Typing Tips for Counselors Using the Enneagram in Therapy – Part 2

As I mentioned in Typing Tips for Counselors Using the Enneagram in Therapy – Part 1 , The Enneagram can be incredibly useful in case conceptualization, treatment planning, and organizing a relevant approach to therapy. It does this by quickly clarifying the client’s basic needs and motivations, vulnerabilities and issues, and patterns as well as by offering interventions and pointing out new paths to positive change and growth in life and therapy.

In addition to insights gleaned from Part I on Typing, below are a few more ways, albeit less popular and a bit more subtle, that can be used to narrow down a client’s type. These strategies include reflection on the client’s Subtype, Dominant Center, Repressed Center, and personal history of past experiences and challenges.

Consider Subtype

Subtypes reflect the client’s focus or preoccupation within their primary Enneagram type.

Self-Preservation (SP) – physical comfort, safety, resources, structure, security
Social (SO) – belonging, community, groups, relationships, status, influence, support
One-to-One (1:1) Self with one other, affection, intimacy, bonding, attraction

Something to keep in mind is that primary types can look like other types due to subtype.

Dominant center: What type of activity does the client seem to prefer and engage in the most?

BODY TYPES: 1, 8, 9: Doing
HEART TYPES: 2, 3, 4: Feeling
HEAD TYPES: 5, 6, 7: Thinking

Repressed center: What activity does the client seem to have the most difficulty accessing and engaging in?

TYPES 4, 5, 9: Doing
TYPES 1, 2, 6: Thinking
TYPES 3, 7, 8: Feeling

When the Dominant Center and Repressed Center are The Same

Type 3, 6, and 9 have a Dominant Center that is the same as their Repressed Center. This indicates that for these types, the dominant center of feeling, thinking, or doing may be an unproductive form of that kind of expression.

Threes often suppress or disconnect from their emotions in order to get things done and maintain an image of success and competence. Feelings are avoided because they can interfere with efficiency. In many cases, it’s not productive to consistently ignore the messages or underlying needs indicated by emotions or compartmentalize feelings until they are unavoidable or cause problems.

Rather than truly “repressed” thinking, it’s more accurate to say Six’s thinking often gets hijacked by fear and doubt. They rely on thinking but frequently don’t trust it leading them to engage in unproductive forms of thinking such as worry, self-doubt, over-thinking, over-planning, over-analyzing, reassurance-seeking, etc.

Nines doing tends towards comfort-seeking and behaviors with the unconscious goal of suppressing their own agenda to keep the peace. Examples can include non-essential busyness, numbing, procrastination, or overly engaging in routines or passive activities. They can also tend to belabor decisions, let others make choices for them, and resist asserting themselves — all of which can interfere with productivity or doing what’s important.

Consider Past Experiences

Is there a set of reoccurring experiences that may be meant to teach the Type what they most need to learn? These experiences would have triggered the Type’s core wounding, challenged the Type’s foremost, albeit mostly unhelpful, coping strategy, and reinforced the core wounding message.

Type 8s often experience betrayals of trust, rejection, attack, or hostility from others leading them to feel victimized by injustices and blame individuals, groups, or institutions for their pain such that anger becomes a reliable and trusted defense against vulnerability and difficult emotions.

Themes: trust in others, empathy, sensitivity, vulnerability, containment, non-blaming, emotional awareness

Type 9s often report feeling as if they don’t matter or being consumed by others’ needs or demands. They may have a history of surrendering to others’ agendas because it reduces the risk of conflict, yet become depressed, stuck, resentful, bored, and resistant to taking empowered action to meet their own wants and needs.

Themes: self-assertion, self-agency, self-remembering, acknowledging anger, initiating action that matters

Type 1s often report experiences where they feel compelled to call someone out for not carrying their weight or their unethical, improper, or harmful behavior or for having tried to “do the right thing” and have oftentimes been separated from or pushed out of jobs, relationships, or other opportunities as a result.

Themes: compassion for self and others, play, humility, perspective-taking, curiosity, acceptance, projection

Type 2s often attract people or situations where they are under-appreciated, openly taken advantage of, or their wants or needs are minimized by others culminating in shame, anger, and resentment as well as high personal costs and pridefulness from an unwillingness or inability to acknowledge their own wants and needs.

Themes: boundary-setting, self-advocacy, self-care, self-awareness, humility, needing to be needed, over-helping

Type 3s often experience love that is given conditionally based on appearances or achievement from an early age culminating in an over-focus on maintaining an image of success. Such pursuits have lead them to burnout or failure, under-appreciate their relationships, or act in ways that cause others to lose respect for them.

Themes: authenticity, true identity, finding passion, tolerating failure, results and relationships, slowing down

Type 4s often have a history of feeling disconnected from others, abandoned, or denied what others’ have leading them to feel envious, angry, misunderstood, and ashamed, yet unwilling or unable to validate themselves, calm their emotions, appreciate what they have, or take action towards positive change.

Themes: taking action, emotional fitness, self-compassion, acceptance, gratitude, tolerating ordinariness

Type 5s often attract situations where they are overlooked, dismissed, or feel invisible, not kept in the loop regarding important communication, changes, or expectations, and may report experiences where people in their lives neglect them or do not express much interest in them culminating in emotional detachment, distrust in others, and an undeterred drive towards self-reliance and self-sufficiency.

Themes: trust in abundance, participation, emotional availability, taking action, receiving, practicing generosity

Type 6s often grow up or attract situations characterized by instability or unpredictability where their trust in caretakers, authority figures, or organizations is weakened or corrupted thereby cracking their foundation of safety leaving them feeling unable to trust themselves, others, or life.

Themes: self-trust, tolerating uncertainty, being own authority, optimism, projection of fears, worry management

Type 7s often show signs of multiple stops-and-starts, frequently shifting interests, superficial relationships, a pattern of distractibility, over-doingness, or dissatisfaction that may be due to low levels of commitment, fear of missing out, or treating people and problems with avoidance or positivity.

Themes: commitment, accepting limits, self-boundaries, relational depth, stillness, presence, tolerating feelings

Conclusion

These are just a few additional ways I’ve found helpful in identifying a client’s type. I mentioned a few primary ways to type a client in Typing Tips for Counselors Using the Enneagram in Therapy – Part 1. Of course, you can also ask the client to take a typing test or ask them to review the type descriptions to see what fits for them.

While not always accurate, the client’s self-selected type could illuminate some things you may have missed or their findings can lead to further inquiry. Even if you don’t agree with the client, you can ask the client what they identify with about their chosen type. Such inquiry can lead to insights and exploration into what matters to the client as well as positive outcomes from therapy.

Helpful Resources for Typing

Online

The Enneagram Institute
The Narrative Enneagram

Books

The Art of Typing: Powerful Tool for Enneagram Typing by Ginger Lapid-Bogda Ph.D.
The Wisdom of the Enneagram by Don Riso and Russ Hudson
The Complete Enneagram: 27 Paths to Greater Self-Knowledge by Beatrice Chestnut Ph.D.