Each type has a core belief about what it needs for safety/security, affection/esteem and power/control. These core beliefs are called “The Basic Proposition” as developed by The Enneagram Professional Training Program.
Below is the Basic Proposition for Each Type
Type 1: The Perfectionist
You lost sight of the fundamental principle that we are all one and are perfect as we are. What you came to believe instead is that people are not accepted for who they are, and that the world judges and punishes bad behavior. You learned to gain worthiness and love by being good, correcting errors and meeting the requirements of your critical mind. You often suppressed your personal needs and desires, and at the same time, developed resentments and suppressed anger or guilt over your impulses, bad behavior and what is judged as wrong. Your attention naturally goes to what is wrong and what needs correcting or improvement.
The central issue for healing
To experience healing and personal growth, a Perfectionist needs to become less dominated by the dictates of the critical mind and, in time, regain a sense of being an undivided whole. This means understanding and appreciating that whatever you frequently judge as “wrong” is actually just “different” because it deviates from your imagined ideal. Perfectionists need to learn to observe the critical mind and detach self-worth from it. The difficulty doesn’t come from having high standards or too many standards, but from the power of the relentless inner critic in determining self-worth and dictating life.
Six healing and growth commitments for Perfectionists:
• Practice releasing the domination of the critical mind
• Appreciate errors, mistakes and imperfection as differences
• Observe the constant monitoring for comparison purposes (good/bad, perfect/imperfect)
• Welcome anger and guilt as signaling “unacceptable” behavior (often what is forbidden)
• Practice acceptance and forgiveness (not just improvement)
• Integrate instinct and desire
If you think you may be a One and would like to confirm it in a typing interview, click here
Type 2: The Giver
You lost sight of the fundamental principle that everyone’s needs are equally and freely met. You came to believe instead that you must give to get, and to be loved, you must be needed. So you learned to fulfill your personal needs by being needed and by giving others what they want or need, with the hope that they would do the same for you. At the same time, you developed feelings of pride in being indispensable. Your attention naturally goes to others’ needs and desires.
The central issue for healing for Twos:
Twos must reclaim their freedom from the tyranny of a need-driven world that only approves of them, and loves them, if they fulfill the needs of others. Developing a separate self, then, becomes a difficult proposition. Since others’ needs and desires are endless, Givers never gain a sense of their own freedom from trying to fulfill them.To gain freedom you must learn to give what is needed and no more, pay attention to your own needs, and receive from others. You must come to realize that, ultimately, your needs are met by a greater or universal will and that your self-worth does not depend upon being the agent of others’ fulfillment. Then you can give with the pure joy of giving for its own sake, freely and lovingly.
Six healing and growth commitments for Twos:
• Develop and maintain a separate, integrated self
• Practice releasing the pride of feeling indispensible
• Freely give and receive without pride and expectations
• Notice signs of your own repressed needs, paying special attention to any rising emotions as indicators than your needs aren’t being met
• Balance the active force that goes out to others’ needs with the receptive force that allows your needs to be met
• Spend time alone to develop your own interests and a sense of separate self
If you think you may be a Two and would like to confirm it in a typing interview, click here
Type 3: The Performer
You lost sight of the original state of hope where everything works and is accomplished naturally according to universal law. You came to believe instead that what gets done is dependent on each person’s individual effort. You learned to get love, acceptance and recognition by working hard to be the best and maintaining a good image. At the same time, you developed a driving, go-ahead energy of self-deception to match to your image of success and approval. Your attention naturally goes to tasks and accomplishments.
The central issue for healing
The task for Threes is to avoid making life into tasks. Performers are not just human doings, but human beings. So the simple prescription here is to slow down enough to allow your feelings to emerge and to realize that love and acceptance come to you for being as well as for doing.Performers depend on active force and mistrust being receptive. Hooked on producing and succeeding, they do what it takes to get to the goal, automatically adjusting their image to become what they perceive will bring the rewards. This is where deceit comes in. Performers take short cuts and sometimes soften the truth to get the job done, which makes sense since the focus is on gaining approval and creating an image of success through the accomplishment of tasks.
Six healing and growth commitments for Performers:
• Slow your pace and allow your feelings to emerge
• Welcome the feelings, realize that doubt and anxiety often arise first
• Develop empathy and understanding
• Develop receptivity and patience
• Be truthful to yourself and your own true feelings
• Allow for failure
If you think you may be a Three and would like to confirm it in a typing interview, click here
Type 4: The Romantic
You lost sight of the original state of a deep and complete connection to all others and all things, and came to believe instead that the world abandons you and that something important is missing. So you focus on searching for an ideal love or perfect circumstance to make you feel loved, whole and complete again. In this search for the most unique, special and fulfilling, you feel envy and a longing for what you idealize but is unavailable. Your attention naturally goes to what is missing.
The central issue for healing for Fours:
Ironically, an outward search for the ultimate, ideal, deep heart connection, and complete fulfillment where nothing of substance is missing, serves only to perpetuate a Four’s dilemma. All your well-intentioned searching in the wrong place only creates more intense feelings of deficiency and longing.A Romantic’s primary task, therefore, is to realize that wholeness and completeness come with acceptance and appreciation of what is here now, in the present moment – from the inside out, not from the outside in. Disappointments and deficiencies are part of the fabric of life, not an indication of deficiency of being.
Six healing and growth commitments for Fours:
• Accept that wholeness and realness exist now in the present moment
• Practice self-appreciation based on what is present and not what is absent, on what is rather than what isn’t
• Resist domination by strong and fluctuating feelings while acknowledging their authenticity
• Sustain a steady course of action even in the presence of intense feelings
• Appreciate the ordinary instead of deeming it as boring
• Disconnect your self-esteem from the need to be special or extraordinary
If you think you may be a Four and would like to confirm it in a typing interview, click here
Type 5: The Observer
You lost sight of the universal principle that there is an ample supply of all the knowledge and energy that everyone needs, and came to believe instead that the world demands too much from people or gives them too little. You learned to protect yourself from intrusion and insufficient resources by becoming private and self-sufficient. You limit your desires and wants, and acquire knowledge. At the same time, you develop a sense of avarice for time, energy and knowledge. Your attention naturally goes to intrusions and detaching to observe.
The central issue for healing
While everyone has concerns about potential scarcity, with not having enough emotional connection or material supplies to sustain our life and well being, for Observers this became the central issue. As a consequence Observers retracted into the mind, detached from feelings and emotional claims, and conserved their energy by reducing needs and pursuing self-sufficiency. They didn’t realize that this can lead to a lonely and even impoverished life.Healing means reversing this process, even though it may be counter to the way you’ve learned to feel comfortable in the world. Moving forward into life-giving energy and building emotional contact represent your key developmental issues. By expanding into feelings, experience and connection, more of life energy will naturally be available.
Six healing and growth commitments for Type Fives:
• Recognize and release the avarice for time, space, energy and knowledge
• Make the counter-instinctive move forward into life and feelings
• Stay present, engaged with others
• Share or give more of yourself while taking in more support from others
• Recognize there are ample resources, and practice abundance
• Realize that the flow of universal energy to meet life’s real needs
If you think you may be a Five and would like to confirm it in a typing interview, click here
Type 6: The Loyal Skeptic
You lost sight of the fundamental principle that we all begin with faith in ourselves, in others and in the universe, and came to believe instead that the world is hazardous, unpredictable and untrustworthy. So you attempt to control life and feel more certainty by gaining (or defying) security, and avoiding (or facing) perceived harm through vigilance, questioning and battling (or escaping) hazards. At the same time, you develop fear and doubt, or just incessant questioning concerning potential threats to safety and security. Your attention naturally goes to hazards and potential worst-case scenarios, and how to deal with them.
The central issue for healing
The task for Loyal Skeptics is more obvious and straightforward than for any other type. The child who experienced the world as hazardous, unpredictable and threatening, and fell naturally into fear and doubt, needs to regain faith and trust in oneself, in other people and in the world. Faith is a big stretch for the Loyal Skeptic since faith comes before proof.This means staying with situations that frighten you and cultivating the courage to go into and through the fear. Notice and resist the impulse to move away from fear (the phobic’s habit), or challenge fear (the counterphobic’s habit). Either way, your path of development goes right through fear and doubt. Learn to trust that you already know how to cope and that you don’t need to keep proving yourself.
Six healing and growth commitments for Type Sixes:
• Reclaim faith in yourself, others and the universe
• Work at distinguishing true impressions from projections
• Relinquish the quest for certainty and control as a substitute for faith
• Balance the tendency to put a negative spin on situations with more positive outlooks
• Welcome fear and move ahead
• Become your own authority
If you think you may be a Six and would like to confirm it in a typing interview, click here
Type 7: The Epicure
You lost sight of the fundamental principle that life is a full spectrum of possibilities to be experienced freely and with sustained concentration, and came to believe instead that the world limits you, frustrates you and causes you pain. You learned to assure a good life and protect yourself from limitations, frustration and pain by imagining options, opportunities and adventures. At the same time, you became a glutton for positive possibilities and pleasures. Your attention naturally goes to options and keeping life up.
The central issue for healing for Sevens:
The central issue for healing for Epicures may be more difficult to grasp than for any other type, because you are asked to welcome in all of life as it exists in the present moment – fear, pain, suffering, boredom and limitation, as well as pleasure, joy, excitement and options. In the process, you must reduce excess, delay gratification, and take only what really is needed.Epicures also must ask themselves to empathize with the entire spectrum of experience in others and to care about the well-being of others as they would their own. Yet for playful, adventuresome, future-oriented Epicures, who habitually direct their outward-moving energy toward positive alternatives and possibilities, this task of deepening, simplifying life and steadying their attention in the “here and now” is just what is needed for wholeness.
Six healing and growth commitments for Type Sevens:
• Reduce excess stimulation and mental futurizing
• Ground in the present
• Accept pain and suffering as part of your wholeness
• Make and keep commitments and agreements with self and others
• Pay attention to others’ desires and well-being in equal proportion to your own
• Trust that the full spectrum of life and your deeper purpose includes the “darker side” of life – its pain, loss, suffering and limitations
If you think you may be a Seven and would like to confirm it in a typing interview, click here
Type 8: The Protector
You lost sight of the fundamental principle that everyone begins in innocence and without guilt, and that everyone can sense truth and came to perceive the world as hard and unjust, where the powerful take advantage of others. As a result, you learned to assure protection and to gain respect by becoming strong and powerful, and by hiding your vulnerability. At the same time, you developed a big lustful energy. Your attention naturally goes to injustices and to whatever demands action right now.
The central issue for healing
Since Protectors believe that they must be strong and powerful, and actively stand up for truth and justice, embracing innocence may seem implausible. This means that they should come to each situation freshly, without prejudice or power motives, ready to appreciate differences and realize that everyone has his or her truth.To do this, you must learn to moderate your own overriding, boundless, instinctual energy, and notice how this energy defies boundaries, how it can be excessive, and how it impacts others. You need to learn exactly how much power is appropriate in any given situation and to delay the tendency to go from urge to action in an all-or-nothing fashion.
Six healing and growth commitments for Type Eights:
• Notice and moderate intensity, excess and impact
• Delay action and consider consequences
• Observe your all-or-nothing style
• Realize that true power comes from the appropriate or proportional application of force
• Reduce denial and allow for vulnerabilities
• Value the truth in opposites and differences
If you think you may be an Eight and would like to confirm it in a typing interview, click here
Type 9: The Mediator
You lost sight of the fundamental principle that everyone belongs equally in a state of unconditional love and union. You came to believe instead that the world treats people as unimportant for who they are, and you can gain belonging and comfort by attending to and merging with others and by dispersing energy into substitute objects. At the same time, you developed inertia (self-forgetting) about your own priorities and limits. Your attention naturally goes to others and to the environment around you.
The central issue for healing
All of us, not just Mediators, sometimes focus on the environment around us and experience ourselves as reacting primarily to people and events outside ourselves. For Mediators, the central issue is losing touch with their inner separate self in favor of adapting to the environment and merging with others. Mediators struggle fundamentally with gaining or reclaiming a separate self.Your main task is to become awake and alive to yourself ¬– literally to love yourself from a personal reference point that has no substitute. Your path to healing is to establish your own priorities and timelines instead of falling into comfortable secondary pursuits, and to resist becoming overly influenced by others.
Six healing and growth commitments for Type Nines:
• Practice loving yourself as you would others
• Take responsibility for your own well-being and value
• Reclaim a separate self
• Establish and adhere to your own agenda and priorities
• Welcome discomfort and conflict
• Recognize anger in its many forms and see it as a signal that you are feeling violated
If you think you may be a Nine and would like to confirm it in a typing interview, click here