Our guest, Ian Cron, is an Episcopal priest, a trained psychotherapist, and author and expert on the Enneagram. His book “The Road Back to You” is a key resource for understanding the Enneagram. Ian recently shared how this personality tool can be part of our healing journey. Ian discovered the Enneagram in 1994 through a book written by Richard Rohr from a Christian perspective. The Enneagram started as a spiritual formation tool used by Evagrius Ponticus, a desert father, in the 8th or 9th century. Much later it began being used by Jesuits and then beyond that into more common use. In brief, the Enneagram is a personality theory that identifies nine different types, each of which is characterized by a dominant motivation or need.

The Enneagram Types in Summary

Type Ones are called perfectionists. They have an unconscious motivation or need to perfect themselves, others, and the world.

Type Twos are called helpers. They are motivated by a need to be needed, loved, and appreciated.

Type Threes are called performers. They are motivated by a need to succeed, to appear successful, and to avoid failure at all costs.

Type Fours are called romantics or individualists. They are motivated by a need to be special and unique. Fours have a perception that they are missing something essential in their core makeup and the only way they can recover it is by projecting an image of specialness or uniqueness or specialness.

Type Fives are called investigators. They are motivated by a need to conserve energy, to gather knowledge and information as a way to fend off feelings of inadequacy or ineptitude.

Type Sixes are called the loyalists. They are motivated by a need to have safety, security, and support.

Type Sevens are called enthusiasts. They are the joy bombs of the Enneagram. They are motivated by a need to avoid painful or distressing feelings by chasing after and planning adventures, escapades, and a future filled with unlimited possibilities.

Type Eights are called challengers. They are motivated by a need to assert strength and control over the environment or over others as a way to mask feelings of vulnerability or tenderness in themselves.

Type Nines are called the peacemakers, sometimes the sweethearts of the enneagram. They are motivated by a need to preserve inner and outer peace, to avoid conflict at all costs, and to maintain their connection to others.

The Enneagram as a Way to Understand Ourselves and Others 

We can use the Enneagram as a way to understand ourselves and others better and we can use it as a tool to promote healing. Sometimes people will find out their type and take it no further but it really can be used in a profound way as a powerful spiritual technology designed to help people experience deep personal healing and change.

Ian says we aren’t actually our personality type. We aren’t a “one” or a “two”, rather, the word personality is derived from the word “persona” which means mask. Our personality is made up of adaptive strategies, coping mechanisms, early childhood programming, some temperament hardwiring, but for the most part, it is the way we learn as a child to move through the world and get your needs met. Your personality is in large measure a ‘cover story”. The Enneagram reveals to you who you are behind your personality. You are not your personality. You have a personality. There is an original essence that had to adopt a mask to survive but the mask that helps you survive in childhood will kill you in adulthood. If you continue to use those survival strategies, they work against you as an adult.

The Enneagram reveals the “imposter” of our personality. When we do the personal work of the Enneagram, we remain the same person who is still motivated by the need of our type but we gain freedom from using those coping strategies in unhealthy ways. Interestingly, notes Cron, each of the nine motivations...