The Complete Enneagram: 27 Paths to Greater Self-Knowledge

by Beatrice Chestnut

The Enneagram not only provides a great deal of help in the process of increasing self-awareness—by showing the “inner witness” what to pay attention to—but also provides a method for how we can change and grow based on that vision.

We each repress our Shadow aspects because they make us feel uncomfortable or bad about ourselves; but making these qualities unconscious gives them the power to create unintended problems in our lives and relationships when they influence us in ways we don’t see. Developing our “true” self requires us to know, accept, and integrate all parts of our selves, including our Shadow elements. The Enneagram can help us do that.

The Enneagram describes personality types in terms of conscious patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving along with their repressed Shadow aspects. As a result, it is an excellent tool for doing the hardest part of consciousness work: realizing, owning, and accepting your blind spots.

The Enneagram reveals the truth of what we might see as the “good” and the “bad” parts of our habitual programming, allowing us to compassionately address the disowned and “fixated” (stuck) parts of our personalities and to embrace ourselves as we truly are.

Fun-loving, sociable, and congenial characters, Social Nines can be workaholics, prioritizing the group’s needs above their own. This high level of activity makes them the countertype of the three Nine subtypes.

Interesting!

This is the most powerful aspect of the Enneagram: it’s a model of transformation that indicates a path for growth.

each personality’s greatest “strength” can also be its fatal flaw or most significant obstacle.

Growth, then, as revealed by the perennial philosophy and the Enneagram map, is a process of observing ourselves, suffering through our fears and disowned Shadow aspects, and working to manifest our higher potentials.

Oriented toward inclusion, consensus, and harmony, they excel at understanding and valuing different perspectives and mediating between them to resolve disputes and maintain peace. They are genuinely caring and unselfish, and their specific “superpower” lies in providing steadfast support to others in a way that makes everyone around them feel honored and included.

The body-centered types are also referred to as the “self-forgetting” triad, in that Types Eight, Nine, and One all tend to “forget” themselves through a kind of psychological inertia that occurs with regard to their physical needs. These three types, each for their own reasons, tend to put their needs and wants in the background, ignoring their practical and physical requirements for things like rest and relaxation (Eights), play and pleasure (Ones), and priorities, preferences, and opinions (Nines).

Whatever the individual case, Nines tend to give up on asserting their desires and adopt a coping strategy that involves forgetting themselves (and the pain of not getting what they want) and overadjusting to others as a way of finding peace and avoiding conflict. Nines can’t tolerate conflict because it seems to them to lead to separation.

Nines have a natural talent for mediation because they deeply understand others’ points of view. They easily focus on the commonalities between opposing arguments and are motivated by their love of peacefulness to help people find compromises based on highlighting the common ground between them.

avoiding conflict and an awareness of their own desires leads to the creation of the discomfort and disharmony Nines are trying to avoid. The pursuit of comfort inevitably produces discomfort because it requires willfully ignoring some basic truths, like the constructive and unifying potential of conflict and the necessity of expressing your real feelings in order to establish deep connections.

overadapting to others eventually creates a sense of dissatisfaction that can leak out through passive-aggressive behavior and lead to the kind of conflict the adaptation was designed to prevent in the first place.

The Self-Preservation Nine fuses with physical comforts and activities, the Social Nine fuses with groups, and the Sexual Nine fuses with other individuals.

Social Nines make very good leaders—the best kind of leaders, in fact—in the sense that they are good, unselfish people who strive to satisfy the responsibility given them. They can be especially gifted mediators; they naturally want to translate differing opinions so that everyone is heard and conflict in the group is avoided.

William James famously said, “when you have a choice to make and you don’t make it, that is in itself a choice.”

People appreciate directness. And when you go along to get along and later realize you didn’t want to go along at all, surfacing your disagreement at that point can cause more problems than it would have if you were direct at the beginning.

Take baby steps toward conflict by practicing giving and receiving feedback. My Nine friend, Matt, says that for Nines, feedback is conflict.

We all naturally go up and down along a vertical dimension of this Vice to Virtue continuum—we rise to higher levels of functioning as we work on ourselves, but because it’s difficult to stay awake, we also slip back in times of stress.

TYPE EIGHT REPRESENTS THE ARCHETYPE of the person who denies weakness and vulnerability by taking refuge in fearlessness, power, and strength. This archetype tends to express instinctual drives in a less inhibited way and to push back on whatever might restrict them.

when they can balance their personal power and strength with a more conscious awareness of their own weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and impact, they can be courageous (and even heroic) leaders, partners, and friends.

Other people usually perceive them as having a “big energy” and possessing a great deal of personal power and strength. It often surprises Eights when they get the feedback that others experience them as intimidating, as they usually don’t intend to be scary. But their very presence communicates power and strength, so others often project a threatening sense onto them.

Because Eights have an early need to feel powerful and so learn to deny their vulnerability, they often feel they can make their own rules and ignore limitations that others place on them.

Eights want and need a lot of stimulation, so they can also pay a lot of attention to meeting their needs for pleasure and other forms of satisfaction. They can be intolerant of frustration, so they scan their environment for sources of fulfillment: interesting people, fun things to do, good things to eat and drink, and challenging situations to master.

“a passion for excess, a passion that seeks intensity, not only through sex, but in all manner of stimulation: activity, anxiety, spices, high speed, the pleasure of loud music, and so on.”

Eights’ neglect or denial of their own vulnerabilities does not prevent those vulnerabilities from having an influence.

When Eights deny their own sensitivity, they are more likely to be insensitive to others, which invites others to react insensitively and creates a cycle of aggression.

They convey an aura of solidity and strength, which can often mean they don’t have to get angry—they can hold their ground, get their way, or make themselves understood without having to express aggression.

While Eights like to be in control, they don’t always assert their ability to control a situation that already has an acknowledged leader. If there is a vacuum of leadership, however, they are ready (if not compelled) to fill the void.

Interestingly, because Eights exude strength, sometimes people around Eights will cede control to them, as many people are happy to have someone else bear the responsibility of taking charge. Alternatively, others may at times feel overpowered by Eights’ natural strength and resent them for being pushy, bossy, or overbearing.

Geared toward getting whatever is necessary to meet their needs, Self-Preservation Eights use their power to find the shortest path between their desires and the satisfaction of their desires. The Social Eight is a mellower, less aggressive Eight, who uses power to protect other people and promote social causes. The Sexual Eight is the most rebellious Eight, using their power to go up against authority and attract people through charismatic shows of intensity.

Eights can benefit greatly from the realization that being in touch with vulnerable feelings, sensitivity, and needs for love and care is an essential part of having deep relationships.

the next step in working with personality type-based knowledge is to begin to inject more conscious effort into everything we do—to think, feel, and act with more choice and awareness.

When Eights see themselves moving quickly or impulsively into action, they can benefit from experimenting with slowing down, analyzing the situation more, and consulting their emotions for additional information.

it takes a great deal of strength to allow yourself to be truly vulnerable.

Fives’ judicious use of inner resources can help Eights focus more intentionally on self-regulation and moderation in the things they do.

Moving back to Two can thus be a way for Eights to consciously re-engage a lost sense of their needs for comfort, love, and care, and their desire to adapt to and please others as a way of relating.

The Seven archetype expresses several dimensions of the personality’s movement toward pleasure and away from pain. Sevens automatically retreat into their intellect to rationalize away difficult emotional states. They actively seek out fun and stimulating experiences as a way of avoiding the darker side of life. Sevens move and think at a fast pace, allowing them to outrun or outwit whatever discomfort may arise.

The specific “superpower” of Type Seven is the power of positive thinking—the ability to see interesting ideas and positive possibilities almost anywhere.

Type Seven individuals thus adopt the unconscious survival strategy of pulling back from distressing aspects of reality by moving toward what’s positive in terms of pleasurable thoughts, fantasies, and plans. This defense provides the child (and later, the adult) with an effective strategy for avoiding pain and other uncomfortable emotions.

Using rationalization, Sevens can find good reasons for whatever they want to do, think, or feel. And while finding a rationale for what you are doing serves as a defense in protecting you from having bad feelings connected to your behavior, it also keeps you from direct contact with your real motives and the feelings connected to the things you do.

Sevens are the most optimistic of all the Enneagram types, and they habitually focus their attention on what is possible in the future.

In the context of the Enneagram, gluttony suggests an (often insatiable) hunger for stimulating experiences of all kinds, such as good meals, pleasurable interactions with others, interesting conversations, or exciting travel plans.

While Sevens’ gluttony for experience arises from a desire to avoid suffering and emptiness, gluttony actually is their suffering.14 Their gluttony for happiness is a way of running away from fear, especially the fear of pain.

When your life strategy is based on the illusory idea that focusing on the bright side will make the dark side go away, you set yourself up for surprising disappointment and failure.

Sevens may not see the problems inherent in continually reframing what is happening in positive terms.

In fully accepting the hedonistic attitude, Sevens may also habitually confuse pleasure with love, as Sevens typically came to feel loved through the experience of pleasure and indulgence in childhood.19 As a result, Sevens regularly engage in self-indulgent experiences that they (unconsciously) take for love.

Type Seven individuals are not so much engaged in an obvious struggle against authority, like Type Sixes or Type Eights, “they simply do not heed it.”25 They want to be free to indulge themselves—something that is often not possible in daily life when we are subject to the potentially inhibiting influences of parents, spouses, bosses, or subordinates

Sevens characteristically find it hard to focus on something for the full amount of time it takes to work from start to finish on something mundane.