In my previous post, I shared a story with you about how I discovered the Enneagram as well as how the personality tool assisted me in some self-discovery. In this post, I would like to explain in depth what the Enneagram is so that you can also use it to learn more about yourself! It is such an amazing tool!
So, to start, let’s look at what the Enneagram looks like:
At a first glance, the Enneagram is a circle with the numbers 1-9 placed in numerical order around it; 9 is at the top of the circle. On the inside of the circle, there are several lines connecting different numbers to one another. These lines introduce the dynamic nature of the Enneagram, and they are called stress and growth lines (I will be explaining what that means shortly :). Each of the nine personalities are made up of characteristics that define the personality, and these are: basic desire, basic fear, holy idea, growth number, stress number, and wings. Let me break each of these down for you.
But before I do that, you need to understand that the Enneagram is a spiritual tool that assists us in learning to appreciate and love ourselves as God made us to be. By understanding your Enneagram type, you come to a greater understanding of your strengths, weaknesses, motivations, and faults. You develop a greater sense of empathy towards yourself. You may even realize why you identify with the people that you do. Yet, in order to understand the different dimensions of your personality, you need to recognize what your intelligence center is. According to the Enneagram, individuals have primarily 1 of 9 personalities, and the 9 personalities are broken into 3 different intelligence centers: the heart, the body, and the mind. Intelligence centers help us identify how God may speak to us most, and we learn to love God, ourselves, and others through them. As the Bible states, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind” (Matthew 22:37). In consideration of the Enneagram, an individual’s pattern for feeling, acting, and thinking is determined by their intelligence center of the heart, the body, or the mind. You can recognize this by asking yourself and reflecting on the question, “Do I feel, act, and think using my heart, mind, or body (gut instincts)?”.
You may be like me and misidentify your intelligence center before doing further reading on the different personality types. When I first began looking at the Enneagram, I thought I was a heart type because I have a lot of emotions. But, that is what the intelligence center considers. After completing further reading, I recognized that I don’t feel, act, and think primarily from the heart intelligence center; instead, I feel, act, and think primarily from the mind intelligence center.
Don’t be confused with thinking, “well if I have a feeling about something, then I am using the heart intelligence center” because you may not be. Your personality type may not primarily resort to that. Instead, if your personality type has a body intelligence center, you may have feelings founded on you gut instincts or what your entire body is feeling at the moment, not what your heart feels.
I could discuss the intelligence centers more, but I need to keep moving forward. You can learn more about the intelligence centers, the characteristics of the Enneagram as a whole, and the different personality types by listening to the podcast Homing and visiting the Enneagram Institute website (click the hyperlinks!)
Okay, moving on! As I stated above, there are different characteristics of each personality type, and these include: basic desire, basic fear, holy idea, growth number, stress number, and wings.
A basic desire is the primary motivation of each type that drives us to becoming our true self. It is often what we unconsciously strive to achieve in our everyday lives. A personality’s basic fear is the insecurity or doubt that arises within an individual, and it prevents each personality type from achieving its basic desire. As humans, we are more comfortable in our fears, and we give more attention to avoiding what we at the core of our wellbeing don’t want to confront. Our basic fear causes us to then recognize our basic desire, and we strive to meet that desire. Yet, it sometimes seems like, at least for me, a battle between my basic fear and desire because I will recognize my basic fear and begin to strive for my basic desire, but my fear tends to have more power and limits me from achieving my basic desire. Our basic fears limit our potential to becoming our true selves as God has created us to be.
The holy idea of each type is, as stated in Homing: Let’s Talk Enneagram, “the purest version of who we are when our heart, soul, and mind is aligned with our identity”. It is often in our personality type’s growth number that we are closest to our holy idea for our growth number is when our personality type is at its best. Growth numbers are one of the lines connecting your Enneagram number with another, and that other number, when our primary number is at its healthiest, takes attributes of another personality number. Contrarily, stress numbers are what our personality type is like when it is unhealthy, and it takes poor attributes from another type on the Enneagram. This type is identified by the second line connecting to another number from your primary Enneagram number. Stress numbers are destructive, and they also prevent you from achieving your basic desire and holy idea. You can learn which of the two lines is associated with your growth number and your stress number by listening to the podcast and visiting the website I linked above.
Lastly, the wings of each personality type help identify the uniqueness of individuals of the same Enneagram number. Consider the following analogy:
You are at the Marcus Valley Grand Cinema, and you are in theater #6 with 20 other people. You and the 20 other people are all at the same theater and in the same room, but you are all watching different movies. Similar to the Enneagram personality types, you and 20 other people may have the same personality type, but your personalities are still unique in some way. The wings of the Enneagram assist us in discerning our personality to a greater extent.
The wings of the Enneagram are the numbers on each side of your type, and the wing numbers have additional influences on your type in different ways. For example, someone who identifies as a type 4 can either wing 3 or wing 5. The type 4 individual will either take on characteristics of a type 3 personality or more so take on characteristics of a type 5 individual. Like I said before, the Enneagram is a very dynamic tool!
I know this is a lot of information, and it may not make complete sense, so I encourage you to listen to the short 20 minute podcast episodes from the Homing podcast and read through the different personality types on the Enneagram Institute website to discern which personality type you are.
Have fun with this! It is going to be exciting recognizing the different aspects of your personality, but also know it will be challenging to accept some of the hard realities of your type as well. Remember, God has created you uniquely, and you can learn to love Him, yourself, and others more by learning more about who you are at your core.
And remember! The Enneagram does not define you; it is a self-realization tool. Comment below what your thoughts are about the Enneagram as well as any questions you may have!
Make sure to follow me on instagram at britneybreckheimer and on facebook simply at Britney Breckheimer! If you would like to be added to my email list and updated each time I have a new blog post available, email me at britney.breckheimer@gmail.com!
Cover image from: https://woodmontchristian.org/2019/09/the-enneagram-and-relationships/
