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Discovering Your Enneagram Type

Guest post by: Barbara Garro

Article Overview: If you don't know who you are, how can you confidently be you and power yourself to success? As a business columnist for eighteen years, I have analyzed many of the popular personality systems, including the ones that cost thousands of dollars per person. Hands down, the Enneagram of Nine Personality Types is the best. I believe in it so strongly that I got the U.S. Patent & Trademark for my Enneagram Personality System Character Architectural Technology. The Three World Views appear in my book "Grow Yourself a Life You'll Love."

Discovering Your Enneagram Type

The majority come to recognize their true Enneagram Personality Type (ennea-type) with relative ease. One of nine types, your ennea-type’s characteristics will simply make sense to you and you’ll feel certain saying, “Yes, that’s me. That’s how I am.”

Still, it is not uncommon to struggle between two or more types. Then, after you get clear on some of the core theories, you are able to find your type.

For some, like me, finding your type will be a climb up a confusing mountain maze, a genuine uncertainty on rocky terrain. This discussion is for you. Through my story of many months of doubt, I share not only the journey but also paths to avoid and paths to take that I wish I had had to guide me.

The Enneagram came to me at work. As a business columnist, I get hundreds of public relations packets every year. My introduction to the Enneagram was a pitch which contained the lengthy Tony Schwartz March 1995 Esquire article, “Funny, You Don’t Look Twoish.”

Curious, to know more, I read an Enneagram book. After I finished, I didn’t know if I was Type 3 or Type 8. Anxious to be sure and move forward, I called one of the authors for help. But he threw me a curve when he said, “You’re a 7.” I supposed he knew best, so I tried it on.

My initial goal was to find out what this personality typing system “Enneagram” was all about, write an article, and move on to other subjects, as I had hundreds of time before. The more I read, though, the more I wanted to know. I became determined to get to the source of this intriguing body of knowledge. Time and again I was told, “That’s not possible, Barbara. The Enneagram comes of out of oral tradition. Nothing was written down.” A little set-back to a journalist--all they told me was that none of them could help me find what I was seeking.

Book after book, I wondered about origins and if I were really Type 7. So I attended an advanced training seminar. There was one other person there typed a 7, and, frankly, while I enjoyed her, I didn’t feel simpatico with her. What I felt was a disquieting doubt, like I was faking it as a 7.

When I told one of the Enneagram authors about my type dilemma, and that I would be attending yet another author’s advanced workshop, he said I would recognize my type during the panels. Candid with the teacher and objectively claiming no type, I thought my journey was over when I related the most to the panel of 3’s.

I felt so good about my “discovery,” I called the author who had said I was a 7, even though I couldn’t “yet” relate to the 3’s vice of deceit. The author agreed that deceit didn’t fit, because the vice for 7’s is gluttony, another vice I didn’t relate to. Still, he seemed even more convinced I was a 7.

In addition, I had now taken three published tests, two came out 8 and one said 3.

Still searching, I called one of the Enneagram instructors I met at the second workshop and asked to be taken through a formal typing session, and was told, “You’re an 8.” I said, “Then, I must be an evolved 8.” “Don’t be too sure,” was the instructor’s reply.

So, I tried on this new 8 possibility with teachers and authors as I interviewed them for articles. None felt I was an 8, most were in the 3 camp, while the first author stopped just short of blatantly telling me I was not only a 7, but a flaming one at that.

During all the months this was going on, I continued intensive research, interviewed several key authors and teachers, and had three articles published nationally on the business benefits of the Enneagram Personality Typing System.

As my research progressed from author to author, I came to Claudio Naranjo, called “The ‘Mother’ of the Enneagram” on one of the book jackets. Naranjo’s depth of insight gave me hope of my body of researched knowledge coming together. For example, I didn’t see the need to speculate about possible pathological deterioration into mental illness for each type as stated by some of the authors. I found that frightening. However, while reading Naranjo’s Character and Neurosis, I realized that neurosis is mentally unbalanced or exaggerated behavior that can happen to mentally healthy people.

Naranjo also made me realize that a solid underpinning in basic psychology is vital to serious work with the Enneagram. I took a break from Naranjo and read two psychology 101 college texts.

The break from Naranjo continued longer than I had intended because of a freak publication error that eliminated several pages. While I was waiting for the missing pages, my research continued and my search for Enneagram origins and my type dovetailed and kept pointing me toward Naranjo as the bellwether source for Enneagram knowledge. That is why I decided to follow in some of his footsteps and study the work of Karen Horney, the Freud-trained psychiatrist to whom Naranjo dedicated Character and Neurosis.

It was Horney’s discussion of three types of reactions to inner conflicts: moving toward (comparable with “dependent”), moving against (comparable with “aggressive”), and withdrawing in her book Our Inner Conflicts, a Constructive Theory of Neurosis, that helped me progress through the maze. From Horney’s analysis, I got a deeper insight into the three reactions and saw a new possibility beyond the aggressive stance of 3,7, or 8. There are other examples of how Horney’s work provided me further insight into Naranjo’s work and the Enneagram, but that is another article.

In many ways, my search for my true type mirrored The Celestine Prophecy, finding one piece of the puzzle, being led to another, and growing enormously on the journey. For example, my next source was a surprise from my own backyard, Albany, New York. I had taken several courses from a Religious Education Director through my parish, without realizing she had been teaching the Enneagram for over 20 years. A wealth of Enneagram information, she matter-of-factly told me, “I see you as a 4.” I was shocked.

Then, it was her turn for two surprises, one, that I couldn’t see it, and, two, my reaction. Instead of being grateful for a new path, I balked. Four was my worst nightmare. How could she think that was me? A secure 6, she softly said, “Just take a look at it, and look at it seeing yourself as you were in your early 20’s.”

From my younger youth, I was able to see how Type 4 fit. For days and days, 4 manifestations haunted me from many multi-faceted neon lights.

At this point, intuition intervened. The night I finished this article, an authoritarian voice I my dream said, “You’re hiding behind the 4. You’re an 8.” Just when I thought I was finished with all this type confusion, my own inner wisdom had spoken. This time, there were no neon lights blaring reinforcement of my new type choice. This time, I had real work to do. Now I had to take ownership of faults I recognized and denied the first time I read an Enneagram book. Back through the suggested paths, I could see the sense of a lust for life, a strong 7 wing, disintegration to 5 and integration to 2. When I showed my daughter summaries of the nine types, she said, “Mom, you’re an 8. There is no other number you could be.”

So, two tests, one mentor, one daughter, and the dark and light side of me all finally came in for a landing on 8. Now, I am on the path where serious work can begin. I am humbled by the reality of the lessons I must learn to reach 8’s possibilities.”

That’s my story, here are the promised guidelines--

Paths to Avoid

1. Faking your type to avoid embarrassment or to “get on with it”

2. Attaching yourself to the type you like best

3. Refusing to consider the type you like least

4. Passively going with someone else’s typing of you without doing your own validity testing

Summary of the Paths that Can Lead You to Your True Type

1. Follow the wisdom of the teachers and those who know you well and try out each type suggested.

2. Take tests and test type results for validity.

3. Find the way you behave most of the time in the world center: Instinctive 8-9-1, Cerebral 5-6-7, Emotional 2-3-4. Look at the way you go about solving problems most of the time: Aggressive 3-7-8, Dependent 1-2-6; and Withdrawing 4-5-9.

4. Test for your type by process of elimination. There are three World View Centers: Instinctive, Cerebral and Emotional (ICE). Say you believe you are mostly Instinctive, like me. There are only three types in the Instinctive Center: 8, 9, 1. Now go to the three Problem-Solving Centers: Aggressive, Dependent and Withdrawing. Say, you believe you are more into Aggressive mode than the Dependent or Withdrawing modes, although you can and do use all three. Instinctive and Aggressive can only be one Ennea-Type, Type 8.

5. Now, go get yourself an enneagram book that speaks to your style of learning. If you are a Type 8, like me, you will want a bottom line book, like one of Goldberg’s books.

6. Then, get to work on yourself to be the best ennea--type you can be.

Always remember that you are in the best position to determine your own type. One of the Enneagram’s most potent messages is that you alone are responsible for you. Carry your own cross, reap your own harvest, and discover your ennea-type in your own time. What better way is there to build your empathy and understanding of others than to struggle to understand yourself.

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Article Tags: Barbara Garro, Communication Style, Getting Along with People, httpwwwBarbaraGarrocom, LifeWork Coaching, Personality, Personality Coaching, Personality Typing



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