A Beginner’s Guide to the Enneagram
To get a job done, you need effective tools. One of the most effective tools I’ve found for answering the question “How has God uniquely wired me,” naming my gifts, coming to terms with my limitations, and cultivating compassion and empathy for people around me is the Enneagram.
We are human beings. We are a mess. We are amazing. To be human is to be this complex bundle of emotions and desires and gifts and shadows. To be human is to be made in the image of God, and yet we are scarred and fractured by the presence of sin and death in the world.
The Enneagram (which literally means “the nine drawing”) is a system of articulating this complex human being-ness. It’s about understanding the image of God in people. What does it look like to be an Image Bearer? What does it look like being a broken Image Bearer? What do healing, restoration, and redemption look like?
The Enneagram and the true self/false self
Regarding the story of Israel in Exodus, Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon write in The Truth about God,
[The Exodus] was about an exchange of masters, the false for the true. We were created to be God’s good lovers, but everywhere we find we have been enslaved by our choices…. Part of the problem is our current presumption that freedom is choice rather than desire. God created us as passionate beings. We rightly desire. The problem is when our desire becomes disordered by desiring what is desirable as if God does not exist. The result is slavery.
This is the work of the Enneagram. It describes our desires, both rightly and wrongly ordered. As Image Bearers of the Almighty, we are made to be windows to the Divine. Yet, we as humans miss the mark on this time and again. We resonate with Paul’s words in Romans 7, knowing we should be one way but feeling incapable of getting there. We can live as two divided selves, warring internally.
The Enneagram names our unique hurts, habits, and hang-ups. At the same time, it names our unique gifts, strengths, and abilities. Each type has a positive and negative side to it. Each type possesses healthy and unhealthy qualities.
How I discovered the Enneagram
I’d been in my role on a church staff and I was struggling. Big time. Getting out of bed each morning was an accomplishment. I was accumulating all the symptoms of depression, and I was beginning to wonder if I needed to seek out professional counseling, maybe be prescribed some medication. The doubts and insecurity were constant, thick, overhanging clouds.
It was during this time that I was involved in spiritual direction training, and our cohort was reading and discussing Richard Rohr’s The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective.
It wasn’t just a light bulb that went off for me. It was fireworks.
The description of the Type 1, the Idealist, resonated with every part of me. There wasn’t something wrong with me. I had a relentless inner critic that I was letting eat my soul alive. I set impossible standards for myself and those around me and then raged on the inside when those standards weren’t met.
I experienced a new freedom in learning how to have grace for myself.
The Enneagram Types
Each type of the Enneagram is like a different facet of a diamond. Taken together, they reflect the image and character of God, and each individual type highlights particular qualities of God.
For the sake of an introduction, I’ll simply name the types here. I’ve written elsewhere how each type may respond uniquely in spiritual direction, for Sabbath, and in Lent. More detailed descriptions can be found at the Enneagram Institute and in the books I recommend below. Every book you find will name and nuance the types slightly differently. I particularly appreciate Marilyn Vancil’s approach that defines them as they relate to God’s character.
Type 1, the Perfectionist, reflects God’s goodness and rightness.
Type 2, the Helper, reflects God’s love and nurture.
Type 3, the Achiever, reflects God’s hope and radiance.
Type 4, the Romantic, reflects God’s creativity and depth.
Type 5, the Observer, reflects God’s wisdom and truth.
Type 6, the Loyalist, reflects God’s faithfulness and courage.
Type 7, the Enthusiast, reflects God’s joy and abundance.
Type 8, the Challenger, reflects God’s power and protection.
Type 9, the Peacemaker, reflects God’s peace and oneness.
You are one type; you are many types
From the day you’re born until the day you die, there is one type that describes you. You don’t change over time from one to another.
In the Pixar movie Inside Out, the character Riley has four emotions pulling the levers inside her psyche. I think of this movie when I think of the Enneagram because we have all nine types inside us. Only one is driving the bus, but all the other eight chime in from time to time.
As there are kids I like my kids spending time with because they bring out the best in them and kids I wish they’d stay away from because they bring out the worst, each type is connected to others in stress and security. A healthy functioning One can look like a Seven. Or an unhealthy Nine can look like a Six.
All of them are related to the others, and we learn over time how to negotiate our social settings by acting out as a particular type, even if it’s not our core type, almost like a costume. We can feel the pressure to act as a particular type. We had parents that were particular types and we learned to adapt accordingly. We live in an ethnic culture that rewards a particular type (for white Americans it’s Type 3). We may live in a religious sub-culture that takes on a particular type.
Over time we learn to adapt and survive in each of these environments by reflecting what we see. This is what makes discerning your core type such work. It can be confusing sorting through all the layers of expectations you’ve accumulated.
Go slow discovering your type
The work of discerning your type takes time. It can be difficult being honest with ourselves. I read a book and was convinced I was a One. I read it with a cohort of spiritual directors, and they all thought I was a Five, but I wouldn’t listen. I spent the next couple of years narrating my life through this grid of a One.
I then spent some time with a counselor, that included talking about the Enneagram, and I came to realize I really was a Five. I was just being stubborn and unwilling to listen to the input of others.
If you know your type, hold it loosely. This is hard, inner, discernment work. Invite the feedback of your spiritual director, your spouse, your siblings, your close friends. While you might interpret one way, they may see something else. At the same time, the Enneagram unmasks our motivations, not our behaviors, and only you know your motivations.
The Enneagram cuts through stereotypes
The Enneagram has existed for centuries, and its insight penetrates all of our stereotypes about race and gender and generation and ethnicity.
“Oh, you’re just being a guy.” “That’s what millennials do.” The Enneagram exposes the shallowness of these judgments. A white American female in her 60s can be a healthy Four, as can a Brazilian male in his 20s.
Be wary of tests
Multiple online assessments exist for the Enneagram, but take them with a grain of salt. You can take any of these tests, but treat it as an invitation to a journey, and not as the final word. Learning your type is a journey and exploration. Resist the urge to tell someone else what you think they are. Don’t rob them of their own journey.
It’s important to always remember that the Enneagram describes you. It does not define you. It’s more adjective than noun. This sets it apart from typical personality tests and Buzzfeed quizzes. It describes and then offers a path for spiritual growth and development.
The point isn’t mastering the intricacies of the Enneagram. The point is to be a whole and healthy human being. As one friend recently told me, “We have laughed more in our marriage because of the Enneagram.” What she and her husband were learning was how to be themselves and to recognize their personal quirks as the absurdities of their type and show grace for one another.
The Enneagram allows you to be you, and you can be healthy
Two recently published great books for getting started with the Enneagram are Self to Lose, Self to Find: A Biblical Approach to the 9 Enneagram Types by Marilyn Vancil and The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self Discovery by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile.