Have you ever read an Enneagram type description and thought, that’s definitely not me?
Perhaps someone suggested you might be a Two, but you’ve never thought of yourself as particularly helpful or nurturing.
Or you’ve ruled out Nine because you’re comfortable confronting people.
But what if your understanding of what it means to be a Two or a Nine is part of what’s creating the confusion?
One of the reasons mistyping and misunderstandings about the Enneagram are so common is language.
We use words like helpful, assertive, ambitious, emotional and conflict avoidant as though we all understand them in the same way.
But we don’t.
And unfortunately, getting a definition from the dictionary won’t necessarily clear things up.
Let me show you what I mean.
Imagine a teacup.
You’re probably picturing one you’ve seen already. Maybe in your cupboard, one your grandmother owned, or maybe the one the Queen used when having tea with Paddington Bear.
Rather than inventing an image from scratch, our brains pull from existing content and context first.
And that content and context is personal to us and our lived experienced. It’s subjective.
Which means, while we’re all imagining a teacup, none of us are imagining the same teacup.
We each have a slightly different mental model.
But as each teacup has tangible similarities, a looped handle attached to a vessel that can hold hot liquids, when we talk about a teacup there is enough overlap in our mental models to generally avoid misunderstandings.
(This idea of mental models, tea cups, misunderstandings and mistyping was first shared with me from Antonia Dodge from Personality Hacker while I was training as a profiler in 2018.)
So now imagine love.
What picture formed in your mind?
Was it hugging a partner, playing with a child, taking a cooked meal to a sick friend?
Was it creating a garden for local flora and fauna?
Was it sitting with someone as they lay dying?
There’s so many variations of what love means. Which creates a lot of nuance in our mental models for love.
Which is great for poetry and love songs, but can create confusion when we talk about love without appreciating that we’re using different mental models.
The ancient Greeks tried to solve this by creating words to represent these different types of love. Familial love, passionate love, deep friendship, universal love, playful love, enduring love, self love, obsessive love and so on.
In modern times, we may not immediately recognize these as love, but we do have an existing mental model for each of them.
They may form part of your overall mental model for love or they may not.
What is true, is your mental models will all be different to mine, to the people you spend time with, even the people you love.
Unlike teacups, there is no universal image for love.
When we talk about love, it’s easy to assume we’re operating from the same mental model. But we’re not.
It’s possible to have very little crossover in our mental models about what love is or isn’t.
It’s very easy to fall into the trap of thinking we’re talking about the same thing, when we’re actually having a very different conversation.
This is why language is key.
Words aren’t just words. While they may have a simple definition in the dictionary, but in our minds they are linked to complex mental models. Models of memories, feelings, beliefs, frameworks, sensations, images, smells, sounds, and more.
And its not appreciating that our mental models are different that create confusion.
How does this apply to the Enneagram?
In the Enneagram there are nine well defined types. It’s easy to think that when we’re talking about a Type 9, we’re all talking about the same thing. But we’re not, at least not at first.
When we first learn about the Enneagram our brain has to build a new mental model of what each type is and isn’t.
It has to build that model from scratch, but it doesn’t do that by carefully weighing the definition of each element, considering how it differs for each type, creating unique examples representative for each of the nine types.
That would take too long, consume too much energy for as yet an unknown pay off.
So our brains use shortcuts.
They build these mental models for each of the nine types out of existing parts.
It takes the key words for each type, connects its existing mental models for each one, chooses the bits that seem relevant and blending them together.
Then it makes a quick sketch of how it believes that archetypal pattern would look and act.
Then compares everything to that sketch.
Your sketch and my sketch are different.
Which means when you and I are talking about a type we’re not talking about the type, because we’re using different sketches, we just think we are.
Because the nine types are well documented from different sources, it leads us to think we’re talking about the same thing.
But internally our sketches of each type will be built based on our different life experiences, the friends we’ve had of each type, and the way our teachers taught us the Enneagram.
Some of us might never have returned to an initial sketch, it might remain a simple outline for the rest of our lives.
Others might have spend time colouring it in. Time spent learning about the types from different sources and listening to panels of different types as they share their stories and struggles.
Others might have started to refine the initial sketch into a more mature drawing. Researching or coaching types from different cultural backgrounds and contexts. Maybe being in a inner work group with people with a range of types and experiences. Being able to recognise the differences of the 27 subtypes.
Some have spent years becoming a master of shading and dimension. Teaching the depth of the Enneagram over years or decades. Developing a nuance for recognising energy patterns, not to type someone quickly, but from having built a complex understanding of all the variations in a type as well as the similarities.
And here’s another complication. Spending more time with the Enneagram doesn’t automatically make our sketches more accurate. We can spend years reinforcing an incomplete picture if we keep reading similar descriptions or learning from people who share our assumptions.
Sometimes the most valuable thing is meeting someone who doesn’t fit our sketch at all. That’s when we discover what we haven’t understood.
But regardless, when we talking about a type, it’s through the lens of our sketches at that time, whether it’s rough or detailed.
We all hold a mental model of each type, a mental model that is both correct and incorrect.
Which is one of the reasons for mistyping and misunderstandings about Enneagram types and ourselves.
We all avoid conflict.
For example, if you’ve always thought of yourself as conflict avoidant, you might identify with the Nine description immediately.
But perhaps you avoid conflict because you worry about behaving incorrectly, disappointing someone, or losing options.
Those are very different motivations.
And unless your mental model of Nine includes the difference between avoiding disagreement and losing contact with your own position, you might not realise there’s anything worth questioning.
You were sitting next to a friend when the teacher says, “Nines avoid conflict.” You look at each other as your brains whirl into action trying to recall all the times you avoided conflict.
Updating our mental models
Instead of assuming we have the full picture about each type or about ourselves or anyone we know, a more useful place to start is to question or test our existing assumptions about what a type is or isn’t.
How can someone test whether their sketch is accurate?
I’d suggest three ways:
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Question the words you use to describe a type. If you think Ones are perfectionists, what exactly do you mean by perfectionism? Are you thinking about meticulous behaviour, or the underlying need to be correct and good?
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Look for examples that challenge your sketch. Explore how different subtypes express the same type, particularly those who don’t resemble the stereotypical description.
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Compare motivations rather than just behaviours. When you recognise a behaviour in yourself, explore what’s driving it before assuming it confirms your type.
The more willing we are to question and refine our mental models of the nine types, the more accurately we can recognise the patterns beneath our behaviour. And the more precise our understanding becomes, the more effectively we can use the Enneagram for genuine inner work.