Step 7: “Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.”
For Enneagram Type 5s, Step 7 at Surrender School addresses core challenges such as detachment, fear of incompetence, intellectualizing emotions, and withdrawal from the world. Type 5s often seek security in knowledge and independence, which can lead to isolation, emotional distance, and using food as a way to cope with feeling overwhelmed by the demands of the external world. Step 7 encourages Type 5s to practice humility by recognizing that their pursuit of self-sufficiency can become a barrier to deeper connection and growth, and to ask their Higher Power for the willingness to release their need for excessive independence, trusting that direct experience and feelings are essential for clarity and understanding.
1. Cultivate Humility and Self-Acceptance
Character defenses, like your patterns of withdrawal or intellectualization, are deeply ingrained behaviors developed over time as ways to feel safe and competent. Just as you are powerless over food, you are also powerless over these defenses in isolation. Trying to dismantle them solely through willpower is rarely effective. True transformation begins with acknowledging these limitations and opening yourself to support from a Higher Power.
- Reflect on Humility: For Type 5s, humility involves acknowledging that intellectual understanding is not the only path to truth and that you don’t need to have all the answers to be okay. It’s about recognizing the value of interdependence and allowing yourself to be supported and understood by others and your Higher Power, even in moments of uncertainty or perceived incompetence.
- Embrace Direct Experience and Feelings: Accept that making contact with your direct experience and feelings is essential for true clarity and deeper knowledge. Allowing yourself to feel, and to be present in your body and emotions, can lead to richer understanding and a more integrated sense of self. Remember your mantra: “Making contact with my direct experience & feelings will bring greater clarity and knowledge.” By embracing your direct experience, you move beyond purely intellectual understanding, foster emotional intelligence, and discover a more embodied way of knowing yourself and the world.
Reflection Questions:
- What does humility mean to me, beyond intellectual understanding?
- How can I actively engage with my direct experiences and feelings to gain greater clarity and knowledge in my recovery?
2. 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 5, you may instinctively rely on your own resources and intellect while hesitating to seek external help. However, true transformation requires surrender and allowing yourself to be supported. Your part in this process is to become aware of when your detachment, intellectualization, or fear of incompetence 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 withdrawing or retreating into your mind, 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 connect authentically with yourself and the world around you, valuing experience as much as understanding.
Reflection Question:
- Reflecting on your Character Defense Assessment, recall times you tried to address your defenses on your own and what the eventual outcome was. How can I accept that I need help and guidance from my Higher Power?
Humbly ask your Higher Power to remove your specific defenses: You can use the Seventh Step prayer or a Personal prayer, inserting your own defenses. (You can focus on one or more defenses at a time.)
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 Defenses Readiness Assessment) 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, I acknowledge my tendency toward (each of the defenses listed in my Defenses Readiness Assessment). I humbly ask for Your assistance in removing this pattern from my life, allowing me to engage in more authentic and self-respecting relationships.”
Letting go of control for a Type 5 means: releasing the need for complete intellectual understanding and trusting that clarity and knowledge also come through direct experience and feelings. It means surrendering the belief that intellect is the primary or only valid way of knowing, and embracing the wisdom of emotions and embodied experience. Letting go allows a Type 5 to engage more fully with life, to integrate intellect with feeling, and to find a deeper, more holistic understanding of themselves and the world.
3. 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 understand and control every aspect of your transformation. Surrender your need for certainty about how your defenses will be removed. Instead, cultivate trust that your Higher Power will guide you, often in ways that are unexpected and beyond your current understanding. You might find yourself engaging more readily in relationships, expressing emotions more freely, or seeking help when needed—not because you have intellectually planned it, but because you are guided towards these changes. Transformation unfolds organically, in its own time, and often beyond the grasp of your intellect.
Incorporate your mantra into your daily prayer and meditation:
For Type 5s, your mantra is a tool to counter your tendency toward isolation and over-reliance on intellect. It’s a reminder to actively connect with your direct experience and feelings as pathways to clarity and knowledge. Consistent repetition helps to gradually reshape your default patterns of thought and behavior, fostering growth and a more balanced approach to understanding yourself and your recovery.
“Making contact with my direct experience & feelings will bring greater clarity and knowledge.”
Reflection Question:
- How does my mantra challenge my reliance on intellect as my primary tool for navigating life? If it doesn’t fully resonate, what revised mantra could better support my surrender in Step 7 and my connection to direct experience?
4. 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 security—one rooted in trust, interdependence, and emotional resilience, rather than solely in knowledge and self-sufficiency. These changes will foster richer, more meaningful relationships and establish a more grounded and connected path in your recovery journey.
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- For each of your defenses, consciously visualize you taking the opposite actions you have identified that may work. (The Type 5 Readiness Assessment Examples from Step 6 appear below).
- 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 5:
- Intellectualizing: I can engage with both logic and emotion, recognizing that feelings are valuable sources of insight.
- Withdrawing: I can stay engaged with others while maintaining the space I need to recharge.
- Hoarding knowledge: I can freely share my knowledge, trusting that learning is a two-way exchange.
- Emotional detachment: I can allow myself to feel and express emotions without fear of being consumed by them.
- Fear of incompetence: I can trust in my ability to learn as I go, knowing that mistakes are part of growth.
- Avoidance of dependency: I can accept help from others, knowing that connection strengthens rather than weakens me.
- Self-isolation: I can engage socially in ways that feel safe and rewarding, without fear of being drained.
- Overthinking: I can take action even when I don’t have all the answers, trusting in my ability to adapt.
- Fear of inadequacy: I can believe in my intrinsic worth, knowing that I am enough even when learning something new.
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 managing overwhelm and seeking connection?
Summary for Type 5
For a Type 5 working Step 7 at Surrender School, the core shift involves recognizing that true clarity and knowledge are found not just in intellect, but also through direct experience and feelings. Humility in this step means acknowledging that your pursuit of self-sufficiency can sometimes lead to inaction and minimizing important issues, and asking your Higher Power to remove the defenses that perpetuate avoidance and passivity. By embracing proactive harmony, practicing surrender of the need for constant comfort, and cultivating new habits of engagement and direct communication, you can transform your relationship with food and build a more resilient and genuinely peaceful recovery.