I recently had the pleasure of sitting down and talking all things Enneagram with The Narrative Enneagram’s newest board member, Chrystal Hamilton-Dorelien. Both of us are recent graduates of the Professional Certification Program – Chrystal as a practitioner and me as a teacher. We enjoyed reflecting on how our experiences have impacted our lives in measurable ways. 

During our conversation, I learned that Chrystal’s journey to a career as a clinical social worker had been shaped significantly by her experience with The Narrative Enneagram.

Chrystal first learned about the Enneagram some years ago on social media. Her interest was piqued when someone she was following on Instagram mentioned that she was taking classes at The Narrative Enneagram and that the school had scholarships. Chrystal thought, “this is some serious stuff, if it’s a whole school, and they have scholarships, and so I looked into it.”

Her initial intention was to complete the Foundational Courses for personal growth and exploration. These four courses guide participants through the nine Enneagram types and instinctual subtypes then delve into ways the Enneagram can support growth and transformation. She loved the panel method as a tool to understand type by learning from real people’s experiences.

“I loved how so many people from different walks of life, who don’t even know each other, had so many similarities with their type. It’s like, wow, this is real. This is real.”

Chrystal told me the foundational work was heavy. She had always felt like a self-aware person, but identifying her Enneagram type and all that comes with that was an eye-opening experience. She needed time to digest it all. She took a temporary step back from the course work to recognize the depth of the experience and let it soak in.

At this point, she wasn’t yet considering certification– that came later when her path shifted towards clinical therapy and she realized that she didn’t want to practice therapy unless she could incorporate the Enneagram into this work.

Looking back, she is glad that she didn’t yet know the Enneagram would be part of her clinical practice when she was taking the Foundational Courses. It allowed her to do the personal work and understand the Enneagram from that lens first. “If it had been in the front of my mind that this was going to be used in my work, I don’t know if I would have applied it so much to myself… this was so personal to me.” As a result of her experience, Chrystal’s advice for other therapists who are considering the Practitioner Certification is, 

“Learn it for yourself first. That’s key. You have to do your own work, and, of course, you’re never going to finish, but you have to start here. And for me, it wasn’t just about learning about myself, but learning about the people in my life. I had so much clarity after just learning the basics.”

After studying the Enneagram for personal growth, she now understood that it could profoundly shape her professional work. She realized and thought, “this is the only way I’m going to be a therapist, if I can use the Enneagram” and registered for the Professional Certification Program.

The Narrative Enneagram offers three Certifications: Typing Professional, Teacher, and Practitioner. The Practitioner Certification is designed for therapists, coaches, spiritual directors, and others who want to integrate the Enneagram into work with individual clients. She was able to use the certification process as part of the hours needed to obtain her license. As Chrystal shared with me,

“Integrating the Enneagram into my clinical practice brought a deeper sense of clarity and alignment, allowing me to help clients explore not only what they do, but the underlying motivations and relational patterns driving them.”

After earning her Practitioner Certification, Chrystal has served as a peer group leader for other cohorts completing the practicum portion of certification. She loves the cohort model because she enjoys working with others. Staying with the same people fosters relationships and collaboration to reinforce the learning. Because she recently participated as a student herself, she felt prepared to offer guidance to current students.

Chrystal is also a member of the Kindred affinity group, which began in 2023 and offers community to people of color in a supportive way. When she started the program at The Narrative Enneagram, she noticed that she was “one of very few Black participants.” These gatherings offer a space of unguardedness, where members feel comfortable to share their experiences. 

Participation in the group has fostered hopes that more people of color will be called into the circle, “A lot of people in my community don’t know about the The Narrative Enneagram, and that’s part of our goal to spread the word, to get the Enneagram out there. Because it’s such a helpful tool in so many different capacities and people need access to this.”

The Enneagram has become an integral part of Chrystal’s approach as a practitioner. She has a deep interest in getting to know her clients and hearing their stories.

“The Enneagram helps me listen for a lot of different things, to pull out the patterns. It’s an honest, genuine way to dig deeper. It allows for the natural flow of things, not surface, yet not intrusive… learning the patterns and the types, knowing where to pause and see what these things are all about.” 

Chrystal does a lot of trauma work with her clients and one of the things that really impacted her is the way that all of the patterns and their deep traumas are connected and intertwined. She uses an image of a ball of tangled up string next to the symbol of the Enneagram to depict the idea of looking at our patterns, our traumas, “all the stuff,” and then she and her clients work to untangle them.

I remember hearing Beatrice Chestnut once say that using the Enneagram during therapy allows for the work to begin at a much higher level. Chrystal told me, “I wasn’t even interested in doing this work [being a therapist] without the Enneagram. Because to me it is so important to understand the why. There’s always a why and people want to know why, because they want to understand themselves.” 

For therapists, spiritual directors, coaches, and others who work with clients one-to-one, the Enneagram offers a deep and profoundly useful tool for exploring the why. The Narrative Enneagram, with its history of exemplary and ever-improving programs, is the gold standard place to get this training.

Are you interested in using the Enneagram in your one-to-one work with clients?

The first step is to complete Experiencing the Narrative Enneagram. After that, you may choose to continue the other three Foundational Courses and then pursue the Professional Certification Program to develop your skills using the Enneagram in your work with clients.

Beginning with the July 17-19 Experiencing the Narrative Enneagram, mental health counselors can earn 19.5 NBCC Continuing Education credits for this course. The Narrative Enneagram has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7892. Learn more about how you can earn NBCC Continuing Education credits or International Coaching Federation Continuing Coach Education (CCE) credits through The Narrative Enneagram.

Contributed by: Theresa Branaugh
Theresa Branaugh is a retired high school English teacher, mother of two, and grandmother of four who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband. She completed her Teacher Certification with The Narrative Enneagram in January of 2025 and is currently serving on The Narrative Enneagram board. When she is not facilitating various community interest classes and professional development workshops at her community adult school, she can be found exploring all things Enneagram—workshops, panels, books, and podcasts.