One of the strange things about working with the Enneagram is discovering that some of our greatest strengths are also the things keeping us stuck.
As a Seven, I’m very good at coming up with ideas. I can see possibilities, make connections between seemingly unrelated things, and synthesise information quickly.
These are genuine strengths. They’re part of what I love about myself.
But they’re also expressions of my Seven pattern. My attention naturally gravitates towards possibilities, interesting ideas and exciting futures.
And sometimes, that means I’m so busy imagining what’s possible that I’m not fully present with what’s happening.
So part of my Enneagram growth work involves learning to slow down, stay focused, and become more comfortable with limits.
Which sounds reasonable.
Except there’s another part of this story.
What if you’ve never been allowed to appreciate your strengths?
Growing up, I didn’t receive much positive feedback about my ability to generate ideas or tell stories.
Instead, I often got the message that being an impractical dreamer wasn’t nearly as valuable as being a practical doer. That my storytelling could hurt people. And that focusing on what I wanted was selfish.
I internalised those messages.
I dreamed of a career where I could play with ideas all day. Perhaps working at a design agency like IDEO, or facilitating creative workshops using Lego.
But those didn’t seem like sensible career choices.
So I pursued more conventional paths in law, accounting and consulting, while secretly longing for somewhere I could be valued for the very qualities I’d learned to dismiss.
Now imagine I’d gone to an Enneagram coach and explained that I was struggling to focus because I had too many exciting ideas.
They might have encouraged me to choose one, set aside the others, and explore my fear of being limited.
And from an Enneagram perspective, that would make sense.
But something important would have been missing.
I hadn’t yet learned to fully appreciate my ability to generate ideas. I’d spent years believing it was a problem, something frivolous or impractical that I needed to overcome.
Being told to limit it further could simply have reinforced that shame.
The growth advice wasn’t necessarily wrong. But the timing was.
Our strengths are part of our personality patterns
Each Enneagram type develops a particular focus of attention.
We become highly attuned to certain aspects of life, and over time, that attention helps us develop genuine capabilities.
A One notices what could be improved and develops discernment.
A Two notices what others need and becomes skilled at providing support.
A Three notices what leads to success and learns how to achieve results.
These aren’t false strengths. They’re real abilities we’ve developed, often through years of practice.
But our attention is selective.
When we’re constantly looking in one direction, we inevitably miss things happening elsewhere.
As a Seven, my ability to see possibilities can come at the expense of recognising limitations, disappointment or what’s already here.
The strength isn’t the problem.
It’s the unconscious dependence on that strength, and what our habitual focus of attention prevents us from seeing.
But there’s another complication. What happens when we’ve learned to feel ashamed of the very qualities our personality has developed?
What qualities have you learned to be ashamed of?
Each Enneagram type develops particular strengths through its habitual focus of attention. But that doesn’t mean those strengths were always welcomed or appreciated by the people around us.
Sometimes we received positive feedback for them. Other times, we learned that expressing those qualities was selfish, inappropriate, excessive, or simply not valuable.
For example, as a Seven, I love telling stories, generating ideas, and making connections between seemingly unrelated things.
But I didn’t always receive positive feedback for those qualities.
I learned that my storytelling could hurt people. That focusing on what I wanted was selfish. That being an imaginative dreamer wasn’t as valuable as being a practical doer.
And those messages shaped how comfortable I felt expressing these parts of myself.
Yet storytelling, imagination and self-referencing are all important aspects of my Seven pattern. They’re qualities I need to be able to recognise and accept in myself before I can explore how my habitual dependence on them might be limiting me.
And this applies to every type.
Type One: You might have been criticised for being too particular or always wanting things done properly.
Type Two: You might have learned that your generosity was intrusive, or that you were too concerned with being liked.
Type Three: You might have been told you were showing off whenever you celebrated your achievements.
Type Four: You might have been criticised for being too sensitive, emotional or dramatic.
Type Five: You might have learned that your curiosity, need for privacy or desire to understand things was strange or antisocial.
Type Six: You might have been told you worried too much, asked too many questions, or were unnecessarily suspicious.
Type Seven: You might have been called selfish, irresponsible or impractical for pursuing what interested you.
Type Eight: You might have been told you were too bossy, intense or controlling when you were trying to protect someone.
Type Nine: You might have been criticised for being too accommodating, passive or focused on supporting everyone else.
Of course, these qualities can become limiting when we express them automatically or excessively.
And sometimes the criticism we received wasn’t entirely unfounded. Our behaviour may genuinely have affected other people.
But that doesn’t mean the underlying quality was wrong or something we should be ashamed of.
What if we’ve spent our lives feeling ashamed of these parts of ourselves?
How can we explore our tendency to be protective if we’ve never been allowed to appreciate our protective instincts?
How can we examine our self-focus if we’ve spent years believing that wanting things for ourselves is selfish?
Or explore our tendency to accommodate others if we’ve never recognised the genuine value in our ability to support them?
Before we can become less dependent on these qualities, we may need to give ourselves permission to have them.
We can’t loosen what we’re still ashamed of
This is where I think healing and growth become inseparable.
If you’ve spent years feeling ashamed of a particular quality, being told that it’s part of your ego pattern may simply reinforce the belief that something about you is wrong.
And that can make it harder to examine the pattern with curiosity.
For me, I needed to recognise that my love of ideas, storytelling and following my interests weren’t things I had to apologise for.
They were genuine parts of myself that deserved a place in my life.
Only then could I begin to explore how my dependence on these qualities was sometimes limiting me.
I could appreciate my creativity and still recognise when I was using it to avoid discomfort.
I could enjoy telling stories while becoming more aware of how they affected other people.
And I could acknowledge my own desires without needing to pursue every exciting possibility.
That’s an important distinction.
We’re not trying to get rid of our strengths. We’re learning to use them more consciously, rather than allowing our habitual patterns to decide when and how we use them.
And sometimes that means healing the shame we’ve attached to those qualities before we can begin loosening our dependence on them.
What might you need to reclaim?
As you consider the strengths associated with your Enneagram type, I’d invite you to think about your childhood.
Which of your natural qualities were celebrated?
Which ones were criticised or discouraged?
Which parts of yourself did you learn to hide, apologise for, or express only when they were useful to someone else?
And are there strengths you’ve become so dependent on that it’s difficult to imagine who you’d be without them?
You might discover that you need to spend some time reclaiming a quality before you’re ready to explore how it’s limiting you.
Or you might already feel confident in that strength and be ready to examine what your focus on it causes you to overlook.
Neither starting point is better.
What matters is recognising where you are, rather than assuming there’s one prescribed development pathway everyone of your type should follow.
Because the Enneagram isn’t asking us to become less capable, less creative, less caring or less ourselves.
It’s inviting us to appreciate the strengths we’ve developed, recognise the limitations of our habitual focus, and discover the parts of ourselves that have been waiting outside our usual field of attention.