Ok, ok, I'll play. I love a good personality test! They are a great way to get a little insight into dominant traits you currently posses, and areas you can develop to gain more balance. I say "currently" because I have noticed that the more I grow, the results of these tests change.
I took the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator about 15 years ago and was labeled ENFJ. SHOCKER! I am still very much this person, because in each category you are either A or B, and they are on completely different ends of the spectrum. Not a lot of gray area here.
I've taken the Clifton StrengthsFinder (now CliftonStrengths by Gallup) twice: The first was about 10 years ago and the second in 2017. My top signature theme was Empathy back in 2010. I had Communication and Positivity up there as well, but I can't remember the other two. I remember being upset that Empathy was my top strength. I didn't think it was a strength at all, but a trait of a weak, emotional person. From that moment, I consciously worked to shove that part of me down into my Subconscious. Silly, self-loathing me.
The StrengthsFinder maintains that we all possess each one of their 34 themes in some capacity, but they give you your top five signature themes ranked by dominance. I focused on developing some of my other, more recessive, themes and my test results were different in 2017. Side note: Since then, I have realized that Empathy is an extraordinary strength, which has not only helped me better communicate interpersonally, but has also made me excel at my career. Thank goodness for personal development!
These were my 2017 results
But what is this Enneagram thing that the kids are talking about these days? After reading Dave Hollis's book, Get Out of Your Own Way, I decided to jump on the Enneagram train and take the test. I am a type 2: The Helper. I'll admit, I had the same reaction to my results as I did to Empathy being my top theme on the StrengthsFinder test. I felt like I was so much more than this, especially after this year. Once I started reading more about it, though, I realized that there are so many facets to The Enneagram. It is now my favorite of all the personality tests! I'm going to try to explain it to you as briefly as I can. **All of this information I am giving you is paraphrased from The Enneagram Institute's website. You can also take the test there for $12.
Ultimately, the goal is for each of us to “move around” the Enneagram, integrating what each type symbolizes and acquiring the healthy potentials of all the types. The ideal is to become a balanced, fully functioning person who can draw on the power of each as needed. Each of the types of the Enneagram symbolizes different important aspects of what we need to achieve this end. The personality type we begin life with is therefore less important ultimately than how well (or badly) we use our type as the beginning point for our self-development and self-realization.
Ok, now I'm going to attempt to tell you how to read this thing as simply as possible. I will use my results for examples.
Basic Personality Type (I'm a type 2 - The Helper)
*When you take the test, the personality type that is assigned to you is the one you developed during childhood, which reflects all childhood factors, including genetics.
* People do not change from one basic personality type to the next, but you will fluctuate constantly among healthy, average and unhealthy traits that make up your personality type.
The Centers (mine is the Feeling Center, and the emotion is shame)
* The Enneagram is an arrangement of 9 personality types within 3 centers: The Instinctive Center, The Feeling Center, and The Thinking Center.
* Each personality type results from a particular relationship with a cluster of issues that characterize that Center.
* Those issues revolve around an emotional response to the loss of contact with the core of the self.
* These are the emotions related to each Center:
* Instinctive Center - Anger or Rage
* Feeling Center - Shame
* Thinking Center - Fear
* All 9 personality types contain all three of these emotions, but in each Center, the personalities of the types are particularly affected by that Center's emotional theme.
* Each type has a particular way of coping with the dominant emotion of it's Center. In my case (type 2), in The Feeling Center, Twos attempt to control their shame by getting other people to like them and think of them as good people. As long as Twos get positive emotional responses from others, they feel wanted and are able to control feelings of shame.
The Wing (mine is Type #3 - The Achiever)
* When you take the test, it will rank the personality types (1-9) in order from your highest to lowest score.
* No one is a pure personality type. Everyone is a unique mixture of his or her basic type and usually one of the two types adjacent to it.
* Your wing is the "second side" to your personality, and it must be taken into consideration to better understand yourself or someone else.
The Levels of Development
* Within each personality type, there is a continuum of behaviors, attitudes, defenses and motivations formed by the 9 Levels of Development.
* The levels account for the differences between people of the same type as well as how people change for better or for worse.
* To understand an individual accurately, it is necessary to perceive where the person lies along the continuum of Levels of his or her type at a given time.
The Continuum of the Levels of Development (I will use my results as examples next to each level)
Healthy
Level 1: The Level of Liberation (Deeply unselfish, humble and altruistic)
Level 2: The Level of Psychological Capacity (Empathetic, compassionate, feeling for others)
Level 3: The Level of Social Value (Service is important, but takes care of self too; nurturing, generous, and giving - a truly loving person)
Average
Level 4: The Level of Imbalance/ Social Role (Want to be closer to others, so start "people pleasing", becoming overly friendly, emotionally demonstrative, gives seductive attention)
Level 5: The Level of Interpersonal Control (Become overly intimate and intrusive: they need to be needed, so they hover, meddle, and control in the name of love)
Level 6: The Level of Overcompensation (Increasingly self-important and self-satisfied. Becoming a "martyr" for others. Overbearing, patronizing, presumptuous)
Unhealthy
Level 7: The Level of Violation (Can be manipulative and self-serving. Extremely self-deceptive about their motives and how aggressive and/or selfish their behavior is.)
Level 8: The Level of Obsession and Compulsion (Domineering and coercive: feel entitled to get anything they want from others.)
Level 9: The Level of Pathological Destructiveness (Able to excuse and rationalize what they do since they feel abused and victimized by others, and are bitterly resentful and angry.)
The directions of Integration (growth) and Disintegration (Stress)
* The inner lines of the Enneagram connect the types in a sequence that denotes what each type will do under different conditions. There are two lines connected to each type, and they connect with two other types.
* One line connects with a type that represents how a person of the first type behaves when they are moving toward health and growth. This is called the Direction of Integration or Growth. The other line goes to another type that represents how the person is likely to act out if they are under increased stress and pressure - when they feel they are not in control of a situation. The second line is called the Direction of Stress or Disintegration.
The Direction of Integration (Growth)
1-7-5-8-2-4-1
9-3-6-9
The Direction of Disintegration (Stress)
1-4-2-8-6-7-1
9-6-3-9
For example, under stress, Twos behave as average to unhealthy Eights. Integrating/Secure Twos behave as average to healthy Fours.
The Three Instincts
*There is a second test that you can take from The Enneagram Institute called the Instinctual Variant Questionnaire. The test will determine your "Instinctual Stack," or the Three Instincts ordered from your most developed Instinct to your least developed Instinct.
My Instinctual Stack is:
Social - Getting along with others and forming secure bonds
Sexual - Extending ourselves in the environment and through the generations
Self-Preservation - Preserving the body and its life and functioning
Why are instincts important for understanding personality?
* A major aspect of human nature lies in our instinctual intelligences that are necessary for our survival as individuals and as a species. We each have a self-preservation instinct, a sexual instinct, and a social instinct.
* While we have all three instincts in us, one of them is the dominant focus of our attention and behavior - the set of attitudes and values that we are most attracted to and comfortable with.
*Dominant instinct - This tends to be our first priority - the area of life we attend to first. But when we are more caught up in the defenses of our personality - further down the Levels of Development - our personality most interferes with our dominant instinct.
The Social Variant (my dominant instinct)
People who have a dominant Social Instinct are preoccupied with being accepted and necessary in their world. They are concerned with maintaining the sense of value they get from participating in activities with others, be they family, group, community, national, or global activities. Social types like to feel involved, and they enjoy interacting with others for common purposes.
The Self-Preservation Variant (my least developed instinct)
When the other two Instincts dominate in an individual and the Self-Preservation Instinct is the least developed, attending to the basics of life does not come naturally. It will not always occur to such individuals that they need to eat or sleep properly. Environmental factors will be relatively insignificant, and they will tend to lack the drive to accumulate wealth or property - or even to care about such matters. Time and resource management will typically be neglected, often with seriously detrimental effects to their own careers, social life, and material well-being.
CONCLUSION
I heart the Enneagram! It is extremely intricate, and the next time I want to tell someone about my type I will have to refer back to this article, for sure; but, I like that it gives you your dominant personality type, and explains how your personality presents in different levels of development. I like that there are other factors such as instincts and wings that play a part. This is the personality test that really nails the different facets of a human, and I'm here for it!