Growth for Enneagrams

Well, it's both really simple and really long and complex, right?

The simple answer is you let go of your fears and have a vision of how you want to be.

The long and complex answer has to cover each individual type at each level, and it would still be vague because the issues each person has depend on that person's specific situation.

What's an enneazone by the way? ETA: nevermind, found it.

 

This would be highly helpful to me if I was certain of my type. At this point, I'm leaning strongly toward 8, but damn... this sounds very little like me.

 

Yeah I am a one... I am not a loud one, but I am a one.

 

I'd imagine I'd appear louder on the forums. I am not so much like that IRL. I tend to be louder when I am in charge of something though, hence the apperence on the forums.

As far as getting up the levels, it has to do (at least with me) with overall mental health.

 

[MENTION=2172]Trifoilum[/MENTION]: I'm not saying that it would be impractical to get into all the details, but rather that I don't think the people here are familiar enough with the enneagram to make a useful description for each type. Rather, we could probably explain what a person, in general, does to get from one place to another regardless of her type. Or even what a specific person would do.

 

http://9types.com/ has some stuff on enneagram "growth" (particularly under the "Pocket E-gram" and "E-Gram Transform" tabs).

 

I'm definitely not a 7. The descriptions of 9s rarely sound much like me at all. I'm too emotional, and am prone to anger. I try really hard to keep it in check, and frequently feel like I'm trying to hold down a volcano from erupting. I'm also very prone to depression after I get my anger under control but cannot change what made me angry. Neither of these seem to be 9-like behaviors.

I've been through a lot in life. I think my biggest issue with Enneagram is that I have more than one basic motivation.

I don't know anymore. A year ago, and anytime before that, I would have said 'my soulmate' without any doubt or reservation. But now, I just don't know. The closest I can say would be 'to not hurt anymore', but that's because I've been through a really painful several years.

Wow. Maybe this is so difficult because I have lost my motivations.

 

@VH; FWIW I don't really have any one type that describes me fully either. In fact, if someone observed my life and had to guess what my enneatype was, she'd probably say either type 5 for watching people instead of participating & being all into reading science texts, or type 9 for having difficulty asserting myself in my younger years & sometimes having difficulty knowing what my opinion is, or type 3 for being focused almost purely on getting good grades until recently, etc.

However, if I look for why I do things beyond my basic survival instinct (being an sp-dominant) it has a helluva lot to do with bolstering my identity and reinforcing the idea that I am not like other people. Yeah, I don't seem to have an artistic flair, nor do I have a particularly strong issue with envy, nor do I have an overly keen ability to discern among feelings, nor do I think I feel more deeply than most other people. But the more I break away from my past life of school and video games, the more I realize that I'm hardly motivated to do anything except discern who I am and what I will become.

I think you're a type 8, and I think you're looking for the Enneagram to explain you better than it can. Nearly everyone has either life pitfalls, life changes, identity crises, lack of motivation, confusion, and other problems at some point in life that make the idea that we have just one basic motivation a rather dubious one. However, at its core, the Enneagram is about what our personality motivates us to do, i.e. what problem does our self-image create? Then you can use the Enneagram to figure out whether the path you are currently on is effective for your own needs.

Or you can just do what I did, which is grab a hold of a type that deeply resonates with you and pursue it to its highest development. When I take the core of my MBTI and the core of my Enneagram together (both instinctual and personality), who I am and where I'm headed makes a whole lot of sense.

Did you see this btw? The development levels I included here are actually for type 8.
http://forums.infjs.com/showthread.php?t=12087

 

I've read in several places that Enneatype doesn't change after childhood, but I'm almost nothing like I was when I was younger. If I had to make a guess about my motivations based on who I was as a kid, I'd be hard pressed to come up with an answer, but I'm pretty sure it would be a 9 or a 4. A lot of child abuse, having to move a lot (more than 20 times as a kid), and then putting myself in positions where I had to get tough or die... yeah, I lost a lot of those traits. They're still there, but this is an interesting way of separating. Thanks.

This is interesting. I'm undoubtedly an sx subtype, and getting this out of the way might be helpful in my search for the answer here.

That's really the question, but thanks for reminding me of this.

That is without a doubt the best description of how my emotions/mind stages and reacts that I've read so far on Enneagram stuff. Very interesting.

Is there any way you have a link to the other Enneatypes described in that format? I'd love to read the others... to clarify my own type, and to help understand other people. (I have a 7 and a few 9s in my life who I feel like I have to protect, and would love to understand how to better do that)

 

[MENTION=2172]Trifoilum[/MENTION]: Hmmm, well since that link goes to type 6, let's look at that one first.

When we look at an individual who is a type 6, the most obvious problems are ones regarding security. The biggest theme going from low to high development is becoming more self-reliant for one's own security, looking less and less to the outside world for that security. So how does one get from being anxious and concerned about security to calm and comfortable? Well, that's where personal development and mental health come in. Personal development being for those who are already at average or higher, and seeking counseling or a psychiatrist if far lower than that.

The only knowledge I have regarding the matter is from my own experience of feeling anxiety in the interpersonal realm, as I can't remember a time when I was overly concerned about my general security for any long period of time. But, I can say that in general people have trouble deliberately 'fooling' themselves (i.e. convincing themselves there's no reason to worry when they are chronic worriers), so what helps the most tends to be real evidence invalidating their concerns. Also meditation works for some people, as does attacking whatever the problem is head-on (i.e. taking martial arts to remedy feeling weak and physically helpless).

If we're talking about personal development in general, the best advice I could give is to look at the patterns of your own life, figure out how each pattern contributes (be it how a particular friend influences you, what good your daily habits do for you, how you tend to handle your problems, etc.), then do more of what's good for you and remove what isn't working. How do you evaluate how good something is? By being clear on your values and your vision for your life. It sounds incredibly simple, but pretty much all people consistently do things they know they shouldn't but aren't aware enough to realize that there are simple solutions to be set into place to remedy them.

 

Hmm, yeah I don't really know what to make of it other than the fact that everyone tends to act out of necessity.

Unfortunately, I only have type 9, but I'll pm you that. Type 8 is a sample full description; all the others come with a $10 test and you only get ones for your top 3 scores. (Type 9 & 6 being tied for 3rd for me).

 

Thanks for type 9. Can I have the others you have as well? That format is the best I've seen so far, and I share your interest in understanding others.

 

Yes, actually. I've always been my own person, even when I was a wee little kid, but I was a nice kid. The 8 behaviors started to really appear in my teenage years. My senior quote was "No one controls me". I've grown into a lot of the deeper 8 behaviors over the years. I still don't have all of them.

There are parts of 9 that sound a lot like me. The motivations and goals of a 9 are very much like my own. Peace, harmony, tranquility, even getting lost in my imagination. I didn't always stand up for myself, but eventually I got tired of being the nice guy because it never got me anywhere. But now that I think about it, I was taught as a kid that being the nice guy was the way to be strong.

However, most of the reactions attributed to 9s are nothing like my own, such as trying to ignore the problems, hiding from emotions, and the ability to accept unpleasant things. That's not me at all. I get mad. I get depressed. I get obsessive. I fight back. I very much love peace and harmony, but I have no problem standing up to someone who is being a problem.

Thanks for the hugs. It's possible. I'd assume that the more 'issues' someone has, the more they're going to identify with more than one Enneatype. I've got a few issues. As best as I can tell, I've got 9 motivations and 8 reactions.

My motivation for a very long time, and I mean since as long as I could remember even into my early childhood (age 5 or so) was finding a soulmate. I know that sounds crazy, but that urge was always within me. From there, I wanted to deeply bond with them, and live out our love in peace and harmony, and help the world become a better place, even if that meant we had to fight for it.

It took me until I was in my 30s to find her, and I've since lost her. In fact, today is the 3 year anniversary of losing her. I was utterly and completely devastated. I'm past most of the depression and anger now. I'm just numb. But, with her went that dream of comfort, peace, and love. My one motivation in life.

Since then, I really don't have much left other than my base motivation to survive, which involves keeping myself emotionally and mentally alive as well. That's why I got so interested in personality typing of late. I feel like over the past three years, I've had to let go of so much of myself that all I have left is the animal side of me... not in a 'feral' sense, but in a sense that has let go of many of my previous assumptions about my idealism and my sense of how things should be. The reasons I would have held back emotionally, been cautious, which was to protect the potential of my dreams coming true, are gone, so there's nothing really holding me back anymore.

 

I've never seen this page before, and this is exactly what I'm doing to mature more. Though I admit, standing to my ground regarding these issues leaves me very uncomfortable and shaky, but it has proven very beneficial with my interpersonal relationships with others since I'm getting a lot more respected and valued because I'm no longer being a pushover but really giving thought as to what I am and what I want to do.

Ennegram is all about getting out of your comfort zone.

 

Trifix can come in handy under those circumstances, but it is usually better to figure out your core type first before considering your trifix. For example, you could be having a trifix of 8w9-5w6-2w1 and that is probably why you see yourself in more than one type and more than one motivation. The instinctual stacking of sx/so would also be the reason of your sx focus or motivation to find your soulmate for life.

The Enneagram can be seen as the defensive mechanisms for the types other than simply basic motivations. I see the Enneagram types as how the brain has been programmed or hardwired to respond to the external world in a certain way, and this recurring pattern of how people react under different situations makes up the personality type of the person.

 

Wow, I thought I was the only one who wanted this from about the exact same early age. And I thought I was crazy for it. Good to know I'm not alone in that. Those wounds of loss of my one motivation are fresh right now, they go deep.