A Brief Overview Of The Enneagram
The Enneagram is based on 9 personality types, as you can see in the image above. Each of the 9 types have 3 subtypes: Self Preservation, Social and One-to-One. Each type also has a wing, so for example, a 1 with a 2 wing would be a different personality type to the 1 with a 9 wing.
There are three triads or “intelligence centers”: Instinctual, Emotional, Intellectual (or as the image above shows: Gut, Feeling, Thinking. You could also see it as gut, heart, mind).
Each type is also connected to two other types. One is the line of stress and the other is the line of growth. What that means is that when we are in a state of stress, we’ll go towards the personality traits of that type and when we are in a state of growth we go to the characteristics of the other personality type.
All of the 9 types are broken down to three levels of being either healthy, average or unhealthy depending on how much inner work and self-awareness one has. The tail is either wagging the dog, aka your personality is running you unconsciously, or you have a “control” over your personality through self-awareness (the dog is wagging its tail).
It’s remarkable the intricacy and accuracy of each personality type. What I’ve found both for myself and my clients, is that it offers relief and comfort to firstly, know that we’re not alone in our experience as others share similar fears, desires and quirks, but it also provides a blueprint of our personality and how we’re affected by it. All around, the Enneagram is an incredible tool to use on your self-growth journey.