What do you mean is not just memes?

My enneagram story, and an invitation for you.

“How are you doing?” Her voice comes through the darkness and interrupts my angry fuming. She’d been gone for a few hours, and it made sense that she wanted to check in on me; honestly, it was the least she could do after dropping this bomb on my lap and leaving.

I know, just like she does that I needed the space to feel my feelings, and I was not going to be able to do it with her expectations looming over me.

She, my best friend, had oh-so-innocently told me about this personality test I “needed” to take. “I think I know which result you’ll have.” She also said. She probably knows me better than anyone, so I would wager she’d be right, however, I don’t have to like it.

“Well, that was a shit show,” I say, laying in bed, almost paralyzed by the weight of the information I’ve just read. I am an Enneagram type eight, and I hate how undeniable it feels. I’ve just spent the last two hours of my life-consuming everything I could about this thing that made me feel so naked.

I’ve taken personality tests before, but this was different. Yes, the results of the test covered my behavior, from best to worst, but it also covered something much more scary, my fears and motivations.

“Which type did you think I was?” I asked her to confirm what we both knew.

Shyly, and maybe with a bit of pity? She replies, “An eight?”

I nod.

Here’s what’s going through my head: I’ve just learned that my fear of being weak and controlled is as evident as sunlight to my best friend. I’ve also just learned that there are other people like me, and they aren’t all very nice and that there are another eight different types that are probably better and more acceptable to be than mine. I now have confirmation that my core fear has been running the show for too long, and so… I am sinking into a familiar pit of despair.

Here’s the thing I now know about the enneagram, “if it stings, it’s yours.” Not that I could even try to deny my eightness, but I certainly did not want to own it. I am in the middle of a divorce and a breakup with a different partner; I am in deep emotional pain, financial survival, and regular immigration loneliness. It feels too heavy to know so much, but if I could put an image of that heaviness, it is a heavy key. Will I dare to use it? Will I dare to heed the invitation?

That was December 2018. Since then, I have made it my mission to understand everything I could about myself, and so I learned everything I could about the Enneagram. I think I went through an Ennea-right-of-passage; I dove head first into the Instagram meme world, bought the books, and tried to type every single person in my life, and also strangers. It was fun, and it helped me make sense of the world outside of me. But what about the world inside?

Slowly but surely, I learned about the enneagram as a personal growth tool, not just a meme machine, not a declaration of who I am, but rather a collection of possibilities about who I can be. You see, the enneagram is dynamic, not static. Granted, our core fears and motivations will not change, but we can choose the role they play in our lives. With time, I stopped seeing just the type eight in me, but I practiced putting on other type’s behaviors and lenses, I created evidence of my own interpersonal dynamism.

Yes, I 100% ascribe to the fears and motivations of type eight. Still, I know that within me, I can find the creativity of type four, the curiosity of type five, the nurturing of type two, the need for fairness of type one, the zest for life of type seven, the readiness of type six, the work ethic of type three, and type nine’s ability to see all sides of a situation… The enneagram does not box me in; its study shows me the box so I can break out of it.

Five years have passed since that fated night when I discovered the one thing Donald Trump, Martin Luther King Jr., and I have in common; since then, both my best friend and I concluded that the type she thought she proudly represented was not in fact, her correct point in the enneagram. The moral of THAT story is that you better get a nerdy friend if you’re not out here trying to do the research yourself. But I digress.

In a time in which I knew transformation was inevitable, the nine-point symbol showed me a map and gave me the tools to make it to the other side. Now, when I work with my clients and use the enneagram as part of their coaching, I hear things like:

“Even before our first session, having the report felt life-changing; it helped me make sense of things that I couldn’t name for my entire life.” - Rutnely

For some others, the enneagram presents not an explanation but a challenge, one that they may or may not feel ready to face. The only requirement is their honest willingness to try, just like my client Jill, with whom I had this exchange on her first session:

Me: So, what do you want to work on?

Jill: I don’t know, Annie, tell me what I need, that’s my problem. I’m disconnected from my own needs!

And just three weeks later came back to me with the following insight:

Jill: I notice I’m now paying more attention to my needs. Recently, I was talking to someone about my plans for my vacation, and they were telling me all these things that I should be doing, and I knew in my heart that that’s not it. I said it several times during our conversation. In another time, I would have followed along and even entertained the possibility, knowing it would eventually ruin me.

Jill is an example of what the information of the enneagram can do when you move past the memes and stereotyping and do the work. For her, it worked to receive guidance; for some (like me), it is a journey that is better traversed alone. Regardless of where you are on your personal development journey, if the enneagram calls your name, I would love to offer you the tools to get going.

I am opening up my last Enneagram Debrief sessions of the year, and I want to offer them to the substack community at a discounted rate; if you become a paid subscriber, I will discount the price of the report from your Enneagram assessment and debrief session, usually $395 it will be $335. Receive a 23-page report with all the enneagram's essential data and a 90-minute session to discover how to use that information.

If you’re interested in taking advantage of this, send an email with the subject line “Enneagram coaching” to annie@anniepwoods.com and let me know you are now a paid substack subscriber.

Thank you, as always, for reading this far!

Xoxo

Annie