Process of Transformation and Therapeutic Recommendations

A fundamental step for people of this Enneatype is realizing the impact of their intensity and how this intensity takes a toll both on them and on those close to them, especially their partners, who often absorb their anger and frustration. Becoming aware of this anger is itself a great step, as Sexual 8s go through life wielding an imaginary sword, striking at anything that stands between them and their desires.

Much of their transformation process has to do with finding spaces to soften, to let that anger give way to emotions such as joy or compassion, which connect them with an expansive, tender, and compassionate love—the love from which, since childhood, they had to protect themselves by building a great emotional armor because, one could say, their closest bonds hurt too much. Thus, love was replaced by a desire for possession.

The SAT Program opened the doors for me. I began to see madness in my patterns. Binary thinking: strong/weak, right/wrong, love/abandonment. The rage I carried like a sword and shield was not power, but unprocessed pain. Before SAT, I associated intensity with connection, loyalty with possession, power with security. After SAT, I began to learn to contain myself. Nuances. How to remain without conquering. How to be present without devouring.

The transformation of the sexual Enneatype 8 therefore involves walking this path and reconnecting with the innocent love of the child who loved for no reason, spontaneously, joyfully, even playfully, and who also lost it and neurotically replaced it with domination over what was within reach. This process means confronting the fear of being betrayed and of losing trust in life and in others, and so reconnecting with that natural, harmonious trust is fundamental to recovering joy. With the loss of this vital energy came the loss of joy and spontaneity—sensations that must be reintegrated when the character’s defensive structure begins to unravel.

This process is facilitated by creating safe environments where they can explore their vulnerability without fear or judgment. Somatic therapy, meditation, and conscious breathing techniques can be powerful tools to release the physical and emotional tension accumulated over time. It is therefore crucial in their transformation to recover trust in people—to feel that there is someone they can trust, someone who loves them even when they show their vulnerability. Here, therapy and group work, such as those practiced in the SAT Program, play a vital role because they help build healthy bonds, where they are loved and accepted as they are, with both their light and shadow, and where they can let themselves be held.

We must remember that this Enneatype lives with a deep sense of unworthiness, so recovering that dignity through safe bonds is very healing. The Sexual 8 must face the challenge of accepting their humanity. This means recognizing that being vulnerable, feeling fear, or not having control does not make one weak but more complete. In this

integration of the darker and more vulnerable aspects lies true freedom—a peace not found in fighting against the world, but in being at peace with it and with oneself.

In childhood, the lesson was that they could not rest in anyone’s arms, that depending on others was dangerous because promises failed and those who were supposed to protect them betrayed them. And so rebellion was not an act of gratuitous defiance but a survival strategy. If no one was going to protect them, then they would be the strongest, the most indomitable, the ones who would never lower their guard. But this strength, which once served as protection, now also becomes their prison. Rebellion becomes armor, unable to surrender to love or comfort. Deep down, that same child still waits, hoping to be embraced, to be seen. But to do that, they must tear down the walls they built to protect themselves. This is the paradox of the Sexual 8: to find true protection, they must first dare to feel vulnerable, to accept that the invincible ones are not alone and that perhaps others are not as dangerous as they once believed.

“In a shamanic exercise I did,” writes Bittor, “I found myself before a tree and fell to the ground, and the tree showed me the moments when I had been a victim: when life had attacked me. And the tree said: ‘What has to happen for you to recognize yourself as a victim?’ And I broke down crying, and I began to integrate my inner victim. And yes, of course, how could I not be both victim and perpetrator? We all are.”

For therapists working with Sexual 8s, the recommendation would be to see the wounded child behind that mask of bravado, intensity, and power—as if looking directly at their wound—to connect with their heart and tenderness, because that is precisely what was missing in childhood and what people of this Enneatype need to begin healing. They should also avoid engaging too directly in confrontation until a solid bond is formed, since confrontation is a familiar terrain for them. A Sexual 8, when sensing conflict, arms themselves and prepares for battle. On the contrary, contact from tenderness disarms them and allows them to begin questioning their character and what they do with it. This contact reaches directly into their heart, filling what was missing, and even if they do not realize it, what they missed most was tenderness.

Another crucial step is to redefine the concept of power. Instead of seeing it as control or dominance, the E8 can learn to recognize power in openness, authenticity, and connection. This shift in perspective allows rebellion to become a constructive force rather than a destructive one. Power must regain its place as love toward oneself and as the ability to be kind and dignified people who can recognize and love others without possessing them.

Renouncing the desire to have everything and to possess others and life itself is necessary in these transformation processes, as well as transcending the feeling of impotence. Because what the Sexual 8 fears most is impotence: to feel it is to face something akin to

madness or violence. Thus, living knowing that not everything can be controlled is also a way to begin healing.

Incorporating limits as something healthy is essential, since lust always tries to exceed them—both those imposed from outside and those that come from within. In fact, if lust seeks anything, it is to break any boundary and fill itself with experiences. Therefore, learning to recognize and respect limits, whether external or self-imposed, becomes a way of establishing a structure where rest and growth are possible. Respecting limits also means rest for their rebelliousness, as rebellion without limits loses its purpose.

Intensity in Favor of Transformation

It is important to note that the very intensity of this Enneatype can serve as a catalyst in its process of transformation and personal growth. When Sexual 8s channel their intensity toward self-discovery, it becomes a vital source for them. Deep down, there is a longing to feel union with the divine—a longing for transcendence that, when recognized, can act as a profound change agent. In fact, among the ten people who worked on this book, there were several men and women who, upon beginning therapeutic processes, left jobs unrelated to the world of personal or spiritual development—such as police or journalism—to dedicate themselves fully to the psycho-spiritual world.

The energy of Sexual 8s tends to be high by nature, as if this intensity were part of their DNA, of the temperament with which they live life. When this intensity is channelled toward psycho-spiritual growth, as Claudio Naranjo did through the psychology of the Enneatypes, Sexual 8s tend to undergo profound and relatively rapid transformation processes, as intense as they themselves are.

“When we enter into knowledge without fear and go deep, we surrender—this is what allows us to reach profound places.”

Giovanna

From what has been shared in this group, we have seen that beyond the neurotic intensity that inhabits Sexual 8s and hides a great vital emptiness, at their deepest core there also exists a high level of intensity. In fact, as children they perceived themselves as extremely sensitive, as if everything hurt too much, including the pain of others. Their tragedy may have required them to desensitize and stop feeling; that is why, in their paths of transformation, it becomes essential to undo that hardening and reconnect with everything that was blocked, with love and compassion. Becoming sensitive again, one might say, means melting the frozen emotions behind the hard armor—almost steel—that these

people built. Softening through reconnection with love, sadness, or fear constitutes a necessary step in their process of transformation and search. Sexual 8s need all those repressed emotions to recover their natural course, to feel again, to become stabilized, and thus to leave behind the neurosis of lust.

“I remember my first two experiences with ayahuasca, in which I could only cry and cry. In one of them, the sensation was that within me there were enough tears to water entire valleys; I needed to cry everything I had not cried throughout my life in order to heal.”

Leonor

“It could be work such as the temazcal, more connected to shamanic practices, as key in their transformation processes. It can be a good transformational practice in the temazcal, but not through an attitude of enduring the heat to prove something—instead, it is about surrendering to the heat, letting oneself be penetrated by the stones, allowing what is buried in the earth to rise up, activating courage, letting go, and releasing the fear, the pain, the crying, and the repressed need.”

Bittor

As we can see, intensity in personal work is something that engages them and can serve as a doorway into a process of personal exploration; thus, even though it forms part of their neurosis, when put in service of transformation it can become a bridge toward the subtle, the beautiful, and the spiritual. These factors foster “healing” and lead the journey toward its essential aspect.

Connection with beauty—through literature, art, or nature—is another element of healing and openness to the most spiritual. Being a type of action, their learning takes place through doing, through practice; theory comes only after experience. Therefore, Gestalt therapy is ideal for them, since it emphasizes experience and what happens in the present moment, an area where Sexual 8s usually feel deeply connected—it is one of the types that most lives in the here and now.

All members of this group agree that the process experienced in the SAT Program was vital to their transformation: seeing their “madness,” recognizing how they hurt others, and becoming aware of the neurosis behind this character type were key steps in their change.

A few members of the group, whose lives had been marked by depression, recount how transformative it was to go through that experience—it taught them to care for themselves more, to value what they have, and to remain attentive so as not to fall again into excess.

“When I began personal work,” says Carmen, “I lived day to day without goals, only seeking intensity. I replaced it with sex, with marijuana… After the SAT, I could forgive my father for the pain he caused me. I entered pain—mine and his—and that opened me to compassion and to crying, which did me great good. I entered a depression that was healing, because I could take care of myself, stop falling into excess, and live more calmly.”

“Throughout my life,” says Muriel, “I went through a couple of depressions, after which I could value many things.”

Entering Stillness

In the transformation processes of Sexual 8s, stillness is key because it allows them to reconnect with the body—as if by stopping they could enter an inner world to which they usually have no access. Being still connects them with potency and with the consequent feeling of emptiness. As people who need to be in constant motion, stopping allows them to feel the intensity that inhabits them, and this can become the gateway to peak experiences and connection with God.

“I had an accident and could not move the upper part of my body, from head to solar plexus. It was seventeen years of pain. What helped me go beyond pain was zazen. I was a Zen nun for thirty years, meditating for eight hours a day in front of a wall without moving. I could experience abandoning the body—and it was a good experience for my type because it brought awareness beyond the body. From stillness I could connect with something greater—with God. That has been my path and then came Gestalt.” Muriel

For these lustful types, the body is the gateway to a broader consciousness, a connection with something beyond themselves. They tend to have great bodily awareness; from a young age, they have been active, instinctive, sometimes almost like restless puppies. From there comes their link with the physical and instinctual that sustains them. Recovering and integrating this bodily connection with emotional state and cognitive elaboration is a way of growing, deepening awareness, and advancing in transformation. It’s about ceasing to live the body merely as a means of satisfaction, and instead entering an experience of more subtle and complete fulfillment.

Connection with the Spiritual

The body is often their entryway into higher states of awareness and experiences we might call mystical.

“I had an experience in a workshop in which my body began to jump, and right there I felt an overwhelming love that transformed me as if I were a child again. I saw clouds above me and the Virgin Mary was there, saying: ‘Don’t be afraid.’ At that moment, her hand reached my heart, and on it was a sculpture of a large bee with a huge stinger that pricked me. I felt great pain, but at the same time great love—a love so vast it hurt—and I asked for forgiveness for my lack of love.”

Muriel

Connection with compassion and the experience of love are deeply transformative, as they connect Sexual 8s with the lost innocence—the healing virtue of this type—that they lost in childhood. It allows them to feel that there is love for them too, and that they can love as well, since they often doubt that love could truly live within them.

In the testimonies that follow, we see how experiences of sacred connection foster love toward themselves, others, and the greater whole.

“What transformed me most,” says Bittor, “was working on Christic connections through which I felt united with the Master Jesus and the presence of the Great Father Creator, but I also recognize that what most moved me was the warmth and embrace of the Great Mother. While vomiting my anger toward God and Jesus, suddenly I entered the experience of the crucifixion of Jesus, which transformed and redirected my evolutionary path.”

“For a long time,” adds Leonor, “I doubted that I could love. As I began my personal search and experiences with meditation and entheogens, I realized that my ability to love was opening. A key moment was an experience where I felt the Virgin’s nails sprouting toward her children and literally entering my heart; she returned to me that unconditional love. It opened a door to loving compassion for myself and for others.”

Feeling that one’s origin is also divine and that it’s possible to recover dignity are profoundly transformative experiences. Feeling themselves as children of God gives Sexual 8s a gateway to something greater—a place where the ego can rest, where not everything depends on them as they neurotically believe. Among their recurring thoughts is the illusion of being the center of all good and evil. Realizing that something far greater exists—call it God or any other name—gives them rest and allows them to stop fighting the current of life and instead bathe in it.

In fact, transmuting sexual lust into spirituality is something the group emphasized as a meditative practice to incorporate into personal work.

“It’s about seeking moments,” writes Bittor, “where the desire for possession—also in sex—can, through awareness, be lifted suddenly to the heart and even beyond the crown, crossing the boundaries of known consciousness and using this energy as a path toward transformation.”

They also recommend what they call “traveling in search of true fatherhood,” without psychotropics, surrendering not to pleasure but to conscious experience of the universe, dissolving into it.

Contact with nature, another crucial aspect for these lustful E8s, becomes a need—because it gives them freedom of being, a ground that supports them, and a sky that invites them to fly. As Claudio Naranjo reminds us, the E8’s concreteness and rigid thought can be softened by inviting imagination and lightness.

Naranjo explains that for type 8, meditation begins with concreteness but must evolve into the imaginative openness of type 7. This transition—from literal to symbolic—helps the E8 move beyond attachment to what is solid and graspable, cultivating the sacred in place of extreme control.

Nature is an ideal setting for these E8s, as it invites them to live more peacefully, with less rush and intensity. Their capacity for connection with nature lies within them, perhaps through the instinctual side of their character.

“Being in nature gives me tranquility and allows me to let go. The subtle and light are delicate things. For me, it’s fascinating to observe the small, to see how from a seed a plant is born.”

Fernanda

Presence and Compassion

The transformation path of the Sexual 8 is, at its essence, a process that leads them to change their way of being in the world. Their authority, once tied to fear and violence, is replaced by presence—the sense of security that radiates from within. Their natural leadership, often sustained by the fear they provoke, can be immense and destructive if unconscious, including verbal or physical violence.

With transformation and personal work, this changes: they discover that violence is not necessary for leadership. They can continue exercising authority from a compassionate and loving place instead of a harsh and despotic one. If they can open their gaze toward their own abused inner child, they can develop deep empathy toward others and understand the

harm they cause when identifying with the powerful abuser. Otherwise, they repeat patterns rooted in childhood trauma and perpetuate the drama of abuse.

Restorative Gesture

For the neurosis of the Sexual 8, the fundamental need is to possess the other—an instinctive need that, as seen earlier, becomes suffocating. The restorative gesture—the antidote to this neurosis—is the opposite act: opening one’s hands, raising them upward, releasing control, and surrendering to something greater that commands love. It is about letting go rather than constricting.

To undress from lust, of which they are so proud, is to begin transformation. Diogenes, who could be considered an evolved Sexual 8, renounced desire and thus lust. He must have been a very strong E8, as his autonomy was the best of type 8: self-sufficiency, not being a slave to his physical or emotional needs. He sought no possessions, glory, or sex.

Claudio Naranjo said that Diogenes exemplifies the E8 who transcends lust and possessiveness, channeling this energy toward a constructive and compassionate life.

The opposite of rebellion is surrender—but not as defeat or submission; rather, as the capacity to let go of control, to trust, and to open to the natural flow of life.

For the Sexual 8, surrender represents an existential challenge because it confronts everything they have learned to survive. They grew up believing that only strength and constant struggle could keep them safe. Yet, when they surrender, even briefly, they feel life again and the world ceases to hurt.

Rebellion comes from defense—a mechanism that keeps them standing, alert, ready for attack. But change requires something they find almost impossible: trust. Trusting others, love, the idea that not having control does not mean destruction. This is terrifying, but it also means recognizing that they cannot protect everything with brute force—that allowing others close to their vulnerability does not destroy them.

Faith is therefore a transformative force for the Sexual 8, though also a monumental challenge. Faith need not be religious—it can simply be belief in something beyond their constant struggle: a place, within or outside themselves, where they can surrender without being destroyed.

They find it hard to embrace faith because they were taught to distrust everything and everyone. Depending on others felt dangerous; trusting—even in something intangible—can seem naïve. But faith is not weakness; it is refuge. It is the place to rest

when they no longer have energy to fight, the tool that gives meaning even in difficulty, and the possibility of something greater than fear—something that sustains them even as they fall.

To transform rebellion, they need faith. Without it, they remain trapped in cycles of fight and isolation. With it, they find the courage to surrender—not as defeat, but as a conscious choice to trust in something greater than their own strength. And in that surrender, they finally find the freedom they have longed for.

Trusting again becomes the bridge that transforms their rebellion into something that does not destroy but builds—a path toward connection, freedom, and, ultimately, peace.

Galina:

In transformation, I am passionate yet contained: I know when to step back. Vulnerable and open, I share my fears without shame. Empowered without dominating, I lead by invitation, not by force. I love without control; I let people be who they are. Aware of my shadow, I restrain myself before exploding.

Epilogue – The Phoenix and the Angel

I was born in fire and burned for years. But in the ashes of pain, I found myself. I am Galina—a woman of steel and soul, of tenderness and strength. In this new life, I no longer seek to conquer, but to connect. Power is no longer my mask—it is my offering.