Exploring the ENNEAGRAM

— exploring yourself

Types and typing

The perceived but non-existent sameness AND inequality of the centres — how we got it backwards

Centres of intelligence, Types and typing

When it comes to the centres and type, there are some paradoxical misconceptions floating about in the Enneagram world. Ironically, out of the two major ones, one is about a perceived but non-existent inequality, and the other, paradoxically, about a perceived but non-existent sameness.

The imaginary inequality in centre access

The first misunderstanding is that, courtesy of which Enneagram type we belong to, we operate only or mainly out of one of the centres. In conversations about the centres in the Enneagram world — where we are talking about the gut, heart, and head as they exist in all of us, not referring to the centre triads — at some point, someone usually says: “But it’s different for different people. For some, this [whatever feature we are discussing] needs to come from the gut (or the heart, or the head).” But the thing is — no, it does not. Take agency, for example; our capacity to take action. In absolutely everyone, this is a function of the instinctual centre, or the gut. It is just one of the many things the instinctual centre provides for us. Saying that for some people agency originates in the heart, is like saying that for some, it’s actually the pancreas that cleans the blood, not the liver. It just doesn’t work that way. “Gut people” do not find love in the instinctual centre, while “heart people” find it in the heart. And “head people” most certainly don’t have “instincts” coming from the intellectual centre. Discussing things such as how different centres express compassion does not make sense. (How different people of the various Enneagram centre triads express compassion, however, is another matter. But half the time, these discussions focus on centres’ capacities, not people’s. And when they do focus on the people, they often fail to make that clear. Hence, misunderstandings about the centres themselves can thrive.)

Yes, our type has a particular relationship to the centres depending on our position on the Enneagram. In some ways, our personality will indeed tend to “manage” the centres a certain way depending on our type. And yes, this might mean we prefer some modalities — of inner work, for example — to others. In the average levels of balance, it also means we each scramble and compartmentalise the centres somewhat differently, strongly contributing to the typical functioning we see in average level types in action. But in themselves, the centres are the same in all of us, regardless of type. In that, there’s absolute equality.

Which is great news, of course, since, to truly listen and receive someone else, everyone is going to be accessing their heart. And since we are all equipped with one, we can all to this, too (albeit with varying success rates, depending on other factors 😊). Likewise, to move — in the room, as well as in life — requires access to the gut. And as we know, everyone moves, everyone has physical needs and urges, and we’re all, equally, use guided by our instinctual drives on a daily basis. And finally, everyone needs to use their head centre to even consider the future or to have an idea about something that is not here, now — endeavours which we all frequently engage in, again, regardless of which centre is our “home base” on the Enneagram circle. We possess them all, and we use them, too.

The seeming but illusory sameness of the centres as such

So the three centres work the same way in all of us. However, they don’t work the same way as each other. As we have seen, they each process different things, in different ways, with different capacities. And this includes their ability to incorporate information from the other centres. It is not a bounce-back-and-forth kind of trio; there more one-way flow here than we might have realised. (I have touched upon their differences somewhat in the article Heart and gut “distinguished” (at least for relatively creative, flowing and open minds 😉.) Briefly, one can see the centres as a bottom-up process, where each new centre, much like the instinctual drives, brings a new protocol. Since the old protocol (say, that of the gut) was in place when the new one (say, the heart) came online, the new one can “read” the information from the old one, but not the other way around. This puts them all in a quite unique place in relation to the other two. If you are interested in reading more about this, I unpack it quite thoroughly in Aspects of You.)

The fact that the centres are so different — that the gut possesses certain qualities that the heart and head do not, and so on and so forth for the others — sometimes has people respond with disbelief or accuse me of favouritism. “Why are you saying only the gut has agency? What about the heart types?” This is obviously because they are still holding on to the first misconception, as the answer is that the gut is the centre providing agency — and that, contrary to what they might think, we all have a gut so we can all move. Image types or types belonging in the intellectual centre (a k a “heart types” and “head types”) have gut centres, too. The centre you are “in” does not mean you only have that, or even that you have more of it. It only means that it’s the centre that your ego will tend to overidentify with and where the majority of your most stubborn issues will be found. (Also, the ego’s relationship to our home-base centre might affect our “vibe” or style, but this is a consequence of our ego preferences and does not signify more “access” to one of the centres.)

Misconceptions spawning confusing conclusions

The idea that one type sources everything from, or even through, a specific centre spawns some intellectual misconceptions on this topic (which, obviously and interestingly, all spring from the head, regardless of the “centre of the person” 😉), where people try to create a perfect symmetry for the centre, so that it looks “fair”; so that we each (despite the fact, as the belief may go, that we “do not have equal access to” all the centres) have access to equally impressive and not-so-impressive traits and skills. But this is an example of where the idea of equality is taken too far (and unnecessary so, since we do all have all three anyway) — a bit like someone coming into zoo insisting that all animals should be fed the same food, so it’s not “unfair”. But it would be unfair to feed everyone the same, since their needs and preferences are different. As long as we are talking about the centres as such, the differences are real.

But at the same time, the perceived (and equally mistaken) inequality of the distribution of the centres in different types opens up another bag of misconceptions. One is when I hear many people say things to the effect that they do not access all three centres on a regular basis. (An example would be a Seven who “doesn’t access” the heart on account of being connected only to the gut — type One — and back to the head — type Five — by the inner lines of the Enneagram model.) This is very seldom true. The centres all provide necessary bits of our life, and of our experience (just as the instinctual drives, which mostly operate under our conscious radar and which all work fine, despite not sticking out enough for us to notice them our conscious experience). However, sometimes, we have an overly narrow understanding of what a certain centre is or does, and our ways of thinking about ourselves can, in turn, help us keep that in place. This may have us go to that centre over and over to solve issues in our life which may well be coming from somewhere else (and therefore keep returning again). This, too, is something I cover in Aspects of You.

* * *

So the centres are much, much more than a basic and obvious bit of Enneagram theory that one covers quickly in the beginning before advancing to more complicated stuff. Besides offering a beautiful world of discovery, deepening our awareness of and relationship with them can serve to dissolve stubborn tangles in our journey, clear up a whole lot of confusion, and overall give more peace, freedom and clarity. Isn’t that something? 😉

I am currently converting recordings of my online course Going DEEPER — Inner Work with the Centres into an evergreen self-study course. If you are in the newsletter (sign up for free here), you will be the first to know when it’s available!

About the need for “refined typing”: the relationship between type-identification, self-awareness, and inner work

Inner growth, Types and typing

“I find the Enneagram constricting and limiting, encouraging you to work with just one type. We do have all nine types within us; the really great teachers all say that.” Yes. And do you know what? They all, also, teach that one of them is going to be “your type”; if it weren’t, the Enneagram of Personality Types would be completely useless.

But here is where people tend to go wrong if they explore the Enneagram type fishing pond before first encountering — and practising navigating — the inner work fishing pond: They expect finding your type to be the be all end all of the inner journey. “Bang, here’s your type, now you know it all, and if you just stick to this awareness and follow your recipe, life will proceed to be just peachy.”

This is, quite obviously, not the case. But when people believe it is, they get their knickers in a twist over subtypes and tritypes and wing theory and line movements, as if figuring out these things were what stood between them and liberation. And to a varying degree, these things can be really useful — but the truth is, what stands between ourselves and liberation is, in fact, inner work. This means cultivating presence with and awareness of ourselves; exploring our instinctual, emotional and mental impulses, reactivity, and patterns. That is the ticket to increased freedom, not self-defining to the finest detail. (Keep your shirt on, we can still meaningfully do that. And with much more ease, too. So keep reading.)

The Enneagram is just a map

The thing is, the Enneagram does not, specifically, tell you to conduct your inner work in a particular manner. It just offers us this amazingly to-the-point map of the human psyche and shows how, within us, “type” springs from its psycho-spiritual, essential roots into particular forms of ego-patterns. That’s all (and it’s a lot!). Also, its various components and the insights it rests upon springs from the actual arena of self-discovery and quite hardcore inner work. So, in a manner of speaking, going in, this is assumed to be a given. Although nowadays, that is usually not where people are coming from learning about it.

What this means, though, is that you were never meant to “work on your Enneagram type/s” (either in singular or plural form); you were meant to work on you. And I’m not just splitting hairs; there’s actually a difference. The you that you need to work on will contain all kinds of patterns, beings assigned to all kinds of types. It will also contain a bunch of patterns, traits and qualities that have nothing to do with type whatsoever. The latter are qualities like being empathetic/intelligent/thrifty/inclined to be untruthful; things that have nothing to do with which Enneagram type you are. But all of it comes with the package that, on this journey through life in a physical body, you call “me’.

A bag full of patterns

Thus, what we get when finding our type is a bagful of ego patterns, tendencies, manipulations, and misconceptions handed to us with a loving note saying, “Look in here, darling — here, you are likely to find the format of most of your crap.” And if we grow our understanding of the model and the deeper, inner workings of “type”, we will also be able to see more clearly where these patterns stem from, which in turn can give us very valuable hints on how to go about our inner work.

However, nowhere does it say: “Here, and only here, are the issues you are allowed to work on.” We are not required to first chart our type (or tritype, or subtype, or any combination of traits and tendencies) and only then do the work for that type or combination. We are meant (I mean, if we are interested in the first place, of course), to self-explore; to increase our self-knowledge and understanding and awareness. In this endeavour, type can offer immensely helpful pointers, which is beautiful. (And refining “type” in various ways can, too, of course.) But when we do approach the work from this direction, never will we erroneously believe that we have to access our issues through “type” to be able to work on them. No. When an issue presents itself, go ahead. When an ego-pattern crops up; dive right in. Or, you know — find a coach, therapist, model, technique, group, teacher or whatever appeals to you to safely cultivate that needed awareness and inner connection. That is how we grow.

And right there on the journey itself …

As a matter of fact, through this work — cultivating, crying, laughing, seeing, doubting, re-framing, hesitating, rejoicing and connecting with all aspects of ourselves — all our desired specification will become apparent to us. To the extent that you are interested, all the components and labels will find you, and now they will make sense. In their own time, and when you are ready.

And it also just so happens, that looking at traits like the centres of intelligence, the instinctual drives and the levels of balance can help us both find our core type (as well as any “extras” that we might find fascinating) and find all kinds of issues and patterns that we might want to explore more closely. Again, this is why I gravitate to this kind of work: I love moving in the Enneagram world, and I so appreciate the Enneagram of personality for showing us ourselves so beautifully (and uncannily truthfully). But I also want to always offer the inner work-aspects first, not as a “work on your type” kind of model but more as a “get to know yourself” model ❤️

“Threes typically compare”; “No, it’s Fours that do that” — zooming out to understand type descriptions

Enneagram, Types and typing

A friend of mine recently asked me about two of her teachers both using “comparing” as a typical trait when describing type — but with one of them, it was used to describe the Four, and with the other, the Three. And as my friend said, obviously, we all compare ourselves with others. But what, then, does it mean to connect it to these types?

Well. Yes, of course anyone can have problems with comparing — or, possibly a bigger challenge, with the value judgements we tend to pass as a result of that comparing. So why use this word specifically in connection with Threes, or Fours? And what’s the deal with it being used in both cases — as the “characteristic comparisons” of those two types would look quite different?

Zooming out to see the bigger picture

Something I often circle back to is the importance of zooming out when we aim to understand Enneagram types. Especially with social media and its many memes and lists, the concept of type tends to get myopic. And usually, the first thing to remember is, don’t get get hung up at the words in themselves, but rather try and get a feel for what they point to, and most of all, the context within which they are being used.

  • Is the word an absolute descriptor — “X equals type A”?
    This is very rarely the case.
  • Is the word a relative descriptor — “X happens much more for type A than for types B or C”?
    This is sometimes the case but then still not always correct.
  • Is the word meant to be heard in context — perhaps together with an example that was just provided, painting a bigger picture?
    This is almost always the case, but the person using the word is not always aware of that — and even if s/he is, it’s not necessarily pointed out clearly.

Usually, brief list-format summaries or witty memes might look like they are in the first category, while in actual fact they are in the third, only missing the vital example and further context. So, if you want to really understand the Enneagram types, you need to learn to zoom out. Let’s take a look at what that means in the example of Threes, Fours and the habit of comparing themselves with others.

What, then, is the bigger picture here? What is the contextual information that we only pick up if we zoom out? Well, we might start by noticing that both Threes and Fours are image types, i e, they belong in the heart triad. And, since these are types where the personal image is central to what I perceive as “me” (as well as the breeding ground for the majority of my personality issues), it stands to reason that comparing myself to others would be almost second nature.

Image-types and flavours of comparison

But obviously, there are three types in the image triad. So where does that leave type Two? Why isn’t the Two mentioned in connection with making comparisons? After first identifying the issue as belonging to the image triad and thus having established it as a feature these types commonly share, we now need to shed some light on their respective differences. This takes some “bigger picture” exploration, too — and the contextual information we need this time is found in the basic framework of each individual type, such as their passion, fixation and social style. Sounds complicated? It isn’t really. It gets a bit technical when spelled out like this, but in practice, what we see is this:

The Two

As a Two, the self-image that my ego tries to maintain is something along the lines that “I am unselfish and loving”. I operate with the passion of pride and the fixation of flattery, with a social style-emphasis on duty. My view of the situation goes something like this (exaggerated for clarity): “I am (or should/want to be) the most unselfish and generous and loving person here. I have no needs of my own that you need to worry about. Let’s focus on YOU.” This already solves the problem of comparison — or rather, it prevents it from even arising.*

The Three

As a Three, the self-image that my ego tries to maintain is something along the lines that I am the best and worthiest. I operate with the passion of vanity and the fixation of deceit** (or vice versa, but that doesn’t really matter here). I make comparisons to find out what more I could possibly attain to keep increasing my value and worth. I take this on in my general style of doing and expanding; actively asserting my value/credentials/gifts. The attitude of the Three is one of expedition; I’ll accomplish what I have to in order to come out on top in the comparison. The focus is forward — as otherwise, how can I expedite?

The Four

As a Four the self-image that my ego tries to maintain is something along the lines that am unique and difficult to understand. My energy is more withdrawing, and I operate with my passion and fixation, which are envy and fantasising/melancholy. These concepts, together with the withdrawal, all point to a kind of shrinking feeling: directing the energy inward for processing (rather than, as the Three, outward for expediting). Put on top of “comparison”, this gives a completely different energy than in the Three: In the Four, the comparison feeds further inward-focus, retreating into into what-could/might/would-have been.

Coming back to the Three and the Four

So when hearing words describing a type, those words need to be put in context — and the context of a type is the overall energy and focus, which we can understand both practically, by studying people of said types, and theoretically, by looking at their Ennea-characteristics, like the aspects (passions, fixations, styles etc) that we explored above. And in answer to the original question about comparison as a characteristic feature in both the Three and the Four, we might come to an overall conclusion looking something like this:

  • When a Three compares and comes up short, it is interpreted as a to-do list and drives practical activity (as in taking steps to eradicate the negative difference; directly addressing the problem of coming up short).
  • When a Four compares and comes up short, it is interpreted as fact and drives non-practical activity (as in longing, fantasising, dreaming, despairing, etc; processing “around” the problem of coming up short).
  • For the record, of course they might both (just like all the rest of us) also compare and come out on top, which will look slightly differently from one to the other, too — but which does not illustrate their differences as clearly so is not as meaningful for descriptions.

This is just one example of how zooming out can help us make sense of teachings and descriptions. And it illustrates one of my pet peeves: we really won’t get any of this by just collecting facts. We need to put those facts together and see them fit into an energetic reality ❤️

Looking for More zooming out material

Logged-in site members (register here free of charge) can find further material on the topic of zooming out in the Surface or core-series. The original article Surface or Core — real understanding or just trait-spotting? is open to everyone.

*) That is, this is how it seems to be. But Two’s actually have one area of comparison which is pretty much always there and where the Two always wants to come out on top: the race of being the closest friend, the best-connected contact or the most unselfish care-taker (the exact flavour depending on things like instinctual preferences). But this comparison is so specific that the concept of comparing as such generally won’t make it into the generic descriptions.

**)The deceit not being geared outwards as much as it is directed inwards, to convince myself that the feathers I collect for my hat will indeed make a difference, the picture they paint actually reflecting me.

Unseen treasures and forgotten keys — thoughts about lame uses for the Enneagram

Enneagram, Types and typing

The way lots of people treat the Enneagram today feels to me like the equivalent of returning to a grocery store over and over, in order to develop your skills in naming and identifying every last article in there and knowing exactly where to find each one. Sure, you can to that — but it’s not what the grocery store is for, and you will eventually starve. To live, you need to move on from mere identification to actually purchasing the foods, taking them home, and letting them nourish you.

Sadly, it seems like the larger Enneagram conversation has become more and more about identifications and definitions, and less about actual integration. With social media and online activities comes increased reach, which is fantastic. However, with the same batch of gifts we also get fluff. On Youtube and Facebook, the fluff of the Enneagram — people asking what type others (strangers!) think they might be, tell others (still strangers) what type they believe they are, or endlessly discussing what this or that teacher says and whether this means one of them is wrong — is rife.

The other day, for what I think is the first time ever in 22 years of studying and living with the Enneagram model, I did a YouTube search just for “Enneagram”, to see what came up. And basically, what came up was an never-ending row of descriptions. Lightweight as well as fuller-depth, brief as well as more extensive. Of the types overall, of Enneagram types in movies/books/history, of high/low sides of [insert your type of choice], and on and on and on. Interviews, illustrations, funny bits. So, types. 

Of course, learning about the types is important. If we don’t learn about the types, the model makes no sense. But on either side of that are two other very important areas, which, once you’ve got the basic  type-descriptions in place, is where the magic happens. 

These two areas are so important, they will get their own headline.

The two Very Important Areas

One is learning about the model as a whole. What “type” means and defines, and what it doesn’t. How wings, arrows, groups and developmental levels matter — and how they don’t. Because the question is seldom whether, but in what way; at what plane. But often, people are so eager to collect information about the Enneagram and its types that they forgot to find out what this information means. (I’ve written about this before, in posts like Did you only learn it, or did you actually get it? The importance of zooming out, A bunch of characteristics or an energetic climate — some thoughts on traits, behaviours and type descriptions and When the Enneagram presence runneth over — the challenges and gifts of expanded reach, among others.)

And the other — the most important thing without which none of the other stuff helps even a little bit — is learning about ourselves. What resonates and how; what that means, what it doesn’t mean. What the truth is beneath our masks, strategies, rationalisations, and urges. Who we are, at our deepest core, and who we’re not; what’s actually us and what is mostly our vehicle for transport here on Earth, the interface via which we interact with the world. All this, and so much more.

Enneagram life outside of the VIAs

Without insights into these two areas, the Enneagram becomes little more than a party trick — a cool system for quickly getting insights into a person and their motivations. (That is, this is what it could be in theory; however, becoming a good enough “stand-up Enneagram typist” would likely in reality require quite a bit of knowledge about these two areas, too. So the likely use for the Enneagram at said hypothetical party would probably be more like telling cool anecdotes about someone else’s uncanny ability to quickly suss out these things.)

Of course, I don’t know what the posters of such fluff on social media do with the Enneagram when they’re at home; how deeply they delve within themselves. But my guess is, if it were at all deep, they would post about other things online 😎.

This state of affairs sometimes frustrates me. Wake up!!! I want to yell to these posters — who have quite possibly just never been shown what the Enneagram can be; what insights it really has to offer once we get past the initial, typology-related fascination. I want to point them to where the real fascination is to be had. Unfortunately, though, that place is inside of them — and the willingness to go there, stop, breathe and find out about oneself really has to come from within. So then I remember that my job — rather than make everyone see it my way, which is of course tempting 😉 — is to keep posting stuff, creating content and offering courses for those who do want this inner exploration and true Enneagram insight, and trust that whoever is meant to find it will. (Are you someone who just did, and want to find more? Please register for a free membership and access to the Members’ area.)

Because these things — the two Very Important Areas — continue to inspire and fascinate me, and fuel my love for the Enneagram. So if you want to explore, experience and excavate the deepest truths about yourself, together with some of what this model means — all against the backdrop of type awareness and insights about their dynamics, but not in abstract theorizing about them — I think we’ll get along just swimmingly 😊❤️

Surface or Core — real understanding, or just trait-spotting?

Enneagram, Types and typing

Sometimes, people say that they have to “access their Nine” (when perhaps they mean “chill”) or “awaken their One” (when perhaps they mean getting organised or doing whatever they do more meticulously). But we can all chill, and we can all be thorough. So when is it actually relevant to discuss “accessing” other types within, and when is it just short-code for bunches of traits?

One aspect of the “Zooming out” approach to the Enneagram that I like to advocate for is distinguishing between us behaving, reasoning or feeling like another type and us exhibiting aspects of the deeper core structures of that same type. For instance, if we “go to” our designated point of stress/disintegration, we tend to believe we are experiencing what that type is typically experiencing. But most often, we are not. Rather, we are borrowing an inner or outer dynamic from that type, while still functioning very much out of our own type’s core motivations and fears.

Faux understanding

Why is this important? Well, as far as getting to know ourselves, it’s not, really. After all, inner work means working with whatever you find in the moment, whichever personality type it’s considered as belonging to. But as far as understanding the Enneagram and its types, it does make a difference. If you are a Nine “going to Six”, you might well have a strong inner Six and experience the core structures of point Six. But it might also be the case that you, still very much from a Nine core space, exhibit typical Six traits from a distinctly Ninish position. In case of the latter, if you believe you now understand the Six from within, you have limited your perspective on point Six and what it means to have that as your core personality structure.

Nowadays, there’s much talk about “inhabiting [or experiencing or allowing or developing] all the types”, and this is beautiful. We do have traits, abilities, challenges, possibilities and aspects of most, if not all, of the Enneagram points. But this is not the same as experiencing their innermost dilemmas, fears and/or psychological conditions. And if I assume it to be, I’m going to arrogantly assume I know what it means to live from all these different points — whereas, in reality, my understanding isn’t nearly as deeply anchored as I might think.

Surface similarities that only go skin deep

This doesn’t even have to be a wing point, or an arrow. For myself, when I look at, say, point Three (a point with which my core Eight has no visible connection on the Enneagram, but which I nonetheless often recognise traits from), I can check a number of things that I do, feel and think that seem distinctly “Threeish”. But when I look at the Three’s “why”, however, the likeness stops. My Eight ego doesn’t want to be the best to be validated or admired or have my worthiness confirmed — it wants to be the best so that I won’t be questioned. And when my ego “phones in its personality pattern” in a conversation with someone, instead of showing up fully and being emotionally accountable, it’s not so much to present a likeable image (which would be the Three motivation) but rather to make sure there’s no opening for the other getting close to me beyond what their intimacy paygrade allows for. And so on, and so forth. It looks, and feels, Threeish. If I were talking to a Three about these different behaviours, we could very well be in full agreement about what we do and how it feels. But in my case, the inner control central is still very much run by point Eight, and if we were to explore our deeper motivations, we’d find different fears and desires at the root of said behaviour.

Then, I might go to my Seven wing and look at the dynamics there. Here I might recognise, say, the tendency to acknowledge a feeling, identifying it and possibly seeing what it’s really about, only to have the ego go, “check!” and continue about its business, considering the matter handled. When I look at the deeper dynamics, this time I might realise that yes, it is the Seven dynamics I’m seeing: I just don’t want to go there in case I never find my way out. I need to keep swimming, lest I sink. In this case, it’s fair to say that there is a splash of Seven core dynamics to my Eight. If I go and look at the Nine, I do see patterns that I recognise there, too — but, as with the Three, not below the surface.

Enough respect to really listen …

I’m not saying this means we cannot understand types which we don’t share deep core structures with. We can. Increased self-knowledge, along with increased knowledge of all the types, makes that possible. But it gets much more possible if we realise we don’t necessarily understand deep Two dynamics just because we sometimes feel clingy, are people-oriented or want to help others out — even if it is to our detriment. We still need to look deeper — and also, likely, have a number of deeper conversations with some Twos 😉. When we respect others (including others of our own type, of course) enough to be willing to listen — rather than just assuming we already know all we need to know — true understanding can deepen and integrate.

… also makes room for really learning

Once we start understanding the types this way — from within, as it were — we can also begin to open up to their best features and capacities in ourselves. Inviting the capacities of type Two, Six or whichever type it might be, we open to these capacities within ourselves. We don’t need to try and mimic the Nine for inner peace, the Three for efficiency or the Two for actually caring about others; we can find these qualities within ourselves, as they are human qualities, not exclusive to any type. Mimicking something that I perceive as “not me” is hard work, and so is trying to be something I’m not. And that’s the beauty of it — it’s not that we “become” these types by truly understanding them, nor that we “go beyond” our own type. We only — but miraculously — grow, evolve and become more whole ❤️.

Members only Bonus

As members-only material (membership is free and you can register here), there is a type-centred reflection for each type, category Surface or core? You can contemplate the (totally arbitrarily selected) aspect of said type, explore to what extent you recognise it and to what extent you do also, in fact, recognise the core dynamics beneath the surface behaviour, reasoning or reactivity. There are no rights or wrongs. Reflections are very welcome (and please share your type if you comment).

My type story — finding the right type after being summarily (and wrongly) defaulted into the wrong one

Types and typing

I’m not a great fan of typing services. Offering to work with a client, following up conclusions, looking at deeper personality structures and exploring together, yes, sure. That is working from “you” into “type” — not the other way around. In the process, you get to know both yourself and the Enneagram model better. If you don’t probe deeply enough into either to actually find your type, having someone put a label on you won’t be that helpful anyway.

My typing story — a quick three-parter

My type — after some initial confusion, more down to not having really understood the model or the deeper structures of the types — was quite easily diagnosed. My inner work journey, having puttered along nicely but somewhat superficially for a few years, got more serious once I was diagnosed with MS three weeks before my thirtieth birthday. As a consequence of the journey that started, or more correctly, levelled up, with that diagnosis, I stumbled across the Enneagram.

Pt 1: The Danish guru

In my exploration of various forms of experiential inner work, I went on a growth retreat with a Danish psychoanalyst-turned-spiritual-guru that harboured the interesting, if misguided, idea that everyone with MS was an Enneagram Nine. This meant that my first introduction to the Enneagram was heavily slanted: You have this condition, ergo, you are a Nine.

As the Swedish name for the Nine in that particular retreat was trots — which can be translated into stubbornness, defiance and/or spite — I had no initial objection. After all, I could find plenty of defiance in me, as well as (obviously) anger. And from my own perspective, sure, I often held the anger back. So I returned from that course with a vague interest for this personality system and with a poorly investigated assumption that my personality was type Nine. (This is an example of how we can read words in type descriptions to mean very different things, and we can go very wrong unless we zoom out and take in the bigger picture.)

Pt 2: Separating “me” from from family patterns

Some time later, me and my husband Per started reading Enneagram books out loud to one another, discussing as we went along. Per is a One, and we both recognised a lot in the One description (in my case, from being raised in a heavily Oneish household). But after talking about it for a bit, I realised that even though we had the same ideas and preferences about many things, we a) had them for different reasons and b) reacted quite differently when things didn’t go our way, or even in our ways of accomplishing what we wanted. When we got to the type Eight descriptions, my husband said didn’t that sound more like me, and that was when I started looking at type Eight.

At first, I thought the descriptions of the Eight were exaggerated. Surely, I wasn’t that aggressive, that challenging? I felt I didn’t quite qualify to be an Eight. I was bullied in school as a child, and I did not think I matched the typical descriptions of “big” and strong and bold. Soon, though, I came to see that this was all a matter of comparison, and that my dominant Enneagram type was, in fact, type Eight (and moreover, one with a Seven wing — by then, it was quite obvious my default MO was not withdrawing).

Pt 3: Weeding out behaviour likenesses

Also, looking closer at all the types, none of the others ever really resonated all the way. I could see bits of the Three. My mind resonated with Seven. One, as I mentioned above, sort of ran in my blood — but it was in the form of my personal internalisation of, and reaction to, One perspectives. I could see some Five, in how I sorted stuff mentally and was drawn to patterns. And my tendency to banter and lock horns with people — often leaders — sometimes made me wonder if I was actually a closet Six (only to have my husband laugh quite hard in response). The Six was the only one to ever inspire any closer look, but I soon realised that my Six aspects are a select few (such as questioning things that I don’t get, or don’t feel hold water, or “bumping up against people” to see what bounces back), don’t go across the board and are not fulled by Six motivations. Also, in groups of either type, it was quite clear that I belonged with the Eights. So, after some initial confusion, there was really no contest.

“Resonating all the way” vs recognising every detailed description

So, why am I telling you all this? Well, a big reason is that thing about it resonating all the way. And it’s all the way vertically, not horizontally. It’s not about identifying with everything that’s written about a type. I sure don’t recognise everything that’s written about Eights. Even in Wisdom of the Enneagram, which I consider a gold mine of Enneagram information and understanding, there are lots in the description that doesn’t particularly feel like me. Except it all does, put together. This is where my pet topic, “Zooming out (and getting it)”, fits in 😉

So we need to see the forest, not stare at individual trees. We need the get the overall perspective, and most specifically the typical misunderstandings and blinders, of each type. We need to weed out “how this can then look and feel” from what makes it look and feel this way. And that’s a tall order.

In my experience, this understanding can’t be rushed. It’s not that it will necessarily take up a lot of time; although some bits probably take longer than others to land for us. But it will be a process of organic ripening, and although we can do our best to “water” and tend to our Enneagram insights so they can thrive, we cannot dictate how and in what order the real, integrated knowledge will land. We can only welcome it ❤️😊