Step 7: Humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings.
For Enneagram Type 2s, Step 7 at Surrender School addresses core challenges such as pride, manipulation, martyrdom, and the tendency to prioritize others’ needs over their own. Type 2s often seek to be loved and needed, which can lead to people-pleasing, denial of their own needs, over-responsibility for others, and using food as a substitute for genuine emotional connection or as a way to nurture others. Step 7 encourages Type 2s to practice humility by recognizing that their pursuit of love and approval through helping others can become a barrier to authentic self-care and reciprocal relationships, and to ask their Higher Power for the willingness to release their need to be needed and to manipulate for love, trusting that the best love comes from a full well and that asking for their own needs to be met is essential for genuine connection.
Cultivate Humility and Self-Acceptance
Character defenses, such as your patterns of pride and people-pleasing, are deeply ingrained behaviors developed over time as ways to feel loved and valued. Just as you are powerless over food, you are also powerless over these defenses in isolation. Trying to change them solely through willpower is rarely effective. True transformation begins with acknowledging these limitations and opening yourself to support from a Higher Power.
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- Reflect on Humility: For Type 2s, humility involves recognizing that your inherent worth is not determined by how much you do for others or how needed you are, but by your intrinsic value as a loved and lovable person, just as you are. It’s about acknowledging that pride and people-pleasing can prevent you from experiencing genuine self-love and reciprocal relationships, where both giving and receiving are valued. Humility here means valuing your own needs and well-being as much as those of others.
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- Embrace Asking for Your Needs: Accept that asking for what you need, and asking again for the best, is not selfish but essential for your well-being and for authentic love. Allowing yourself to acknowledge your needs, to express them directly, and to trust that you are worthy of receiving love and support, leads to a more balanced and genuinely loving way of relating to yourself and others. Remember your mantra: “Ask for what you need and ask again for the best love comes from a full well.” By embracing asking for your needs, you counteract pride and people-pleasing, foster genuine self-care, and discover that the best love flows from a full well – your own well-being must be nurtured first.
Reflection Questions:
- What does humility mean to me, beyond being needed and helpful to others?
- How can I practice asking for what I need and acknowledging my own needs as valid and important in my recovery?
Ask Your Higher Power for Guidance and Transformation
It is important to reach out to your Higher Power and other trusted, program fellows – connection is the antidote to addiction. As a Type 2, you may instinctively focus on meeting the needs of others while minimizing or denying your own, often hesitating to ask for help or express your own vulnerabilities, fearing it will diminish your value to others. However, true transformation requires surrender and allowing yourself to be supported. Your part in this process is to become aware of when your pride, manipulation, martyrdom, or people-pleasing is driving your actions and to humbly ask your Higher Power to remove these defenses. This is not a one time event, but an ongoing process of self-awareness and surrender. Each time you notice yourself prioritizing others’ needs over your own or trying to manipulate for affection, you can consciously turn to your Higher Power for guidance. Your Higher Power’s role is to gently remove these defenses as you become willing, freeing you to engage in more authentic and reciprocal relationships, valuing your own well-being as much as your connections with others.
Reflection Question:
- Reflecting on your Character Defense Analysis (from Step 6), recall times you prioritized others’ needs and what the result was for your own well-being. How can I accept that caring for myself is not selfish and that I need help and guidance from my Higher Power and others to achieve this balance?
Write your own Seventh Step Prayer: In addition to using the Seventh Step Prayer below, take time to write your own version of the prayer, inserting the defenses you identified and speaking from your heart. Keep it simple, honest, and personal. One suggestion for modification is presented below.
Seventh Step Prayer: “My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me my (each of the defenses listed in my Character Defense Analysis) which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding. Amen.”
Personal Prayer: “Higher Power (our words of your own choosing), I am now willing that you should have all of me, true-self and false self. I pray that you now remove from me the defense of _________________ if it stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Help me to see my other defenses as I live my life in alignment with your will. Amen.”
Letting go of control for a Type 2 means: releasing the need to control others’ feelings and your relationships to feel loved, and trusting that the best love comes from a full well – meaning your own needs must be met to give and receive love authentically. It means surrendering the belief that your value lies in being needed by others and embracing the truth that you are inherently worthy of love and belonging, just as you are, and that asking for your needs strengthens, rather than diminishes, connection. Letting go allows a Type 2 to experience more genuine and reciprocal love, to build healthier boundaries, and to find a more sustainable and fulfilling sense of self-worth rooted in self-care and mutual respect, not in being indispensable.
Practice Surrender and Trust in the Process of Transformation
It is important to let go of outcomes! It is vital to relinquish the need to control how love and connection are expressed in your life and to dictate how your relationships should look. Surrender your need to orchestrate affection and ensure you are always needed. Instead, cultivate trust that your Higher Power will guide you as you open yourself to asking for your needs and receiving love authentically. You may find yourself setting healthier boundaries, expressing your needs directly, or allowing others to give to you without feeling guilty—not because you are becoming selfish, but because you are being guided towards a more balanced and genuinely loving way of relating, where both giving and receiving are equally valued. Transformation unfolds organically, in its own time, and often in ways that reveal deeper and more reciprocal love than you could orchestrate through your defenses.
Incorporate your mantra into your daily prayer and meditation:
For Type 2s, your mantra is a tool to counter your tendency toward pride and people-pleasing and denial of your own needs. It’s a reminder to actively acknowledge your needs, to ask for them to be met, and to recognize that self-care is not selfish, but essential for healthy relationships and genuine love. Consistent repetition helps to gradually reshape your default patterns of thought and behavior, fostering growth and a more balanced approach to giving and receiving love in recovery.
“Ask for what you need and ask again for the best love comes from a full well.”
Reflection Question:
How does my mantra challenge my tendency to prioritize others’ needs and deny my own? If it doesn’t fully resonate, what revised mantra could better support my surrender in Step 7 and my journey towards self-care and asking for my needs to be met? Some suggestions for a type 2 are:
- “Love is not earned, it’s given freely.”
- “I give from self-care, not self-sacrifice.”
- “The best gift I give is my own self-care.”
Choose one of the mantras above or create your own, based on what you’ve discovered about your defenses and patterns. Commit to using it in your daily surrender practice.
Embrace New Habits and Attitudes
Welcome the expansion and growth that comes from releasing your defenses and cultivating self-awareness. As you deepen your connection with your Higher Power and with others, you will discover a different kind of love—one rooted in mutual respect, genuine reciprocity, and authentic connection, rather than solely in being needed and receiving validation for your help. These changes will foster richer, more meaningful relationships and establish a more grounded and authentically loving path in your recovery journey.
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- For each of your defenses, gently visualize yourself practicing the opposite behavior you have previously identified in your Readiness Assessment for Step 6.
- Choose one or two defenses to work on at a time.
- When you notice a defense arising, consciously ask your Higher Power for help, repeat your mantra, and actively practice the opposite behavior.
Examples for Type 2:
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- Pride: I can acknowledge my own needs and ask for help without guilt or expectation.
- Manipulation: I can communicate my needs and feelings openly instead of trying to influence others to meet them indirectly.
- Martyrdom: I can set healthy boundaries and care for myself without sacrificing my well-being to prove my love.
- People-pleasing: I can honor my own truth and say no when something does not align with my well-being.
- Denial of needs: I can acknowledge that my needs matter just as much as anyone else’s.
- Over-responsibility: I can allow others to take responsibility for their own actions and choices. I can support and encourage people without feeling the need to fix or rescue them.
- Avoiding conflict: I can express my feelings and concerns with honesty and respect instead of avoiding difficult conversations. I can embrace conflict as an opportunity for deeper understanding rather than a threat to relationships.
- Co-dependency: I can cultivate my own sense of identity and self-worth outside of what I do for others. I can build relationships based on mutual support rather than dependency or control.
- Fear of rejection: I can accept that I am worthy of love just as I am, even if some people do not approve of me. I can embrace rejection as redirection and trust that the right people will appreciate me for who I truly am.
Reflection Questions:
- Which of my defenses can I start practicing the opposite of right away? And how specifically?
- How can I create new habits that support my self-care and recovery, particularly around acknowledging my needs, asking for help, and setting healthy boundaries in relationships?
Summary:
For a Type 2 working Step 7 at Surrender School, the core shift involves recognizing that the best and most genuine love comes from a place of inner fullness and that self-care and asking for your needs to be met are not selfish, but essential. Humility in this step means acknowledging that your pursuit of love and approval through constantly helping others can become a barrier to authentic self-care and genuinely reciprocal relationships, and asking your Higher Power to remove the defenses that perpetuate people-pleasing and denial of your own needs. By embracing asking for what you need, practicing surrender of the need to be needed, and cultivating new habits of self-care and direct communication of your needs, you can transform your relationship with food and build a more loving and authentically connected recovery rooted in mutual respect and genuine reciprocity.