Hannah Paasch - Millenneagram: The Enneagram Guide for Discovering Your Truest, Baddest Self

SELF-HELP BOOKS ABOUND. I SWEAR, EVERY DAY I SEE SOME new fix-it guide to getting your life back on track. As a connoisseur of inspirationI love a good meaty Chicken Soup for the Soul, honeyI can tell you: most of them are gonna say the same old shit and just repackage it. Are there a few useful tidbits? Probably. Does it apply to you personally in any way? Probably not.

Enter the Enneagram.

Plainly put, the Enneagram is a personality typology that has a sneaky way of reflecting our innermost selves. Each personality type is given a numberthere are nine types in totalbut you should view that number as a starting point, not as a label to pigeonhole you.

Maybe it would help to start at the beginning. The Enneagram symbol itself is ancient, but the Enneagram model of human personalities as we understand it today is from a guy named Oscar Ichazo, who was inspired by the expansive ideology of philosopher and teacher George Gurdjieff. Ichazo, also a philosopher, sorted nine distinct personality types out of Gurdjieffs spiritual system of the seven deadly sins, positing that we all have go-to passions, or coping mechanisms, that create recurring themes throughout our lives. For example, some people just cant shake that theyre missing something everyone else has, and theyre pretty fuckin envious of those around them. (Hello, baby Fours, I see you.)

In the 1970s, famed psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo synthesized the Enneagram with modern psychology and called each of the types an ego fixation. Thats just a fancy term that means we all have systems of coping mechanisms that help us survive what comes our way in life, as well as assign value to ourselves.

Today, the Enneagram is a system for understanding the self that marries what we know about the mind and what we sense about the spiritual realm. Just like how humans are half animal and half spirit, half concrete and half abstract, half learned and half unique, with one foot planted on the earth and the other leaping toward the starsthe Enneagram seeks to make sense of the wild, painful, glorious lives we lead.

Ive been an Enneagram nerd since I first discovered it ten years ago, in my former life as a maudlin youth at a conservative Bible college (more on that later). I still remember where I was when I discovered my number, because I got fucking pissed off. I was sitting in a Starbucks in downtown Chicago, reading an Enneagram book and trying to peg all my bland-ass seminary friends. I started in on the type Four chapter, and my first thought reading the description was Damn, these folks suck. Second thought? Fuck. Thats me, isnt it? I slammed the book down on the table and broke into a really intense pensive window-staring sesh. How could *I* of all people be some self-centered individualist? ME, dramatic? ME, tortured? AS IF.

When you read the words that call your bluff, everything changes.

After Id come to terms with being a Four and read every book I could get my hot little hands on about it, I was able to laugh at my ego fixations (that shit hates being laughed at, lemme tell you what) and chart a path forward, smoothing out brain ruts and old emotional wounds as I went. I was able to figure out why the fuck I was so annoyed with my closest friends, which made me feel less crazy, while learning a deeper, driving sense of compassion that defined my interactions with them going forward.

The Enneagram helped me figure my shit out. Im gonna show you how it can help you too.

SO, HERES THE PITCH

Why should you care about an ancient personality typology whose origins are murky and can hardly be backed up by scientific data?

To borrow a line from our lord and savior Lin-Manuel Miranda (in Hamilton), we are young, scrappy, and hungry, and we live in some goddamn terrifying timestimes that require our presence, our intelligence, our intuition, and our wholeness. The Enneagram is a map to help us arrive at the unique version of wholeness possible for each of us. Only from this position, rootedness in who we are, what we believe, and what kind of story we are writing, will we be able to act bravely for the sake of justice and humanity, to approach our fucked-up world with the grounded courage it asks of us.

The Enneagram doesnt want to just slap a label on you and call it a day. The Enneagram is here to help you figure out where the fuck you are currently and where the fuck you want to go. Once you have these two key tidbits of information, you can start mapping the story you want to tell with your life. Ultimately, you dont need to worry about what you doworry about the why behind it. The Enneagram is not about behavior modification; its about motivations, fears, and basic desires. Deep shit.

What are the nine Enneagram personality types? Practitioners use different names for each one, emphasizing a different, but related, element. Here are some traditional type names:

ONES: THE PERFECTIONIST, OR THE REFORMER

TWOS: THE HELPER, OR THE GIVER

THREES: THE ACHIEVER, OR THE PERFORMER

FOURS: THE ROMANTIC, OR THE INDIVIDUALIST

FIVES: THE INVESTIGATOR, OR THE OBSERVER

SIXES: THE LOYALIST, THE DEVILS ADVOCATE, OR THE QUESTIONER

SEVENS: THE ENTHUSIAST, THE EPICURE, OR THE ADVENTURER

EIGHTS: THE CHALLENGER, THE ASSERTER, OR THE BOSS

NINES: THE PEACEMAKER, OR THE MEDIATOR

But its a new era, with new ways of talking and thinking about identity. I hereby give you the Millenneagram:

MILLENNEAGRAM ONES: THE MACHINE

MILLENNEAGRAM TWOS: THE PARENT

MILLENNEAGRAM THREES: THE WINNER

MILLENNEAGRAM FOURS: THE TORTURED ARTIST

MILLENNEAGRAM FIVES: THE DETECTIVE

MILLENNEAGRAM SIXES: THE ORACLE

MILLENNEAGRAM SEVENS: THE PARTY

MILLENNEAGRAM EIGHTS: THE DRAGON

MILLENNEAGRAM NINES: THE WALLFLOWER

Illustration Evgeniy Belyaev/Shutterstock

If you already know your type, I hope seeing it through the Millenneagram lens will help a little light bulb go off over your head. If you dont yet know your type, take a minute to flip to the for a short and sweet quiz to get you going.

Before we really get deep into it, though, youll need to know a few terms. Allow me to be your tour guide.

The Triads

The nine personality types are sorted into three triads: the Intuitive Triad, the Feeling Triad, and the Thinking Triad. Youll discover your triad in a hot sec, but your triad describes where your center of intelligence and guidance comes from. It also highlights both the source of your strength and the primary location of your ego fixation. Each triad is rooted in a part of the body: the Intuitive Triads story takes place in the gut, the Feeling Triads adventures play out in the heart, and the Thinking Triads saga of loss and victory plays out in the brain. The Intuitive Triad includes Types Eight, Nine, and One, the Feeling Triad includes Types Two, Three, and Four, and the Thinking Triad includes Types Five, Six, and Seven. Sounds pretty melodramatic, I know, but another way to think about this is Where does my power come from: the gut, the heart, or the brain? For example, as a Four, Im part of the Feeling Triad, which means the center of my strength and essence comes from my depth of feeling and emotional intelligence. Not to brag or anything.