Why I Work With The Enneagram
And Why You Might Want To
The night I learned about the Enneagram I didn’t fall asleep until 3 AM, I was so shaken by what I read. When I got to what I thought might be my type, it was unnerving to have a book so intimately describe the personality traits that I tried so hard to hide. It was also mildly humiliating to realize there were other people a lot like me; I wasn’t as unique and special in my twistedness as I wanted to believe (can you guess my type?). What kept me awake and pacing that night more than anything though, was hope.
If there were others out there who felt as off-kilter in the world as I did for similar reasons, then this mush of traits, feelings, behaviours, gifts, and secret shames that I experienced the world through might be a repeating and observable pattern. “Enneagram type” seemed like just as a good a name for that pattern as any. More importantly for me that night, if my Enneagram type could be this readily identified and observed, maybe there was a way out of it; a way to slip through the net of bad habits and escape my self-defeating patterns.
The recognitions and realizations flashed quickly that night: oh, that would certainly explain why life has felt like one abandonment after another, even though objectively that hasn’t been true at all. That’s why I still long for the relationships, friendships, and environments of 5 and 10 years ago, even when I found them draining and unsatisfying while I was in them.
I don’t think the Enneagram is a complete explanation of the mystery of lives and our fates, but its capacity to describe the taste and the ingredients of our lives and our fates is uncanny. What I’ve shared with you so far is a little of the taste of my life. Yours might be similar, or maybe in the taste of your life is not predominated by flavours of longing and abandonment, but anxiety and avoidance. Perhaps it’s resentment and rigidity. The Enneagram describes nine patterns of personality called types, and the idea is not so much that we have one of these types, but that one of these types has us in its grips. Challenge that assertion if you’d like. It’s worth pushing back against. In my experience, it hurts to find out we’re not as free from your conditioning as we thought, and it’s the first step towards a deeper freedom.
And if you are interested in learning more about the Enneagram and, more importantly, yourself:
Which types fill you with admiration and envy?
Which disgust and irritate you?
Which feel uncomfortably familiar in your behaviour and the behaviours of others?
Which might be yours?
No one has ever asked me why I study the Enneagram with anything other than open curiosity. Nevertheless, I sometimes feel like I have to justify to myself the money, the time, and the opportunity costs of all the study and trainings I’ve done. I often feel sheepish and inadequate in the wake of this inner inquisitor. Underneath the scorn and judgement, the question at the heart of that inquiry is a good one: Why learn the Enneagram?
I can and I can’t answer that question in words. My best attempt at an answer would be something like: to take back more and more direction in our lives from the part of ourselves that is looking for what we need in old, stale, futile places. I think a truer answer can be found in the way a life can unfold throughout study and application of the Enneagram which, when done with heart, is also the study of one’s self. The meaning and the value of the Enneagram can be found in every situation when you catch yourself trying something new instead of letting your Enneagram type handle everything on autopilot. It can be found in the gradual acceptance and loosening of secret shames, fears, and rages you scarcely imagined living without. Perhaps most of all, it can be found in the gifts and joys you can become more able to embrace once your attention can move beyond your Enneagram type’s habitual fixations.
In some cases, this loosening of the Enneagram type and a growing capacity to see and try things beyond it can help with things that are much easier to explain as well. As I learned more of who I was and who I wasn’t, it became easier to find meaningful work and appreciate what it was and what it wasn’t, and to make more money in the process. My dating life improved as it became more possible to sense genuine attraction and compatibility and distinguish it from what my type thought I should be chasing.
These tangible, outer world achievements helped along by studying the Enneagram are half the story at most. Underneath these visible flowerings and flourishing in my life is the invisible root system of feeling so much better about myself and others.
I’ve found that when I take the teachings of the Enneagram to heart, it’s much easier to remember the fallible humanity of myself and everyone I encounter. Everyone’s got the same poor, confused little Enneagram type trying fruitlessly to overcompensate for what it incorrectly believes life can’t provide it with.
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