The 2D Enneagram

  Playful Friday [17]:   You might be a Type Two if…   You showed up before anyone asked. Obviously. That's the whole point.   You're not pushing. You're just making it very easy for them to accept your help.   You've said "no no, don't worry about me" and then worried quite a lot about whether they'd notice you said it.   Your love language is feeding people. Emotionally, physically, sometimes literally.   Nobody said thank you. You're not saying it bothered you. You're just saying nobody said it.   You remember everyone's birthday, their coffee order, and the name of their dog's vet.   You respect people's space entirely. Unless you can see they need something, in which case their space becomes a logistics problem to solve.   You've given advice that was exactly what you needed to hear and still haven't taken it.   You're fantastic at asking people how they are. Being asked back sometimes catches you completel...

  Communication Wednesday [18]:   Type One Type Six   Ones and Sixes often feel like they “get” each other’s worry. Both care about responsibility, both scan for what could go wrong, and both feel uneasy when people are careless, vague, or unreliable. When they cooperate, they can be a strong “let’s think this through and do it properly” team.   The tension shows up in how they handle that anxiety. Ones want to reduce unease by tightening standards and “just doing the right thing,” while Sixes want to reduce unease by questioning, checking, and getting reassurance or backup. So a One’s firm decisions can feel rigid or dismissive to a Six who still has unanswered questions, and a Six’s what‑ifs and doubts can feel to a One like negativity, obstruction, or lack of trust.   If you are a One with a Six:   Treat their questions as contributions, not attacks; “Good point, let’s look at that risk” calms them more than “Stop overthinking.”   Share your reason...

  Myth Monday [17]:   “My Enneagram type is the result of how my parents treated me.”   A lot of traditional Enneagram teaching quietly assumes a neat origin story: your type is basically a reaction to your primary caregivers and early environment. It sounds tidy and therapeutic, but there is no actual research that proves any specific parenting pattern “creates” any specific type.   Families are often the best counter‑example: the same parents, in similar circumstances, can raise children with radically different personalities and Enneagram patterns.   From twin studies we know that even identical twins, with the same genes and very similar environments, still end up with different personalities.   That tells us two things at once: it is not all genetics, and it is not all parenting either. The honest answer is: we do not know exactly how type forms, and pretending that we do is a stretch. At most, we can say that inborn temperament, random developmental f...

  Sundays with the Enneagram   The “Three Centres” Myth – Part 10: Tritype Translator (Without Forcing 27 = 27)   Tritypes say you have one type in each centre and combine them into a three-digit code like 279 “The Peacemaker”, 278 “The Free Spirit”, or 548 “The Scholar”, treating these as 27 distinct archetypes. But when you read the descriptions, they look much less like “three centres inside you” and much more like recognisable blends of one core strategy expressed through a particular instinctual bias and relational style, which is exactly the territory subtype work already covers.   Take 279 “The Peacemaker”. It is described as gentle, conflict-avoidant, harmony-seeking, people-pleasing, and optimistic, wanting everyone to feel included and at ease. That reads like a Navigating 9: a type 9 strategy of keeping inner peace and avoiding tension, expressed through a strong focus on bonding, inclusion, and smoothing the emotional climate for the group, not proof tha...

  Playful Friday [16]:   You might be a Type One if…   You've corrected a typo in a text message you sent to yourself.   "Good enough" is a phrase you understand intellectually but have never actually felt.   You've started tidying up while guests are still there. Just a little. Just the obvious things.   You didn't say anything. But you noticed. You definitely noticed.   Your to-do list has a to-do list.   You've rewritten an email four times because the first three were "too sharp," and the fourth one still felt too sharp, but you sent it anyway.   You hold yourself to a standard that you would never, ever apply to anyone else. And somehow that feels fair.   When someone does it wrong in front of you and you have to just... stand there... and watch...   You don't want to be difficult. You just want things to be right. Those are not the same thing, and it frustrates you that people can't see the difference.   Type One...

  Communication Wednesday [17]:   Type One Type Five   Ones and Fives can quietly respect each other from a distance. Both take life seriously, both like things to make sense, and both can feel out of step with a world that seems sloppy, loud, or irrational. When they click, there is a shared appreciation for clarity, logic, and not wasting words.   The snag is in how they handle that seriousness. Ones move toward problems with “Let me fix this” energy, often stepping in to correct, improve, or organise, while Fives tend to pull back first, wanting time, data, and distance to think.  So the One’s push to act can feel intrusive or demanding to the Five, and the Five’s withdrawal or long thinking process can feel to the One like avoidance, apathy, or not caring enough to do the right thing.   If you are a One with a Five:   Give them advance notice and time to consider instead of springing decisions on them; “Can you think about this and we’ll decide to...

  Myth Monday [16]:   “The nine Enneagram vices are the deep root of each type.”   In much traditional teaching, the nine “passions” or vices are treated as the sacred core of each type, the deep spiritual root from which everything else grows. That sounds profound, but there are a few big problems with taking them as the foundation.    First, it is basically unprovable; you can tell a story that everything in type 4 comes from “envy” or everything in type 9 from “sloth,” but there is no way to test that against anything except more story.   Second, seven of the nine come straight from the Christian “seven deadly sins”, which already biases the whole list.  Because seven were not enough to cover nine types, two more had to be added, so we get Fear for type 6 and Deceit or Vanity for type 3, depending on the source. This is not a neutral discovery of nine universal roots; it is a religious framework stretched to fit a nine‑point diagram.   Third, a...

  Sundays with the Enneagram   The “Three Centres” Myth – Part 9: Tritypes on a Shaky Foundation   Tritypes are the idea that each person has not just one Enneagram type, but three: one from each traditional centre, supposedly giving you a “primary” type plus a supporting type in the other two centres. The concept emerged and was developed in modern Enneagram circles (especially Katherine Fauvre’s work), building directly on the assumption that the head, heart, and gut centres are real and that everyone must have one type from each.   The logic sounds tidy: if you have a dominant centre, surely you also have secondary patterns from the other two, so why not name a “3-type code” to capture this? But the whole thing quietly smuggles in several untested assumptions.    Why should every person necessarily have exactly one type from each centre? Why not two from one centre and one from another, or five types you strongly relate to, or different patterns in diffe...

Playful Friday [15]:   You might be a Transmitter if…   You don't just have opinions. You have positions, and you're ready to explain them at length.   You think in terms of impact. Not just "did this work?" but "did this matter?"   You've been told you're "a lot" at least once. You took it as a compliment.   Small talk is not conversation. It's just waiting for the conversation to start.   An idea that stays in your head feels like a waste. Ideas are for sharing, testing, spreading.   You notice when the room is paying attention. You also notice when it isn't, and you adjust accordingly.   You're not trying to dominate the space. You're trying to use it for something.   "Let's keep this low-key" is a suggestion you respect in theory and quietly ignore in practice.   The Transmitting domain is not about being loud or attention-seeking. It's about being wired for impact and reach — the pull to put so...

  Communication Wednesday [16]:   Type One Type Four   Ones and Fours often feel a surprising pull toward each other. Both care about authenticity and “how things ought to be,” and both tend to feel slightly out of place in environments that are shallow, careless, or fake.  They can recognise a shared seriousness about life, which can make the connection feel more real than with many other people.   The trouble is that they usually aim that seriousness in different directions. Ones try to improve the external world through standards, order, and “doing it right,” while Fours try to stay true to an inner sense of meaning, mood, and identity. So a One’s attempts to tidy, correct, or structure can feel to a Four like a criticism of their inner world, and a Four’s emotional intensity or inconsistency can feel to a One like self‑indulgence or unnecessary drama.   If you are a One with a Four:   Remember that when they go deep into feeling, they are not nece...

  Sundays with the Enneagram   The “Three Centres” Myth – Part 8: Mistyping and Wasted Growth Energy   Even if the head/heart/gut centres were a useful way to organise the types, in practice they create more confusion than clarity, both for typing people and for helping them grow.   By encouraging generic “balance your less-developed centres” advice, they pull attention away from the real work of noticing and changing specific, observable behaviours.   If the centres were valid psychological categories, we would expect frequent mistypings within each triad, as people with similar “head,” “heart,” or “gut” styles get confused for each other. In reality, that rarely happens: 5s, 6s, and 7s are seldom mistyped among themselves despite being “head types”; 2s, 3s, and 4s stay distinct even as “heart types”; nobody confuses 8s, 9s, and 1s in daily typing discussions.   The centres do not predict who gets mixed up, which suggests they are not capturing real shared...