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 clarifying the client’s basic fear, needs, motivations, issues, and patterns as well as by pointing out key themes, interventions, and potential paths to 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 a reflection on the client’s primary stance, dominant center, repressed center, and personal history of past experiences or challenges.
Stance: How does the client approach their life, work, and relationships?
Aggressive (Assertive): 3, 7, 8
Aggressive or assertive types are future-oriented and move against people. They cope with anxiety, vulnerability, and insecurity by seeking power, control, and influence over others.
3: Moves forward to achieve success and impress others
7: Looks ahead to create exciting possibilities and avoid limits
8: Advance aims by asserting control and independence
Compliant (Dependent): 1, 2, 6
Compliant or dependent types are present-minded and move toward people. They cope with anxiety, vulnerability, and insecurity by forming and fostering relationships, so they can earn love, approval, and support from others.
1: Tries to do what’s right and meet internal and external standards
2: Helps and serves others to earn their love, acceptance, approval, and support
6: Seeks safety by aligning with trusted people, groups, or systems
Withdrawn: 4, 5, 9
Withdrawn types are past-minded and move away from others. They cope with anxiety, vulnerability, and insecurity by retreating into themselves and their own worlds.
4: Turns inward to explore identity and feelings
5: Seeks solitude to think, observe, and conserve energy
9: Retreats to avoid conflict and stay comfortable
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.
While very attuned to other people’s feelings, Threes often suppress or disconnect from their own emotions in order to get things done and maintain an image of success and competence. Feelings are avoided because they may be thought to compromise their image or interfere with efficiency and productivity. In many cases, it’s not helpful to consistently ignore the messages or 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 Sixes’ 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 frequently tends towards comfort-seeking with the unconscious goal of suppressing their own agenda to keep the peace. Examples can include non-essential busyness, 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 getting things done and 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 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 frequently feel overlooked, dismissed, or invisible and may report experiences where people neglected them, did not respond to them, or did not express much interest in them culminating in a pattern of 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 endure 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, 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, being present, tolerating feelings
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 influenced by others’ wants or needs. 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, needs, and goals.
Themes: self-assertion, self-agency, self-remembering, acknowledging anger, initiating action that matters
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 chosen type could illuminate things you may have missed about them or suggest new themes/topics for inquiry. Such exploration in sessions can contribute to insights into what matters most to the client as well as progress towards positive outcomes in 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 Complete Enneagram: 27 Paths to Greater Self-Knowledge by Beatrice Chestnut Ph.D.
The Wisdom of the Enneagram by Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson
Posted: by Teresa
