The Enneagram is a dynamic system that maps out human nature into nine archetypes. While it is a splash of personality typing, the Enneagram is more a heavy dose of core motivations that reveals to us some things we might be blind to:
- How we’ve learned to navigate our world in order to survive;
- How we engage and show up in, or try to escape our world;
- How we perceive the world and people in it; and
- How we may or may not have empathy for others.
Each Enneagram type is a combination of a holy idea, passion, virtue, fixation, and motivation. This is much more than simple personality typing! Together, these types are representative of both humanity as a whole AND each individual. We make up all nine types. Individually, each one of us has access to all nine types (and their passions, virtues, etc.), but somewhere along the way we settled into one dominant type as a way to defend ourselves against the harsh reality of life.
Because we settle into our unique style as young people, we are mostly unaware of these defense mechanisms, resulting in automatic, or automated response patterns and behaviors. The Enneagram, then, is a tool to bring these patterns and blind spots into the light so we can begin to gauge how useful they are to our well being.