Growing with the Enneagram: the development path of each type

Discovering your type is only the beginning. Enneagram integration work is a path of personal growth that takes you beyond your automatic reactions to develop your essential qualities. The aim is not to become another type, but to open up to complementary strengths that balance your personality: this is what we call growth potential.

Three questions to get started

Each type carries inner questions that show up through its automatic reactions. To reach them, you can ask yourself:

1. What do I avoid at all costs? Conflict, failure, criticism, emptiness…
2. What triggers my stress or my blocks? Fears, anticipation, rumination, beliefs…
3. Which patterns do I keep repeating? Control, escape, seduction, giving up, rationalising…

The growth path of each type

• Type 1. Understand what lies behind the drive for perfection, and the anger fuelled by seeing that the world is imperfect. Let go of the belief that they won't be loved unless they are perfect.
• Type 2. Identify their own needs, become aware of their dependence on recognition and understand the anger that ingratitude triggers. Let go of the belief that they won't be loved unless they give.
• Type 3. Resolve the conflict between being and appearing, stop identifying with their achievements and see impostor syndrome as a doorway to authenticity. Let go of the belief that they won't be loved unless they succeed.
• Type 4. Work on managing emotions and finding the right relational distance, understand how they replay the wound of abandonment, and what the feeling of lack gives them and what it costs them.
• Type 5. Explore the right relational distance and dare to feel emotions without fearing being overwhelmed or losing mental control. Understand what lies behind their strong need for solitude and independence.
• Type 6. Identify the fears that lead to control and avoidance (anticipation, procrastination, doubt), and understand their difficulty making choices and trusting their own desires.
• Type 7. Resolve the tension between the need for freedom and the need for roots, and understand what constantly racing ahead gives them and what it costs them, and what lies behind the constant search for more.
• Type 8. Question what the image of strength protects, what control gives them and what it costs them, and what lies behind their sensitivity to injustice and power dynamics.
• Type 9. Understand what lies behind their numbed anger, their need for harmony and their difficulty claiming their place, and where their automatic patterns lead them.

A journey best taken with support

This path takes time and an outside perspective: our automatic reactions are, by definition, hard to see on our own. That's why growth potential is at the heart of our one-to-one coaching and our certification, where you learn to recognise it in yourself and in others.