You can use any of our products, my book, or use the menu to set up with a coach, or counselor, or even just visit the products > freebies page and start there! We know you are SO unique so there are lots of options and freebies for both Enneagram and non-Enneagram marriage care amidst the podcast episodes, products, and counseling and coaching offerings.
What is the Enneagram?
The Enneagram is a system for helping individuals to find their core strengths and greatest gifts in the world as well as helping them identify what’s holding them back, namely, their core vices and unhealthy inner thinking scripts or fixations. It’s been the most helpful tool to date with couples that I have seen in terms of systems applications and I use this tool to integrate the best of general marriage research with the nuanced personality types to help couples find their best strengths and to combat weaknesses together.
Throughout history, there have been different ways of approaching the classification of personality types. You may have heard of the ancient personality system of the four humours by Hippocrates, or more recent approaches such as Gary Chapman’s Five Love Languages, the Myers-Briggs four-letter personality typing system, DISC, or the Big Five. In the Enneagram system, there are nine basic types of personality, each with unique gifts, unique strengths, and unique weaknesses. It is thought that discovering your personality type can be quite useful in knowing what hobbies and careers to pursue, and which vices (sins/passions) we need to be especially careful to avoid. It can be especially useful in relationships such as marriage when so much is at stake to communicate well and to meet each other’s particular needs for a long and happy life together.
What’s with the shape of the Enneagram?
The Enneagram is simply the geometric shape that is formed when we arrange the nine basic personality types in a circle and then draw arrows to illustrate how they relate to each other. It’s like a diagram or map of personality types. “Ennea” comes from the Greek word for nine, and “gram” simply means shape, so the term is just a practical use of geometry. Sometimes you see the shape drawn without the numbers at each point around it, and this is just a simple symbolic way to represent the entire Enneagram personality typing system.
The shapes and numbers of the Enneagram do not hold moral value, they are just trait placeholders and neutral symbols representing each personality type on a personality continuum of sorts, although there are other uses of similar nine-pointed symbols across history and time. Another example of a symbol that can be used in multiple ways is the five-pointed star. We all use them every day to highlight something, to reward kids, and to celebrate beautiful states and countries across the globe. However, a five-pointed star can also be used with a circle around it to represent satanism or the occult.
Across time and humanity, we have many neutral tools and symbols that we can use for good, to develop tools to live better together. The Enneagram is one of those tools. You will no doubt occasionally find eccentric individuals who use these neutral tools for strange or even evil ends, just as in medicine or the arts and sciences otherwise, but we hope to always use the Enneagram for good purposes here at Enneagram + Marriage, to bring God-given gifts to light and life.
Will I be labeled or put in a box?
I wrote a whole article on this for couples on my blog page, but briefly, it’s not helpful to use any kind of label to discriminate against people and to limit their freedoms based on sex, race, body type, or even personality type. In fact, there’s a potential misuse of ANY identifying trait on anyone. It can happen with mental health diagnoses, disabilities, or anything where we forget person-first language. It’s something we should all be careful to avoid doing and avoid using the Enneagram to weaponize. However, just because we don’t want to weaponize traits does not mean we don’t have these traits. Just as your ethnicity may be celebrated for all of the wonderful particular traditions and cultural idiosyncrasies that it includes, so your unique personality type holds certain traits you can celebrate and be proud of.
Comparatively, perhaps you avoid doing genetic tests like 23 & Me or Ancestry.com because you don't want to know what genes come from where or what genetic propensities exist in the unique genome in your body. Perhaps you think ignorance is bliss in this sense, and that's fine, you are free to choose not to know. It's up to you. But does that mean you don't have genes that will make it more or less likely for you to have certain diseases? No, they will still be there, only you won't have the powerful knowledge that you could act upon which could potentially prevent you from manifesting those harmful traits.
Similarly, when someone experiences trauma in their childhood, it often impacts their psyche and festers over the years, rearing its ugly head in the form of anxiety, depression, difficulties in relationships, or harmful behaviors. If you don’t want to take advantage of counseling to carefully analyze what you’ve experienced and how it has affected you, that’s your prerogative and you are free to choose that. However, you will just be missing out on the freedom and power that comes from identifying the problem and bravely doing the work to heal those wounds.
You are stuck with your genetics. And you are stuck with the way your life experiences have shaped you up to this point. There's no changing these things as the past is in the past. However, as you move ahead, you might as well figure out what they are so that you can actually play an active role in doing something about it! It is in this sense that analyzing and labeling your many different beautiful traits, including your unique personality type, can be very helpful. Knowledge is power. If you identify your personality type, you can know your tendencies, both the strengths and weaknesses, and live a more empowered life. I just love living intentionally with you!
Is the Enneagram astrology/numerology?
No. What makes the Enneagram so much different than astrology is that not only is it not at all based on the stars or influence from the stars, but it's also not about your future destiny. Having an Enneagram number does not mean you are destined to a certain fate, or that you are blessed or cursed in any way. Your personality type is not meant to be a box that you are stuck inside, but rather like a skeleton or latticework that you get to grow out from in whatever direction you choose. And just like your genetics and your upbringing, this personality you have is part of the hand of cards you've been dealt, and you now get to use your free will to choose how you want to play from here. And we are here to walk alongside you help you and your spouse with accountability and encouragement along the way!
Did the Enneagram come from the occult?
First of all, NO, there's no good evidence that the Enneagram is from the occult or astrology. For more on this, see this excellent video from Tyler Zach. Second, there is a basic logical mistake called the genetic fallacy that we all need to be careful to avoid in our day-to-day lives. We must not judge any argument based on where it comes from or who is presenting it, but rather by the truth of its content. This is because truth is truth no matter who is speaking it.
For example, we all use and trust theories in science and mathematics that were discovered by people who don't hold the same faith values that we do. So many ideas we all take for granted as truth came about from some unknown past and evolved over the millennia until they came to be in the form we know them today. Do you think algebra is reliable? Algebra is an Arabic word. When you use algebra, you are using a system discovered and developed largely by ancient Babylonian Muslims. Does this make algebra any less useful to Christians or Jews? No way! The theorems of geometry were largely discovered by polytheistic Greeks. Does it make geometry any less reliable to monotheists to understand the world? No, of course not. Thursday comes from Thor's day, May and June come from Maya and Juno, Greek goddesses, so every time you use a calendar you're using names of days and months named after Greek gods. Should we abandon the calendar? No, it's actually very useful and accurate regardless of how we got it, and I'm grateful we now have it. Isaac Newton was maybe the greatest scientist of all time, and indeed, you may know he wrote a lot about the Bible and prophecy. But he was also heavily into the occult! Does that mean we abandon the laws of motion and gravity he discovered? Not at all! Kepler was a Christian genius who discovered the laws of planetary motion that we used to go to the moon and send spacecraft to Mars. Did you know Kepler practiced astrology and used it to supplement his low salary from the University? Should we abandon the laws of planetary motion that he discovered? No way! And all these ideas started as crude approximations which have evolved thanks to people from many different cultures over time thinking carefully, running experiments, and refining them into the reliable time-tested theories we have today.
I believe all truth is God's truth and we have nothing to fear from the truth. We can still learn from those who differ from us, even if we don’t want to align with them in every area of life. I tell my kids we have to eat the meat and spit out the bones when consuming information in the world today. Yes, it might take some work to tease out what the Truth is, but it's worth the effort. I hope you will try your very best to do the same as you scroll social media and watch YouTube videos. If you’re a person of faith, try your best to love God not only with all your heart, soul, and strength, but all of your mind also. Think carefully and deeply about what raw materials you have to work with including your personality type, and then try to do your best with what you have.
If you turn out to be like me and you find the Enneagram is helpful toward this end, then great! And if not, that's OK too, there are a lot of other useful tools you can use out there. But please do not pre-judge people or reject the Enneagram based on the weak argument that it's an evil form of astrology or numerology or the occult. It may not be your favorite tool, but it’s not fair to judge or call someone a Satanist because they’ve made good use of this tool.
Why do you use the Enneagram?
I love helping helpful couples to understand what helps them to thrive and to blend their gifts together, and the Enneagram system is an excellent clarifying training ground for doing so with nine possible gifts that can be combined together in any variety of ways (For example, you may have a 4-5 marriage or a 9-7 marriage). There are 45 pairings, and I’ve written about each one of them in my new book. It’s exciting to help couples to create a healthy narrative together as they see their own unique giftings paired together. I love learning right alongside couples as we study what makes their pairing unique and beautiful as they learn their gifts and struggles or shadow sides. This is highly promising in terms of marital satisfaction across time, according to research.
Much of the communication in relationships is non-verbal or seemingly intangible, and the Enneagram can provide some structure to help us to understand each other better, and get a better idea of where we are coming from because whether we realize it or not, we are like iceburgs, being moved, influenced, and swayed in different directions because of a larger part of who we are under the surface or in the shadows.
However, when you make the effort to think carefully and take an inventory of all the raw materials you're working with, you can live a more empowered life. As you learn your type, you increasingly know what needs to be shored up and strengthened because it's not naturally a strength. You know better what pitfalls to avoid based on your natural weaknesses. Of course, you can learn these things the hard way they experience and most of us do! But with tools like these models of personality, you might not have to go against the grain so much, and you might avoid a lot of unnecessary and wasteful pain and frustration. As I said before, knowledge is power. If you identify your personality type, you can know your tendencies, both strengths and weaknesses and live a more empowered life. The Enneagram can help you to truly shine all the brighter as you make the most of each day, loving your people well with intention and direction in your own unique way with your unique personality type. I just love that about living intentionally with you!
If you'd like to know more about how to use this very helpful tool to better understand your spouse and greatly improve your marriage, then check out my new book, The Enneagram in Marriage, available wherever books are sold!
