Working with Type Nine in Therapy

Enneagram Type Nine, referred to as “The Peacemaker,” or “The Mediator” is characterized by a desire for peace and harmony, an avoidance of discomfort, an aversion to conflict, and a tendency to merge with others’ agendas while neglecting their own.  They tend to ignore, internalize, or repress their anger and disconnect from upsetting things, which can maintain a false sense of peace but cause issues for them.

Their patterns often include self-forgetting not only who they are, but their own priorities and needs, controlling through resistance, non-responsiveness, or disengagement, focusing on non-essential busyness, and attending only to the present moment. In unhealth, they can “fall asleep to themselves” leading to inertia towards positive change and procrastination as well as neglect themselves and others or take action only out of anger.

The goals of therapy should include helping Nines become more assertive and self-aware by assisting them to identify and assert their want and needs, increase their engagement, take action towards their goals, navigate conflicts, and respond to anger in a healthy way. Growth is indicated when Nines wake up to themselves, set and follow their own agenda for life, take purposeful action, and begin to integrate harmony with conflict.

Core Messaging & Key Characteristics

Lost Childhood Message: “Your presence matters.”

Wounding Message: “It’s not okay to assert yourself.”

Wounding Message Development: The world is full of conflict, and I can control that by keeping things in, going with the flow, staying optimistic, and disconnecting from myself and others.

Grounding Message: “My presence and actions matter.”

Wants/Needs: Comfortable and peaceful world but will settle for passivity.

Basic Fear: Of loss and separation
Basic Desire: To have inner stability and peace of mind
Basic Need: To avoid disharmony and conflict

Values: Harmony, Comfort, Stability, Agreeableness, Peacefulness

Motivations: To create harmony in their environment; avoid disturbances, tension and conflicts; minimize change; and preserve things as they are in order to stay comfortable

At their best: Indominable, all-embracing, able to bring people together and heal conflicts, and being a “safe harbor” for others due to their steady, patient, and calming presence

Strengths: Caring, attentive to others, supportive, adaptive, easy-going, inclusive, accepting, non-judgmental, open to others’ perspectives, steady, calm, balanced, harmonious, and receptive

Challenges: conflict-avoidance, resistance to taking action, self-forgetting, stubbornness, ambivalence, inattentiveness, indolence, complacency, lacking care for what’s important, and indecisiveness

Mental Habit: Attention goes to harmony and comfort

Emotional Habit: Stubbornness, resistance, and passive-aggression

Emotional Survival Strategy: I try to put the world in order through meditation, eliminating conflict, and becoming invisible

Patterns of Behavior

Patterns listed below are based on average to below average levels of functioning within the Type, which is typical for clients entering therapy. Behaviors may vary from client to client, so it’s appropriate not to assume every client displays all these patterns.

  • Pattern of self-forgetting their own interests, priorities, strengths, purpose, and limits
  • Resist self and emotional awareness by avoiding self-discovery and feelings that can be unsettling
  • Tend to avoid taking action if it brings up difficult or disturbing emotions
  • Control through resistance, stubbornness, non-responsiveness, or disengagement
  • Focus on non-essential activities or dulling distractions over priorities and goals
  • May get lulled into day dreaming or tending only to the moment in front of them
  • Advocate for space as a way to avoid engagement or having their peace disturbed
  • Shut off their anger and avoid upsetting things to maintain a sense of false peace
  • Prone to inaction, passivity, inertia, or disengagement to reduce discomfort
  • Tend to “go along to get along” in order to avoid effort or conflicts in their relationships
  • Often find themselves responding to things, rather than initiating things
  • Tend to believe they don’t matter or matter enough to important others
  • Withhold opinions or preferences and commonly report not having preferences
  • Struggle with decision-making due to self-forgetting or not knowing their own wants or needs
  • Experience ambivalence with change and indecision since both require risk and discomfort
  • Difficulty with exercising self-initiation, self-determination, and self-agency
  • Find it difficult to know and express emotions or connect with bodily sensations
  • Numb emotions via comfort-seeking behaviors, non-essential busyness, or other means
  • May only act out of anger or only when absolutely necessary
  • Often find themselves stuck in inertia – their biggest obstacle to growth
  • Prefer to give others their way, rather than directly assert themselves
  • Tend to communicate their anger passive-aggressively
  • May present as absent-minded, disengaged, or passive
  • Emphasize the positive and dismiss the negative to stay comfortable
  • May have difficulty with getting to the point when speaking

Impact in Relationships

  • Belief in not mattering leads them not to show up or hide in their relationships thereby compromising the possibility for a strong, sustainable, or authentic connection
  • Thinking they don’t matter to others may lead others to respond to them as if they don’t matter or fail to recognize and support their wants/needs, especially partners who have a preference to prioritize themselves or their own agenda in relationship
  • Resistance to leaning into, learning from, and dealing with their anger in a healthy way blocks self-understanding, creates tension from unmet wants and needs in the relationship, and compromises their well-being in addition to the health of their relationships
  • Self-forgetting and indecisiveness coupled with a strong fear of self-assertion and resistance to doing what needs to be done builds barriers to well-being and satisfying relationships
  • Low willingness or ability to engage in conflict limits realness, resilience, and workability in partnering
  • Disinclination to figure out or express preferences keeps others from knowing who they are or making their wants and needs important, perhaps even causing others to eventually lose interest in asking for them or feel frustrated by their lack of clarity or inability to contribute to decision-making
  • Not accepting full responsibility for meeting their own wants and needs in relationship often leaves them feeling disappointed in and angry with their partners
  • By consciously or unconsciously surrendering their life, aspirations, or personal agenda to their partners, they may report feeling lost, being disconnected from themselves and their partner, and dissatisfied with their partner and their relationship
  • Repression or suppression of anger has the potential to lead to angry outbursts at which point, they may finally move past their aversion to discomfort and begin to directly address issues in the relationship albeit with more costly outcomes
  • Numbing of difficult feelings not only thwarts self-understanding, but also clouds underlying or unmet needs in the relationship, which can create obstacles to growth through relationship
  • Merging with others makes real relationship impossible because healthy relationship requires two separate individuals showing up as they truly are with their own interests, values, and goals
  • Losing themselves to their partner’s agenda leaves their partners to direct their life for them (if they are willing) oftentimes culminating in unwanted destinations and dissatisfaction; or exhausting their partners who may feel burdened by functioning for them
  • Over-prioritizing comfort in relationships not only makes it difficult for them to know themselves through relationship, but also less capable at expressing who they are or their needs to partners oftentimes confusing and frustrating their partners and causing problems

Goal of Therapy: Asleep to Assertion

Therapeutic Interventions

Therapeutic interventions should aim to help Nines feel more awake to life and themselves, know and assert themselves, clarify, express, and pursue the fulfillment of their own needs and desires, increase their energy and engagement, and build their tolerance for confronting uncomfortable conversations and situations in their life.

Conclusion

By integrating these interventions, Nines can gain self and emotional awareness, cultivate more authentic and rewarding relationships, and balance their quest for harmony with qualities of being that have the potential to not only provide a comforting sense of belonging, but also create fulfilling opportunities to live a meaningful life and apply the gifts of their type.

While this brief collection of themes and therapeutic interventions for Nines is by no means exhaustive, I invite you as the counselor to bring in whatever you think could be helpful to your Type Nine client as they are likely to share desires, fears, and challenges that are common to all of us.

Finally, in my work with clients, I also find it helpful to not only consider interventions that are relevant to the client’s primary Type, but also interventions that are specific to one or both of the client’s wings, especially the dominate wing.

Trainings

Enneagram for Counselors with Leslie Bley, LPC-S

Resources

Enneagram Institute
The Narrative Enneagram

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