The Enneagram and Mental Health
“What number are you?” is a common question that you may hear at coffee shops, summer lake days, or with your workplace friends. The enneagram has quickly become the most popular personality test out there. It presents personality as fitting into 9 basic types, with other more detailed descriptors such as wings (the number on either side of yours) and subtypes (self-preservation, social, or sexual) helping explain the types more extensively.
The 9 types are:
The Reformer
The Helper
The Achiever
The Individualist
The Investigator
The Loyalist
The Enthusiast
The Challenger
The Peacemaker
Exploring your individual type can be extremely helpful in growing your self-awareness regarding stress, health, lifestyle, work, and relationships. It is a framework that gives common language to help you understand yourself, and thus understand how you move and interact with the world. This can be critical in working towards mental health, as the enneagram can be thought of in terms of coping patterns that you commonly employ to handle the world through your types framework.
If you want to know more about the 9 types and how they interact with different aspects of mental health, there are a ton of helpful resources out there that can start you on that journey. The Enneagram Institute (https://www.enneagraminstitute.com) is a great place to start, as you can read about the 9 types and take the official enneagram test to discover your type. The Road Back to You (https://www.theroadbacktoyou.com) is also a great book and podcast series that can help you if you want to do a deeper dive into the enneagram world!
If you ever want to process through what you’re learning through the enneagram, all of the Brave GR counselors are well versed in enneagram-language and would love to talk through that journey with you!
