Understanding Yourself And Others With The Enneagram

The Enneagram is a map of nine interconnected personality types that has been described and taught as a method for self-understanding and self-development.

According to The Enneagram Institute, the Enneagram can be seen as a set of nine distinct personality types, with each number on the Enneagram denoting one type. Although it is common to find a little of yourself in all nine types, one of them is your basic personality type.

Each person emerges from childhood with one of the nine types dominating their personality, with inborn temperament and other pre-natal factors being the main determinants of our type. We are indeed born with a dominant type. Subsequently, this inborn orientation largely determines the ways in which we learn to adapt to our early childhood environment.

Contrary to other models of human personality, the Enneagram explains that we're much more than our personality type (who we think we are). The Enneagram does not put us in a box; it describes the box in which we find ourselves stuck and most importantly, it gives us a path to break free.

The contribution that authors Riso and Hudson made to this fantastic psycho-spiritual development model is their description of nine Levels of Development. As described by the Enneagram Institute, there is an internal structure within each personality type. That structure is the continuum of behaviors, attitudes, defenses, and motivations formed by the nine Levels of Development making up the personality type itself. The Levels account for differences between people of the same type as well as how people change both for better or worse. There are three unhealthy levels where serious mental illnesses develop, three average levels where most people operate, and three healthy levels of progressively higher levels of functioning, well-being and freedom.

Whereas the pattern of personality (the "Enneagram type") that we develop in early childhood is necessary for survival, it ends up metaphorically reducing our field of view from 360 degrees to 40 degrees (operating from one type rather than nine). Our personality pattern turns us into automatic pilots compulsively responding to what's going on inside and outside of ourselves in the same old patterned ways. Obviously such limited ways of functioning condemns us to running into issues, especially relationship issues because relationships don't flourish on automatic pilot.

Over time, working with the guidance of the Enneagram allows us to free ourselves from our patterns and manifest the deepest quality of our type. Additionally, developing the qualities of the eight other types gives us additional tools us to shift from automatic piloting to manual piloting and enjoy a greater range of movement to journey through life.

This results in the possibility of experiencing and responding to what happens in the moment with freedom, spaciousness, and authenticity. It means that we are more present and resourceful, that we understand ourselves and others with greater depth, that we can take good care of ourselves, and that we can build happy, healthy and fulfilling relationships, both in our private and professional lives.