Edgy Mama

Yesterday, I had a “typing” interview with a trained Enneagram instructor. According to The Authentic Enneagram website, “The Enneagram is a powerful and dynamic personality system that describes nine distinct and fundamentally different patterns of thinking feeling, and acting.”

I’ve been hearing about the Enneagram for years, and most of my Asheville friends and acquaintances have discovered their Enneagram type and used that knowledge as a path to further self-understanding. Upon looking into the system, I became intrigued. Initially, I labeled myself an eight, primarily because friends who knew the system told me I was an eight (despite the fact that you are not supposed to type others, only yourself). Then, on vacation with my lovely Book Club, I got hold of an Enneagram book and decided I was a four. I must have been feeling particularly melancholy that day, because it doesn’t seem that I have much four in me.

The “typing” interview, too, was inconclusive. I scored high for eight, seven, and for a type called a counterphobic six.

Here are brief Descriptions of the Nine Types from The Authentic Enneagram website:

Type One: The Perfectionist – believes you must be good and right to be worthy. Consequently, Perfectionists are conscientious, responsible, improvement-oriented, and self-controlled, but also can be critical, resentful, and self-judging.

Type Two: The Giver – believes you must give fully to others to be loved. Consequently, Givers are caring, helpful, supportive, and relationship-oriented, but also can be prideful, overly intrusive, and demanding.

Type Three: The Performer – believes you must accomplish and succeed to be loved. Consequently, Performers are industrious, fast-paced, goal focused, and efficiency- oriented, but also can be inattentive to feelings, impatient, and image-driven.

Type Four: The Romantic – believes you must obtain the longed for ideal relationship or situation to be loved. Consequently, Romantics are idealistic, deeply feeling, empathetic, authentic to self, but also dramatic, moody, and sometimes self-absorbed.

Type Five: The Observer – believes you must protect yourself from a world that demands too much and gives too little to assure life. Consequently, Observers are self-sufficiency seeking, non-demanding, analytic/thoughtful, and unobtrusive, but also can be withholding, detached, and overly private.

Type Six: The Loyal Skeptic – believes you must gain protection and security in a hazardous world you just can’t trust. Consequently, Loyal Skeptics are themselves trustworthy, inquisitive, good friends, and questioning, but also can be overly doubtful, accusatory, and fearful.

Type Seven: The Epicure – believes you must keep life up and open to assure a good life. Consequently, Epicures are optimistic, upbeat, possibility- and pleasure-seeking, and adventurous, but also can be pain-avoidant, uncommitted, and self-serving.

Type Eight: The Protector – believes you must be strong and powerful to assure protection and regard in a tough world. Consequently, Protectors are justice-seeking, direct, strong, and action-oriented, but also overly impactful, excessive, and sometimes impulsive.

Type Nine: The Mediator – believes that to be loved and valued you must blend in and go along to get along. Consequently, Mediators are self-forgetting, harmony-seeking, comfortable, and steady, but also conflict avoidant and sometimes stubborn.

Here’s what I’ve decided: I’d like to think I’m an eight, because I like power and thinking of myself as strong and powerful, but I’ve most likely developed eight tendencies as a reaction to my sixness—which ultimately is about filtering the world through fear. As a counterphobic six, I’ve confronted my fears and taken risks in order to overcome my fears—thus, seeming to present as an eight. My primary consolation upon recognizing this is that Bruce Springsteen is a six.

Is this helpful to me? I’m not sure. I did, however, decide after much research and soul-searching into the Enneagram that the below quiz was probably more helpful for discovering my inner self.

You are Form 4, Gargoyle: The Fallen.

“And The Gargoyle mended his wings from the
blood of the fallen so he could rise up from
imprisonment. With great speed and
resourcefulness, Gargoyle made the world his
for the taking.”

Some examples of the Gargoyle Form are Daedalus
(Greek) and Mary Magdalene (Christian).
The Gargoyle is associated with the concept of
success, the number 4, and the element of wood.
His sign is the new moon.

As a member of Form 4, you are a creative and
resourceful individual. You are always
thinking of possible solutions to problems you
face and you generally choose one that is
right. Much of your success comes from your
ability to look at things a little differently
than everyone else. Gargoyles are the best
friends to have because they don’t always take
things for face value.

Which Mythological Form Are You?
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