The Enneagram

The tool I've come back to for twenty years.

Most personality tests tell you what you're like. The Enneagram tells you what you're afraid of, and what you've quietly organized your life around avoiding. That's a very different piece of information.

What it actually is

The Enneagram maps nine core patterns. Not nine ways of behaving - nine different strategies people built early in life to stay safe, to be loved, or to stay in control.

That distinction matters. Two people can do the exact same thing for completely different reasons, and the reason is the part that's actually useful. The Enneagram works on motivation rather than behavior, which is why it keeps being relevant long after a list of traits stops being interesting.

The strategy worked, by the way. That's why it stuck. The problem is that it's still running now, underneath decisions you think you're making freely - and you can't choose something you can't see.

Your type isn't what you're like. It's what you're afraid of, and what you've built your life around avoiding.
Why I care about this

I found it in university and it explained something I couldn't.

I came across the Enneagram as a student, long before I did any of this professionally. I'd taken the usual personality tests and they all told me roughly the same flattering, useless thing. This one didn't. It named the thing driving me, and I didn't particularly enjoy reading it.

I'm a Three. Threes are driven by wanting to feel valuable, competent, worth something - and we get there through what we accomplish. What we're most afraid of is being seen as a failure. Worthless. Unlovable without the achievements.

So I built a facade. Everything's great, everything's handled, my life is perfect - even when it really wasn't. I cared enormously about the picture other people had of me, and I worked hard to keep it intact.

It took me years to work out that people can love you for who you are and not for what you produce. And that being vulnerable isn't a slip or a weakness. For me it's the actual growth, and it's how the relationships I care about finally got deeper.

What I understood much later is that reading your type once changes almost nothing. Catching the pattern running, in real time, four or five times, changes how you make decisions. That gap between understanding something and actually using it is most of what my work is about now.

The nine types

You'll probably recognize pieces of yourself in several of these. That's normal, and it's why picking the one that sounds most like you is the most common way to get this wrong. The question isn't which description you like. It's which motivation explains the most.

1
Strict Perfectionist
Sees the gap between how things are and how they should be, and feels responsible for closing it. Principled, precise, and quietly hard on itself. Core fear: being corrupt, wrong, or fundamentally bad.
2
Considerate Helper
Reads what people need before they say it, and gives generously. The catch is that love starts to feel like something you earn by being needed. Core fear: being unwanted, or unloved for who you are rather than what you give.
3
Competitive Achiever
Turns ideas into real things faster than almost anyone, and reads exactly what a room rewards. Worth gets measured in output, so rest feels like losing ground. Core fear: being worthless without the accomplishments.
4
Intense Creative
Stays with feeling that other people run from, and finds meaning where others see routine. Comparison runs constantly and usually comes out short. Core fear: having no identity or significance of your own.
5
Quiet Specialist
Sees whole systems while everyone else reacts to fragments. Calm under pressure, private by default, and inclined to withdraw rather than refuel. Core fear: being depleted, overwhelmed, or incapable.
6
Loyal Skeptic
Spots the risk everyone else talked themselves out of, and stays when things get hard. The doubt gets aimed at its own judgment first. Core fear: being without support or guidance when it counts.
7
Enthusiastic Visionary
Finds the possible route when everyone else sees a wall, and brings real energy with it. Discomfort gets outrun rather than felt. Core fear: being trapped in pain, limitation, or deprivation.
8
Active Controller
Says the thing everyone was thinking and nobody would say, and protects the people who can't protect themselves. Vulnerability reads as danger, so it stays hidden. Core fear: being controlled, betrayed, or made vulnerable.
9
Adaptive Peacemaker
Holds every side at once, and people relax around it. Its own priorities go last, and eventually go missing altogether. Core fear: conflict, disconnection, and being made not to matter.

Nine is only the beginning. Each type splits three ways by dominant instinct, which is where the 27 subtypes come from. Two people can share a core type and look nothing alike, because they're chasing the same need in completely different ways. It's the piece most free tests skip, and it's one of the reasons I didn't want to build something that just hands you a number.

Where I trained

I'm certified through iEQ9

Integrative Enneagram Solutions, the team behind the iEQ9 assessment. I trained with them because I wanted to work with something that goes well past assigning you a number.

I didn't want to build something that hands you a number. The model I trained in also looks at:

  • All 27 subtypes, not just the nine types
  • Centers of intelligence - head, heart and body
  • Both wings, because wings shift across phases of life rather than staying fixed
  • Levels of self-awareness and integration
  • Lines of stress and growth
  • Current strain, measured separately from personality

I also have Co-Active coach training, and I'm a certified NLP master practitioner and breathwork facilitator. That's where the practical half of my work comes from. A good assessment tells you what the pattern is. Breath, language and attention are what actually shift it. Insight on its own tends to sit there.

See your pattern.

63 statements - 54 for your type, 9 for your instinct, measured separately and combined at the end. Then a report written from your actual answers, not pulled off a shelf.

  • Why we think it's your type - your actual score pattern, laid out
  • What would make us question the result, so you can decide for yourself
  • Your type, and which of the 27 subtypes you are
  • How the same pattern plays out in your money, health, relationships and work
  • Both wings, your center, and where you go under strain and in growth
  • The sentence you say to yourself on repeat, and one to swap it for
  • A 14-day practice small enough that you'll actually do it
  • And for fun: your type crossed with your star sign, if you want it

Por ahora el perfil está solo en inglés. Si quieres que te avise cuando esté la versión en español, mándame un correo.

See my pattern - $27 USD

About 10 minutes. Yours to keep as a PDF.