Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Christa Hardin. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Christa, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.

There were so many things I learned from my parents’ and their partnership and marriage in terms of how I came into couple’s work. First, they were tenaciously devoted to one another, even though they were well aware of one another’s weaknesses. They also fought for one another in public forums, till my family told me when my mom struggled with a mental health disorder (schizophrenia), and my dad fought so very hard for her across social sectors. In fact, he finally found her a psychiatrist who treated her symptoms well when I was a baby, and I never even knew she had this disorder, nor did my friends, since she was so healthy as a parent and wife, and they did not hide in shame from the diagnosis either.

My parents also built up my gifts, and when a teacher put me into a remedial class for reading help because I was shy, they knew I was advanced, and they got the school to offer me testing. I was offered a spot in the Junior Great Books literature gifted classes from that point.

Lastly, they modeled humility because when they needed help as a couple, they accepted some of it from me because I deeply enjoyed creative problem solving and I saw both of their hearts. I felt happy to be able to offer them a third-party perspective, and in this way, the three of us discovered my career!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

As a couple’s helper, I specialize both in general relationship and marriage care, because we have some great collective bodies of research that help many couples. However, we also need nuanced care and I love conducting the Enneagram assessment with my clients, since knowing our particular issues truly helps us to learn the best personal and relationship care. I’ve had over a million downloads on my podcast, and my new book that just came out Oct 3, 2023, “The Enneagram in Marriage: Your Guide to Thriving Together in Your Unique Pairing,” has been on Amazon and Baker Book House bestseller lists.

I love to help couples find their compatibility, intimacy building, affair prevention and recovery, and work on extended family issues. I think my focus of both the best of marriage research and the best of personailty research gives me a cutting edge in my field. I also have many individuals (33K) who follow my Instagram account @enneagramandmarriage who have allowed me to research them also, so we can truly learn the best and worst of each personality type in marriage.

Another aspect of my work that is unique is that I help my clients not only through the Erik Erikson “Intimacy versus isolation” stage, but also the “generativity versus stagnation” phase, which helps them to create a special mission together where they use their mutual gifts to serve others in the world.

I want couples to realize every personality type can work with any other type if they put on the healthiest traits of their type along with the best of marriage and relationship tips. I can help them to do this with my coaching, book, podcast, Instagram, website, and speaking engagements.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I think one of the most important things we can do as leaders and entrepreneurs is to show care to the individuals we serve, and not just pass on the one for the many. My staff knows we care about people one by one, and their own mental health, not just their relationships. I’ve been building my business across many years, and I believe the people who follow me on the podcast or meet me in the pages of my book, website, or social media accounts know this, and therefore trust me with their deepest relationship wounds and care.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

My husband Wes is my business partner and he’s my complete opposite. We met as youth in school, as I share about in my book in full detail, but he had gifts I didn’t have and vice versa. We fit not like parellel lines but connected as puzzle pieces, interlocking as a stronger unit, and and other times and in shadow moments, falling apart. We have learned the best tools for staying connected through our Enneagram and relationship tips across the years, and it’s made a world of difference in terms of learning not just to survive but to thrive.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.enneagramandmarriage.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/enneagramandmarriage/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/772026686525647
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christa-hardin-b23258120/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@enneagramandmarriage

Image Credits
@shylarosephotography