How We Relate: Understanding God, Yourself and Others Through the Enneagram

How We Relate: Understanding God, Yourself and Others Through the Enneagram

Note: The Love Thy Neighborhood podcast is made for the ear, and not the eye. We would encourage you to listen to the audio for the full emotional emphasis of this episode. The following transcription may contain errors. Please refer to the audio before quoting any content from this episode. 

AUDIO CLIPS: Love Thy Neighborhood… Discipleship and missions for modern times.

JESSE EUBANKS: Hey guys, it’s Jesse. Today’s episode of the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast is going to be a special one. Just a couple of weeks ago, I released my very first book – How We Relate: Understanding God, Yourself, and Others Through the Enneagram. And my publisher was generous enough to let us share with you the introduction and the first two chapters of the audiobook version, and so today’s episode is going to be exactly that. You’ll have a chance to preview my book. If you do find that the book is helpful and you are curious about what comes next, if it leaves off at a cliffhanger and you wanna know what’s coming, you can buy the audiobook version wherever it is that you get your audiobooks or you can head over to HowWeRelateBook.com. So here it is – the introduction and the first two chapters of How We Relate: Understanding God, Yourself, and Others Through the Enneagram.

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Introduction: How We Relate Is How We Relate 

If you want a meaningful life, invest in your relationships.

Years ago, I was sitting in a circle of chairs with about a dozen other men. We were in a cold room on the third floor of an old elementary school that had been turned into a church. It was the edge of springtime, gloomy outside. The leader was encouraging us to each share a burden that we’d been carrying for a long time and couldn’t seem to get past. Sitting with a small group of people talking about their burdens can be excruciating, but he said doing so takes the shame away because we see that others aren’t judging us. Oh, if only they knew the firing squad I had stationed at the ready in my head. 

As each man shared, I foolishly assumed I could pinpoint their issue within the first 60 seconds. One guy felt insecure at work and wasn’t sure what to do about a coworker. Problem: He was insecure. Solution: Be more confident. One guy was having marriage problems. Problem: He had anger issues. Solution: Stop yelling at your wife. One guy was wealthy and wanted to use his money wisely to help people. Problem: You’re rich. Solution: I’m not, and you have the power to fix that. 

When it finally circled around to me, I suddenly felt hazy. It was like fog had filled my head, and I could only make out vague shadows and abstracts of light. All clarity was just gone. I started fumbling around in the dark, trying to explain my problem. I rambled about how ministry hadn’t been going well for a long time, how my neighbors didn’t seem interested in me, how I had sacrificed for God but he wasn’t doing much with that sacrifice. As I spoke, I became more animated and emotive. I don’t really remember what I said over the next fifteen minutes, but I do remember the recoiled silence in the room when I concluded my sharing time by yelling, “… and that’s why I’m mad at God!” As I once heard someone say, “Sometimes anger is how the truth escapes jail.” 

I was as shocked as anyone else. Until that moment, I had no idea I was so resentful. I honestly thought of myself as pretty easygoing, hopeful, and in tune with my emotions. I suddenly realized I had been avoiding the truth. The ideas I had about myself were not consistent with who I really was. I was resentful toward God. I was also resentful toward others and especially toward myself. The gap between my dreams of how life could be and the reality I was trapped in had grown bigger than I could hold. My grip was slipping, and the scariest thing was that I had no idea it was happening. 

Have you ever experienced this? Are you able to see the problems and solutions of others with clarity but suffer from blindness when it comes to yourself?

Self-clarity is difficult to obtain and not for the faint of heart. Moving beyond the surface level and into the recesses of our soul is a terrifying journey. We’re scared of what we will find and scared of who or what might be down there. Jesus tells us that knowing him and walking with him will lead to truth, and that truth will set us free (John 8:31-32). However, we believe if we discover the truth about ourselves, we’ll be swallowed by shame and humiliation. To desire self-clarity is to risk seeing ourselves, not for who we want to be, but for who we really are. It’s easier to stay asleep to the truth. Self-clarity wakes us up. 

At the time I was sitting in that cold room on the third floor, other areas of my life weren’t going well either. My marriage was unhappy. I was consistently overwhelmed and aggravated as a new parent. The nonprofit where I worked was on the verge of bankruptcy. To top it off, our ministry spent days publicly telling people about the love of Jesus while privately bickering and mistrusting each other. I was burned-out, and my relationship with God was on autopilot. Relational trust and intimacy were at an all-time low in my life. 

But I wasn’t the only one who was affected. My wife felt unsupported by me. My kids felt nervous around me because of my temper. My coworkers felt frustrated by my incessant need to reinvent the wheel and innovate, even when it wasn’t necessary. And I was blind to all of it. I saw everyone else as the problem. But as it turns out, I was playing a much bigger role than I wanted to admit.

There’s a question that humanity has been wrestling with since the dawn of time: “What is the purpose of life?” If I could be so bold, I would like to humbly submit my answer: The purpose of life is relationships.

The phrase “one another” occurs one hundred times in the New Testament. Almost sixty of those occurrences are commands about how we relate to one another. Examples from this lengthy list include callings to “love one another,” “be devoted to one another,” and “care for one another.”

In other words, God’s great desire for you is to love and be loved.

However, we have a problem – a relational problem. Let me illustrate: What do you think is the number one cause of missionaries leaving the field?

If you’re like me, you likely assume it’s due to issues like persecution, lack of funding, or even illness. As it turns out, none of those are correct. The number one reason Christians leave the mission field is conflict with other Christians.

That’s right. Sometimes even spiritual superheroes want to break someone’s nose. But this isn’t just a problem in the mission field. I’d venture to say that this is also the reason Christians leave marriages, leave churches, and leave friendships. Often, the problem is not the world; the problem is us. We don’t know how to do relationships. 

This is especially tragic for us as Christians because if you ask anyone with basic Bible knowledge, they’ll tell you that the Scriptures can be summarized by Jesus’ words in the gospel of Matthew: Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus tells us that all of life is about loving and being loved in relationships.

Richard Rohr once wrote, “How we relate to God always reveals how we will relate to people, and how we relate to people is an almost infallible indicator of how we relate to God and let God relate to us. The whole Bible is a school of relationship.”

Did you catch that? How we relate is how we relate. 

Each of us has a relational style – our one way that we approach doing relationships – and we apply it to everyone, even God. This is why the Scriptures tell us that we can’t love God if we don’t love others and that when we love others we also love God (Matthew 25:31-46; 1 John 4:7-8). It’s why we’re told in Mark 12 to “love your neighbor as yourself” (verse 31). How we relate is how we relate. 

This is why understanding our style of relating is critical. 

Sitting in that cold room, I looked around and realized I needed better relationships. I was desperate. I was willing to do whatever was necessary. So I started going to counseling and I found some guys to meet with on a weekly basis where I could practice vulnerability and receiving feedback.

One of the awful things that I had to face about myself was my own lack of self-awareness. I hadn’t been able to see how my style of relating to others was impacting my life. I quickly learned that being oblivious about myself made it harder for me to have robust relationships. As hard as I tried, I simply didn’t have the tools for the level of self-clarity or empathy that others needed from me. It was at this low point in my life that my counselor introduced me to a tool that helped me grow closer to God and others, and even be less afraid of the truth about myself. It was a tool called the Enneagram. 

The Enneagram 

The Enneagram is a system of personality typing that describes patterns in how people perceive, process, and present. The basic idea is that our personalities are composed of our emotions, thoughts, and actions. Ennea means “nine,” and gram means “points.” There are nine different personality types – each driven by a different desire. These desires are so powerful that they forge our personality and distinguish one personality type from another. The Enneagram attempts to map out all of this in a way that is easy to understand while resisting the temptation to reduce people into caricatures. 

Unlike other personality systems that box people into a rigid framework, the Enneagram looks at a wide array of traits that go into our personalities. Each person has a core type – a primary center that drives them. However, we each pull in traits from the other types as well. Imagine your core type as your favorite black coffee. The characteristics you pull in from the other types are the creamers that give your drink the specific taste that you prefer. Each person is a unique mixture of all nine types. No two personalities are identical.

So, how does this help with the problem of our relationships? The Enneagram allows us to see that everyone has different ways of perceiving, processing, and presenting. Understanding that each of us is driven by different core needs improves our empathy so that we don’t assume people are intentionally hurting us or trying to just drive us crazy.

The origins of the Enneagram are mysterious and often contested. Some say that it came from the early church in the fourth century. Others say that it was primarily developed in the last hundred years. It’s not really clear, but what is clear is that, with such a broad list of contributors (both Christian and not), the Enneagram is best understood not as a “Christian” tool, but as a human tool. Like economics, medicine, or astronomy, the category is neutral. What we do within that category determines how compatible it is with Christian faith. I’m grateful for the tool of the Enneagram and how it has helped me in my relationship with God, others, and myself. 

Since my days of yelling about God to other men in an old elementary school, I have become an Enneagram coach. I spent years reflecting on the Enneagram – teaching workshops, hosting The EnneaCast (a podcast about the Enneagram), interviewing some of the best authors and teachers available, and doing private coaching. From my own life, as well as from the lives that I’ve walked with, I’m convinced the Enneagram can be a useful tool that God uses to show us a path toward better relationships. 

Many people have used the Enneagram purely for diagnostic purposes without engaging the call to transformation. It’s important to understand that the Enneagram is not an excuse for poor conduct. We can’t say, “I’m not bullying them – I’m just an Eight,” or “I’m not overreacting – I’m just a Four.” If a diagnosis reveals we are sick, it is our responsibility to pursue a treatment plan, not revel in our illness. Nor is the Enneagram meant to reduce people to simply a type. In fact, we have qualities from all nine types to greater or lesser degrees. When used well, the Enneagram allows for the complexity of humanity and enables transformation. It’s because of this that I hope to offer three distinct contributions to the Enneagram. 

The Enneagram Needs Your Story

It’s impossible to understand your Enneagram profile apart from your life story. In fact, your Enneagram can only be interpreted through your life story. Like all great stories, each chapter of your life has built on the one that came before it – leading you to where you are now. If you only have the Enneagram, you have only half the equation. We need both to have self-clarity. This is why I often say “Enneagram + Life Story = Clarity.”

I’ve arranged the content of this book in a narrative structure: beginning with childhood, then exploring the nurturing of your False Self (more on this later), then reflecting on your encounter with Jesus, and culminating in the redemption of your True Self (more on this later too). 

This structure may at first glance seem to oversimplify the complexities of life, but seeing your life clearly as a narrative is helpful. I like a good, exciting story and I want to give yours the arc it deserves. 

The Enneagram Needs Jesus

The Enneagram cannot save you. It has no magical powers and no relational interest in you. The Enneagram cannot love you into wholeness. However, there is someone who can. 

I’ve been on the edge of faith more times than I can count, but the person who always brings me back is Jesus. I have never met anyone more thrilling, beautiful, strong, or merciful than Jesus. He is too dynamic to be an invention and too wonderful to be just a man.

In this book, we’ll explore two aspects of Jesus – his empathy and his authority. Why? We give our trust to someone when we believe they truly understand our problems and they have to show a mastery of how to overcome those problems. In other words, “Empathy + Authority = Trust.” One of the marvels of Christian faith is the belief that God understands and shares our pain. We worship the God who empathizes. If this is true, then Jesus empathizes with each of the nine types. Does he stop merely at empathy? No. We’ll also explore how Jesus models his mastery of personality and why he commands our attention. I am convinced that when we recognize that Jesus understands our pain and also recognize his demonstration of authority over our lives, we will give him our trust and foster a deeper and even more life-changing relationship with him and others.

The Enneagram Needs the Gospel

Pastor and theologian Tim Keller says, “The Gospel is good news, not good advice.” Traditional Enneagram teachers instruct that being virtuous leads to a happier life. In other words, works produce salvation. However, Christian faith teaches that good news – the gospel of Jesus – frees us to become virtuous – salvation produces works. I am far more interested in giving you good news. If we do not recognize the good news that Jesus has for us, we may accidentally think we are free, while in reality we have replaced one set of chains for another. 

What is this good news? It’s the news that your wounds can be healed and your sins forgiven. Every parent knows that each of their children requires a unique approach and that love takes a different shape for each child. In the same way, I believe that God has a special message for you based on your personality. The gospel of Jesus is a diamond – a multifaceted collection of good news with diverse personal and social implications. While all nine types need the entirety of the gospel, I suspect that different angles of this diamond will pierce each of our hearts in a remarkable and touching way. God customizes his love for you. 

What Do You Want?

If the purpose of life is relationships – to love God and love others – why wouldn’t you want to keep growing? You’re putting your relationships at risk if you stay where you are. If you stay here, you’re like I was in that small group years ago, surprised by my anger at God and my distance from others. You’re in danger of continuing to misunderstand others and be misunderstood yourself. You run the risk of missing out on seeing God’s customized love for you and embracing more of the abundant life he’s offering.

God worked through the Enneagram to bring healing and flourishing to my relationships. I believe the Enneagram can change your life just as much as it has changed mine. 

To feel loved, you must be known. To be known, you must share yourself. To share yourself, you must know yourself. Come and see who you are.

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Chapter 1: Created for Community

The soul expresses itself as personality. Personality expresses itself in relationships. 

I run an organization called Love Thy Neighborhood. Among other things, we recruit young adults from all over the world to relocate to our city to live together in impoverished neighborhoods and serve with understaffed urban ministries. We’re like the Peace Corps but with Bibles. In my nearly two decades of working with young adults doing missions and discipleship, there’s one story that I’ve heard over and over again. It goes something like this.

A young adult named James comes to give a year of his life to serving the marginalized and being an urban missionary. And those really are the two things on his mind – service and evangelism. To James, these are the most important things about his time with LTN.

But then James starts to experience something else. In his first week, he’s asked to share his entire life story – from birth to present – with his new household. As the weeks go by, he has dinner with his fellow missionaries at least twice a week. Once a week they get together and spend a couple of hours updating one another on how their lives are going – their highs, their burdens, their worries – and pray for one another. They serve together, worship together, and do life together. James finds himself spending just as much, if not more, time with his fellow missionaries as he does engaging in missions or discipleship. 

And at the end of his year of service, James is noticeably different. He is more vibrant than when he first came. He’s more patient, more vulnerable, and more attuned to the people around him. He actually takes time to listen to people instead of just thinking about what he’s going to say next in the conversation. Instead of seeing neighbors merely as projects, he now sees them as friends and people who have their own stories and dreams. And the day before James leaves to go back home, he comes up to me and says, “I figured out why I’m so different than when I first came. I never realized how lonely I was before. I never realized how important community is to living a full Christian life.”

The thing that impacted James the most wasn’t the books he read or the projects he completed. What changed his life was community – loving and being loved. Through LTN, I’ve seen over and over again that without community we are anemic versions of ourselves. We need people around us in order to thrive. 

Somehow we’ve become accustomed to loneliness. This isn’t what we were made for. 

The book of Genesis says, “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (1:27). 

What does this mean? 

This is where the notion of imago Dei comes from. Every human being is made in the image of God. Sort of like you have mannerisms, expressions, or physical features that resemble your mom or dad, being made in the image of God means that you intrinsically bear a resemblance to him in your essence. You might have your mom’s eyes but you have God’s image. This is what the Scriptures call the soul. This image is immaterial, eternal, and extremely valuable. 

This essence brings with it a built-in design feature: you are relational. Let’s think about the Trinity for a moment: God is three distinct persons as Father, Son, and Spirit – eternally loving each other. This is how we can say that “God is love” (1 John 4:8). In their book The Relational Soul, Richard Plass and James Cofield write, “God can only be love if God exists as a community.” Love requires relationships. So God is relational. Being made in the likeness of God means your soul exists for the purpose of being in a loving relationship with God and other people.

God designed your relational soul to express itself through your personality. As we discussed in the introduction, personality can be described as “the way that we perceive, process, and present.” In other words, you see the world in a way that is unique to you, process your experiences through your own methods, and then present to the world with a particular style.

As you present your personality to the world, you will do so in three ways: through your emotions, your thoughts, and your actions. It’s what you feel, what you think, and what you do. 

When God designed us, he intended for our personality to be well-rounded. Imagine your personality to be like spokes on a tire. God planned for it to look like a perfectly round wheel. However, each of us knows that that is no longer the case. Instead, it looks like a car ran over your bike. While some spokes are in excellent condition, others are broken and deformed and could put someone’s eye out. Even if you can still ride the bike, the experience is going to be bumpy at best. How did this deformation happen? 

Fear, Guilt, and Shame

God wanted a deep relationship with us. Because the foundation of any healthy relationship is trust, God wanted us to trust him. He wanted us to trust his intentions, his methods, and his timing. He wanted us to trust that he was with us and for us. Instead of trusting God, we became mistrusting. We backed over the wheel of our soul. 

Every healthy relationship is built on the foundation of trust. Without trust, the relationship begins to fracture. In the Garden of Eden, we committed the original sin – mistrust. We mistrusted God and began to take matters into our own hands. Humanity fell, and paradise slipped from our grip. Adam and Eve manifested the first expressions of our underlying emotions of fear, guilt, and shame. Fear tells us that we are in constant danger of losing something precious. Guilt tells us that we are culpable for the sinful actions or inactions that we’ve committed. Shame tells us that we are defective and that our exposure will humiliate us. This pain is too great to bear, so we devise tactics to survive and manipulate. We see all of this on display in Adam and Eve. 

In their fear, they hide (Genesis 3:8). 

In their guilt, they blame (Genesis 3:12-13). 

In their shame, they cover themselves (Genesis 3:7). 

These same emotions are still active in our life today. They have affected our family of origin, our life choices, and our experiences. Our culture, our DNA, our gender, our ethnicity – all of life has been distorted by these three underlying emotions. 

Like Adam and Eve, we devise tactics to survive these emotions and manipulate our experiences. We try to find solutions to our problems that don’t require us to trust God. These underlying emotions produce a unique deadly sin for each personality within the Enneagram. We will see that for each type, the deadly sin does not feel like sin. Instead, it likely feels comforting, familiar, and reasonable. It’s like we are drinking bleach because we’ve grown to prefer the taste over fresh water. And we can’t see that it’s killing us. 

We are guilty because of the sins that we commit. We are wounded because of the sins committed against us. And sadly, we commit our greatest sins out of our deepest wounds.

We’re no longer the way that we were intended to be. While our souls still contain the essence of the imago Dei, these distortions are now present within us and make themselves known in our personalities. Because of this, a civil war is raging inside our soul. 

Your True Self and False Self

We have a part of ourselves that remembers and reflects our true self in Christ and another part of us that is our False Self – determined to have its independence from God. Some people, using the Apostle Paul’s words, refer to this as the Spirit and the flesh (Romans 7:4-6). Whatever you call it, this warfare between these two selves is raging within us 24-7. 

Your True Self is the part of you that desires healthy relational connection with others. When this True Self manifests in your personality, it is the clearest glimpse of the imago Dei in you – reflecting the character, traits, and presence of God to the world. This is who you are “in Christ” and who God intended you to be. 

However, as the distortions of your soul manifest in your personality, a False Self emerges. This part of us is convinced that compromises are necessary for survival. This False Self tells us that our needs won’t be met unless we let it take care of us. It tells us that God has abandoned us and that we don’t need him anyway. The False Self is both wounded and one that wounds. It’s your attempt to utilize sin to cope with sin. It’s like getting drunk today to cope with your guilt from getting drunk yesterday. It’s an adapted self that mistrusts God – a persona that rationalizes and excuses sin. It’s a prison that you lock yourself in. 

With both our True Self and False Self at play in our lives, we live as an Expressed Self. Our Expressed Self is both True and False, both resourceful and unresourceful, both free and enslaved. Our reality is not either-or but both-and. Your Personality and your Expressed Self are one and the same – full of goodness and evil, truth and distortions, strengths and scars.

Both our True Self and our False Self make themselves known in our relationships.

The quality of your life is determined by the quality of your relationships. This is why Jesus prayed for his followers, “I pray also for those who will believe in me, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:20-21). Jesus prayed that we would be capable of intimacy and community. 

How will the world know we are Christians? By our approach to relationships. 

When you show up for your relationships, what is your relational style? This is where the Enneagram can help.

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Chapter 2: The Enneagram

Everyone approaches relationships in their own way. What’s your style? 

There are stories from the Great Plains of farmers going out in the winter to care for their animals during a blizzard, only to get lost in the blinding snow on their way back to the house. They’d stumble their way forward, certain that their home was just a bit further ahead. Instead, each blind step would lead them farther away from shelter and safety. Their bodies would be discovered months later when spring arrived and the snow melted.

To keep themselves from a wandering death, farmers in the Great Plains began to tie a rope around their waist when they went outside. One end of the rope served as a belt, while the other end was tied to a post by their home. Whether it was a blizzard in the summer or a tornado in the spring, the farmer simply had to follow the rope to get back home. Though they were blind and disoriented, trusting the rope saved their lives. 

The rope couldn’t breathe life into the lungs of the farmer or tell them why they were a farmer, but it could definitely keep them from getting lost and point them in the right direction in the middle of a blizzard. The Enneagram is a rope that can help bring you back home. 

To uncover our relational style, we’ll first need to explore the basics of the Enneagram. 

What makes the Enneagram so useful? The Enneagram factors in both the spiritual and psychological complexity of people. It begins with the premise that no two people are the same. We are an unwieldy mixture of life experiences, motivations, longings, and interpersonal styles. We are the result of nature and nurture, of mystery and facts. A few years ago, one woman told me, “I used to avoid the Enneagram because I thought its goal was to put me in a box. In reality, the Enneagram helped me see how I put myself in the box.” The Enneagram gives us clues into the deeper terrain within our soul, where God is working to confront, affirm, and heal us. 

The Enneagram is a powerful diagnostic tool. Developed over thousands of years through a variety of people, it has become a highly useful guardian against self-deception. The Enneagram works like a mirror that reflects both our truthfulness and falsehood back to us. Its recent surge in popularity is due in large part to how easy it is to use while providing such robust insights. 

Like the Location Services on our phones that show us our bearings, the Enneagram has the ability to help us understand where we are in our relationships with other people and ourselves. It shows us the way other people experience us. The Enneagram helps us see many of the beliefs that fuel our actions and inactions, some we might not even be aware of. The self-awareness gained through the Enneagram gives us language to talk about our desires and our sins. In many ways, the Enneagram is also more about what we don’t see than what we do. It shows us our fixations as well as our blind spots. 

Likewise, the Enneagram increases our empathy for the personality and pain of others. How many times have we assumed people are doing things intentionally to hurt us when in reality it was a difference in the way that we perceive, process, and present? As Atticus Finch says in To Kill a Mockingbird, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” 

The Enneagram creates a road map to greater relational intimacy. So how does it work? 

The Triads

As we said previously, the soul expresses itself through personality. Though we are tempted to think of ourselves in simplistic terms such as, “I’m not emotional,” or, “I just go with my gut,” that’s actually untrue. Personality is composed of three ingredients: our actions, emotions, and thoughts. The Bible largely refers to these three ingredients as “the heart.” The biblical authors saw our actions, emotions, and thoughts as so intertwined – so inseparable – that they often referred to them through the singular term “the heart” – an ancient way of referring to personality.

Enneagram teachers use slightly different language. Instead of saying “the heart” as shorthand for our actions, emotions, and thoughts, they refer to these three ingredients as the triadic centers of intelligence, or triads for short. The Enneagram names these triads the Body Triad (which has to do with actions), the Heart Triad (which has to do with emotions), and the Head Triad (which has to do with thoughts). Just as the Bible says that we interpret and respond to the world through “the heart,” the Enneagram draws the same conclusion using different words. Elements from each of these triads combine to compose our personality.

There are a total of nine types within the Enneagram (more on that in a moment). Three of the types fall within the Body Triad, three within the Heart Triad, and three within the Head Triad. Each of us resides primarily within one of these triads. The triad in which a type is located reveals which aspect of our personality we rely on the most. In other words, there are people who prefer to interpret the world through their bodily instincts, others through their emotions, and still others through their minds. Each of us overemphasizes one of these aspects – thinking, doing, or feeling – and underutilizes the other two in the process. 

Additionally, though we are all impacted by fear, guilt, and shame, our triad tends to put special emphasis on one of these emotions in particular. So the Enneagram not only reveals whether you rely on your instincts, emotions, or thinking first, but it also shows you which negative emotion you are likely to wrestle with the most. The severity of these emotions come from what we believe we have lost – either our freedom, our identity, or our security. In turn, what has been lost leads each triad to be haunted by an existential question: Who am I?, Where am I?, or How am I doing? When left unhealed or unacknowledged, these underlying emotions and feelings of loss fuel our False Self. So, does this all seem a bit confusing? Well, let’s talk through each of the triads and see if we can clear things up.

The Body Triad

The Body Triad includes types Eight, Nine, and One. They process the world primarily through their gut instincts. As a result, their body language often communicates their true feelings before their brains can recognize what they feel. They present as being grounded in the moment and focused on overcoming the threats of life by pushing through to achieve their goals. They tend to hold their ground rather than adapt, and they are wrestling with the question, How am I doing? They have an overwhelming sense that they are not doing enough or that they’re doing the wrong things. And because they are highly aware of their actions and inactions, their primary underlying emotion is guilt.

People who reside in this triad tend to convert many of their negative emotions into anger. Some people in this triad often feel their anger far more readily than their guilt. Under this anger is often profound grief. They’re likely to perceive the world as coming against them and threatening their autonomy. When they’re resourceful, this triad pursues healthy independence. When they’re unresourceful, they resist being held accountable and they blame their problems on others. 

The Heart Triad 

The Heart Triad includes types Two, Three, and Four. People in this triad perceive the world as a series of interpersonal relationships. They process their experiences through their emotions.

These emotions can sometimes become big and overwhelming for them. They present themselves as highly relational people. They value what others want from them, and they often adapt to meet those needs. 

People in the Heart Triad are often grappling with the question, Who am I? Because this is a question about identity and the belief that theirs is either deformed or lacking, their primary underlying emotion is shame. At various levels, they are embarrassed about who they are, feel defective, and worry about being rejected by others. When they’re resourceful, people in the Heart Triad seek out healthy connections with others and themselves. When they’re unresourceful, they create personas.

The Head Triad

The Head Triad includes types Five, Six, and Seven. People in this triad tend to perceive the world as a series of complex obstacles to be navigated. They process the world primarily through their minds. As a result, they can often become out of touch with both their bodies and their emotions. They present themselves as observant, organized, and dependable. 

People in the Head Triad are haunted by the question, Where am I? They tend to be preoccupied with their relationships to information, safety, and pleasure. Their underlying emotion is fear. They are anxious and scared about the obstacles of life harming them. And to erase their fears and make them feel safe, people in this triad are always on the hunt for more resources and support. When they’re resourceful, they seek out and trust healthy support systems. When they’re unresourceful, they become obsessive and stifled by anxiety. 

Now that you understand the triads and which underlying emotion each gravitates toward, let’s look at the individual types.

The Nine Enneagram Types

The Enneagram breaks human personality down into nine types. Each of these types contains distinct personality characteristics. Every person contains elements of all nine types to greater or lesser degrees. However, we identify most readily with a single type. Whichever type we identify with the most is our core type.

All nine of the types have both resourceful True Self traits and unresourceful False Self traits. In addition, each type has a primary strategy – a way of pursuing the identity, security, or freedom that they are seeking. We’ll explore each type in depth in separate chapters, but for now, let’s take a look at an overview of the traits of all nine types.

Type One: The Reformer. The resourceful traits of Type Ones are that they are honest, hardworking, devoted to practical action, highly ethical, orderly, appropriate, and conscientious. The unresourceful traits of the Type One is that they can be judgmental, rigid, harsh, inflexible, demanding, conditional, micromanaging, critical, and controlling. Their primary strategy in handling the struggles of life is doing the right thing, and they are in the Body Triad.

Type Two: The Helper. The resourceful traits of the Type Two is that they are generous, supportive, encouraging, thoughtful, caregiving, compassionate, and sacrificial. The unresourceful traits of the Type Two is that they can be intrusive, possessive, codependent, people-pleasing, need to be needed, and angry. Their primary strategy for getting what they want is by helping others, and they are in the Heart Triad. 

Type Three: The Achiever. The resourceful traits of Type Three is that they are efficient, goal-oriented, communicators, driven, motivating, adaptable, successful, and competent. The unresourceful traits of Type Three is that they can be image-conscious, superficial, addicted to positive attention, shallow, inauthentic, and manipulative. Their primary strategy for getting what they need out of life is through succeeding, and they are in the Heart Triad. 

Type Four: The Originalist. The resourceful traits of the Type Four is that they are creative, expressive, deep, authentic, intense, they have a heightened sense of beauty, and they are emotionally intuitive. The unresourceful traits of the Type Four is that they can be overreactive, temperamental, dramatic, snobbish, dissatisfied, and constantly feel misunderstood. Their primary strategy for getting what they need out of life is by being unique, and they are in the Heart Triad.

Type Five: The Investigator. The resourceful traits for Type Five is that they are thinkers, they’re wise, objective, scholarly, perceptive, insightful, intelligent, witty, and reflective. The unresourceful traits of the Type Five is that they are relationally detached, non-responsive, isolated, reclusive, hoarding, and uncaring. Their primary strategy for getting what they need out of life is figuring it out, and they are in the Head Triad. 

Type Six: The Loyalist. The resourceful traits for the Type Six is that they are faithful, committed, responsible, prepared, dependable, systematic, honorable, and committed to security. The unresourceful traits for the Type Six is that they can be skeptical, a catastrophic thinker, anxious, self-doubting, uptight, rigid, wary, and reluctant. Their primary strategy for getting what they need out of life is through loyalty, and they are in the Head Triad. 

Type Seven: The Enthusiast. The resourceful traits for the Type Seven is that they are excited, joyful, they have a childlike wonder, they’re playful, they’re excitable, they are optimistic, curious, imaginative, and very funny. The unresourceful traits for the Type Seven is that they can be scattered, unreliable, escapist, pain-avoidant, uncommitted, irresponsible, juvenile, addicted, narcissistic, and demanding. Their primary strategy for getting what they need out of life is by enjoying life, and they are in the Head Triad.

Type Eight: The Protector. The resourceful traits for the Type Eight is that they are strong, they are leaders, they’re commanding, they’re prophetic, they’re assertive, they’re self-confident, they’re intense, they have high levels of energy, they’re empathetic, and they’re confident. The unresourceful traits of the Type Eight is that they can be aggressive, domineering, hostile, insensitive, controlling, vengeful, won’t listen, and always feel threatened. Their primary strategy for getting what they need out of life is by staying in control, and they are in the Body Triad. 

Type Nine: The Peacemaker. The resourceful traits for the Type Nine is that they are easygoing, calm, kind, accepting, thoughtful, reassuring, receptive, flexible, patient, and they are reconcilers. The unresourceful traits of the Type Nine is that they can be passive, stubborn, resigned, passive-aggressive, avoiding of conflict, procrastinating, and indecisive. Their primary strategy for getting what they need out of life is by cultivating harmony, and they are in the Body Triad. 

Three more important thoughts regarding the types: First, while there is a great deal of debate about the age at which our type forms, almost all teachers agree that it is formed by early adulthood at the latest. The degree to which we are either born our type or our environment forms our type remains a mystery. Two children can experience the same events and be different types, so we cannot attribute our personality to our childhood alone. All we can say is that both nature (our DNA) and nurture (our life experiences) play a significant role, and that by the time that we reach young adulthood, we have solidified into our core type. 

Second, our core type never changes. Some people may identify as a different type in the future, but that is not because their core type changed. Rather, they gained more self-clarity about their core motivations and way of relating. They are simply going from “mis-typed” to their correct core type. 

Third, a quick note about the order of the types in this book. You will notice that the next chapter begins with type Eight as opposed to type One, and this is because I’ve arranged the content by triad. So we will begin in the Body Triad (types Eight, Nine, and One) before moving on to the Heart Triad (types Two, Three, and Four) and concluding with the Head Triad (types Five, Six, and Seven). 

With these things in mind, it’s time to discover the way you relate. 

How To Discover Your Type

When it comes to figuring out your type, here are a few tips to help you as you explore each chapter. 

Number one – focus on the motivations, not the behaviors. All types behave in universal ways at one time or another. It is not about what you do but why you do it. 

Number two – remember yourself in early adulthood. This is the most accurate version of you and is likely a good indicator of your type. 

Number three – search for who you are, not who you’d prefer to be. The goal is to find a mirror for self-clarity, not become an actor taking on a new role. 

Number four – pay attention to your embarrassment. If you’re reading about a type and begin to feel self-conscious, it may be a sign that you’re reading about yourself.

Number five – don’t expect to identify with every aspect of the description. No two people are alike. You may identify with most of the type but likely not all of it. 

Number six – self-clarity is a process. The first stage is embarrassment over our flaws. The second stage allows us to see our gifts. The third stage lets us accept both.

Number seven – write One to Nine on a piece of paper and scratch off the ones you know aren’t you. This will help you narrow down the options as you decide your core type.

Number eight – talk with friends and family and let them give you feedback. Ask trusted people how they experience you and what they see motivating you.

11 Rules For The Enneagram 

As you discover your core type and begin to explore the Enneagram, here are a few guardrails to get the most out of this tool and avoid misusing it. 

Number one – don’t sound like a crazy cult member. Don’t talk in numbers all the time. It’s weird. It freaks people out. It makes others feel stupid and like outsiders. 

Number two – don’t weaponize the Enneagram. Don’t use the Enneagram as an excuse for your bad behavior. Don’t use it to manipulate others or put them in a box. 

Number three – don’t type other people. You don’t know their motives. This isn’t a party trick. We’re dealing with people’s souls and stories. Handle with care. 

Number four – don’t oversimplify it. People are complex. This is a complex tool. Everyone is different. Don’t undo the Enneagram’s benefits by turning people into caricatures. 

Number five – it’s not God and it’s not Scripture. It’s a tool for self-clarity. Self-clarity is for communion with God. God transforms us, not the Enneagram. 

Number six – it’s not perfect. All tools are flawed, but some are useful. Have realistic expectations for the Enneagram and how it can help you. 

Number seven – be honest with yourself. This can only be helpful if you avoid deceit. Disowning your gifts isn’t humility. It’s self-deception. 

Number eight – you have all nine types inside you. You aren’t just your core type. Notice which types you utilize and which ones you have disowned. 

Number nine – find a community to journey with you. Our self-evaluation can either be too positive or too negative. Friends give us clarity and encouragement. 

Number ten – let God hold your story and your complexity. You won’t discover anything here that God doesn’t already know. Let him lovingly hold your discoveries. 

Number eleven – it will get worse before it gets better. Self-awareness may leave you feeling exposed, ashamed, and resistant. Abundant life is lived in reality.

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JESSE EUBANKS: Okay. Special thanks to my publisher, Zondervan Books, for lending us these audiobook chapters. Thanks so much for listening. If you would like to hear the rest of the book, you can head over to HowWeRelateBook.com or you can buy the audiobook version wherever it is that you get good books.