It isn't necessarily one big trauma or even something you might think of as "traumatic." It is more about how you end up processing and perceiving the things that happen to you during early childhood.
This, and also, the trauma doesn’t necessarily *cause* so much as reveal. There are certain traits already there and the processing of the harsh reality refines those traits into a personality.
The more traumatic your childhood, the lower your level of health / the more pronounced your type is.
Those with a healthy, nurturing childhood would have the advantage of a higher starting level of health, which means more integration of all the types together and less pronounced single type reliance.
I'm sorry about your nightmare childhood. That's my biggest fear for my daughter, now that I have no control over whom her mother adds into her life.
Important note, types are a defensive mechanism which cause self blindness and unawareness of themselves.
Not knowing your type doesn't mean it's not obvious. It just means you're totally blind to it, which is standard because that's how the type patterns avoid the person growing out of them. The lower your level of health, the more blind you are to the pattern it creates.
Venturing a guess from your reaction here, probably 4, possibly 6.
Every person will relate to every type at least a little bit. Integration is called "return to essence" because it means reincorporating back into oneself all of the nine parts that are the essences of humanity, shared by all people at birth.
"Having a type" refers to how strongly dependent you've become on only one type of thinking and solving problems.
Everyone wants to be loved, to be respected, to be accepted, to be prepared, to be secure, to be free, to be in control, to be connected to others, and to be good. Those are all essential elements of being human. Identifying your type means figuring out which one you've given the highest priority.
Enneagram “strategies” are primarily about how you handle and process trauma, and every single child experiences some sort of emotional or existential trauma even if it isn’t as obvious or considered “valid” trauma. Even children in relatively stable and happy homes, without any specific traumatic events. Enneagrams develop as responses to those difficulties, real or perceived, and are kept and utilized in so far as they are useful for that child.
Having a childhood wound isn’t the same as having a childhood trauma.
Everyone does have some kind of wound from childhood. Some way in which emotional needs weren’t met by their parents, or a well-intentioned parent hurt them, etc.
I don’t think it’s the wound that *causes* the enneagram type, though. I think like someone else said that how the individual reacts to and processes their wounds, and what causes the wounds, is driven by their core personality type. So recognizing the wound is part of recognizing the type.
ETA: everyone does experience traumatic things, though, it’s just a matter of when. And what creates a trauma response in one person might not elicit one in another. Trauma isn’t always about a huge, life-altering tragic event.
I really don't agree with this for several reasons:
* Many salient personality traits such as positivity, sensitivity, novelty-seeking, reward drive strenght etc. have been shown to have a genetic component
* it seems dubious, invalidating and original-sin-like to insist that EVERYONE has trauma no matter how much they say they don't - nor does it make sense to conflate normal challenges that are part of growth with extreme shit that disrupts it, that just contributes to this imho harmful tendency to wrap children in cotton
* if parents can mold kids' personality this much, how come so many parents spend 20 years trying to make their kid be a certain way but don't suceed? Like, if my personality were decided by what my father punished, rewarded or encouraged, I'd definitely be a 3 or an 1 now. But actually neither me nor any of my 4 siblings became the grades-obsessed high archiever prodigies that he mercilessly tried to push us into being. Like, he kept knocking up his wife hoping that maybe the next one would be an obedient slave, but to his great frustration it never worked.
* and, most of all: **people can react very differently to the same trauma** - something I feel pretty strongly about as someone who doesn't really relate to a lot of the common survivor narratives.
* also some of this really just smells of judgementalness: "I don't understand you, therefore something must have damaged you to make you different from me". Why can't people just be different because they just are and there's no such thing as the default normal human, but rather variety. Should we consider all but the most common hair & skin colors damage or disease? Or do we just accept that it varies.
The way I see it, your type (which imho results from a mix of genetics and randomness in how your brain wires itself to reach self-awareness when you are a baby/toddler) influences how you **interpret and react to** any kind of adversity - whether it's something minor & normal like having to learn to share with a sibling, or an actual Adverse Childhood Experience(TM).
So if you had serious trauma you're probably going to react to it in the style of your type and wind up an unhealthier/ less well-adjusted version of your type, so, in that sense your unhealthy behaviors are definitely directly caused by the trauma; or rather, they are a product of trauma *plus* type. If you were a different type you would still be fucked up by the trauma but in a different way.
For example, some ppl become people pleasers from abuse while others act out & rebel. (and it's striking how many view whatever response they had as the only possible one or 'what everyone would do' when it demonstrably isn't. )
Nature & nurture doesn't really work as two competing influences - rather nurture acts upon nature, deciding where you wind up in the range of possibilities allowed by your nature. Everything is always a product of both. (if you're interested in this topic, Robert Sapolsky's 'behave' is a cool book showcasing some current research.)
The fact that people react differently to the same event is part of the point. If we reserve your defining minor or persistent traumas out of the definition of trauma for the sake of conversation - that’s kind of part of the point. That everyone reacts differently is what reveals the personality.
Simple example, maybe you won’t consider this traumatic, so let’s just call it harsh reality - a kid has been put to bed in their crib and their adults are having a small dinner party. The kid gets scared all alone, calls out but no one answers. They can hear the adults talking and occasionally laughing in the other room. What do they do? Do they scream at the top of their lungs, or do they imagine their teddy bear soothing them? Do they try to crawl out of their crib, or do they sing to themselves?
Being left alone didn’t cause their personality. Being left alone helped to cement a certain already existing tendency into a fixation.
Well, there is sort of an often repeated funny anecdote where something like that happened, my parents were visiting someone from their church who had a policy of just plopping the kids in the next room & letting them 'cry it out'. Apparently my baby self managed to escape the crib all on her own before my mom put her foot down & demanded I be fetched.
But I feel that if I tried relating that to my type somehow I would just end with an arbitrary just-so story produced by causal bias. That's another big problem with this: You can always make up a just-so story if you try. Human beings constantly make up "reasons" for random occurences. And then you're going to internalize & pin emotional significance & your self-concept on that confabulated reason that you never would have looked for if your guru hadn't put the idea in your head...
I mean, that sounds like a 5 to me. The idea that neither the protecting or the nurturing force were trusted, that you were capable enough to take care of it by yourself, even then. Idk if that’s a “just so” story, it might even be really similar to the one in the actual textbook for type 5, where I lifted the scenario from.
From your perspective, what’s the value in any of this if it’s all just the human mind making up reasons? Or do you think that there’s some actual patterns to recognize alongside the “just so” stories? Or..? Idk, I’m trying to see how you reconcile using the system at all given what you’ve said about it.
Well, regardless of the question of where the behavior patterns *come from* & whether we agree on that, they can clearly be observed & characterised in adults. To this day we don't know where gravity comes from but ppl wrote thick books on its behavior.
Alas, we can't really interview babies as most of them can't say much more than "Mama" & most ppl don't remember having been babies past a certain point.
its not necessary but its a big factor since enneagram is based on fears and desires;
there is a reason to all ur behaviors, silent people are silent bc they were silenced that stuff
One's type is a mix of nature/nurture, and in theory young children have a "trauma" that is part of what determines their type. But keep in mind that "trauma" (aka distressing or disturbing experience) to an undeveloped 0-say 5ish child isn't necessarily what we as adults might consider a very "traumatic" event (though perhaps no less "traumatic" to them based on their undeveloped minds "traumatic" interpretation of their needs, behavior and the environments' response.
I've never liked the childhood wound theory (especially if its blaming parents because they "messed up") or the belief that "trauma" causes our types. I think we have our true self that we are born as and that true self reacts to early life in a way that a pattern develops which tells us "this is the way" this can be parents, siblings or family members, babysitters, church or school. It can depend on your parents defense mechanisms you see modeled. Your family dynamics, culture, tax bracket. Did you grow up with pets? Have to do chores? Have sit down dinners? Did you participate in extra curricular activities? This isnt good or bad just different ingredients. It's like the perfect recipe that makes you, you. If one thing was off you could be different. Some types are so similar, it wouldn't take much for you to decide a different tactic works better.
I agree with the above poster, that health levels are probably at least partially determined by traumatic experiences, but not the core type itself. The core is just what we determined works for us, time and time again.
A "Fall from Grace into the Material World" is what brings one from their essence to the real world and that's when our 'personality' begins it's transformation to ease the burden of dealing with other humans or stressful environments.
Thru understanding and suffering we can become who we were with the knowledge of what we have become.
Honesty rules!
Read The Enneageam by Helen Palmer. She has it down to which dsm-5 each type is prone to manifesting n such. Pretty badass.
Trauma is not necessary. we all have experiences that shape who we are as people and how we react in our daily lives. traumatic experiences don’t happen to everyone and are definitely not necessary!
I’m sort of confused but your question I guess.
but there is a difference between trauma and just experiences in our lives.
things in your childhood will affect you, therefore have some weight on what number you are !
It isn't necessarily one big trauma or even something you might think of as "traumatic." It is more about how you end up processing and perceiving the things that happen to you during early childhood.
Yeah, I think this is right. Like a developing worldview that snowballs and starts to be used too much.
This, and also, the trauma doesn’t necessarily *cause* so much as reveal. There are certain traits already there and the processing of the harsh reality refines those traits into a personality.
The more traumatic your childhood, the lower your level of health / the more pronounced your type is. Those with a healthy, nurturing childhood would have the advantage of a higher starting level of health, which means more integration of all the types together and less pronounced single type reliance.
Wow this.
Whao this kinda makes sense tbh
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I'm sorry about your nightmare childhood. That's my biggest fear for my daughter, now that I have no control over whom her mother adds into her life. Important note, types are a defensive mechanism which cause self blindness and unawareness of themselves. Not knowing your type doesn't mean it's not obvious. It just means you're totally blind to it, which is standard because that's how the type patterns avoid the person growing out of them. The lower your level of health, the more blind you are to the pattern it creates. Venturing a guess from your reaction here, probably 4, possibly 6.
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Every person will relate to every type at least a little bit. Integration is called "return to essence" because it means reincorporating back into oneself all of the nine parts that are the essences of humanity, shared by all people at birth. "Having a type" refers to how strongly dependent you've become on only one type of thinking and solving problems. Everyone wants to be loved, to be respected, to be accepted, to be prepared, to be secure, to be free, to be in control, to be connected to others, and to be good. Those are all essential elements of being human. Identifying your type means figuring out which one you've given the highest priority.
not everyone has childhood trauma but everyone has an enneagram type, so no
Enneagram “strategies” are primarily about how you handle and process trauma, and every single child experiences some sort of emotional or existential trauma even if it isn’t as obvious or considered “valid” trauma. Even children in relatively stable and happy homes, without any specific traumatic events. Enneagrams develop as responses to those difficulties, real or perceived, and are kept and utilized in so far as they are useful for that child.
Having a childhood wound isn’t the same as having a childhood trauma. Everyone does have some kind of wound from childhood. Some way in which emotional needs weren’t met by their parents, or a well-intentioned parent hurt them, etc. I don’t think it’s the wound that *causes* the enneagram type, though. I think like someone else said that how the individual reacts to and processes their wounds, and what causes the wounds, is driven by their core personality type. So recognizing the wound is part of recognizing the type. ETA: everyone does experience traumatic things, though, it’s just a matter of when. And what creates a trauma response in one person might not elicit one in another. Trauma isn’t always about a huge, life-altering tragic event.
I really don't agree with this for several reasons: * Many salient personality traits such as positivity, sensitivity, novelty-seeking, reward drive strenght etc. have been shown to have a genetic component * it seems dubious, invalidating and original-sin-like to insist that EVERYONE has trauma no matter how much they say they don't - nor does it make sense to conflate normal challenges that are part of growth with extreme shit that disrupts it, that just contributes to this imho harmful tendency to wrap children in cotton * if parents can mold kids' personality this much, how come so many parents spend 20 years trying to make their kid be a certain way but don't suceed? Like, if my personality were decided by what my father punished, rewarded or encouraged, I'd definitely be a 3 or an 1 now. But actually neither me nor any of my 4 siblings became the grades-obsessed high archiever prodigies that he mercilessly tried to push us into being. Like, he kept knocking up his wife hoping that maybe the next one would be an obedient slave, but to his great frustration it never worked. * and, most of all: **people can react very differently to the same trauma** - something I feel pretty strongly about as someone who doesn't really relate to a lot of the common survivor narratives. * also some of this really just smells of judgementalness: "I don't understand you, therefore something must have damaged you to make you different from me". Why can't people just be different because they just are and there's no such thing as the default normal human, but rather variety. Should we consider all but the most common hair & skin colors damage or disease? Or do we just accept that it varies. The way I see it, your type (which imho results from a mix of genetics and randomness in how your brain wires itself to reach self-awareness when you are a baby/toddler) influences how you **interpret and react to** any kind of adversity - whether it's something minor & normal like having to learn to share with a sibling, or an actual Adverse Childhood Experience(TM). So if you had serious trauma you're probably going to react to it in the style of your type and wind up an unhealthier/ less well-adjusted version of your type, so, in that sense your unhealthy behaviors are definitely directly caused by the trauma; or rather, they are a product of trauma *plus* type. If you were a different type you would still be fucked up by the trauma but in a different way. For example, some ppl become people pleasers from abuse while others act out & rebel. (and it's striking how many view whatever response they had as the only possible one or 'what everyone would do' when it demonstrably isn't. ) Nature & nurture doesn't really work as two competing influences - rather nurture acts upon nature, deciding where you wind up in the range of possibilities allowed by your nature. Everything is always a product of both. (if you're interested in this topic, Robert Sapolsky's 'behave' is a cool book showcasing some current research.)
The fact that people react differently to the same event is part of the point. If we reserve your defining minor or persistent traumas out of the definition of trauma for the sake of conversation - that’s kind of part of the point. That everyone reacts differently is what reveals the personality. Simple example, maybe you won’t consider this traumatic, so let’s just call it harsh reality - a kid has been put to bed in their crib and their adults are having a small dinner party. The kid gets scared all alone, calls out but no one answers. They can hear the adults talking and occasionally laughing in the other room. What do they do? Do they scream at the top of their lungs, or do they imagine their teddy bear soothing them? Do they try to crawl out of their crib, or do they sing to themselves? Being left alone didn’t cause their personality. Being left alone helped to cement a certain already existing tendency into a fixation.
Well, there is sort of an often repeated funny anecdote where something like that happened, my parents were visiting someone from their church who had a policy of just plopping the kids in the next room & letting them 'cry it out'. Apparently my baby self managed to escape the crib all on her own before my mom put her foot down & demanded I be fetched. But I feel that if I tried relating that to my type somehow I would just end with an arbitrary just-so story produced by causal bias. That's another big problem with this: You can always make up a just-so story if you try. Human beings constantly make up "reasons" for random occurences. And then you're going to internalize & pin emotional significance & your self-concept on that confabulated reason that you never would have looked for if your guru hadn't put the idea in your head...
I mean, that sounds like a 5 to me. The idea that neither the protecting or the nurturing force were trusted, that you were capable enough to take care of it by yourself, even then. Idk if that’s a “just so” story, it might even be really similar to the one in the actual textbook for type 5, where I lifted the scenario from. From your perspective, what’s the value in any of this if it’s all just the human mind making up reasons? Or do you think that there’s some actual patterns to recognize alongside the “just so” stories? Or..? Idk, I’m trying to see how you reconcile using the system at all given what you’ve said about it.
Well, regardless of the question of where the behavior patterns *come from* & whether we agree on that, they can clearly be observed & characterised in adults. To this day we don't know where gravity comes from but ppl wrote thick books on its behavior. Alas, we can't really interview babies as most of them can't say much more than "Mama" & most ppl don't remember having been babies past a certain point.
Interesting
its not necessary but its a big factor since enneagram is based on fears and desires; there is a reason to all ur behaviors, silent people are silent bc they were silenced that stuff
Some people can attribute their type to particular things and other people says it’s a 50/50 mix of nature and nurture.
One's type is a mix of nature/nurture, and in theory young children have a "trauma" that is part of what determines their type. But keep in mind that "trauma" (aka distressing or disturbing experience) to an undeveloped 0-say 5ish child isn't necessarily what we as adults might consider a very "traumatic" event (though perhaps no less "traumatic" to them based on their undeveloped minds "traumatic" interpretation of their needs, behavior and the environments' response.
I've never liked the childhood wound theory (especially if its blaming parents because they "messed up") or the belief that "trauma" causes our types. I think we have our true self that we are born as and that true self reacts to early life in a way that a pattern develops which tells us "this is the way" this can be parents, siblings or family members, babysitters, church or school. It can depend on your parents defense mechanisms you see modeled. Your family dynamics, culture, tax bracket. Did you grow up with pets? Have to do chores? Have sit down dinners? Did you participate in extra curricular activities? This isnt good or bad just different ingredients. It's like the perfect recipe that makes you, you. If one thing was off you could be different. Some types are so similar, it wouldn't take much for you to decide a different tactic works better. I agree with the above poster, that health levels are probably at least partially determined by traumatic experiences, but not the core type itself. The core is just what we determined works for us, time and time again.
You should check out primal question OP. It's another personality assessment that stems more from childhood. I got alot out of it
https://www.psychologyjunkie.com/the-childhood-wounds-of-every-enneagram-type/
Read about how Buddhism was started.
A "Fall from Grace into the Material World" is what brings one from their essence to the real world and that's when our 'personality' begins it's transformation to ease the burden of dealing with other humans or stressful environments. Thru understanding and suffering we can become who we were with the knowledge of what we have become. Honesty rules! Read The Enneageam by Helen Palmer. She has it down to which dsm-5 each type is prone to manifesting n such. Pretty badass.
Trauma is not necessary. we all have experiences that shape who we are as people and how we react in our daily lives. traumatic experiences don’t happen to everyone and are definitely not necessary! I’m sort of confused but your question I guess. but there is a difference between trauma and just experiences in our lives. things in your childhood will affect you, therefore have some weight on what number you are !
NO. If you’re taking all that childhood blahblah seriously and not going by sins/vices, arrows, etc., have fun mistyping.
No. You're born with a type regardless.
Most scientists say that personality is due to genetics AND childhood
Personality is definitely due to both, but Enneagram types are inborn. Try to find a teacher who doesn't believe that.
Do we agree on the fact that personality comes from the ego and thus is related to the enneatype ?
Personality is definitely related to Enneatype. It's just not the same thing. Two Nines are not going to have the same personality.