Episode 3 | “Enneagram Fours & A Journey of 131 Miles” (ft. Jabee)
Join me (type 3), my girl Johnna Marie (type 9), and my homie, Jabee Williams (type 4) as we dive into the messy and beautiful topic of pushing for healthy relationships using my signature Stress Free Love Method.™️
On this episode, we dive into the emotional abyss 4s can fall into; confronting Tommy Johnson, the OKC Sheriff; and his affinity for 60 year old white women. 😂
Episode 3: “FOURs & A Journey of 131 Miles” (ft. Jabee)
Transcript
[00:00:00]
Johnna Marie: Thank you for joining me for another episode. I am Hilary Stevenson, your host and a therapist. My featured guest today is JB Williams, a local activist and an artist. We have been friends for over 20 years. I am so excited for him to let you into his world of being an Igram four.
Join me, dive into some of his most personal. Our guy, JB Williams.
We've got a couple of special guests Imma introduce you to. One of them is a regular. That is my girl, Johnna Marie.
Hi everybody. I'm a nine. Yes. And I am trying to get it. Today, we have a special guest in the building. Oklahoma City's own celebrity guest and a good friend of mine, Mr. Jabee Williams. Jabee, tell me if you know what your Enneagram type is.
Jabee: You told me before. I think it's like a six? Nope. Four? Correct. I knew it was like one of them even numbers.
Johnna Marie: We are so grateful to have a four. Our listeners and my clients know my husband is also a four. I, I know what,
Jabee: I don't remember what four is.
Hilary: We're gonna get into it. [00:01:00] Okay.
One of the key things is being unlike anyone else. Being unique.
Jabee: You just said that Avery is a four, and I'm a four. Then you said unlike anybody else.
Johnna Marie: Every four is completely unlike every other four. Okay. That's actually one thing that makes fours hard to generalize- the need to be different.
Jabee: I don't like the need to be different. Okay. You know what I'm saying? I don't try to be different.
That implies it's not natural. It's not organic. Yeah. We need to be you
Johnna Marie: know what I'm saying? I totally understand what you're saying. I agree with that.
Jabee: Because I might not be a four if that's the case.
Johnna Marie: Are you like anyone else?
I don't think so.
You're not creating this fake thing that makes you unlike anyone else. The limitation of fours, though, is if someone else is already doing it, they're not interested.
Jabee: Yeah, I would say that.
You know.
Whoa. All I'm saying is if there's a need for me to be different, then I'm not different, you know what I'm saying?
Sure.
You said the need to be different.
Johnna Marie: So you're okay with being like everybody else.
I'm not.
Okay, so what's the difference?
Jabee: Go to the next.... No, I see what you're saying. I can't control it. It's not like I make a decision, I need to do this so I'm not like them.
Johnna Marie: Not like you're actually like them and you're pretending not to [00:02:00] be.
Exactly.
No, you are definitely absolutely unique. Okay.
Jabee: Is the fact that I'm going back and forth with you about that a part of it?
Johnna Marie: It definitely is.
Okay.
Yeah, absolutely.
When fours are unable to do something that someone else is doing, even if it was authentic to them. If they were gonna do it, but somebody else did it first.
Jabee: They're like..
It's like, "I'm on to the next." Yup, okay. Yep. I guess that could be the need to be different.
Johnna Marie: It's not that fours are pretending to be different. They're gonna be different anyway. They don't have a choice. No doubt. It can get in the way of the creative process to need to be different.
There have been studies done with fours at conferences where they're not able to just sit at a round table with everyone else.
Jabee: That's funny.. On Sunday I went to visit a church and they was trying to go eat afterwards.. Everybody talking. I said, I'm just gonna leave yo I just can't.. I'm not finna sit here while yall try to figure it out.
Johnna Marie: I don't fluently speak four, so I use things my husband says, and it makes sense to fours.
Jabee: You've been able to talk me off ledges before. Things we've been through and we've seen. I don't know if you would call it speaking four or not, but the fact that you can communicate with me in the [00:03:00] way that you do. To understand me, even before you were doing this stuff. I think you speak four. The fact that you were able to marry a four- you speak it.
Johnna Marie: Before an Enneagram workshop, I would sit down with my husband and ask him a question and then I would just regurgitate it.
That's what you would do, okay. Re- gur- gerate. Where's your cup at?
Jabee: Regurgitate.
Johnna Marie: I still said it wrong.
I know. That's rough. Anyway. I would say back- what he would say. Have you seen the movie, Get Out, with the tea cups? Yeah. You seen that?
Is it that I think that she was dope? That's what you do. We're not gonna talk about your thing for old white women.
That's not what we're talking about today. That's not what you're talking about today. I might need more words on this. We can put a pin in it and come back to it later. Oh, listen, trust me. I really need to hear this. I'm talking about 70- year- old, random white women.
Jabee: Not 70. Don't say 70.
60?
Maybe 60.
Johnna Marie: I don't know that I wanna know.
I'm pretty sure I said that.
I'm gonna put a pin in that. Let's put a permanent pin in that.
Jabee: Mine's not my permanent.
Hey, I'm trying to date up, you know what I'm sayin?
Up in age?
[00:04:00]
Johnna Marie: Up in everything.
I don't even know where I was going with that. Oh, I was talking about Get Out. She taps on the tea cup, and they go into what they call the sunken place. Mm-hmm. This is a place my husband references. Going into a place of emotional turmoil. You're stuck and it's cycling.
Your thoughts are reinforcing certain feelings. You're thinking something, and it's making you feel some kinda way. And you're thinking something and it's making you feel some kinda way. Yeah, I hear you. He drew it on the chalkboard before my workshop. A swirl that started big and got down, down, down- what he called "the sunken place."
This won me out at points with the fours. Stuck in this place of, I need his words, but darkness where he's unable to get out. Where the thoughts and feelings start swirling. He has learned a process where he has to pick an action to get out of it.
fours...,
Jabee: Give me an example of one of his actions.
Johnna Marie: He's put a whole bunch of work into our front yard. There are still areas where it won't grow. The example he gives is - so he'll just be walking by and look out the window and see bald spots in the grass. He will sit there and obsess about what he could have [00:05:00] done different.
He gets frustrated like, "Well, I'm just, I'm never gonna figure this out." And he'll spiral, but it never comes to a place of action. So he's learned a process of getting to the point- I'm telling you. Yeah. He's learned process of getting to the point where he to notice the spiral start to happen and use action as a way to springboard out of it.
Lemme go to Home Depot, get on YouTube, Imma figure it out. That's not natural for a four, because it's so easy for the thought-feeling spiral to sink you down and down and down.
Jabee: Oh my God, fam.
Tell me about it. He described it really well. I like that; there are things that spiral and sink you down.
I read this autobiography of Marcus Garvey. When he was a child, like 12, 13. It's tradition in Jamaica. The father would dig a hole. Seven, eight feet deep hole. The father would take the son, climb down the ladder into that hole and say, "When I climb up, I'm pulling that ladder with me. You gotta figure out how to get out on your own."
His dad climbed out of the hole, pulled the ladder up. He had to figure how to get out of that eight feet hole on his own. When you say that spiral, you [00:06:00] tryna climb out, but you can't. That's the same thing. He said his mom would come out crying and screaming to his dad, "Let my baby up, let him up. He can't do it. Let him up." In life, it's like that where people are trying to help you. But his dad wouldn't let that happen. Eventually, he clawed himself outta the hole. His dad said, "See, now you know in life you can't depend on anybody, but yourself." It's the same thing.
That one thing will put you in that hole. It's up to you to climb out. You might have friends come try to help you. Even though, you know, that person is there for you, if his mom had pulled him outta that hole, he wouldn't have been who we know he is today.
I think we know we need that to be who we need to be, and do what we need to do. And for me, it's like, man, when you said that, "You can see the grass. You know what you need to do. You need to take the actions to do it." I look at my life. There's so many things like that. In relationships, it's the same way, where really you just reach out and fix it. Maybe for somebody else. But for me, it kick my ass first. Just the thought of it kicks my ass.
Johnna Marie: The Enneagram- there are three different ways of knowing: thinking, feeling and [00:07:00] action. Mm-hmm. Fours are are centrally emotional beings. What they are disconnected from is the action. Mm. So when they're able to add the action to the thinking and feeling.
Jabee: In music, I could say everything that I know I need to fix. There's even been points where I've been like, "But you've heard my songs before, so why you.." You know what I mean?
That lets you know, I know.
Like if you know it, why don't you do better?
What is it that you need when you're in that sunken place? I know the worst thing you can say to a four when they're in that place is "What's wrong?" What I've learned from my husband is what he needs from me is to basically block for him while he is down there.
Johnna Marie: He doesn't need me to pull him out. He needs me to have confidence that he'll be back.
Jabee: Yeah, that's.. That takes some maturity and some understanding. To do that, you gotta know, "At this moment, it's not about me."
That's the hardest part. And that's hard for anybody.
That's hard for anybody.
Johnna Marie: Being able to recognize: the smallest things impacted them differently. It's real. And it really does matter.
Jabee: Trying to tell somebody that what you feeling is real. [00:08:00] It's like, "Why you saying that? That's not true." I'm like, "Bro, if I feel like that, it's true." yeah. That's how you feel.
What you talking about?
Johnna Marie: Yeah. If you touch my arm, I'm gonna feel it. It's going to be real, but it isn't gonna hurt me. If you touch someone exactly the same way that has a third degree burn.. You can touch them in the exact same way.
It is literally going to affect their pain receptors in a completely different way. And it is real.
Jabee: So what you're saying is to somebody else, it might not be nothing. Right. But to someone that has third degree burn. Yep. Yeah. I got it
Johnna Marie: Talking about fours and all of this emotion that they carry. I don't really like emotion. I don't like my emotion. I don't like other people's emotion. I understand it's real. And it has happened. And it affects every aspect of your life. But then it's like, well, why are you letting it affect you? If you know it's something that's affecting you, why can't you just flip a button and be like, Nope, not today. That's a thing I hear from eights a lot. "Why does emotion have to impact you so heavy?" That's real. Well, shoot, I wish it didn't. I agree that it [00:09:00] does, but I don't like it.
A couple of weeks ago, we were at your house, Hilary, and we were talking about my nine crap. Avery pulled out this whole chart, these pictures, the whole situation.
The thing that stood out to me matches with what you said. Nobody could pull him out of that. He just needed somebody to sit with him.
We make it about us. Whatever is happening to him is happening to us. The fact that my husband just completely withdrew affects everyone. But what he was able to share with us was that he is going down and down and down into this sunken place. That he can get so far and still be able to pull himself out.
What he talked about is what we call melancholy: the happiness of being sad. Fours embrace melancholy without needing to be pulled out of it.
It might be a certain movie. It might be a certain weather or place, whatever that is. He needs to be able to go there. I'm going down and down and down. The rope only goes so far. That's the melancholy. I can pull myself up from here. If you don't let me have that, I'm going to fall off of the rope and I'm gonna get to a [00:10:00] level nobody wants to see and nobody can get me out of.
Jabee: You could be like, "OK." And let him do what he to do.
Or you could be like, "well, what about me?" For sure.
There have been times I'm like in order for me to get out of where I'm at, I need to be in my own house, my own time. Just chilling. Yeah. Watching a hip hop movie or something like that. Doing shows and performing lift my spirits. We went through a whole year and a half of nobody being able to do anything.
Wow.
It affected my life, my income, everything. As soon as things started picking up, I'm doing everything. I'm creating and working, doing everything I can do to get back to where I was. And it's like, "Oh wait, what about.. You gonna do a show on my birthday?"
Like really, you want me to do a show on your birthday, you know what I'm saying? That's what you really want.
Johnna Marie: Right. We're so enmeshed and fours are not. They know what they need in order to survive and be functional. I wouldn't say they do a great job of communicating what they need.
I suck at communicating everything. I'm horrible at communicating,
Back to not [00:11:00] being fluent in fours. I am a three. I'm really great at playing it off. I feel good about playing it off. For my husband, and all the other fours out there, playing it off is like dying a thousand deaths.
Man. Fam. On me.
Johnna, for a nine, the ability to minimize.. It's like a superpower. It feels like a superpower. It, yeah, it does. Even when a nine is healthy, they don't experience things on the same level. Not at all. That a four does. Threes are also shame- based types.
What you mean you mean shame- based? Shame is the core emotion of the triad that threes and fours fall into.
Jabee: Shame other people or themselves?
Johnna Marie: The triad is twos, threes, and fours. Twos are- probably people that you have really liked in your life.
I have really liked? Yeah. Twos are the- what do you need?
I can help you.
Jabee: Twos bomb as shit.
Johnna Marie: Especially for people who only function on a creative level. But twos base their worth off of how helpful they can be. They need to [00:12:00] help you, and fours are not necessarily other people focused.
But they're in the same triad where twos are all about other people's feelings and fours are the opposite of that, where they have a hard time overcoming their own feelings. Twos are embarrassed easily. Threes are embarrassed easily, but they're so good at projecting this certain image that no one would ever know.
Fours- that typical iceberg. How you see the tip at the top, but everything else is below the surface- that's a four. They're not easily embarrassed. It's more of a deep, dark, quicksand. That's pulling them down. Yeah.
Jabee: Wow. Nah, just like, the shame part.
Because I'm a three, no one will ever see us struggle. If fours were to pretend, they wouldn't be able to deal with themselves. Yeah. It's not that they don't recognize what other people desire of them or want them to be. But the cost they would pay for conforming is something they wouldn't be able to handle.
Conforming period. I was telling somebody the other day- I'll [00:13:00] just say it- the sheriff of Oklahoma, Tommy Johnson. I had meeting with him. I'm trying to explain to him how he's selling his people out. I'm telling him, "Listen, if I did and said everything these white folks wanted me to say and do, then I would have money." It's impossible for me to be like that.
It's impossible for me to conform. I couldn't live with myself.
Johnna Marie: I was gonna say- it wouldn't be impossible. But you wouldn't be able to exist at the level that you exist at. You would hate yourself.
Jabee: If I try to conform to what people want me to do and say, and be, and look, man, I'd be straight.
Johnna Marie: With your political passions and the things that you are a hardcore believer in, it seems like the natural route that you would become a politician. Yeah. That's what people do who care about changing things. That's the ideal.
Jabee: But you know why I don't? It's because I know once I do, I can't say and do what I wanna do. You can't say this, because we're gonna lose such and such donors.
Fuck them motherfuckers, yo. If we gonna lose them, we don't want them.
Johnna Marie: Not a position you can have when your family's food is dependent on votes.. Yeah. You [00:14:00] wouldn't be able to function in that. At all. And it sucks because we miss out on what you have to say, to a certain extent. You have been able to continue to show up on social media, at protests, organizing things.
And I do wonder, and you know this because you get concerned texts from me when you are having guns pulled on you, walking how many miles? 131. 131 miles. I understand your passion and your personal convictions as of four. But how do you keep your head above water in those kinds of situations when the emotional part is so heavy on you? Umm I don't know. How do you keep it from pulling you down that spiral into the sunken place?
Jabee: I'm down there a lot. What's Avery's cousin's name? Iven. Iven sent me something one time. I had to save what he said to my phone. So I pull it up when I need it. It's those things, you know. A lot of times it feels like you by yourself [00:15:00] and for somebody to just reach out. Like somebody, I can't remember who it was, stopped me and was like, "Man, how's your heart?" I didn't have the answers, but it made me like, okay, he's seeing something else. When you feel like you're by yourself and then randomly, somebody's like, man, I see what you're doing.
I've always been about community and activism. I never been as deep in it as I am now.
That's current. But just, with rap, I remember there was times where not only did I wanna not rap no more, but I didn't wanna live and some more. Two things happened.
First thing happened was- Sailor, my daughter was born. Yeah. But the other thing that happened when I didn't rap no more is Chuck D was like, "Man, your music can change the world." And I was just like, Damn just when I wanna be done with this, one of the biggest hip hop figures of all time was saying that about me.
Yeah. It's like, okay, maybe this ain't about me. Maybe it's about whoever hearing this shit. When you at the bottom of that sunken place and you trying to fight and claw your way out and you about to just be like, man, fuck it, and fall back. It's things like that. There's things that you've hit me up and you said, I'm like, damn. That video that Iven sent me- just to see it and know it's there, that gimme something. You know what I'm saying?
A [00:16:00] lot of the people that teach about fours are speaking in a very culturally specific way. I was watching a video the other day, and they were saying, "I think everyone who's a four owns a mauve scarf.'
And I'm like, well, maybe..
This man was white, huh?
Exactly.
That's why he's saying that bullshit. What did you say melancholy was? The happiness of being sad. The happiness of being sad. Do you think most of the way I respond to things today are based on things that happened to me in the past? Because I even say in a song, "ugly kid, I grew up with a broken heart."
I grew up with my heart broken. Is being broken-hearted comforting because of how I grew up?
Johnna Marie: When you talk about relationships, there's what we call a trauma bond. If I've had a certain level of trauma, when I connect with someone else, who's also had a certain level of trauma, that feels comforting. Because it's what I know. If it was too shiny and too blingy and too happy, it feels wrong.
Jabee: When I date somebody I'm like, "you have no idea." "Your high school was like what? Your home life was like what? You haven't [00:17:00] even lived."
Johnna Marie: You don't know who you would be or where you would be without-
those things happening.
Absolutely. Yeah, that's definitely true. You know, You talked about "I've learned from the past." Fours are withdrawing types, who tend to cope with situations by withdrawing.
Jabee: Mm-hmm. That's me. Oh, my God, keep going...
Johnna Marie: but also their orientation to time is the past. Fours believe there's nothing that I need to know for the future that the past can't teach me. All the things you do and go through- having a gun pulled on you at a protest. What advice do you have for young Black men out there who are experiencing things in the same way? How do they cope?
Jabee: It's crazy, I was having a conversation about this earlier today in a lunch meeting with this dude, who's an artist.
We're gonna try to collab on something. He takes pictures and makes these dope art pieces with them. Anyways. It's crazy, while we're talking. I'm thinking about all these things that I'm an adult now that I'll never forget, I'll never be able to get over. I forgive the people for doing them, but I'll never get over it.
Traumas that play a part in [00:18:00] how I react to people and things that I do. For instance, I was like 11 years old. We always go to Lazy E Arena for a field trip in middle school. It was, I don't know, like $5. I'll never forget the night before. It was time to turn in my permission slip and my money.
My mom went to the bank and got the things you put the pennies in. She had huge plastic bag full of pennies. I sat there and watched her count out $5 worth of pennies. For like two hours. Counted them out, put em all in, put 'em in the bag and said, "Take this to school tomorrow. Here's your permission slip." So I take it to school; we turn our permissions slips in. I remember taking it and put on the desk.
The teacher looked, and she was like, "Who brought this in here??" And I'm like, no, she ain't. No, she ain't. Yo, she ain't about to do me in, you know what I'm saying? Wow. Yeah. And she was like, "Who brought this in here? I'm not gonna count all this." That pissed me off, because I remember my mama counting all that shit. I said, "You ain't gotta count it- it's been counted already."
She was like, "No, we are not taking this." So everybody had to see me go up there, grab that bag of pennies, go back to my- I didn't go on the field trip. I know there are young Black [00:19:00] men who are trying to figure out how to manage things like that.
Trying to tell a young black man who might be a four like me- man, I don't know, becuase I'm an adult and I'm still plagued by those things that happened to me as a child.
Johnna Marie: Really, what you're saying is the answer. Don't minimize. It matters. It still matters 20 years later, 30 years-
Jabee: 15, 10..
You know... I mean, you know... 5? You know-
Whether it's at a protest, speaking in front of people, performing, relationships, that affects how I respond to certain things. In my mind, everybody going, "Who's is this?? What the-" you know what I'm saying? Wow. And I'm like, You ain't gotta count it. It's been counted already.
Johnna Marie: Wow.
