The Beginner's Guide to Determining Your Enneagram Type in 4 Steps

Ever felt misunderstood?

Have you ever felt like you did not understand someone else? Maybe neurodivergent?

Well, you are different, and that is why so many are obsessed with personality. And there is one personality system called the Enneagram, which can help demystify yourself and others. The Enneagram is a framework for understanding people’s core fears and motivations.

How I discovered my Enneagram type:

My wife and I, being newly married, couldn’t resolve our disagreements. We felt like we tried everything. Our fights would escalate as we tried to force our viewpoints on each other when, in reality, we both were demanding to be understood (later in therapy, we learned to slow down and take turns mirroring each other).

I felt we were out of options, and my wife suggested I take a personality test. I was skeptical but was also willing to give it a shot because what I was doing clearly wasn’t working. So I took the test and had my mind blown 🤯.

Before the personality test, we thought we already understood each other’s perspectives, but little did we know how the surface level was our understanding of each other’s worlds. The Enneagram helped us slow down and gave us a partial map of each other’s inner world.

We got in it, loved it, and became obsessed with it.

It helped us resolve our conflict then, and we continue to use it now.

In this guide, I’ll simplify the complex world of the Enneagram. I’ll show you exactly how to determine your type so that you can better understand yourself and others.

Enneagram Overview

What is an Enneagram?

The Enneagram goes deep, but we will cover the broad strokes in 4 steps.

But first, let’s demystify personality. “Personality” is a grouping of characteristics that explain how people are similar and different. The Enneagram looks at thoughts, feelings, and actions and identifies “types” or archetypes. There are 9 core types, which is what people mean when they say, “I am a type 8 or a type 4,” etc.

How your Enneagram Type is Formed (nature vrs nurture?)

It is said that your type/ personality is formed in childhood as a response to an unmet need or a childhood trauma ( akachildhood wound).

Your type can be thought of as a coping mechanism or a survival strategy that you developed in childhood but still use today. Parts of your personality help you survive, and parts hold you back.

Examples of childhood trauma patterns

• A child who was constantly criticized may grow up to be an adult who second-guesses their every decision, never believing their efforts are good enough.
• A child who grew up in a chaotic environment might cope by distracting themselves, always looking on the bright side, and avoiding uncomfortable or painful situations.
• A child who was only shown love and affection when they achieved something might grow up to be a workaholic who believes they must win at everything; otherwise, they are worthless.

A childhood wound can develop in many ways. The important part is the negative emotion that stays with you. The three negative emotions are fear, shame and anger.

Now, let’s dive deeper into how you can determine your type.

Steps to Determining Your Enneagram

1. Identify Your Core Emotion

The first step in identifying your Enneagram type is understanding the three core emotions that form your “type.”

Ask yourself, “Which of these emotions comes up for you the most in daily life?”

You either:

• feel that emotion and use it to motivate you
• feel that emotion and push it away
• feel that emotion constantly in the back of your head (subconsciously)

Another way to identify your core emotion would be to ask which emotion you have the most access to. Which emotion is easy to express? Or if someone else was feeling anger, fear, or shame, which emotion would be easiest for you to empathize with?

2. Consider the Connection Between Emotions and Centers of Intelligence

In the Enneagram, these core emotions relate to centers of intelligence.

The negative emotion you feel forces you to develop coping mechanisms that help you survive. You develop a special “intelligence” to cope with that negative emotion.

• Fear relates to intellectual intelligence
• Shame relates to emotional intelligence
• Anger relates to instinctual intelligence.

If you can consistently sense what other people are feeling, you may have high emotional intelligence, and your core emotion may be shame. If you are always in your head or have been told that you “overthink” things, you might have intellectual intelligence that you developed in response to fear. If you go with your guy a lot to make decisions, you might have instinctual intelligence and wrestle with anger.

The crazy thing to think about is that other people have different intelligences that may come off as superpowers.

Conversely, your own intelligence/ superpower might be a blind spot to you but not to other people.

3. Consider How Your Core Emotion Shows Up

When trying to identify your core emotion, you need to consider how each type “uses” that emotion.

Each type handles its core emotion differently. There are three Enneagram types for each core emotion. The different ways of handling the emotion are the following:

• Actively using the emotion as a form of empowerment or motivation
• Actively suppressing the emotion in an attempt to escape the uncomfortable feeling
• Unconsciously using that emotion or having that emotion constantly in the background

With that in mind, you are now ready to determine your Enneagram type.

4. Find Your Type

Look through the following list and try to deduce your type.

Once you have identified a type that you think you might be ask a friend about it. Maybe even look through the following list with a friend. Each type has a core emotion, core motivation, and core fear. Look through the following to get a sense of what your type might be.

If you have identified your core emotion look for a type that has that core emotion.

If you identify with an Enneagram type or are trying to decide between a few, there is one more thing you need to know.

The Connecting Lines on the Enneagram

The Enneagram types are connected.

These connections represent how each type will appear depending on their emotional state. Each type will act differently depending on if they are “in stress” or “in comfort.” These lines are also known as the paths of integration (growth/ comfort) and the paths of disintegration (destruction/stress).

The Paths Explained

Path of Integration (Growth): This is the direction we move when growing, feeling secure, or operating out of our higher selves. We take on some of the positive traits of another type. For example, when a Type Eight (The Challenger) is moving toward growth, they take on some of the positive characteristics of a Type Two (The Helper), becoming more open-hearted and caring.

Path of Disintegration (Stress): This is the direction we move when we are under stress or operating out of our lower selves. We take on some of the negative traits of another type. For example, when a Type Eight is under stress, they take on some of the negative characteristics of a Type Five (The Investigator), becoming more withdrawn and secretive.

Here’s how it works for each type:

• Type 1 moves towards Type 7 in growth and Type 4 in stress.
• Type 2 moves towards Type 4 in growth and Type 8 in stress.
• Type 3 moves towards Type 6 in growth and Type 9 in stress.
• Type 4 moves towards Type 1 in growth and Type 2 in stress.
• Type 5 moves towards Type 8 in growth and Type 7 in stress.
• Type 6 moves towards Type 9 in growth and Type 3 in stress.
• Type 7 moves towards Type 5 in growth and Type 1 in stress.
• Type 8 moves towards Type 2 in growth and Type 5 in stress.
• Type 9 moves towards Type 3 in growth and Type 6 in stress.

Examine how you feel when you are at your best and when you are at your worst and see if it aligns up with your connecting lines. To dive deeper into the connecting lines and see how each Enneagram type looks check out this article.

Avoid the Common Pitfall

The most common pitfall is identifying with the type that you want to be rather than who you are.

Considering your natural tendencies and daily behaviors is hard. Some people completely reject their Enneagram type at first because the childhood wound is too close to home. They might also reject it because they are active working on addressing their core fear.

We are all a work in progress.

Remember, this is a journey of self-discovery, and it may take time to fully understand your type. Please be patient with yourself and the process.

Wrap Up

You now have a better tool to understand your thought patterns, emotions, and behaviors.

Use what serves you; disregard what does not. Personal “development” is not just about knowing more things, feeling good about yourself, or changing your behavior. It is about understanding yourself and others and having empathy for how they became who they are.

As Socrates said, “The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know, and you need to know more because you should, and go ahead and do it, know more” (loose translation).