Want to get healthier as an enneagram two? Let your enneagram number be your guide. Inside, I share the enneagram two health tips that include an ultimate guide on how to get healthy based on your enneagram strengths and weaknesses.

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How To Use The Enneagram To Get Healthy

It’s no surprise that everyone ticks a little differently, making health more than just a one-size-fits-all approach. What motivates, scares, and pushes you is very different yet critical in understanding what it will take to help you change. You can not expect what works for someone else will work the same for you because you’re not the same.

That’s what I love about the Enneagram. It adds more personality to what you do and why you do it. Plus, it’s invaluable in understanding specific action steps you should begin and those to stop doing, creating a more realistic plan suitable for you.

Today, we’re talking all about Enneagram type two. As a two, you function very differently than a five or a six, and yet you do it in your own beautiful way. If you’re an enneagram two or know one, this could be powerful information in helping you achieve health and live a more fulfilling life.

If you don’t know your enneagram type, take this quiz to find out.

Enneagram Type 2

Two’s you are a natural helper. You see people and feel for people in a way most can’t understand. In the process, you also tend to blend in, masking your needs for the sake of someone else. Much like a nine, you tend to sacrifice yourself at the expense of other people, neglecting the care your body needs to live well and turning to food to provide the comfort you’ve failed to provide yourself.

Of course, you attract people because of your warmth and generosity. Many even expect you’ll always be there, unknowing how little you have left to give.

Twos, have you considered how this relates to your health? Have you considered how this might stall your health instead, leaving you exhausted and burnt out? 

When it comes to health and creating nourishing rhythms, type two, you have many healthy and highly beneficial characteristics. When you see a need, you meet the need.

The problem is you expend so much energy giving to others that you fail to realize how little energy you have left for yourself. You’ve found your worth in giving that you’ve detached the thought that you, too, are worthy of energy and attention. A problem that leads to numbing or stuffing your feelings in food or substances, decreasing your energy.

Health for you means learning what it means to love yourself.

Loving yourself is not a selfish thing. A lack of love creates self-obsession more than too much love. You have more to give in love without allowing others to take everything you have. In love, you know how to protect yourself and your energy while helping others. It’s giving out of abundance rather than lack.

The work isn’t easy, but it is worth it because you’ll have more to give in your filling and healing.

Get the enneagram two ultimate guide!

Inside this post, you’ll learn health is not fixing yourself or anyone else. It’s learning how to fill yourself up—creating more energy to live.

Get 10+ pages of health tips for enneagram-type twos inside this guide. Download the guide, print it off, and see how much this resonates with your life.

Enneagram Two Health Tips

Two’s, you reside in the heart triad. This means you will often associate diet and exercise with needing to be loved and wanted. You move through the world primarily through the lens of emotions with a natural tendency to absorb the feelings of others. You live life in response to others, constantly wondering how you can please them, impress them, or how you compare with them.

Likewise, you can find so much peace by learning to process your emotions instead of letting your emotions run your life.

Healing for you happens when you learn to recognize your own needs. Understanding what you feel, outside what other people feel, is crucial in your healing. You have to come back to understand yourself outside of everyone else.

One of the best ways to heal and fill yourself is through solitude, creating space to be alone. As the most relational of all enneagram types, this can feel overwhelming, sometimes even a purposeless task. But it’s time to invest in yourself the same way you invest in others.

As a two, you need to approach health as a means of solitude, a place to heal more than a tool to compare.

Shift your focus from achieving health to creating it in the form of rest. To sit in your individuality, apart from the needs of others. To do this, you must learn to nurture your feelings instead of numb them or press them, allowing health to be the means of nurturing and sustaining you.

Be gentle with yourself. Listen to your needs and engage in self-care activities that fill you with energy. Action steps that help heal you physically and mentally. Make a conscious choice to make health a priority. In healing you, there is more of you to give.

Enneagram Two Health Strengths

Twos are special people with the distinct ability to discern situations and offer help in any and every way. It’s time to use that drive to help yourself so you have more to give. Health for you is learning to protect your energy from unnecessary things and channeling it in the direction that brings you health. Here are some strengths you should rely on:

•  The ability to channel energy in specific directions.
•   Openness to trying new things. 
•   Highly people-oriented and social. 
•   View food and movement with positivity. 
•   Ability to accomplish tasks efficiently. 
•   Flexible.
•   Perceptive and highly aware. 
•   Practical.

Enneagram Two Health Struggles

Type two greatest health asset is their healthy view of food. While I don’t want to overlook this gift, your most significant asset can become your worst enemy, which happens when a type two gets stressed.

Under stress, you tend to satisfy your overwhelming emotions with food. You twist the intended design of food from nourishing and positive to use food as a form of love. You use it as a means to suppress rather than nourish your body. 

Health for you means learning how to deal with your emotions. Setting boundaries so you can take care of yourself, leaving energy to care for everyone else. 

You can only stuff the pain, hurt, and fear for so long before it erupts. The starting point to dealing with your emotions is acknowledging them without accepting them. When you understand what you feel, you can determine if this feeling is something you want to act on or liberate yourself from. In most cases, the healthiest thing you can do is learn to let your emotions out. To free yourself from hoarding them, opening up space to feel something else. 

Find places or people you can freely release your emotions. Make sure it is a safe and encouraging space where you fear no judgment—a place of openness and vulnerability without being enabled to continue stuffing. 

As you let unnecessary hurt out, open yourself up to fill it with love. Not human love that will fail every single time, but go back to the one who called you Beloved and knit you perfectly together in your mothers womb. No human can satisfy what only Christ can. Fix your eyes on Jesus and let yourself live loved. Remember, you are not loved for what you do but because of who you are. 

5 Practical Health Tips for Enneagram Two

As a two, you are efficient, flexible, and love to care. It’s time to care for yourself as you care for everyone else. When you take care of your mind, everything else seems to fall into place. Here are some practical steps or rhythms that you can choose to fill yourself up. Remember, these are just ideas and not the end all be all. Add to it to create a personal health plan that nourishes your uniqueness.

1. Practice daily solitude

One of the scariest and most filling practices for a two is solitude. Space alone can feel counterintuitive to the most relationally-oriented type, but that’s why this space is needed and healing.

As long as you’re in the presence of others, you’ll find it challenging to take care of yourself. When you are alone, there are no one else’s needs to meet but your own. Use space and solitude to rebalance and ground yourself in what you need. It doesn’t have to be a lot of time, but you may find the more time you give, the better you feel.

2. Make a gratitude list

It’s easy for twos to become consumed with needs that they forget the world is full of good. One way to help unload the emotions you carry, both yours and those of others, is to practice gratitude. Start a simple checklist marking off three things you’re grateful for daily. It’s so simple it’s easy to overlook, but don’t skip this one. The more you recognize the good, the more you’ll accept it as such.

3. Incorporate journaling

Feelings and more feelings are what the two needs to process. As I mentioned, if you can deal with your emotional stress, everything else often falls into place. Sometimes it’s hard to uncover what you are feeling. That’s where journaling comes into play.

Use the practice of journaling to put into words what you are feeling so you can adequately free what is no longer serving you. Create space alone with a pen and paper and write anything that comes to mind. Even if you do nothing with it, it still helps you to see yourself in the sea of others.

4. Sit down and enjoy food

Food is a love language for twos, not only for themselves but as a way to love other people. When food becomes love, it’s easy to fall back on when life feels overwhelming, sad, or lonely. To overcome this, get back to loving yourself by making food less about masking your feelings and use it to change how you feel.

Eat to feel energized, not to feel less sad.

To do this, you must slow down and recognize how food can change how you feel—eating not to suppress but to feel alive, vibrant, confident, and energized. Eat to nourish, and use the general rule of thumb that you sit at the table to eat your meals. Let this be a guide to ensure you are not too busy that you skip eating and ensure you’re eating to nourish.

5. Practice daily self-care

Twos are notorious for skipping self-care because they view it as selfish. But as we learned in this post, self-care is anything but selfish. It’s the tool and resource to fill yourself so you can help more people.

Let this be your reminder: caring for yourself is okay and even necessary. It’s okay to slow down and care for yourself. Take a hot bath, buy the clothes you feel confident in, and get your nails done from time to time.

Bonus Tip: Do More Planning

You go where you are needed, sometimes leaving you scattered and chaotic. Beat these feelings and ensure your making the most of your hustle by creating a plan. A plan that helps you create time to help others and still make time to nourish yourself.

As a two, I created the Nourished Planner for people like us! A place of structure and flexibility and a home to map your weeks, schedule downtime, plan meals, and even those activities that allow you to give back.

You can’t do it all, but you can plan what’s most important. Let the pages of the Nourished Planner guide you to do just that. Get your Nourished Planner here.

Want More Enneagram Two Tips?

Enneagram twos, you have so much to offer and enough drive to help everyone else get healthy. Now it’s your turn.

Spend some of that energy you give to other people filling your cup, knowing it will better everyone around you. If you want more tips, download the free guide below. Inside, you’ll get the full run-down and complete health tips for your type.