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Eckhart Tolle, in defining the pain-body, writes, “Because of the human tendency to perpetuate old emotion, almost everyone carries in his or her energy field an accumulation of old emotional pain, which I call ‘the pain-body’.”  He makes no distinction about personality patterns.  When he speaks of the pain-body, he simply says that we all have one, made up of the unprocessed experiences from our own lives as well as the residue from the family pain-body and the collective pain-body.

Considering the development of personality based on the structure of the triads—Instinctive, Feeling, and Thinking—we can predict that the pain-body is constructed from the basic emotions related to each triad:  rage, shame, and fear.  It is important to recognize that we all have all three primary emotions, not just the one that is highlighted in the triad of our own personality structure. 

Tolle likens the pain-body to a gremlin that lies hidden within each of us.  This gremlin needs to feed in order to survive.  It feeds on negative emotion and when aroused will stimulate negative thoughts in order to engender negative feelings.  It will stir up the pain-bodies of people around it in order to feed on their negative emotions as well.

To help us understand what the pain-body looks like in the Enneagram types, let us consider the primary affect of each triad as it plays out in the three types within the triad.  Remember that we each have at least a little bit of each pattern.

INSTINCTIVE TRIAD (related to the Belly Center)
Primary Affect:  Rage, in response to not getting autonomy needs met

Type Eight especially likes to feed on fully aroused anger that blasts everyone with Belly center aggression, blaming and threatening, all puffed up like those lizards that display a red ruff around their necks in order to be as intimidating as possible.

The Type Nine tendency is to keep rage suppressed, quietly stewing with resentment or compulsively subduing even their awareness of rage with potato chips, beer, pot, or computer games.  The pain-body is often denied until it explodes briefly and then goes underground again.

Type One pain-bodies often manifest as indignation or self-righteous anger.  “I am only doing this for your own good” or “You deserve this because of your own behavior” are perfect ways to rouse all of the pain-bodies within hearing distance.

FEELING TRIAD (related to the Heart Center)
Primary Affect:  Shame, in response to not getting recognition needs met

The Type Two pain-body feeds on perceived slights, experiences that seem to convey that they are not being appreciated.  Two’s have their pride injured when their love seems to be rejected, and they nurture hurt feelings that can sometimes explode when, under stress, Two’s manifest Eight  behavior.

The pain-body for Type Three feeds on humiliation, the experience of being publicly or privately judged as lacking in value, not respected and admired.  Three’s may try not to show that the pain-body is aroused until it spills out in a flood of emotion.

For Type Four, the pain-body is frequently activated because the personality supports its sense of identity through emotional states.  Four’s nurse their self-pity, envy of another’s apparent happiness, and at the same time disdain whatever they perceive as normal or average, stirring the ire of those around them.

THINKING TRIAD (related to the Head Center)
Primary Affect:  Anxiety, in response to not getting the need for security met

The Type Five pain-body feeds on anxiety about being overwhelmed by the world and struggling to find a place to fit.  People with Type Five personalities are incorrectly stereotyped as being unemotional.  If fact they often have deep and passionate feelings but feel unsafe or cynical about sharing them. 

The pain-body for Type Six feeds on worry and anxiety of every variety, whether openly anxious (as in the phobic pattern) or suppressing the anxiety through behavior that constantly tests their ability to survive the fear.  Testing the ones on whom they feel dependent often stirs the pain-bodies of those close to them.

Type Seven personalities have pain-bodies that feed on irritation about limits and lack of stimulation, and the fear of pain that underlies that irritation. The frenetic energy of Sevens can arouse pain-body irritation from those around them. 

The most important thing we can understand about the pain-body is that the only way to respond to it is to just observe it, name it as it arises, and breathe through it.  Trying to fix it is useless because it does not want to be fixed.  Sitting with the experience and accepting it for what it is allows us to utilize the practice of Presence.  In that way, the negative feelings are brought to consciousness without feeding them and slowly they disintegrate.