential expression of traits? And then why do they seem to be fixed? In the way that they express themselves? Which, you know, we're the only people who teach, but I have not seen compelling evidence that we're wrong. So María José touched on the first one, and I'll make an additional comment here.

Mario: 18:52

It's kind of silly to assume that anybody could or should be balanced in their approach to all three instinctual domains. We do not see this anywhere else in nature. Every creature expresses traits differentially, particularly social species. There are always some in any social species that are good at this and others who are good at that. Evolution works on multiple dimensions. There's natural selection, which is kind of the overarching idea of it. But there's sexual selection that has an influence, meaning that desirability increases the chances of reproduction.

Mario: 19:33

There's also group selection, which is the idea that the group sort of chooses, unintentionally and unconsciously, what traits get carried on by supporting those traits or not, or ostracizing people with those traits. And so, every social species has differential expression of traits. Some are good at this. Some are good at that. And by working together and each having strengths, we can be better at more things rather than being mediocre at everything. So I get really frustrated, and María José does too, when people talk about balancing the instincts. Doesn't make any sense. There's nowhere else in nature. And it gets away from this whole idea that we each brings strengths to the table.

María José: 20:21

Which doesn't mean that we can afford to neglect some of the areas where we're struggling or making people suffer. We're not talking about that. But should we be equally good at the three domains? I don't see a need for that. And again, it would be silly, as you're saying, not to leverage the strengths that we have, and which we would lose if we were equally good at everything.

Mario: 20:50

There's only so many hours in a day, right? So we can either work on things that we're not so good at, but are not really relevant. Or we can work on relevant strengths. What we talk about instead is requisite skill in each of the areas. So I'm navigating my zone of indifference is the preserving domain, meaning is the one that I don't pay enough attention to. I don't pay much attention to. I don't think is that important.

Mario: 21:20

This does not justify me letting my health go to waste, or not managing my finances, or not putting a roof over my head or any of these preserving things. But I should understand that I need to be good enough at any of the things that affect my life in a significant way so that I don't cause myself to suffer, or the people around me to suffer. Doesn't mean I have to be equally good at preserving as I am in navigating. So that's the distinction. Don't worry about balance, worry about requisite skill, in every area of our life.

Mario: 21:53

The other thing is you can't balance an instinct. Again, there's not just three instincts. There's all these different adaptations. And you can't just say, Okay, I'm going to work on my preserving now. And then every behavior in the preserving domain is automatically going to get better in some way. You have to identify specific behaviors and develop an action plan for them and work on them specifically.

Creek: 22:16

I'd love to bring us back to what are the patterns of expression? And why do you think they're important?

Mario: 22:23

So most people talk about stacking when it comes to the three instinctual domains. That we have this stack. One's number one, the other number two, the other's number three. We don't like that term, because it implies an independent, three separate things sitting on top of each other, and that sort of thing. Instead, what we talked about the way that these things express themselves in our lives, meaning the way that we act out these impulses. Consciously or not, well managed, or not, etc.

Mario: 22:52

And the way we think about it is that they're not independent forces, but they're uniquely tied together in a specific relationship. And one of them is what we call the zone of enthusiasm. Okay, that's the bias that we are most inclined toward. We get enthusiastic about it. When you want to get me engaged, talk about navigating stuff, because that's what I get enthusiastic about. You wanna get my wife engaged, talk about preserving stuff, because that's what she cares about.

María José: 23:21

Even if we're not that good at it, but we pay attention to it. We talk about it. We spend time and energy on it.

Mario: 23:29

Yeah. And when we do the episode on how to work with these things, a few episodes ahead, we want to talk more about that María José about this difference between attention to something and skillfulness at it. Because you can be a screw up in your dominant instinctual bias.

María José: 23:47

Yeah, the reason why... Sorry, the reason I bring it up, it's because enthusiasm sounds like, I'm good. I like it. And some people don't like particular aspects of their domain, but they still pay attention to it.

Mario: 24:01

Yeah. And they're drawn to it. And they're energized either positively or negatively sometimes. So the zone of inner conflict is the secondary domain. It's the domain in which we are drawn to it more than we realize. We're energized by it more than we realized. But we're also conflicted about it. We feel some embarrassment. We feel some shame about it. In my case, as somebody who's dominant navigating, my zone of inner conflict is in transmitting. Now, anybody who knows me knows that Mario can get to transmitting at times, but there are other times when I feel really conflicted about it. So it's a love hate relationship with this domain.

Mario: 24:47

And the third domain is what we call a zone of indifference, meaning it just doesn't seem important to me. It's not that interesting. Now, some people would call this a blind spot or say that there's shame about it and that sort of thing. We avoid it because we feel shame. I think the shame develops because we avoid it. And we usually fall into what the management theorist Chris Argyris called skilled incompetence, meaning we develop these workarounds for something that we're not competent at. But then we don't want to actually go back and develop that, because we're exposing that we're not competent at it to begin with, so...

María José: 25:23

Yeah, if there were no consequences, we wouldn't be ashamed of it. We would still be indifferent to it, but not ashamed.

Mario: 25:33

Yeah, I think people tend to over psychologize the instinctual biases. Look for, you know, I remember hearing somebody say, Well, you know, we become self pres, because in our childhood, we didn't have enough of the things that we needed, et cetera, et cetera. Well, that might be the case. But how do we prove it? How do we know that?

Mario: 25:53

And, you know, I don't know if you've ever tried to talk to a three month old, but it's a one way conversation. And nobody remembers their memories from three months old and cetera. So it's likely that it's a combination of pre-wiring, predisposition towards some area that then is acted upon, cause to express through our experience.

María José: 26:15

Yeah, if that were the case, most people who were born during kind of the war would be preserving, and it's not the case. I mean, it's doesn't work like that.

Mario: 26:26

That's a great point. And I actually heard one person say one time, one Enneagram teacher say that there are no social and I'm sorry, no sexual subtypes younger than 13. Because that's when you hit puberty, and you can't be a sexual subtype if you don't have a sexual impulse or something.

Mario: 26:46

Now, first of all, it's just stupid on a lot of levels. Freud would have certainly disagreed. But even if we throw out Freud, again, we're not talking about sex. We're talking about transmitting, and I can tell you, the father of a transmitter, that that transmitting was there really early. So again, I think there's an inclination towards these things.

María José: 27:08

Yeah, my daughter, my first daughter, when she was like four, I couldn't figure out what was wrong with her. And then I realized that she's transmitting, and I realized that there wasn't anything wrong. It's just that I was reacting to her transmitting, and her lack of navigating skills or attention. And I thought that she was going to just fail in life because of it. And when I realized that she's just transmitting, it's nothing wrong, and she will succeed just as anyone else.

Creek: 27:45

So this was kind of a general overview of the pattern of expression. The next episode, we're going to get even more specific on what those patterns of expression are, as well as how to work with them. And why should you believe Mario?

Mario: 28:05

Because I have an honest face.

Creek: 28:06

I don't know.

María José: 28:09

They cannot see it so...

Creek: 28:10

They cannot see your face.

Mario: 28:12

So you have no reason to believe me other than your own experience.

Creek: 28:15

Yeah. So we'll see you back here next week.

Mario: 28:23

So long guys.

María José: 28:23

Bye.

Creek: 28:28

Thanks for listening to the Awareness to Action Enneagram podcast. If you're interested in more information or talking to Mario, MJ or myself, feel free to reach out to us through the links in the show notes or by emailing info@awarenesstoaction.com. All episode transcriptions and further information can be found at awarenesstoaction.com/podcast.