Finding Your Enneagram Type

• Yes, you do have an Enneagram type that is dominant and is unchanging over your lifetime.

• No, your type does not define who you are. Actually, your type is a distortion of who you are. It is a box that you and I confine ourselves to when our ego is over-functioning, and the purpose of the Enneagram is to get you out of this box.

• Your essential self IS NOT your type. Rather, it is a spiritual identity that is beyond type and including all types.

• It is extremely helpful to understand your type! Discovering your type is like finding a lost instruction manual that provides both a trouble-shooting guide for your malfunctions (how you get stuck), and a maintenance map for how you move toward your essential self (how you become more free).

Why is determining your type so tricky?

Your Enneagram type is describing the motivations behind your behaviors rather than how you are behaving. For example, the behavior may be acting friendly toward another person. For one person that behavior is motivated by a desire to be loved in return, for another person that same behavior serves to create a calm encounter that will uneventful and short-lived.

Typing is tricky because your ego self, that wants to look good or be appropriate, tends to answer typing questions. This creates a distorted view, blocked from seeing into the real motivations and perspectives that shape the type.

In my experience, about half the people who type themselves initially get it wrong. This doesn’t mean that typing is doomed to fail, but it does mean that determining your type should be seen as process that unfolds over some time rather than a one-step process that will deliver your type.

In a nutshell: hold your initial results very lightly.

See them as a starting place rather than a definitive answer.

My Background & Offerings