What is the Enneagram?

“The Enneagram is a powerful gateway to self-awareness and understanding of others. It describes the structure and dymamics of nine personality types opening a path to a more integrated and rewarding life.” - The Narrative Enneagram

The modern evolution of the Enneagram is largely attributed to the teachings of Bolivian teacher Oscar Ichazo (1950s) and Chilean pyschiatrist Claudio Naranjo (1970s). However, much earlier connections, dating back 2000 years have also been posited. - Wikpedia.

Through the Enneagram you can, if you choose to go on the journey, deepen your self-understanding and identify your pathways for growth.

The Enneagram offers a fast-track to “waking-up” to one’s own habits of minds and self-limiting patterns. Some say, “but no, don’t put me in a box” and yet, the enneagram offers you the opposite. We’re all already in a cage of sorts - limited by our own shadows and unconscious patterns of thought. The Enneagram helps us to see the cage, open the door, and offers us courage fly even in the knoweldge of our limitations. We are all human!

The Enneagram is effectively a “map” that shows us nine different personality types, and within each type there lie three subtypes. So, in all, it shows us 27 pathways to growth. The nine core types represent nine different ways of seeing the world.

The Enneagram is a really effective way of helping us see the limitations of our type from which we experience the world. The Enneagram helps us understand our motivations for why we do what we do, what we are paying attention to and how. The Enneagram offers us a way of “waking up” (an infinite journey) and once awake, we can embrace the ability to see more choices and options to help us more successfully navigate our present and paths ahead.

Note: The Enneagram itself is not “owned” by any one school or organisations and as such, there are a vast array of teachers and consultants offering their own particular take. Please be very discerning with who you choose to listen to. Many online “experts” you may find, in reality, lack training, credentials and substance.

Why do I love using the Enneagram with clients?

Because…

• It is a fast track for development.

• My clients love it - they “see themselves” and it offers language and actionable strategies that they come back to again and again.

• It “normalises” - it’s liberating to realise that others share similar struggles. Millions of others identify with each type and it is uncanny how similar the struggles that emerge.

• It offers insight into your specific “shadows” of your type - the kinds of things we find difficult to see and acknoweldge (and be self-compassionate about) but are an important part of our developmental journey.

• It helps us understand ourselves and others with more compassion. Our “personalities” are not who we are. Our personalities are the ways we learned to survive in the world as children (a mix of nuture and nature). And so these strategies have been very useful, but as adults, they become limiting when we don’t realise the habits we’ve formed. Yet, by understanding more about why we adopted our coping strategies, I hope that we can also be gentler with ourselves and the journey we’ve travelled. And, hopeful about the journey yet to come.

How to get started?

• Consider if you’d like to explore the Enneagram for your own development. If so, congratulations, great decision!

• You could choose to work with me and complete your Enneagram typing as part of our coaching programme. I have completed training with the highly respected Narrative Enneagram organisation - founded by two of the Enneagram’s most well-known teachers and researchers, David Daniels and Helen Palmer.

• Or you could choose to explore first on your own and if so, I wish you well and recommend starting with one of the following reputable schools: Narrative Enneagram; the Enneagram Institute; or Beatrice Chestnut.

Each school offers a “test” (for a fee). E.g.

- Narrative Enneagram: https://www.narrativeenneagram.org/discover-your-type/

- RHETI: https://tests.enneagraminstitute.com/

- Chestnut Paes https://cpenneagram.com/compass

Please be aware, that no Enneagram “test” provides a definitive answer. The "tests" only offer you the more likely options from which you can consider and research further. The final decision must be yours alone. Only you can ever really know “you”. It is very normal for people to take several months, or years to determine their accurate type. Some people find they have been mistyped for years, perhaps by believing a less-than-credible source, or perhaps someone "told them" who they are, or perhaps they relied on a test to provide the answer and that can be quite unsettling.

Identifying your enneagram type is a personal journey. I found myself that I learned a lot as I considered myself through the lens of other types. It was not a negative. It took me two years to finally settle on my type, and sub-type. (The sub-type piece is fascinating and powerful too - more on that another day!)