You attended the transportation briefings, read the military’s moving instructions website, talked to friends, gleaned advice from Facebook groups, prepared for the movers and said goodbye to your favorite coffee shop. But did you ever stop to think about how understanding your personal psychology can help you create a successful military Permanent Change of Station (PCS)?
The Enneagram system helps individuals not just understand how they tend to approach and think about the world, but also how to not just move through challenges, but come out better on the other side. In this episode of PCS with Military.com, Kellie Artis, a certified Enneagram expert, explains how to not just understand your own type, but use it to make your PCS move awesome.
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The Essential Enneagram by Dr. David Daniels
The following is an edited transcript of this episode of PCS with Military.com.
Amy Bushatz: We all know how stressful military moves have been over the last several years. Lost stuff, COVID more lost stuff, tons and tons of breaks. All the problems. There are a few helpful and practical ways to get through this, like being an organizational ninja or knowing exactly what your rights are as a military family or a service member.
You can carefully plan ahead. You can do scouting trip to your new base, or you can hire someone to scout things for you. You can ask all of the Facebook groups for all of the advice. But there's another way to prepare for, deal with and recover from a PCS. And it has to do with who you are as a person, and yes, the psychology of a PCS. Sounds interesting right? Can we really make PCSing easier on ourselves by understanding how we individually think? That's exactly what Kellie Artis is going to talk to us about today. You might remember Kellie from 2021 season of PCS with Military.com, where she talked about dealing with your new duty station from a distance by using the Millie Scout program.
But she's also recently completed the narrative Enneagram core program. And by the time you hear this, she'll be well into an Enneagram professional training program to become a certified teacher. In short, she knows what she's talking about. Today, she's going to talk about how understanding your own personality and psychology can help make this PCS season go as smoothly as humanly possible.
She's also going to tell us what the heck an Enneagram is. Kellie, welcome back to PCS with Military.com.
Kellie Artis: Hey Amy. Thanks so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here.
Amy Bushatz: So we did talk about this last time, but it's something we ask all of our guests. So remind us, how many times have you personally moved with the military or otherwise?
Kellie Artis: Oh, shoot. Otherwise there's a whole new category. But seven actual PCSes.. Yeah. And, but then in college I got bored a lot, so I moved almost every semester. But that's like laundry basket move. That's not, a a whole move.
Amy Bushatz: It's safe to say you like new scenery and that the military life isn't so bad from a new scenery perspective.
Kellie Artis: It's really not. And this is a whole nother conversation, but I've often wondered have I made it this far into the military lifecycle. I mean, we've been married for over 15 years now. Have I done okay at it because I am well-suited for it personality wise? Or has my personality shifted to accomodate the lifestyle that we live?
Amy Bushatz: Well, I think that's related because we're talking about psychology and personality today. So last time we talked Millie and move scouting from a distance, but this time we're going to talk something entirely different, but also very practical, just in a very different way. And that is the psychology of moving and how your personality fits into it. How did you get into this topic?
Because you really are one of the, I don't know anyone who's more interested in this than you are. So passion point for you. And I will say, and we'll get into this in a minute that I also find this endlessly fascinating, but that has to do with who I am as a person as we'll discuss. So talk to us -- what is Enneagram? How did you get into it.
Kellie Artis: Stressful situations catapult all of us into I think a bit of self discovery, whether we notice that it's happening or not. So just even basically fight, flight or freeze responses. You probably know and can look back on stressful events in your life and picked up on what you've done there. Did you find it, did you fly to freeze? Right? I'm a flight person that defaults to that. So anyway we're facing a PCS and we're just going to go into a stressful season. And with his military career with me having lost job or changed jobs four, because of a previous PCS, we did three back-to-back, like in for years. So there's just a lot, so I felt like I was like unraveling, you know what I mean? Like I was just so stressful. I was like, why can't I handle this? You look around and you're like, everybody else seems to be doing this so much better. They're enjoying the adventure. They're doing all this awesome Pinterest worthy stuff with their PCS. And I am like barely keeping my crap together. What is the problem? I like happened to be listening to some self-help podcast episode, and the hosts were talking about Enneagram and what type they were. And one's like, I'm a five and I'm a seven and I'm a two. And I was like, wait a minute, which one's better? What one do I want to be whatever.
And it was something that I didn't know about. And I was like, oh, I need to know what that is. So I jumped in found like an online test is how most people enter the Enneagram world just to determine which type you are, right? Everybody thinks oh, it's like Myers-Briggs or it's what friends character are you, or which Hogwarts house are you? All of these sorts of things.
It's fun and games until you're like, wait a minute. What? That was way too close. You know what I mean? Like you get you find your type and you feel like offended. I was like obsessed from the moment I read about it. I was like, wait a minute. Not only is this like identifying all of the things that I'm feeling, I can't put my finger on, but it's helping me like detach from that and feel less wrong, like guilty or like inadequate because of it.
Cause I'm like, oh, that's just my personality type structure kicking in and trying to protect me from the stressful thing that's happening. So that was, gosh, probably six years ago at this point. And it's just been the ultimate rabbit hole for me ever since. And just to establish right up front, for those of you who are familiar with Enneagram, I am a type five.
So a lot of what I'm going to tell you is going to make sense. Also Mille, funny enough.
So I had started with had been working with Millie before I learned about the Enneagram and then finally kind of merged the two sort of concepts together. I, literally Amy, mentally researched like PCS and researched 85 different duty stations in 13 months and was thriving on that sort of like deep dive. I loved it. I was accumulating all of this information and knowledge. Okay. That's like a crux for a five. I was like, oh, snap, that like fit totally into it. And it made me like the perfect fit for that role because I was able to, I didn't have to actually move. But I was able to pretend like I was moving in each instance, and lean into the strengths of my type instead of using them like in an unhealthy way which would be unraveling in the face of the PCS. Yeah.
Amy Bushatz: Do we consider Enneagram to be a personality test or do we think of it as something else?
Kellie Artis: You can. So essentially what the, Enneagram is. And just so you guys know, I am going to be borrowing pretty heavily from this really handy textbook that I love. It was written by David Daniels and it's actually going to be my recommendation in lieu of an inner internet test.
It's called the essential Enneagram, short little book gives a lot of descriptions that are boiled down. Enneagram is a really deep system, right? Like it, again, I've been studying it for six years and only barely feel like I'm scratching the surface. But he describes this concept, this system as nine patterns of thinking, feeling and acting, and those are based on perceptual filters and driving emotional energy.
So it's less about your type, right? One key thing here is you have a type, you're not a type, right? There's more to it than that. So it's not oh which box do I fit in and keep me in it? No, the idea is to identify what you, what type structure you lead with? Unconsciously, right? And start identifying waking up to the things that you do on a habitual basis and have never really paid much attention to, you've just kind of done them because they work for you. You adapt to these patterns when you're very young, right? It's all part of your ego trying to protect you. And you kind of lose sight and lose a connection with this greater knowing that you're loved because you're you and not because of XYZ thing that you do right? Or you are, or you act. So that's the the basic explanation of it. The actual Enneagram itself is named after a symbol. It's a circle that you can see, Google it. I'm sure you've probably seen it before you and my friend I know have there are nine points, like dots around the circle and each dot corresponds with a number one through nine.
And they all intersect with all these different crossing lines that kind of shoot across the, the circle. And it all has meaning The key thing here to know too, especially if you're new to Enneagram is if those lines provide you access to other points on the Enneagram, so you can move around a little bit.
And you have all of these other resources at your disposal that once you get more fluent with this map the system this archetype. Then you can start to draw in some of the things that you have access to that might be more helpful in situations like a PCS or other stressful things.
Amy Bushatz: So it's less about pegging yourself to a personality box and saying, oh, I'm an X, Y, and Z type person. You know, I'm a, I'm an introvert. So I therefore must act this way and more about saying I tend to have these types of qualities. Those things are my strengths or my weaknesses or things that I can grow in. I can use this information to help me really understand what makes me feel good, but also understand how to design what I'm doing in a stressful situation or in a non-stressful situation to really make me feel my best.
Kellie Artis: Yes, Amy, write that down. That was great. I liked that a lot. If one other thing that I'll add here is that most of the other like personality type sort of systems are typically describing behaviors.
Introverted, extroverted, things like that, Enneagram goes a bit deep. A lot deeper than that, in that it points out your core desires, your core motivations, your core fears. And it sometimes gets a bad rap because people that land on their type of read a type description, like I said, can feel hurt by it. Right? Like that was way too close. You know what I mean? Like that's not me. That's rude. Or maybe it triggers something that you've been called before in your past. Or you feel self-conscious about. And it can sting a little, but the idea is to call attention to those things and learn that you may be exhibiting those behaviors when you're unraveling, when you're stressed, when you're acting out in your type and it can help you pull back in. So again, self discovery is painful sometimes. Like it's a whole, it's not just like cocktail party banter. I mean, if that's all you're looking for out of it, then, it's super fun. But if you're using it as a tool, it is so much more helpful than that than to just oh, I'm a five.
Amy Bushatz: Okay. So there are seasons, seasons in life. There's seasons for growth and seasons for surviving. There's PCS season and non PCS. Okay. So, I feel like when you're under a lot of stress is the time to use a tool like this, to understand how to power through it, and that other times can be when you use it for growth. So do you agree? Disagree?
Kellie Artis: I like that a lot. And I'm gonna say that it also makes things so much more identifiable, right? It's hard to read a list of qualities and good traits and say, oh yeah, that's a hundred percent me. That seems boastful. It's oh, we were talking earlier offline about imposter syndrome. We all have it on some level. So like, I can read this beautiful articulation of, you know, a certain type and think no, that's not me because I'm going to be self-deprecating and think on some basic level that I'm not that, I'm not that right? When you're stressed out and you're relying on these coping mechanisms and you're acting out, those things are a lot more apparent. I just feel like I know again, I'm going to keep using myself as an example here, but as a type five, one of my coping mechanisms is withdrawing. My passion, the thing that I struggle with is avarice, which is actually like a hoarding or a feeling that there's a scarcity of something, could be the information that could be people that could be food, right? Like any kind of thing like that. I can notice when I'm doing it.
It's hard for me to notice when I'm living my best life. You know what I mean? Because like, I dunno, it just, I don't know. It just makes it much more clear- it's the red flags offering like, wait a minute, I'm doing my thing where I shut down and I stop responding to texts and I, you know what I mean? Like now that I know that's one of my coping mechanisms, I can spot that and try to correct a little more consciously instead of just like letting that take its natural progression.
Amy Bushatz: And if you want to pick on another number during this feel free to pick on me the eight. Eightest in land.
Kellie Artis: The eightest there ever was , yeah, I married an eight too. So I know you guys well,
Amy Bushatz: So I'm comfortable, I'm comfortable bearing my eightness for the good of the order. So lay it out for us, okay. Because we've talked a lot about how this can help you in red flag moments. We've talked about how it can like add texture to understanding who you are and how you tend to operate. Why should thinking about this be part of preparing for or recovering from a PCS? What does personality broadly, and this type of understanding specifically have to do with PCSing? And why are we talking about this on PCS with Military.com?
Kellie Artis: Because I convinced I've made us to draw a line between two really obscure things um, no okay.
Amy Bushatz: And because I'm an eight, I was like, that is fascinating.
Kellie Artis: All right. All right. Here's where I landed on this. And if you guys will indulge me a metaphor that I'm actually pretty stinking proud of and a promise I'm going to circle back. I think in a short answer, like if you want to just a one line it gives you an avenue to pull out of stress, anxiety depression even, we've all seen the dark side of PCS. It's hard, y'all, it's just hard. Transitions are hard. So I think that even in my personal experience a certain level of self-awareness, self-knowing pausing, reflecting, really getting in tune with what's actually going on in reality, versus what this personality type structure has obscured from us.
So that's the whole thing is that we're walking around with this filter that we didn't intentionally put on. We can be appreciative for, because our brains did that. Our brains have done that for like, when we were little kids, it said, you know what? That's not safe to think that, so we've disconnected from this like greater knowing.
For me, it's actually, there's plenty, like instead of having an abundance mentality, I have this scarcity mentality. That's not reality. There's plenty out there for me. So anyway, okay.
So here's my metaphor. We are looking at as an illustration, like a hand drawn illustration of a little stick figure. And the little stick figure is on a boat, a little sail boat, with little sailboat on the water. The sailboat is on a calm sea. The sun is shining. The clouds are out and a little stick figure has made a choice to look up at the clouds and see the beautiful horizon, the sunshine feeling the warmth on their skin or their stick figure skin right?.
And they are just enjoying life up in this crow's nest of this little boat on the sea. Okay. Along comes some disturbance in the water. Can't really see what the disturbances, but it begins to rock the sea, rock, the boat stick figure starts to get a little more concerned about this glorious life and starts to really get scared, right?
So they're looking down, they're seeing huge waves start to threaten to capsize the boat. They're freaking out about what's in the water because when I, that boat capsizes, I'm going to be in the water and a sea monster is going to eat me. Life is not good for the stick-figure any longer. Okay.
Then we skip ahead to the next scene and the stick figure has made its way to the seabed. It's still fine. They can breathe underwater. So on the sea floor, if even though he can still look up and see the disturbance on the surface, right? It doesn't seem as bad. There's perspective. There's a different perspective.
Things are calm on the seabed. They're sweet little fish floating by there's some coral, like it's cool and calm and you can still, again, you can still have a perspective of the thing that's happening, the disturbance on the surface, but you don't necessarily feel as involved in it and as invested right in the outcomes.
Okay. So here's where I'm going with this, the guy on the top of the boat and the crow's nest is your head, right? Your head space. This is where you're thinking, okay. So you can make choices on a daily basis, no matter what's going on in your life to choose your positive outlook or to catastrophize, right?
That's a spectrum. Clearly, you know, there could be anywhere in between there, but as a thinking human person with a brain, with neural pathways, our brain prioritizes the information that we decide that we want to pay attention to. So we make those choices on a daily basis, what we're looking at your brain also has a bias. So if you are fearful to begin with, on that boat, you're going to be looking down in the water and creating all sorts of scenarios for doom or danger. And again, that has kept you safe on some level, right? Like those things are important for humans in our evolution, but on another level, they're not as helpful because it's not reality. You're not seeing reality.
So that's what's going on in all of our heads. When we sink down and start paying attention to what's going on in our hearts, our feelings, we're then experiencing the waves, right? It doesn't matter what is happening or what caused the waves. It could be a storm, it could be a hurricane.
It could be, and I'm saying this as health challenges or, catastrophic events, I'm saying stress like deployments, right? It could be things that you don't have control over and you think are inconsiderate, and rude and ill timed, like uncle Sam coming along, telling you to pack up for a PCS, which can be big crater you know, or a yacht, like an obnoxious yacht that comes by and causes your, your boat to rock and not be tranquil any longer. So there's external forces creating this wave. The wave is like your actual emotional sort of stasis, the thing that you struggle with. So there's a, they call them passions and the Enneagram language, we all have a type of passion.
It's actually translated as like a struggle. What is the thing that you emotionally struggle with? What is that driving emotional force that pushes you into action? And we each have our own distinct, one of those I'm skipping back to the head I missed talking about your mental fixation. So there's, there are nine types of mental fixations as well, that correspond with your type.
Once you are able to sink down to that space on the seabed, is your moment of self-awareness right. That's your resource. Okay. So if you can find a way to get to that point where you are okay, that can be a resource for you and a refuge. So what that looks like is ignoring and pushing away what's going on in your head, right? Forgetting the little guy on the boat, the waves, all of the worst case scenarios. It is, instead of fighting the waves of the emotional thing that's happening, learning to navigate through them. Let go a little bit, right? If you've ever swam against waves or surfed or anything, you can't fight the wave.
You got to work with it. You know, so learning to let go a little bit of our emotional reactivity to that disturbance also getting mad at the yatch is not going to help anybody, and he's still going. So we're going to waive that yacht and just, learn to work around it.
But thinking down into your body, checking in with yourself, making sure that you can still find a moment to realize I can still breathe. I can draw breath. Where do I feel that breath? Do I feel like warmth in my heart space? Do I like actual physical sensations? It sounds woo and crazy, but it really works, y'all. And it's hard to cultivate this. Like, I'm still not there yet. As a head person, like it's a long way away from me. But learning to connect and Amy, I know, you know this so well with get just giving where you live and what you do on your free time, you are out in nature for a reason, right? It probably brings you a lot of solace grounding yourself and recognizing like, my body is amazing, capable of doing all these awesome mighty things.
We get distracted by all of this other noise that's happening in our lives, particularly around big, stressful situations. That we forget that. So tuning back in, again, it doesn't solve any problems necessarily. Like it doesn't help you, push your claims or your damage claim forward. But it gives you a moment to like, relax to let go to just appreciate, you're yourself, your body, you're not broken. You're not doing this wrong. I always thought like, I'm not doing this, everybody else is doing this better. Nope. That's not true. That's my perception. So checking in like, you know what, I'm doing a great job for me. And I appreciate me and I appreciate my brain and its way of fixating on things, because that helped me figure out XYZ.
And I appreciate my emotions because the sadness that I feel over leaving my best friend at this duty station helped me appreciate the relationship. You can just, again, get a better perspective of what's going on, taking just a small moment. I would say, dare I say daily to just reflect and recognize and use that as a resource, then you can push through, spot your red flags when they start to flare up, back back down into that resource point, right into that moment of I need to not experience this anxiety right now. I need to try so hard to like claim to what's important and not all of the falsifications that are coming at me, that my own brain has developed.
Amy Bushatz: So now I think people who've listened to episodes of this podcast know that I think this is an overused word, but I'm going to use it anyway, because I think in the right context it's okay. Resilience.
Kellie Artis: Oh I knew you were going there.
Amy Bushatz: The reason I don't like that word is because I lived through the army in 2010 when it was all the rage and it was something new people were talking about. And I felt like it became very empty. Using this tools like this is a way to make that word have meaning and actually be something that you can develop for yourself.
Because if we're looking at PCSing from a holistic standpoint, and we're looking at our lives, both military, and once we are no longer in the military, because that is one thing that's for sure people eventually are no longer active duty families. They no longer move every year. That is an eventuality. Looking at your life from a whole life, whole trajectory perspective, when we talk about that resilience, what we're talking about is making it so that you can get through this life full of challenges and come to the other side to a place where you are a better version of yourself, where you feel good, very basic, right, but that's the thing where you are happy. And where you have taken the opportunities that have been presented as challenges like a PCS, across your life to not feel like you're drowning. Because that's the other option for Mr. Stick Guy, that you're in the water and your little stick parts are flailing around because you cannot keep your head above water.
And I think so much of what we talk about here on, on PCS with Military.com is about practicality, but this is an emotional thing. And I am going to be better at the practical stuff if I feel like I am not drowning all the time.
Kellie Artis: 100%. Yes. And that doesn't make the practical stuff less hard to get through, like logistically it's all, but also like understanding too, and here I'm going to keep going with this metaphor. The chart has been packed or paved before. Like you're not the first person to ever PCS and struggle. We all do this. I do this as a living, right? Like it's my industry. There are so many other resources, there's your inner resource, which we talked about, just keeping yourself balanced, but then there are all these external resources that you have at your disposal and depending on your type structure, Those might be harder to uncover or ask for or identify for all kinds of reasons.
But again, if you back up and get a little bit of perspective, then you can say oh, actually this is going to be really helpful for me. I will take all that I can get. So.
Amy Bushatz: Yeah. Absolutely. We've talked about what Enneagram is. You referenced a book. I want to say that if you want to buy a book, that's great.
There are internet quizzes with this that may not be the most thorough resource, however they totally exist. So you can do that. It can be free. You can dive in there. There are level and zillion Instagram accounts, where you can follow information about your type or information about your friends types or information about your husband's type. And just feel some comfort and, information in that. I love doing that. I may or may not pick gifts to get people based off of those accounts.
Kellie Artis: That's so smart though. Yeah. Can I throw some caveats? So go online tests are so great and they're so fine, especially if it's just an entry point, but just hold the results loosely. Okay. The whole thing here you guys is that we are not accustomed to living on the seabed and having that healthy perspective of what's going on in our lives and how we're reacting to it. So you could take a test and type yourself as the thing that you want to be perceived as versus the thing that you actually are.
So there takes a level of self-awareness to even honestly take the test. So start out there, but they're probably, most of them will spit back two or three different types that you kind of resemble, or maybe scored highly for, explore all of those. You can usually eliminate several just on surface level. Like, nope, that's not me.
Amy Bushatz: Like, I am not a four.
Kellie Artis: You're not, you're not. So yeah. Some people can spot their type just from reading the short descriptions. I feel like eights y'all can do that. Like, there some like really strong types that are like, they don't struggle finding their type, but there's several that really resemble other types.
So there's a bit of digging sometimes that you have to dig in there. So just don't be discouraged if you don't like resonate with the results right off the bat. It doesn't necessarily mean that the system is bogus. It just means maybe dig a little deeper and do a little more exploration.
So before we become super annoying, just throwing out numbers can you, we've talked about two 3 numbers now. Very specifically, five, eight and fours.
In passing. Yeah.
Amy Bushatz: Can you define what those three are?
Kellie Artis: Yeah. Do you want me to just I'll go around. How about I go around the circle?
Amy Bushatz: That's even better so we're not just like dragging people through a number line without any definitions.
Kellie Artis: I could just randomly select numbers. Yeah. Or we could have some system. I'm actually going to start with eight. And I'll tell you why. Yeah, you're welcome. Hey, it's it's you. Um, there know that there are nine numbers in, there are three centers of intelligence. So they're group sort of like head, heart, gut. Did the backwards gut body heart head. So we'll go through them in those orders.
So the eights, the nines and the ones are all in the body triad. So that means that you guys all take in information instinctually on a gut level. That's your, that's what you have prioritized as the way that you perceive things in the world and your environment. So eights are the challenger. Also known as protector. I mean, there's tons of little like, you know, there's nomenclature, you can find all kinds of different opinions about the different names.
So we'll just, we'll go with the top of mind ones. So challenger for the eight, the nine is the peacemaker and the one is the perfectionist. Okay. Moving into the heart triad, we have number two or type two, which is the giver or the helper. I want to say something here, because a lot of military spouses, specifically women feel like that's their type or they're supposed to be that type, or they have been cast in a role that resembles that type.
It doesn't necessarily make it your leading type structure. So just make sure that you're not just defaulting to the giver because you volunteer right. Type three is the achiever or the performer type four is your romantic or individualist. Type five is the observer or questioner or sometimes and type, oh, sorry, we just moved into the Headspace. So Headspace is five, six and seven. And that's me the observer. That's your sixes, who are the loyalist and your sevens, who are the enthusiast or the Epicure.
Amy Bushatz: So that is a rundown of the types. And you can figure out which one of those you may be. And it is possible to be one leaning into the other. It's called a wing, right?
Kellie Artis: So you can be, you have one core type, but then you have access to the behaviors of the types on either side of you, right? So you could be a five, which is myself, the observer. And I can have a wing that is a six wing meaning I am community driven. I am people oriented or I can have a four wing, which brings out some of the creativity, some of the melancholy the heart space. So I can use those as resources once I'm a bit more fluent. If I want to, I don't have to, you don't have to have a wing. You might not have a wing, but those are only the numbers on either side of you. So Amy, for you, it would be seven or nine. Do you know your wing?
Amy Bushatz: I have determined that I don't have a wing. Is that possible?
Kellie Artis: Absolutely possible. And it's possible that you could have a dominant wing earlier in your life, um, that receeds over time and spend some time developing your other wing. So there's all these opportunities, like I said to to explore and see kind of what's what's working for you.
Amy Bushatz: And the other thing I personally like is looking at the strengths of the other types, and thinking about ways that I can use my type to lean into those things that I run away from a little bit.
So how does this relate to PCSing? So I know that I follow my gut and I'm biased toward action. I could sure use to take a beat sometimes and say, let's give this a day and not act right now and see if there are other options. Maybe hit up somebody like you who have done your research. So instead of making sweeping bold decisions about where I'm going to live, I have learned the hard way. And we talked about this in season one, where I ragged on poor Oak Grove, Kentucky that maybe if I had, instead of just followed my gut and gotten things done, I've matured now. And I know that that doesn't as well for me as I'd like all the time. And so I need to take a beat and do and lean into a little bit more research or lean into asking other people for advice. And then I can make a decision and follow my gut and, be a person of action, but I need two days.
Kellie Artis: That's two days you've got, I love that, you've got a time limit on it. Yeah, that's yeah, that's absolutely a perfect practice for you. And I think some of it stems from like perceptions of vulnerability or weakness and also being controlled.
So that impulsivity rares up because you want to be able to reclaim ownership of something or a thing or a situation, and that's not often productive. So taking a moment and just stepping back and yeah. Finding some calm. Yeah.
Amy Bushatz: So I give that example because I know that about myself and that's a very practical way that I can use this understanding and the psychology to make my PCS better. What are some other practical ways that people can do this? Because of course the DOD is not going to change. That's not flexible, right? That's not moving. So how can our poor little stick figure guys use this system to maybe make certain pain points of individual PCS is better?
Kellie Artis: As a personal example of a five I know that I pull away from when it comes time to leave transition, move on. That's not cool, right? It's not good for me because I don't have closure on relationships or at least new definitions on relationships, but I need to know that like me moving, doesn't remove that person from my life entirely. Like, I feel like there'll be taking something of me with them if I do that. So I'm robbing them of the opportunity to fully connect with me. And I'm also robbing myself of that opportunity to have the relationships and the emotional attachments needed that my type thinks is scary and unsafe. So that's one that I've identified in myself. Speaking more broadly, so we could, I'll try to do this quick way. So going around like the one can challenge their own rigidity, right question like are maybe there two rights in this scenario, maybe there's two right ways to pack a box and I don't need to stand over the movers or the packers while they're packing the boxes and maybe it'll be okay. It probably won't y'all so just go ahead and accept it, but you know, just like loosening up a little bit there and just bring up some mental space for other things that are more important to worry about, right?
Number twos are the type twos realizing that you are still loved, whether you're doing for others or not. And I think during a PCS, we need a lot of. We individually need a lot of help, even just logistical stuff like babysitting the kids while the packers are in the house. We, and it's tough to ask for help for a lot of people, but it's really hard to ask for those type twos because they feel like their value is attached to them being able to help you, not vice versa. So letting go of that, I think would be super helpful.
Type three, struggle with the vanity, so maybe that's putting unnecessary pressure on getting your new house just so right, on, making sure that you do everything perfectly like the best and well and just letting go of this idea of winning at PCSing. Like they're messy, it's gonna be messy. So not attaching like the fact that you didn't look great doing it. And I'm saying look great, not in like a physical way, you know what I mean just like.
Type fours are going to be really tempted to disappear into melancholy and loneliness. Right? So it's already a lonely thing to experience, especially like in the, the liminal space, right? The train, the actual move, even just the road trip, pulling away that could probably potentially be of kind of dark space to just wallow. So using that as an opportunity to explore that and push against that, I think would be super helpful for fours. And knowing that like, people are gonna see you as uniquely amazing as you are at your new duty station too. It wasn't just here or where you're leaving.
We talked about type fives, so just staying open and knowing that you will risk reestablish yourself and you will find new resources and new, things in your house your safe space again, too. It's just going to be a minute.
Type sixes. Oh, they need to not project. And when we talk about projection, it's like an actual physical projector makes a small thing really big on the wall. So think of projection in that way, like this small little thing that went wrong or might go wrong or hasn't gone wrong yet, but you fear it could doesn't need to consume that much space. Wait until it actually goes wrong to start freaking out about it if you can.
Type sevens are going to be tempted to just like mentally bail on the whole thing. And just be like, just tell me what I need to show up. Uh, you know, tell me when the truck gets here right kind of thing. And they'll be tempted to plan all these trips and maybe that's great. Do that totally do something fun in between like, this is going to be a person that's like, let's go to Europe while they're moving our stuff right. That sort of thing, which is fine. But if you're doing it just to escape the situation and just hope that it'll turn out or that somebody else will do it for you could be stressful for you in the long run, but also can be stressful for your family. So imagine if your family feels like they need to be more hands-on and you just want to go to Disneyland, try to stay present in the actual moment.
You nailed type eight, right? Just taking a break, realizing that there's calm and you don't have to act immediately on every single thing. And that you don't have to be in control. You can let someone else manage it.
Amy Bushatz: That's a lie.
Kellie Artis: It's not a lie. It's real. And it type nines. I'm really going to be tempted to just get lost. They merge with others really easily. They kind of absorb the mood, the temperature of whatever scenario they're in. And they're also really hesitant to make decisions and fear of introducing conflict.
So I would almost say to rob some of that energy from the eight next door to be able to push them to action. So where you're needing to slow down and not impulsively act. We need to give nines a little bit of that juice to say, you know what, it's okay. And you're going to make bad decisions and that's okay too, as long as you feel like you're still moving forward you're going to be okay.
Amy Bushatz: Yeah. Well, hopefully you guys have heard, one of your types mentioned, or yourself mentioned a little bit in one of these types rather today. And that those things sort of resonated with you. You can of course, find out more about the Enneagram in the book Kellie mentioned, which is what again?
Kellie Artis: The Essential enneagram by Dr. David Daniels.
Amy Bushatz: Cool. And we'll link that in the show notes as well, if you want to follow a direct link there. And of course internet test is a good, a good entry point, but it's not all that in a bag of chips. So maybe start there, but, and then move forward if you find it interesting. But the goal here, of course, isn't to put yourself in a hole or a box it's to say, or be a floating man in the sea stick guy it's to be in control of your experience by understanding how you operate and who you are in a way that can improve your military life. Like I said earlier, DoD talk a lot about nuts, bolts tips, tricks, regulations, rules, how to talk to the movers, how to deal with the trucking people, how to deal with the DoD.
This is how to deal with you and how to deal with you pretty big part of your PCS. So I'm very hopeful that you guys have found this useful. Kellie, thank you so much for joining us on PCS with Military.com.
Kellie Artis: Thanks Amy.
