An Interview for The Practical Enneagram

“Trauma is more subjective than we generally think” — pioneer of trauma healing system

The research showing that levels of trauma are shaped by each individual’s innate capacity for resilience is still overlooked by most trauma therapies, according to clinical psychologist and author of Trauma into Transcendence, Dr Keith Witt.

The author, lecturer, and high profile member of the integral community, has developed a stage-based model for healing trauma which accounts for this knowledge, and factors in where the individual is at with their trauma.

In this interview, we speak about the model as well as parts work, the Enneagram and the development of the Wise Self.

RH: Keith, I’m curious—how do you usually introduce yourself, given your various occupations and interests?

KW: It really depends on who I’m speaking with. When I’m talking to someone like you, I’d say my primary identity is spirit coming through as Keith into the world. My incarnation has had all sorts of passions and fixations, and I’ve tried to manage them and stay true to my values as I’ve grown. There have been many developmental stages and journeys, but at my core, I’m spirit coming through Keith.

RH: I really like that answer. Let’s talk about one of your roles—you’ve pioneered an approach to healing trauma that seems to challenge conventional modalities.

KW: One principle of integral theory is that everyone gets to be right, but nobody is right all the time. My approach to trauma doesn’t reject other systems — it expands and contextualizes them.

What I noticed was that no one was describing trauma work as progressing through stages. I decided to describe those stages in my book Trauma into Transcendence (available for free at drkeithwitt.com). Understanding these stages can guide us in helping people.

RH: Why was defining the four stages so important?

KW: Where someone is in the trauma process determines how we approach healing. In the first stage, people need to focus on and talk about the trauma. In the third stage, the memory may not be bothering you anymore, but you might still experience intrusive thoughts or emotions. At that point, focusing on the trauma can be unhelpful — you need to shift to creating new, alternative states. Knowing which stage someone is in helps shape the therapeutic response.

First off, it’s helpful to understand that all life has what’s called an ‘orientation reflex’. As nervous systems evolved, the orientation reflex became progressively more complex and powerful, leading to the crest of the evolutionary wave, human self-aware consciousness. Human self-aware consciousness orients to both our internal and external worlds. That’s a human superpower!

Now, we all know about long-term memory, short-term memory, and working memory. Trauma and resilience are types of memory systems.

We’re primed to be resilient: to encounter challenges, grow from them, and become better adapted. Think about learning to drive. The first time, it’s terrifying. A year later, you’re cruising at 80 mph.

RH: You might be.

KW: It’s California! Everybody does 80… whenever they can anyway.

But sometimes we don’t become more resilient. Instead, we become sensitized. This could be the result of repeated small humiliations, a major traumatic event, or — importantly — innate temperament. Some people are just born more anxious, angry, or depressed. When bad things happen, they interpret them through those lenses. It’s not simply that the events caused their distress — it’s a more complex combination of temperament, experience, and meaning making.

Sensitization means smaller and smaller triggers lead to bigger and bigger reactions. For example, someone nervous about driving might avoid highways. Eventually, just thinking about highways triggers panic. That’s a trauma memory interfering with life.

I have a client whose wife won’t drive on the highway because she’s sensitized and hasn’t resolved the irrational fears. This puts a lot of pressure on him being forced by her fears to always be taking the kids places.

People get stressed out and burdened by sensitization and trauma learning and so go to a change worker like a therapist or a coach. The first thing they hear from the practitioner is some version of, “Okay, let’s talk about it”. “Let’s talk about it” is more complex than it sounds. You’re talking with a practitioner who is quite interested in your feelings and your personal meaning-making, but it’s often hard to talk about traumatic events. People can feel damaged and diminished as a result of feeling wounded by a discounting primary care-giver early on, or an assault, or a devastating accident. And so the first stage of trauma work is having the conversation until someone can talk comfortably about the events and experiences they’ve had.

RH: I will just pause you there. That’s a powerful insight you shared — that our natural resilience can be undermined by not just experiences but predispositions.

KW: Exactly. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, isn’t predicted by the intensity of a trauma, but by the personality structure of the person experiencing it. That’s a big shift from traditional trauma theory.

Getting back to the first stage of trauma treatment, Freud believed that once someone could talk comfortably about a trauma, they’d resolved it. But that’s not always true.

Psychotherapist Bruce Ecker, based his Reconsolidation Therapy system on a fascinating neuroscience discovery that when you recall a traumatic memory and its physical sensations, your thalamus ‘opens’ it up, making it malleable. If you add compassion and understanding during that moment, the memory is ‘reconsolidated’ in a new form. When you remember something, you’re not just remembering the original event — you’re remembering the last time you remembered it.

If just being able talk comfortably about traumatic material doesn’t result in people feeling whole and resolved, we move to this second stage on trauma work: exploring the meaning of the trauma within the person’s autobiographical narratives. These narratives are often unconscious, built around how we see ourselves — as siblings, parents, lovers, workers, etc. Trauma can disrupt this identity. The second stage of trauma work helps people reframe themselves as heroes in their own story, rather than damaged victims.

Joseph Campbell popularized significant principles of Carl Jung’s psychology. His book, Hero with a 1000 faces was given to me by my therapist when I was 19. It was one of those three or four books that had a huge immediate impact on my consciousness. Two others are A Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi which landed on me when I was 30, and Integral Psychology by Ken Wilber which landed on me when I was 48.

When a person sees themselves as the hero rising to a challenge, they gain strength and wisdom.

In the second stage, people learn to observe their experiences through the lens of the Hero’s Journey. We are called to action from our desires, ambitions, passions, and injuries. A woman might be able to talk about her husband cheating on her but still feel diminished and weakened. Her distress is a call to action. The first part of the hero’s journey is the call.

If we receive the call and act, we meet the threshold guardian—our fear, anger, codependence, or resistance to change.

We defeat the threshold guardian by choosing the path of productive self-awareness on the road of trials and adventures. We encounter obstacles. We receive magical aid from friends, therapists, coaches, lovers, and the world. We endure dark night of the soul in the belly of the whale. We face conflicts with the archetypal Mother, Father, and Shadow, which transforms us into wiser and stronger. Wiser and stronger moves us to give back to the world.

This is the hero’s journey, and we are enlivened and empowered when we surrender to it.

As the second stage progresses, people see themselves more effectively facing and overcoming difficulties and sometimes that’s enough for them to feel resolved.

RH: Right. So alongside this work in adapting our inner narratives to something more empowering, we are also developing the ‘compassionate witness’ that we have spoken about before?

KW: Exactly. All effective therapies cultivate compassionate self-observation. The compassionate self-observer is what the developer of Internal Family Systems (IFS), Richard Schwartz, calls the Self. I call it the Wise Self.

Let’s move on the third stage of trauma treatment. If intrusive thoughts persist past identifying as the hero in our personal journey, we move to stage three: cultivating alternative states of consciousness.

For example, a woman rebuilding trust after her partner’s infidelity might still feel occasional surges of sudden rage, jealousy, or anxiety, even after reaching a stage two resolution.

Parenthetically, I have another book on my website called ‘100 Reasons to Not Have a Secret Affair’.

RH: I saw that.

KW: I wrote that book because I’d worked with so many people having these train wrecks of affairs. One time one of my clients was talking about cheating on his wife, and right before he walked out the door he said, “Just tell me why I shouldn’t have a secret affair.” I said, “There are 100 reasons to not have a secret affair!” He said, “that’s a great title. Why don’t you write a book about that?” So I did.

Anyway, back to the woman whose partner cheated. Maybe she feels rage or suspicion, but doesn’t want to relitigate the affair in herself or with her husband because they’ve worked through the infidelity and reconstructed a satisfying friendship and love affair.

In the third stage you cultivate preferable states of consciousness. This is the difference between the first stage and the third stage. We don’t want to discuss the trauma—it is remembered as finished—but we get rushes of uncomfortable fear, suspicion, or anger. In this case it’s useful to practice preferable states of consciousness.

Most contemplative practices cultivate a certain kind of equanimity.

Contemplative practices tend to have the five common characteristics of not pursuing judgements, focusing on the present moment, awareness of awareness, labeling and describing inner experience with words, and radical acceptance.

Cumulatively, these practices help grow your Wise Self. There are countless ways to cultivate positive states, most all involving practices of one sort or another

Neuroscience research has found that after about 30 days of a practice, stem cells divide in your brain. The daughter cells turn into integrative neurons that begin to hardwire integrative networks which reach back to the amygdala and the hippocampus and help calm us when we’re distressed. These are self-regulatory circuits that need to be maintained with regular practice. There was a great study done of therapists who meditated having high empathy scores. Once they stopped meditating, their empathy scores went down. There’s some evidence we need to keep doing our practices. It makes intuitive sense. My friend Jeff Salzman says we don’t do our practices to be successful, we do them to be faithful. I have faith that my practices support my health and happiness.

In the third stage, I teach practices. For instance, the HeartMath Institute has great practices for cultivating gratitude, love, joy, and awe.

When the woman who was cheated on feels the rage beginning, she can go to gratitude for her husband and her family. If she practices this enough, her unconscious—sending that rage to protect her—gradually begins to send compassionate understanding and gratitude when the rage is triggered. Eventually the unconscious will regulate triggers from a surge of anger into gratitude outside of her conscious awareness, leaving her believing the problem is gone.

Actually, the neural circuitry for the reflexive rage doesn’t disappear. Objectively, from a neurobiological standpoint, that’s not how it works. Research suggests that she has developed more sophisticated circuitry that includes and transcends the flash. It feels to her like the rage is gone. Neurobiologically, it began, was regulated, and never made into her conscious awareness.

RH: As I hear that, some sort of objection arises. Probably because this seems antithetical with my current practices. In the Diamond Approach, we inquire into every feeling, including rage.

KW: The Diamond Approach and the four stages of trauma work are actually quite compatible. Inquiry, like in the Diamond Approach, is essential in the first two stages—opening up channels into the self. We need to explore our passions and the meanings and memories associated with them. Hameed saw that spiritual seekers often denied uncomfortable parts of themselves and needed practices to address the denial and dissociation. Inquiry is a central feature of the Diamond Approach’s answer to that problem.

Let’s move to the fourth stage of trauma treatment. As people feel more resilient, in harmony with their narratives, and not plagued by intrusive rushes of distress, they move into to fourth stage of trauma work which is sustaining and strengthening the Wise Self—the compassionate witness. When problems arise, or trauma occurs or is triggered, Wise Self directs us to return to whichever of the first three stages is needed.

RH: Can we talk more about parts work? I’m just getting familiar with IFS. Are there just a few core parts?

KW: Parts work goes way back— Freud had ego, id, and superego. Jung introduced archetypes. Fritz Perls saw every part of a dream as a self. Psychosynthesis called our different selves sub-personalities. Transactional analysis is based on various aspects of Parent, Adult, and Child.

Richard Schwartz was trained as a family therapist. He noticed that clients had internal parts that functioned like family systems. He applied family therapy to the psyche and created IFS. He refined his approach into a system that’s a scalable and teachable. Here it is:

There are four main types of parts—exiles, managers, firefighters, and the Self:

Exiles are wounded parts carrying pain, shame, or overwhelm. Examples are the child who was abused, or the distressed part that feels worthless and abandoned.

Managers are protective parts that enforce, control, criticize, or insist on routines. Examples are the critic who tries to help by attacking, and the taskmaster who demands compliance with schedules.

Firefighters are parts who jump into action when painful feelings threaten. They distract from pain via compulsive destructive behaviors like drinking, drugs, sex, food, crime, or violence.

The Self can look at the parts and others with compassionate understanding. Therapists live in Self. When someone hires me as a therapist, they’re contracting with me to be Wise Self consistently with them. My job is not to necessarily be Wise Self all the time. My job is to notice when I’m not being Wise Self and adjust back.

Practically, what’s most important in therapy is a caring/understanding relationship with the therapist. Outcome research has suggested that 30% of the variance of positive change in therapy is the relationship, 40% is client resources like friends, family, and resilience memories, 15% is placebo effect (you pay an expert to help and you expect to get better), and 15% is method of treatment. Method doesn’t matter that all that much! It matters, but it doesn’t matter all that much.

The Exiles are the parts of us that feel wounded, stressed, overwhelmed, worthless, or beleaguered. They’re the parts of us that generate the thought, “Oh God, I hate this weak part of me. I hate this collapsed part of me”. There’s often hostility from managers towards exiles.

The Managers are like critical parents saying, “You’re bad!” “You screwed up!” or, “You have to do your routines to stay safe.”

The firefighters show up when distress is triggered and we want a quick escape. “I’m beginning to have a bad feeling. I think I should go drink or use drugs or have sex or eat doughnuts.” The Firefighters are there when the Exiles are beginning to get activated and overwhelmed.

What Richard Schwartz does in IFS is talk to the parts. A client might say, “I’m super stressed and anxious.” Schwartz might ask, “What makes you anxious?” The client responds, “There’s a part of me that feels like the world is too scary. And I hate that part”.

Richard hears this and sees an Exile and a Manager (inner critic in this case). He’ll talk to the critic first, saying, “I get how you’re pissed and frustrated. Can you just step aside for a moment and let me talk to the scared self?”

As he’s doing this, two healing processes are occurring. One, he’s modeling Wise Self and, through mirror neurons and human tendencies to create complementary states, he’s strengthening the client’s Wise Self.

Secondly, he is working with the system. He connects with and comforts the Exile, helping that part feel known and supported. He empathizes with the Managers, and asks questions like, “You try to help by telling the exile how worthless they are. how does that work?” The Manager says, “It never really works.”  In the subsequent dialogue, Schwartz teaches the critic how to manage more kindly.

He asks to talk to the firefighters who tell the system, “Let’s drink (party, self-mutilate, use drugs, flee, work, etc).” He discusses more healthy alternatives like, “Maybe you could exercise, or call your sponser when you feel that surge of distress.” As he works the system, the parts begin to integrate, and the Self gets stronger.

Whenever there are challenges, Schwartz encourages people to check in with Self. Does an exile part feeling vulnerable need attention? Does a controlling manager need support in handling an exile more effectively? Do firefighter self-destructive impulses need to be faced with compassion? Self cares for all the parts and guides all the parts, generating integration and harmony. That’s the beauty of IFS.

If you notice, I just described the system in seven minutes. Anytime you have a psychotherapeutic system that can be described like that, in seven minutes, that’s a very cool psychotherapeutic system.  

RH: That’s a great summary. And I am smiling as I learn that there are three broad categories in parts work. You know, the triadic system is a prominent feature of the Enneagram. I imagine the countless IFS and Enneagram students that must have drawn connections between the two systems. Maybe they see the parts as corresponding to the dominant center, or withdrawn center. Or maybe they see the three parts as their core type and the two connecting points.

As I see it, the gifts of an IFS perspective is that we never lose sight of what is called Essence in the Enneagram (the Wise Self). That can be very helpful when a student first comes to the Enneagram, and is confronted with all the pathological stuff.

A parts perspective also encourages us to be aware of and include everything. All of us have all three categories of parts, even if we do tend to identify more with one.

In terms of what Enneagram knowledge can add to the parts practitioner — I think we need to tread carefully here, hold everything loosely. But what I see as being potentially useful is having us have more productive dialogues between parts.

As you know, the Enneagram shows us what is very unconscious, our ‘shadow’. Let’s say as a Two, I repeatedly come in to my parts therapist with the idea that the dialogue needs to happen between the Manager and the Wise Self. Maybe I am more identified with my Manager. Well, what if as a Two, I ask myself, where is my Exile part? What if behind my idea that people are being mean and nasty is a sense of self of being unwanted. Then a different sort of dialogue can emerge. Basically holding both maps and systems (IFS more a psychotherapeutic system; the Enneagram more a typology system) potentially supports a truer inquiry.

KW: [Keith, does this sound right to you? Or if not, can you correct this?]

It sounds exactly right Rez! One of the great gifts of the enneagram is to keep bringing attention to multiple different selves associated with all the possibilities and connections generated by the system. Each of these selves can be some form of exile, manager, firefighter, or Self. All of them are important and crave integration, harmony, and development.

KW: Psychotherapy is very much about taking people at least a half step farther than where they are, and IFS and the enneagram provide opportunities and direction for such growth.

Let’s talk about healing systems for a bit. I’ve learned dozens of systems and generated different healing systems in my books. For example, my book Waking Up is one of the first textbooks on Integrally informed psychotherapy.

One thing that I’ve been aware of my whole career since my doctoral dissertation is what I shared earlier — that the system matters—15% of the variance of positive change—which is significant but not as central as the therapeutic relationship (30%) and client resources (40%). What I’m most interested in is practitioners developing healing systems that fit what I call their Natural Healing Style. I tell my students, “Learn systems, and then make them yours, because every practitioner embodies healing work in their own way. My doctoral research suggested that different systems had the same healing impact when delivered by experienced practitioners.

RH: Is that publicly available?

KW: The material on Natural Healing Style is available in my books Integral Mindfulness, The Gift of Shame, Shadow Light, Sessions, and Waking Up.

RH: Does Wise Self evolve?

KW: Yes! It begins forming early — by age 4 or 5. I have two kids. They’re 36 and 39 now. Every once in a while, when they were little, they’d say something ridiculously wise. Statements like, “Everyone should just love each.” Their consciousness had evolved their moral foundations to the point that they had intuitive wisdom. I believe this is our Wise Self that is either encouraged or suppressed with all the challenges of life and development.

Also, we’re all born able to have experiences of Unity. I believe implicit memories of oneness with universe are encoded in the third trimester of pregnancy. We can have transcendent states at any age, and with any worldview (like egocentric, ethnocentric, rational, pluralistic, or Integral). We interpret these experiences based on our stage of ego development. All the developmental systems such as Spiral Dynamic and Integral Psychology have this understanding at their core.

A little egocentric kid might feel spiritual awe and say, “it’s magic.” A conformist might feel spiritual awe and say, “This is Jesus coming through me.” A rational person might feel spiritual awe and say, “My nervous system amps up my dopamine when I excel.” Someone in a pluralistic moment might feel spiritual awe and say, “We each of us have equal capacity for love, joy, and intimacy.” At an integral level, someone might feel spiritual awe and say, “I’m having this experience and it can mean many things depending on context and what serves the highest good.” The same awe can mean different things to different people depending on multiple variables.

There’s even a genetic angle — the DRD4 gene for instance. About 20% of us have a mutation associated with higher novelty-seeking (there are 7 repetitions of 85 different sites on the gene instead of the usual 4 repetitions). These people are more wired to be seekers physically or spiritually. Such seeking fuels what we call ‘vertical development’ in Integral— where your worldview evolves to accommodate new understanding.

RH: Thanks for sneaking in that whistlestop tour of the Spiral levels by the way. Does the Wise Self eventually dissolve into emptiness?

KW: Hameed says pure emptiness is spaciousness, pure fullness is presence, and they are always ever present. With practice we can experience non-duality more often. Those moments become more accessible and frequent. But we’re still human. Even Buddha probably got annoyed now and then.

RH: I would like to think so.

KW: The goal isn’t perfection — it’s deeper connection, wiser responses, and helping others move forward, even if just by half a step.

~End of interview~.