Kate Yeo

(This post is part of my 2024 reads! I’m aiming to read 10 books this year, outside of academic coursework.)

What is the Enneagram?

• The Enneagram framework is concerned with our core motivations. The theory’s focus is not about what we do, but why we do it.
• There are nine personality archetypes and their underlying fears and desires. These fears serve as “masks” to shield us from real or perceived threats in life. 
• Types may share similar preferences, but for different reasons. For example, a Three and a Five may both be high achieving, but the Three tends to do it to win admiration, while the Five does it as part of an endless quest for expertise. (27)

Why learn this framework? Allender reminds us that “emotional intelligence, it turns out, is the single biggest predictor of success—of far greater importance than IQ.” People perform better in emotionally intelligent work cultures. (51-52)

Enneagram type descriptions 
(You may not identify with every single feature of one type)

Type	Idealised self-image	Core fear	Descriptors
1	“I am right”	Being wrong, bad, corrupt	The Reformer Principled, purposeful, self-controlled, and perfectionistic
2	“I am loving”	Not needed, being rejected, feeling unloved	The Helper Demonstrative, generous, people-pleasing, and possessive
3	“I am a success”	Being thought of as worthless or a failure	The Achiever Adaptive, excelling, driven, and image-conscious
4	“I am special”	Having no identity of significance—fear of not belonging, and of being too ordinary	The Individualist Expressive, dramatic, self-absorbed, and temperamental
5	“I am knowledgeable”	Not knowing enough, being thought of as incapable or ignorant	The Investigator Perceptive, innovative, secretive, and isolated
6	“I am safe”	Being without support or guidance, and fear of feeling fear itself	The Loyalist Engaging, responsible, anxious, and suspicious
7	“I am happy”	Being trapped or deprived	The Enthusiast Spontaneous, versatile, distractible, and scattered
8	“I am strong”	Showing weakness, vulnerability, being controlled by others	The Challenger Self-confident, decisive, willful, and confrontational
9	“I am easygoing”	Being in conflict, losing connection with others	The Peacemaker Receptive, reassuring, agreeable, and complacent

Remember that you are not an Enneagram type! We are each far more complex and nuanced than a single type could possibly encapsulate. But the Enneagram framework can help us understand why the mask (the idealised self-image) is there in the first place, and provide guidance for slowly removing it.

The three centers of intelligence
It can be helpful to view the Enneagram framework through the three centers: head, hurt, and gut.

Ideally, we would have all three of these centers in balance. In practice, we tend to have (i) one dominant center, (ii) a supporting one, and (iii) a repressed one.

Center	Type	Description	Primary emotion
Gut	8, 9, 1	Experience life through their senses. Tend to be concerned with matters of right versus wrong, and are motivated to stand against injustice.	Anger
Heart	2, 3, 4	Understand the world first and foremost through their emotions. Tend to be highly relational and the most image-conscious of all the types.	Sadness
Head	5, 6, 7	Make sense of the world through thinking and logic. Tend to be concerned with wanting to be certain about things, and feel more fear than other types over what they cannot predict.	Fear

Room for growth
Allender suggests how we can use the Enneagram to create more balance in our lives, so that our core Ennea-type doesn’t preclude us form other ways of seeing the world.

Type	Goal
1	To be spontaneous, to do less, allow mistakes to happen
2	To learn to say no, to become deeply connected to your own desires
3	To slow down and connect with your feelings, to no longer confuse identity with accomplishment
4	To rely on thoughts and actions as much as feelings, to allow emotions to come and go
5	To get out of the head and into the body, to be less hesitant and more decisive, to experience the fullness of life
6	To trust yourself, accept uncertainty, take some risks, and to stop trying to control the outcome
7	To accept limitations, refrain from acting on all your ideas, to allow for some stillness and boredom
8	To see vulnerability for the strength that it is, to connect with and show tender emotions, to think and feel before doing
9	To connect deeply with your own desires, speak up without fear of conflict, and to own your anger

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If you’re curious to learn more about the Enneagram, check out The Enneagram Institute here.