Why I Don’t Like Enneagram

I spend an excessive amount of time trying to come up with the right titles for my articles. It’s not even for the reader’s benefit, if I’m being honest. I mean, yes, there’s a balance. The title has to be informative for everyone, but for me personally, it helps me focus my thoughts on precisely what I want to cover. It’s like a launching point that also has boundaries and signs to keep me on the right track. With this article, I jumped around between ideas like “The Flaws in Enneagram: An Opinion”, “My Issues With Enneagram”, “My Struggles With Enneagram”, etc. But nothing felt right. Finally, after several days (because I literally can’t start writing until I have an adequate title), I sat down and typed out the simplest, most straightforward option my sleep-deprived brain could muster: Why I Don’t Like Enneagram.

Up Until Now…

I’ve basically been reading articles, people’s opinions, book excerpts, etc. Trying to get a solid grasp on the theory. I wrote a few articles along the way with my current interpretations, all of which would probably make me cringe if I looked back at them now. (So I just won’t do that, lest I fall to the temptation of endlessly refining and tweaking, never to put out new content again.) I believe I even wrote one article declaring that I had found my type (without actually declaring what that type was.) The content in that article is probably fine, but had I really found my type? Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, I’ve learned a lot since then. Anyhow, I’m not trying to bore anyone with a history lesson. The bottom line is that I’ve now reached a place where I’ve decided that Enneagram, while interesting enough, isn’t really my cup of tea (so to speak). Of course, I’m going to explain why.

My Struggles With Enneagram

For the record, my intent below is not to say that Enneagram has no value. If it works for you, keep at it. In addition, I’m also aware that different people have different interpretations, some of which may be better than others. Below, I’m just listing the issues that I continually came across and can’t really get past. You’re welcome to share your thoughts.

1. Enneagram is only for the traumatized/unhealthy

I’ve read the theory about how every child experiences some sort of parental imbalance, resulting in a “trauma” of sorts. In other words, the trauma doesn’t have to be severe, but every child will come out of childhood with some sort of trauma-based coping mechanism. (I outright dismiss the idea that Enneagram types are born – that goes entirely against everything Enneagram is supposed to be.) My issue here is that I really struggle with this idea that everyone is “traumatized”. Is it really so impossible for someone to emerge from childhood reasonably balanced, not leaning too severely on any one particular Enneagram coping mechanism? If that were the case, such an individual would be difficult to type, and Enneagram would be a pretty pointless theory for them.

However, whenever such a thing is suggested, people like to say something like this: Someone who doesn’t think they have trauma is just a 7 or 9, because of positivity, avoiding confronting the negativity in their past. (Insert eye roll.) Sure, that could be a scenario, but what if there just isn’t any past trauma to confront? Or what if the person has moved past their trauma, in a good way?

I would also think that, given new “traumatizing” circumstances, someone could shift to a different coping mechanism, one more relevant to what they’re currently going through. But I know what you’re thinking: Tritypes. Right? From what I’ve seen, there are people who live in their core type, and just kinda tag on the other two, and then there are people who have to find all 3 to make the core make sense. In my opinion, tritype seems like it waters down the theory, in order to account for individuals with less pronounced types, some of which may just be healthier, since they have access to more coping mechanisms. (Of course, sometimes tritype is just used to account for mistypes.) If you need to all the add-ons to make the theory work, is Enneagram even useful for you anymore, or is it just distracting you from your core issue?

Basically, I don’t see Enneagram as a theory that automatically applies to everyone, just unhealthy or imbalanced people. (I’m a bit baffled as to why people like to wear their Enneagram type as a pseudo badge of honor. Sure, I’m aware of all the people who just quickly choose a cool sounding type and roll with it. But as for everyone else, do they not understand what this theory is defining, or do they actually want people to know about all their issues/baggage/vulnerabilities? Blows my mind.)

2. Attachment Types vs. Hexad Types Debacle

Alright, I need to go off on a brief side trail about attachment types here. It’s not that I don’t think you know about attachment types, but I need you to see the pieces of logic that I’m chaining together. Basically, attachment types are types that are “seeking common ground”. Their unhealthy behavior is supposed to be overly adapting to something external (i.e. attaching), resulting in a loss of something internal, whether that be value, desires, or certainty. (Of course, it might be going in the other direction, right? Loss of something internal leading to an attachment to something external. Either way, that seems to be the premise.) Hexad types are every type that isn’t an attachment type. In other words, hexad types are all the types that don’t do that thing I just described. I have no problems with this. I’m just laying groundwork.

Here’s my problem: seeking common ground is a healthy, positive behavior. If it’s done to the degree that I described, where you lose something internal, it becomes unhealthy/negative. But, by itself, it’s healthy and necessary. Someone who cannot yield at all to other people will never have a healthy relationship ever. Period. End of story. It’s absolutely necessary. A relationship cannot be entirely sustained by one person yielding to the narcissism of another. Both have to grow and adapt together. It’s a two-way street. What I see happen with the so-called attachment types, is that people narrow in on this basic healthy behavior and use it as the deciding factor for someone’s type. It doesn’t matter if the unhealthy aspect of “attachment” isn’t present – if the individual in question is trying to be reasonable and accommodate others, they automatically get labelled as an attachment type.

You know, you could play that game with any type, right? Let’s say that we grabbed a healthy behavior associated with another type, like type 1 and morals. Type 1s have high moral standards. We could start labelling every single person out there who claims to have any kind of morals as a 1. Would that make a lot of sense? No. The vast majority of people have morals to some degree.

My point here is that every single one of the nine enneagram types have a seemingly “healthy” behavior that they’re good at, because of an “unhealthy” behavior that’s forcing them in that direction. The type is defined by the unhealthy behavior, not the seemingly healthy one. (I’m saying “seemingly” because on it’s head, the behavior might look healthy, but for the type in question, it won’t be. However, for other types, that same behavior will be healthy, since it’s not being done to an unhealthy degree because of an underlying unhealthy behavior.)

3. No allowances made for hexad types

So, with all that attachment stuff in mind, I’ve seen two things happen, the first being that hexad types are given very rigid type descriptions. A healthier variant of a hexad type doesn’t seem to be allowed. Anyone who deviates from those very rigid, hexad type descriptions is declared a mistype. You see (spoiler alert), attachment types can look like any type, but hexad types can’t ever look like attachment types at all. They have to look exactly like their standard type description. If you’re a hexad type, you have to be a maladapted stereotype. Otherwise (if the hexad type is not a maladapted stereotype), they get plugged into type 6 or 9…which leads me to the second thing.

4. Types 9 and 6 are catch-alls

Types 9 and 6 are typically seen as the most “normal”. Many descriptions depict a fairly ordinary person, with some attention, of course, given to their unhealthy coping mechanism. However, types 9 and 6 apparently have a lot of give to them, from a description standpoint. Supposedly, types 9 and 6 can look like any other type out there, just with that pesky little additional behavior of yielding to other people. Of course, this means that any “recovering” hexad type gets labelled an attachment type, any semi-healthy individual gets labelled an attachment type, any non-traumatized individual, etc. It doesn’t matter if they don’t display the unhealthy motivation of types 9 or 6, but they have that healthy yielding behavior, so they obviously must be type 9 or 6. That’s what matters most.

Supposedly, the vast majority of people are 9s and 6s. Given what I’ve seen, it makes perfect sense that people would think that. Most well-adjusted people will be reinterpreted as a type 9 or 6 at some point, adding to the hoards of 6s and 9s. I’ve actually seen people state that attachment types are far less psychologically screwed up than hexad types. That feels like it defeats that purpose of Enneagram. Aren’t all the types supposed to be depicting an extremely unhealthy coping mechanism? Why is type 6 and 9 getting watered down? Oh, right, we need to be able to account for everyone in a system that is specifically geared for the traumatized, without making certain types feel less special.

If the vast majority of people are actually 6s and 9s, and they can look like any type, they should have more subtypes, otherwise the type itself is meaningless.

…But really, we probably just need to imagine a world where hexad types can look/act more like normal people.