Here's a quick lesson on how our Centers of Intelligence impact daily life.

1. An encounter or conversation initiates internal storytelling by our Heart Center based on memories that cause an emotional reaction—making us subject to our inner narrative.

2. Our Belly Center reacts as if in danger via familiar neural pathways, hijacking our presence and attention and causing a fight, flight, freeze, faint, or fawn response based on our dominant personality point, Center of Intelligence, and Instinctual Variant.

3. Our Head Center can intervene and bring us back to Presence, allowing us to see and experience the situation more objectively. The emotion won't disappear, but we'll have more personal agency, self-awareness, and objectivity. One way to do this is by cultivating a vocabulary for the felt sense of the intruding emotion, thus minimizing its triggering effect and forging a new neural pathway. For example, one might sense and say aloud that they feel a pit in their stomach when feeling disappointed, clammy hands when nervous, or tired when sad.

Holly Margl is the award-winning author of Witnessing Grief; Inviting Trauma and Loss to Our Coaching Conversations, An Enneagram Perspective, coach, coach mentor, and trainer specializing in grief, trauma, and the Enneagram.