# Personal Habits In Guessing Other's Enneagram Types!



## Mereallysmart (Jun 7, 2011)

If you're anything like me, you're often speculating the possible enneagram types of an acquaintance, friend, relative, or character, and you tend to decide on the personality type of the person before you even ask them. 
So I have a question for all of you:
What's your most common guess of someone's personality type?


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## Blazkovitz (Mar 16, 2014)

Boring people - 9
Annoying people - 7w8 (frivolous) or 6 (nutty)

Idealistic people who have integrity - 1


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## Lord Bullingdon (Aug 9, 2014)

Well that depends on the individual in question and what sorts of energy he / she is throwing off, the sorts of statements he /she makes, their thoughts, etc. I don't notice a particular bias; it depends more on the person in question.


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## Stellafera (Jan 19, 2015)

I tend to guess 1 most offline and pretty often with fictional characters. Online, almost everyone sounds like a 6 when they're busy questioning themselves to me, but 1s are still fairly distinctive.


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## Figure (Jun 22, 2011)

The type I've run into the most in real life is by far and away type 6. I can even kind of tell which of them would be interested in knowing they are a 6, which would be apathetic to it, and which would flagrantly deny it. Some of them are stereotypically 6-ish across the board, and others look a lot more like their wing, and others I sort of assume are 6's because they aren't any other type on the surface, then once getting to know them better start to show their 6-ness more clearly. 

Second behind that is 9, and in particular 9w8.

And third, I tend to interact with a lot of 3's due to my profession being full of them. It was similar in college, lots of Self Pres 3's who worked really hard and ground through the tough courses so they could work at Wells Fargo or Goldman Sachs as entry level I-Bankers. 3's do, however, tend to be less common in the outer world than I had thought at first; there really doesn't seem to be a lot of them.


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## Swordsman of Mana (Jan 7, 2011)

Mereallysmart said:


> If you're anything like me, you're often speculating the possible enneagram types of an acquaintance, friend, relative, or character, and you tend to decide on the personality type of the person before you even ask them.
> So I have a question for all of you:
> What's your most common guess of someone's personality type?


are you asking which type we believe is the most common? if so, I see 6s and 9s everywhere.


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## Sixty Nein (Feb 13, 2011)

I never really thought of 6 or 9 being that popular. I guess I only tend to see it whenever it's particularly extreme or something? I guess people tend to confuse common issues, and type people as sixes based of them or whatever.

Where exactly did this notion of the 369 types being more popular than the others come from anyways? Like if anything I'd imagine 258 being more common, if only because it would make more logical for that to be the case. Then again I do have the concept of 2 5 8 being the "permeable" points that underline the basic desires of their respective element, body arrangement or whatever. 3 6 9 would be more "dense" in the sense that their issues are more complexed than the 3 6 9. While 1 4 7 would be more of a "refined" sort of deal, which is generally more feminine than their more masculine counterparts, which underlines the higher desires of the "soul" or whatever.

I guess the complicated nature of the "attachment" triad can confuse people who aren't really on point of seeing someone else's actual nature and thus sort of assume that everyone has to be those types.


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## 0+n*1 (Sep 20, 2013)

Honestly, it is 6. Whenever I try to guess someone's type I almost always include 6. Why is that? Well, I am biased. I feel like 6 is one of the most misunderstood types of all. No, I'm not saying 6 is so complex that cannot be understood; I like to think all types are complex (humans are complex, point). The fault is not in the 6-ness of type 6, whatever that is, but on the reputation it has. '6 is contradictive', '6 is everyman', '6 is blahblah'.


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## hksfdgknsjbdklrafbku (Jan 2, 2015)

7 a lot because i automatically label anyone elses problems and thoughts as less 'deep' as mine are (but just as important none the less), so i assume they aren't digging very far into their internal world which i think is a 7 thing?


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## atenea (Sep 14, 2014)

I've typed many people I know as 6s and 7s. I think my country's culture promotes 7s or at least makes a lot of people look like 7s, even if they are not.


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## tresemme (Jun 21, 2014)

Blazkovitz said:


> Boring people - 9
> Annoying people - 7w8 (frivolous) or 6 (nutty)
> 
> Idealistic people who have integrity - 1


Not sure if serious or ego stroking. I guess it doesn't matter. Idealistic is not the first thing that comes to mind when someone who studies the enneagram thinks of 1s. That would be 9w1 or some positive reframing type or something. If only I get a quarter every time I hear people view type 1 like some inherent revolutionary type, I can buy so much macdonald cheeseburgers.



0+n*1 said:


> Honestly, it is 6. Whenever I try to guess someone's type I almost always include 6. Why is that? Well, I am biased. I feel like 6 is one of the most misunderstood types of all. No, I'm not saying 6 is so complex that cannot be understood; I like to think all types are complex (humans are complex, point). The fault is not in the 6-ness of type 6, whatever that is, but on the reputation it has. '6 is contradictive', '6 is everyman', '6 is blahblah'.


It used to be cowardice that was associated with 6, but that's too narrow so I think they went with angst or fear. Fear makes sense in that it is very broad and most primitive instinct. Of course, as you've mentioned, that's all lip service and doesn't do it actual service in describing the type.



> “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”
> ― H.P. Lovecraft


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## Blazkovitz (Mar 16, 2014)

tresemme said:


> Not sure if serious or ego stroking. I guess it doesn't matter. Idealistic is not the first thing that comes to mind when someone who studies the enneagram thinks of 1s. That would be 9w1 or some positive reframing type or something. If only I get a quarter every time I hear people view type 1 like some inherent revolutionary type, I can buy so much macdonald cheeseburgers.


I was not fully serious. It is nice to think 'I am the same type as a hero' however. Albert Schweitzer was a great hero and he is usually typed as a 1w2, so this makes some sense. But I'm aware that every type has its scoundrels.


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## Zamyatin (Jun 10, 2014)

Lots of 6s. They're easy to identify, especially if phobic. There's that unmistakable and constant "freaked out" agitation they try to keep up under control, but it spikes a lot, up and down, up and down. Exasperation is a common expressed emotion. When they're feeling threatened, they start talking about how nothing can be relied upon and how life is unfair to them and we're all lost, and they do it quite vocally and in public. Some quotes from the Facebook of a 6 I know IRL (these are public posts, they're not excerpts from a conversation or anything, and just from the last couple of months);



> Is it genuinely that difficult to be a decent human being?





> That feeling of alone you get when you know nobody else has a clue either, and we're all just fumbling through life thinking someone else has it together.





> Happy New Year! Hopefully this year brings happiness instead of pain!


Notice four main elements;

1) Belief that the world is full of pain that's hard to avoid, almost a sense of being persecuted (first and third quotes)
2) Strong feeling of being "lost", looking for someone or something that "has it together" but realizing nobody does (second quote)
3) Sense of being alone, with nothing to rely on (second quote)
4) Outward focus of the fear, always based on how or what something outside affects the individual (first and second quotes)

There's also a fifth element that's not noticeable in these quotes, but is very noticeable if you know a 6 in person; they tend to surround themselves with people, even if introverted, that they feel they can rely upon, and they use those people for emotional support constantly. All 6s I've ever met have a "clique", even if it's only one or two people, which is often the case if they're strongly introverted.

While I certainly don't mean to imply that all 6s post stuff like this on their Facebook walls, the underlying beliefs are visible in all 6s. Examples from my life that come to mind are a type 6 professor I had back in college. She taught constitutional law and case law relating to it, and her agitation and angst towards the fact that American "liberties" are based on a bunch of legal fiction was palpable. Her dominant emotion was exasperation with her own subject, and she would periodically lose control of her emotions and overemphasize something because it was particularly bothering her. She demonstrated a lot of elements 2 and 3, though if I'd known her personally I'd likely have seen a lot of the others as well.

Another example would be a manager I had once. She took the perfectionist route to avoid anxiety, and would obsessively plan everything because she was afraid that something would go wrong. She displayed more of 3, 4, and 5 -- she would seek consensus with _everybody_ because she distrusted her own decisions, constantly second-guessing herself and using overthinking and the advice of others to overcome that.

By a very large margin, type 6 is the most common type I know. It's nearing the point that I start by typing people I know by first checking to ensure they're _not_ displaying type 6 traits.

The second and third most common in my life are probably 7 and 2, though there are probably more 6s in my life than 7s and 2s put together. The rest of the types are fairly uncommon, though there are a decent number of 9s.


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## mushr00m (May 23, 2011)

I must say, 6 seems the safe to go to type if one can't decide between 6w5 and 5w6, 6w7 and 7w6 if there is a confusion, with 5 on the basis that the person is too outwards seeking to be a 5 and too insecure to be a 7 so just simply leave it at 6. I often wonder if the person is a 6 at all, I have to wipe the slate clean and come up with something like a list of why they fit this type and what about them fits the neighbouring type. When analysis becomes too fragmented, it's good to go back to the fundamental basics of a type rather than get stuck in technicalities that lose grip of the over-arching theme. Anxiety is a hot topic on the 6 and there's been many a conversation on here about whether it's 6 related or whether the anxiety stems from something else like PTSD but as long as you stick with the underlying basis that if you feel like you need something stable to hold onto consistently through your life and the whole type structure, your on the right track, it's helpful not to get sidetracked on those irrelevant details and to get stuck in them such as the anxiety, go back to the drawing board of what are the crucial psychodynamic characteristics and _it is a number of them_ that feeds the fixation hence why type is formed structurally.


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## mushr00m (May 23, 2011)

0+n*1 said:


> Honestly, it is 6. Whenever I try to guess someone's type I almost always include 6. Why is that? Well, I am biased. I feel like 6 is one of the most misunderstood types of all. No, I'm not saying 6 is so complex that cannot be understood; I like to think all types are complex (humans are complex, point). The fault is not in the 6-ness of type 6, whatever that is, but on the reputation it has. '6 is contradictive', '6 is everyman', '6 is blahblah'.


If it is so misunderstood, why is it so commonly typed? It's kinda like anything difficult to understand gets quickly filed under ____, how do we know that the person typing cannot understand the other person because of some bias on their part or don't know how to examine inside the complexity of another? 


*thought food*


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## tanstaafl28 (Sep 10, 2012)

Mereallysmart said:


> If you're anything like me, you're often speculating the possible enneagram types of an acquaintance, friend, relative, or character, and you tend to decide on the personality type of the person before you even ask them.
> So I have a question for all of you:
> What's your most common guess of someone's personality type?


I did not read what others have posted. It doesn't work like that for me. I take everyone as they are. I try not to project my own affiliations on them. The general consensus is that 4s, 6s and 9s tend to be harder to type than the rest, I am not sure whether this is true or not. I believe that some people tend to be more obvious than others. I think people in the average-to-healthy range tend to be clearer to read (this may be because the more unhealthy a type is, the less we tend to want to be around them).


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## Stellafera (Jan 19, 2015)

Zamyatin said:


> There's also a fifth element that's not noticeable in these quotes, but is very noticeable if you know a 6 in person; they tend to surround themselves with people, even if introverted, that they feel they can rely upon, and they use those people for emotional support constantly. All 6s I've ever met have a "clique", even if it's only one or two people, which is often the case if they're strongly introverted.


I agreed with a lot of your post (points 2-4 are very identifiable), but I'm not so sure about this one. I mean, I guess that I look to my mom when I'm worried about something, but I don't deliberately cultivate a clique for 'safety'. Never quite liked the "alliances" view of Type 6, maybe because it never really fit in with me as a So-dominant 6w7 who never understood the concept of seeing authorities and 'power structures' as nebulous forces. 

I do, however, look to my friends and family when I am upset for reassurance. In my worse moments, it's absolutely true that I both want someone who has it together so that I can bounce advice off of them but also want to believe that everyone else is just as neurotic as me so that I feel more comfortable with myself. It's a subconscious, but surprisingly needy trait. 

(I loved Quote 2 but I didn't like Quote 1 at all, funnily enough. It sounded _really_ passive aggressive.)


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## Zamyatin (Jun 10, 2014)

Stellafera said:


> I agreed with a lot of your post (points 2-4 are very identifiable), but I'm not so sure about this one. I mean, I guess that I look to my mom when I'm worried about something, but I don't deliberately cultivate a clique for 'safety'. Never quite liked the "alliances" view of Type 6, maybe because it never really fit in with me as a So-dominant 6w7 who never understood the concept of seeing authorities and 'power structures' as nebulous forces.
> 
> I do, however, look to my friends and family when I am upset for reassurance. In my worse moments, it's absolutely true that I both want someone who has it together so that I can bounce advice off of them but also want to believe that everyone else is just as neurotic as me so that I feel more comfortable with myself. It's a subconscious, but surprisingly needy trait.
> 
> (I loved Quote 2 but I didn't like Quote 1 at all, funnily enough. It sounded _really_ passive aggressive.)


Hmm, I wonder how instincts affect this. Most of the 6s I've known are Sp or Sx. Those quotes are from an So-last 6 on the Fe-Ti axis.

It can be hard for me to understand the mindset of 6s, which is why I've tried so hard to learn to identify their outward behavior quirks. I mean, for example, the quote "we're all just fumbling through life thinking someone else has it together" seems really alien to me. Not because I think we're not fumbling through life, because I can kind of understand that thought (though it's not how I'd put it) but because I _don't_ really think about whether or not "someone else has it together". It seems kind of irrelevant to me. I only really care about whether or not _I_ have it together. If I can learn something from another person, great, but it keeps coming back to the relationship between myself and how things should be, not between myself and whether others are suitable guides. But I've noticed a lot of 6s who seem to put a LOT of weight on the idea that we're all lost together, a kind of hopeless sense of community, it seems fairly central to how they think and what they're looking for, yet it also seems to make them absolutely miserable.

6s bewilder me more than any other type.


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## VacantPsalm (Dec 22, 2014)

1, 4, and 5 because I understand them the most. If I'm not sure or don't care about them, I won't guess at all. So I need to see something both interesting and "type x-ish" before I'll guess.

7 also got a vote because anyone who's loud and far too excitable for my tastes gets it. Especially people in these beer ads I keep getting on YouTube.


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## 0+n*1 (Sep 20, 2013)

mushr00m said:


> If it is so misunderstood, why is it so commonly typed? It's kinda like anything difficult to understand gets quickly filed under ____, how do we know that the person typing cannot understand the other person because of some bias on their part or don't know how to examine inside the complexity of another?


I don't understand type 6 completely and yet I consider it one of my options. I feel like 6 has become in my head some kind of place where the leftovers of the enneagram can go. It shouldn't be like this, I feel this is insulting. I think it's safe to say that a lot of people in the community perceive 6 as a bunch of contradictions, or too complex, or with a lot of variations; just to illustrate it, I don't see people making a distinction between type and countertype like they do with 6. I think a lot of times, as you said, not understanding the other person (or even oneself), not knowing how to examine inside their complexity or not knowing how to interpret what we see, can lead to people dumping them on the 6 box. At least it happens with me, but I don't think I am the only one that commits this mistake. 6 has become some kind of default type, that I feel I must consider as an option whenever I try to type someone. It doesn't happen with other types, only with 6, and I think it is partly because there's a lot of things that are said about type 6, that it feels like type 6 is such a human type, that represents the struggles of being a human (there's even a description that says almost exactly what I said here and I think it is well-regarded).

To give you an example, regardless of my type (and maybe thanks to it), everything I said here sounds more like venting than anything else, talking about my frustrations with the enneagram and the uncertainty about my type and type 6 in general, it almost feels like what I said lost its validity (I said almost just for self-respect), it gives the feeling that I'm looking for an answer out there and I'm resigned to never find it, and if this wasn't palpable by the things I said, then this confession just reaffirms it; it reeks of type 6.... or does it? And the question just begs the 6 out of my head. I see 6 everywhere, it's like seeing offense where there is none because you've experienced a lot of it and now you're just defensive. At least I am honest and I say 6 is one of my options. I'm finding really hard to accept it but also hard to deny it. 

And one of your observations really fed me up with thoughts. Thanks?

Ambivalence must be my second name.


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## Stellafera (Jan 19, 2015)

Zamyatin said:


> But I've noticed a lot of 6s who seem to put a LOT of weight on the idea that we're all lost together, a kind of hopeless sense of community, it seems fairly central to how they think and what they're looking for, yet it also seems to make them absolutely miserable.


If I feel like I don't have a solid anchor of security, and everyone else does, that suggests that either I'm right and they're wrong -- or they're right and I'm not looking at things accurately. The latter really scares 6s because _then_ what do you do? Meanwhile the former sounds implausible because it begs the question of what makes _you_ so special? Where's your proof? All these other people are saying you're wrong, what are you backing it up with? Your opinions? One philosophy? That's nice. You must clearly be _infallible_ then.

So we want others to say "Yes, don't worry, your feelings are all normal and correct". And preferably all at the same time, so that we don't have to figure out who to believe. Also make them all the most trustworthy benevolent people ever who know everything. In fact, I want to know everything too. The whole universe is in agreement about this. Every atom's gonna be going "mmhmm you said it, we're done here" and high-fiving each other at every point in time simultaneously. There we go. No more moral dilemmas.

Things don't work that way in real life. Sixes contingency plan constantly. They take the bits of confirmation coming their way as much as they can while they do the rest of the work themselves. They eagerly await a trusted critic's comments on their new book and hope it's something like what they had in mind, but if not, steel themselves to face rejection. In fact, they're already conjuring up what to say if the critic's not a big fan of X character. They prepare to fill their minds with new perspectives and make improvements. Because you just don't think that you're all that confident that your work is fine on its own. 

It's very tiring, though. Sometimes it's nice just to know that you're not alone. It's not the best route to self-improvement, and that's why it makes us a little miserable, but when those around you don't have their life totally together, you feel better about your own.

_[I'm a teen, so I'm probably going to be more concerned with this kind of thing in my day to day life than an adult 6 just because I'm busy working out the kinks.]_


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## Vive (Nov 11, 2013)

Zamyatin said:


> Lots of 6s. They're easy to identify, especially if phobic. There's that unmistakable and constant "freaked out" agitation they try to keep up under control, but it spikes a lot, up and down, up and down. Exasperation is a common expressed emotion. When they're feeling threatened, they start talking about how nothing can be relied upon and how life is unfair to them and we're all lost, and they do it quite vocally and in public. Some quotes from the Facebook of a 6 I know IRL (these are public posts, they're not excerpts from a conversation or anything, and just from the last couple of months)


_I am not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to the Enneagram, in this post I do not mean to imply any disrespect, or to offend you. _

Well, I'm not constantly freaked out, I don't even relate to being freaked out, even in stressfull situations I rarely freak out, I'm very much used to this fear, know it's there, know how to look past it, I know the feeling of being unsafe doesn't necissarily relate to the truth, so I always stay rather calm, and it's not like I try real hard not to freak out, it's kind of a everyday thing for me.

When I feel threatened, I do my best to engage in introspection, see whether it's actually reasonable to feel threatened or not, and I don't think I ever shared it in public, it might have to do with my 5 wing, though. When I feel threatened I don't think "Life's unfair!" "I can't rely on anything at all, I can't trust anybody!" Of course I can trust people, of course life is unfair, and that has it's benefits too. What I do engage in is harsh self-critique, but even with that I've realized it's not exactly realistic, and that it's ok, and that my faults are human and all. It can make me a bit agitated at times, and later on, I'm fine again.


> 1) Belief that the world is full of pain that's hard to avoid, almost a sense of being persecuted (first and third quotes)


Yes, I know, people die, hearts get broken, happiness turns into sadness, etc. I carry the belief you can't avoid pain, it's simply there, and you have to experience it. It doesn't make the world any worse for me in the long run, sure I'll feel shitty for a while, but it will pass, and I will be fine.


> 2) Strong feeling of being "lost", looking for someone or something that "has it together" but realizing nobody does


Well, I was never quite on the lookout for such people, I gravitated towards people who didn't have it together, or those who were bullied, and I stepped in, handled critique that made me feel shitty, and developed a friendship _(but I was quite bad at handling insults aimed towards me)_. The people of whom I thought that they 'had it together' are the people that I didn't really understand, and they seemed to not understand me either. But of course I might have unconsiously gravitated to people that seemed to have it together, people who seem stable, and reliable. I find understanding to be one of the most important things, and it was the thing I was searching for the most as a kid.


> 3) Sense of being alone, with nothing to rely on


I did feel like I could rely on things, but I did feel alone at times, but I was under the impression not just sixes feel alone from time to time, even when they know they aren't alone.


> 4) Outward focus of the fear, always based on how or what something outside affects the individual (first and second quotes)


Well, most of the times, I feel like I only really have one kind of fear, and it can attach itself to so many things, often everything can simply start with this random pit in my stomach, it feels as if things are unstable, and soon after that my mind starts acting upon that. But, it's not always there, when I realize I can simply enjoy myself when I'm aware that it's just my feeling, and not reality, when I become able to accept that, and relax myself I can finally really think clearly, fast, and put my faith in things very easily, while still being aware of the potential dangers, but somehow they don't really bother me that much. The older I get, the more I feel like I'm able to be aware, relax my judgement, relax myself, see past the fears, and drop the inner tension. 


> There's also a fifth element that's not noticeable in these quotes, but is very noticeable if you know a 6 in person; they tend to surround themselves with people, even if introverted, that they feel they can rely upon, and they use those people for emotional support constantly. All 6s I've ever met have a "clique", even if it's only one or two people, which is often the case if they're strongly introverted.


Not really, I have a couple of friends and my parents, who I go to when I feel I need some help, and this is definitely not constantly, nor do these people constantly surround me. 


> While I certainly don't mean to imply that all 6s post stuff like this on their Facebook walls, the underlying beliefs are visible in all 6s. Examples from my life that come to mind are a type 6 professor I had back in college. She taught constitutional law and case law relating to it, and her agitation and angst towards the fact that American "liberties" are based on a bunch of legal fiction was palpable. Her dominant emotion was exasperation with her own subject, and she would periodically lose control of her emotions and overemphasize something because it was particularly bothering her. She demonstrated a lot of elements 2 and 3, though if I'd known her personally I'd likely have seen a lot of the others as well.
> 
> Another example would be a manager I had once. She took the perfectionist route to avoid anxiety, and would obsessively plan everything because she was afraid that something would go wrong. She displayed more of 3, 4, and 5 -- she would seek consensus with everybody because she distrusted her own decisions, constantly second-guessing herself and using overthinking and the advice of others to overcome that.


Why does your professor's behaviour correlate with six motivations? Last time I checked being agitated, exasperated, and losing control over your emotions because you dislike a certain system doesn't make you a six. She could be a very stressed person, could have a varying degree of mental disorders that make her act like that, I also know of 4's, 2's,9's who can get far more upset over such matters as me. Of course I can get upset over something, but people often overestimate how upset I am, and underestimate how quickly I can get over it.

Same with the manager, she might just be stressed, she might have an anxiety disorder, I don't believe you can take a look at a person and say: "You there, you have existential anxiety". I did see that you also listed other possible types, but even then, it's incredibly hard to correctly assess the motivations of a person behind the behaviour they are displaying.


> By a very large margin, type 6 is the most common type I know. It's nearing the point that I start by typing people I know by first checking to ensure they're not displaying type 6 traits.
> 
> The second and third most common in my life are probably 7 and 2, though there are probably more 6s in my life than 7s and 2s put together. The rest of the types are fairly uncommon, though there are a decent number of 9s.


I don't really understand why many people carry this view, I can't really type people around me I don't know personally. But If I would have to try and type people I only really know superficially, I still wouldn't say 3's, 6's, 9's, etc are the most common. I've seen many possible eights, fours, fives, sevens. I don't really seem to be able to pick out a most common type. I don't think we really have enough evidence to say: "Well, this type is more common than that type" (As far as I've seen "statistical" information about the Enneagram). I believe that the types are rather equally distributed, but we simply don't notice many people being a certain way, because we are bound to prejudices, or they bind themselves to prejudices, and different kinds of people gather and go to different places- IMO.


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## Zamyatin (Jun 10, 2014)

Vive said:


> Well, I'm not constantly freaked out, I don't even relate to being freaked out, even in stressfull situations I rarely freak out, I'm very much used to this fear, know it's there, know how to look past it, I know the feeling of being unsafe doesn't necissarily relate to the truth, so I always stay rather calm, and it's not like I try real hard not to freak out, it's kind of a everyday thing for me.


It probably wasn't clear in that post, but I was referring to body language. 6s obviously aren't freaked out all the time, but their body language has an unmistakable tension that seems to reflect core anxiety. They never seem _quite_ comfortable. That's a trait they share with only two other types, type 5 (and their discomfort seems more like they're uncomfortable taking space/dealing with _things_, body language sort of looks like they're easily over-stimulated) and some type 1s, whose discomfort manifests in stiffness. 6s always seem slightly agitated, even when safe and comfortable. 

It's hard for me to describe these things in specific concrete terms without directly showing a video or something and pointing out specific observations, so if you're interested, I could look around on Youtube for some videos I think demonstrate this.



Vive said:


> When I feel threatened, I do my best to engage in introspection, see whether it's actually reasonable to feel threatened or not, and I don't think I ever shared it in public, it might have to do with my 5 wing, though. When I feel threatened I don't think "Life's unfair!" "I can't rely on anything at all, I can't trust anybody!" Of course I can trust people, of course life is unfair, and that has it's benefits too. What I do engage in is harsh self-critique, but even with that I've realized it's not exactly realistic, and that it's ok, and that my faults are human and all. It can make me a bit agitated at times, and later on, I'm fine again.


The persecution complex I mentioned is rarely explicitly expressed and isn't always present, particularly if the 6 is healthier. But it's a recurring pattern. In those quotes I posted, you can see the outline of this sense that "it's not fair that all this is happening to me" in the first quote. While it's coached in moralist terms, it's very much reactive and superego. The subtext is something like "why is this happening to me? It's not fair. I'm a good person. Is it so hard for you to treat me well? I keep looking for good people and keep getting disappointed." A statement like that is not really in-character for other types. A 2, for example, probably wouldn't draw off of morality, instead saying something like "after all I did for you and gave you, this is how you treat me?", while a 1 would more directly express anger and condemn the individual, something like "You know what you did was wrong, and I hope you suffer for it." In other words, there's an air of exasperation that's very much E6 in that (as well as the other) quotes that you don't really see in others.

I welcome 6s to explain what goes on in their heads when they say things like this, because I'm basically working off of observation here, but it is a recurring pattern. How I'm currently understanding it is as something that follows from their need to put a name to their fear. They feel a generalized uneasiness deep within their souls, and that's not a pleasant thing to feel, so they try to put a name on it so they can fight it. And as life goes on and they feel betrayed by various things, that projection of their personal fear can turn into a sense that the world is "out to get me". "My parents didn't protect me, and my church is corrupt, and my government doesn't care about me, and my boss might fire me, and nothing can be relied upon! No wonder I feel anxiety!"

Basically, as I understand it, health for the 6 is learning to disassociate fear from specific parts of their environments and instead recognizing it for what it is, something personal and inside the individual, and thus really confronting it. Unfortunately, the average 6 still believes two erroneous things, first, that it's things outside of them that create the fear, and second, that the solution is to find things outside of them that can provide stability/fend off the things that create the fear. As they grow, they learn to look inside themselves for strength, in the way the gut triad finds natural, and they integrate to 9.

I think you were describing this when you wrote the following;



Vive said:


> Well, most of the times, I feel like I only really have one kind of fear, and it can attach itself to so many things, often everything can simply start with this random pit in my stomach, it feels as if things are unstable, and soon after that my mind starts acting upon that. But, it's not always there, when I realize I can simply enjoy myself when I'm aware that it's just my feeling, and not reality, when I become able to accept that, and relax myself I can finally really think clearly, fast, and put my faith in things very easily, while still being aware of the potential dangers, but somehow they don't really bother me that much. The older I get, the more I feel like I'm able to be aware, relax my judgement, relax myself, see past the fears, and drop the inner tension.


The fact that you recognize that it's really just one fear, attaching itself to other things, rather than many things causing many fears, is a sign of growth. You do sound like a healthier 6.



Vive said:


> Well, I was never quite on the lookout for such people, I gravitated towards people who didn't have it together, or those who were bullied, and I stepped in, handled critique that made me feel shitty, and developed a friendship _(but I was quite bad at handling insults aimed towards me)_. The people of whom I thought that they 'had it together' are the people that I didn't really understand, and they seemed to not understand me either. But of course I might have unconsiously gravitated to people that seemed to have it together, people who seem stable, and reliable. I find understanding to be one of the most important things, and it was the thing I was searching for the most as a kid.


Yeah, I've read a lot of 6s have this dual drive, one part driving them to seek protecting, wanting a strong person to guard them, and the other that motives them to want to BE the strong person. So they can be drawn to people who they feel might be weaker than them, so they can feel strong. Would you say you bonded closely to the people you tried to help?



Vive said:


> I did feel like I could rely on things, but I did feel alone at times, but I was under the impression not just sixes feel alone from time to time, even when they know they aren't alone.


Oh, they do, but for different reasons. Drawing off the experience I know best, as a 1, when I'm in disintegration I feel rather alone. But it's not a sense of being unprotected or unsupported. It's more a sense that nobody understands me, I'm weird in a world that doesn't recognize me, that I lack deep connections to others, and that I'm helplessly lost in my own flaws. That's much more of a 4 experience than a 6 one, as I understand it.




Vive said:


> Why does your professor's behaviour correlate with six motivations? Last time I checked being agitated, exasperated, and losing control over your emotions because you dislike a certain system doesn't make you a six. She could be a very stressed person, could have a varying degree of mental disorders that make her act like that, I also know of 4's, 2's,9's who can get far more upset over such matters as me. Of course I can get upset over something, but people often overestimate how upset I am, and underestimate how quickly I can get over it.


She had the perpetual agitation I mentioned earlier. It was easy to rule out 5 since it was more "I can't believe I can't rely on any of this bunk!" rather than "I feel uncomfortable asserting myself in the environment", and she definitely wasn't a 1, it's usually pretty easy to identify others of my type and if she were a 1 she wouldn't lose control of her emotions like that. The only emotion that generally gets away from us is anger, and we don't really care so much if things outside of us are unreliable. If she were a 1, her presentation of case law would have been more focused on "this is wrong", more "it is unconscionable that our rights in the United States are only protected by a fragile incorporation doctrine that isn't even intellectually defensible" and less "can you believe how unreliable and idiotic this is!". She displayed none of the calm sense of stable identity 9 tend to display, none of the pride of 2s, and none of the introverted focus on differences between self and others that you see in 4s.



Vive said:


> Same with the manager, she might just be stressed, she might have an anxiety disorder, I don't believe you can take a look at a person and say: "You there, you have existential anxiety". I did see that you also listed other possible types, but even then, it's incredibly hard to correctly assess the motivations of a person behind the behaviour they are displaying.


The assessment I made was based on a lot of personal experience with her, as well as information I didn't include in that post. I was describing her simply to show one of the ways type 6 can manifest, not to prove that she was a 6, which isn't going to be possible here as I can't present enough data to make that possible. 



Vive said:


> I don't really understand why many people carry this view, I can't really type people around me I don't know personally. But If I would have to try and type people I only really know superficially, I still wouldn't say 3's, 6's, 9's, etc are the most common. I've seen many possible eights, fours, fives, sevens. I don't really seem to be able to pick out a most common type. I don't think we really have enough evidence to say: "Well, this type is more common than that type" (As far as I've seen "statistical" information about the Enneagram). I believe that the types are rather equally distributed, but we simply don't notice many people being a certain way, because we are bound to prejudices, or they bind themselves to prejudices, and different kinds of people gather and go to different places- IMO.


Why would the types be equally distributed? As we're dealing with core motivations and not traits when we talk about the Enneagram, you can't be in-between types, so there's no reason to expect the distribution of the types to resemble a normal distribution (unlike, for example, the MBTI or Big 5 dichotomies). In addition, if we subscribe to the theory that one's type is formed by a combination of childhood experience and genetic predisposition, it's expected that some types would be less common than others, as certain childhood experiences are more common than others and the gene pool is not normally distributed. If, as I strongly suspect, type 6 is one of if not the most common type, that's not an unexpected finding given that type 6 is commonly produced by what most people in the west would consider a "healthy" parent-child relationship, the parent caring for and protecting the child from harm and thus creating a fear in the child of being without the support they knew in childhood.

As for why I do this, it's mainly because I think there's something to this theory that may, with sufficient thought and proper operationalization, be possible to turn into an actual science. I'm exploring the possibility that I may be able to use this to inform proper psychological research in my post-doctoral career. But even if that doesn't pan out, it's a fun mental exercise.


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## Vive (Nov 11, 2013)

Zamyatin said:


> It probably wasn't clear in that post, but I was referring to body language. 6s obviously aren't freaked out all the time, but their body language has an unmistakable tension that seems to reflect core anxiety. They never seem _quite_ comfortable. That's a trait they share with only two other types, type 5 (and their discomfort seems more like they're uncomfortable taking space/dealing with _things_, body language sort of looks like they're easily over-stimulated) and some type 1s, whose discomfort manifests in stiffness. 6s always seem slightly agitated, even when safe and comfortable.


I can see your point, I would naturally assume I display such body language, though many people seem to be very bad at reading it, generally I get the comment that I seem like a very calm and relaxed person, though I think the word 'tense' would be exactly right to describe me, I can see - when I look back at videos made of me, that there is this constant tense sort of 'vigilante' _(as in trying to keep an eye on potential danger around me)_ vibe I display.


> It's hard for me to describe these things in specific concrete terms without directly showing a video or something and pointing out specific observations, so if you're interested, I could look around on Youtube for some videos I think demonstrate this.


Sure, I would very much like to see this typical six body language.


> The persecution complex I mentioned is rarely explicitly expressed and isn't always present, particularly if the 6 is healthier. But it's a recurring pattern. In those quotes I posted, you can see the outline of this sense that "it's not fair that all this is happening to me" in the first quote. While it's coached in moralist terms, it's very much reactive and superego. The subtext is something like "why is this happening to me? It's not fair. I'm a good person. Is it so hard for you to treat me well? I keep looking for good people and keep getting disappointed." A statement like that is not really in-character for other types. A 2, for example, probably wouldn't draw off of morality, instead saying something like "after all I did for you and gave you, this is how you treat me?", while a 1 would more directly express anger and condemn the individual, something like "You know what you did was wrong, and I hope you suffer for it." In other words, there's an air of exasperation that's very much E6 in that (as well as the other) quotes that you don't really see in others.


A fair argument. If I would have to guess what my belief was as a kid, then this would come very close to it. Though I probably worded it differently, and expressed it differently, it was essentially the same. When very young and other people would get mad at me, I would get very frustrated, since I thought that I intended it well. 


> I welcome 6s to explain what goes on in their heads when they say things like this, because I'm basically working off of observation here, but it is a recurring pattern. How I'm currently understanding it is as something that follows from their need to put a name to their fear. They feel a generalized uneasiness deep within their souls, and that's not a pleasant thing to feel, so they try to put a name on it so they can fight it. And as life goes on and they feel betrayed by various things, that projection of their personal fear can turn into a sense that the world is "out to get me". "My parents didn't protect me, and my church is corrupt, and my government doesn't care about me, and my boss might fire me, and nothing can be relied upon! No wonder I feel anxiety!"


Well, for me it eventually turned into: "Hey wait, even if there is literally nothing to fear, why am I still scared, what exactly am I scared of?" and eventually I simply realized I was simply projecting upon the outside world. Which initially, even though it was a good discovery, made me very frustrated with myself, basically making myself feel as if I was very stupid, and that my fear made no sense whatsoever. Eventually, I became able to accept this, though it can still make me frustrated when in a bad mood.


> Basically, as I understand it, health for the 6 is learning to disassociate fear from specific parts of their environments and instead recognizing it for what it is, something personal and inside the individual, and thus really confronting it. Unfortunately, the average 6 still believes two erroneous things, first, that it's things outside of them that create the fear, and second, that the solution is to find things outside of them that can provide stability/fend off the things that create the fear. As they grow, they learn to look inside themselves for strength, in the way the gut triad finds natural, and they integrate to 9.
> 
> The fact that you recognize that it's really just one fear, attaching itself to other things, rather than many things causing many fears, is a sign of growth. You do sound like a healthier 6.


Thanks, and yeah, but another big step for me, was to realize that possessing this existential anxiety, didn't make me weak, bad, disfunctional, etc. I understand mentally that it doesn't, though I so often don't feel that way, but I know that if I keep on looking inside of me for strength, that I eventually am able to overcome it, accept it, move beyond it, etc. I think acceptance of the way you are, accepting your anxiety, is also very crucial for development.


> Yeah, I've read a lot of 6s have this dual drive, one part driving them to seek protecting, wanting a strong person to guard them, and the other that motives them to want to BE the strong person. So they can be drawn to people who they feel might be weaker than them, so they can feel strong. Would you say you bonded closely to the people you tried to help?


hmm... The more I look back at what I typed the more I believe I only really shared on part of the story, what I didn't think of yesterday is how much phobic behavior I've also displayed, I can really relate to that dual drive, I think that the way I acted has always really depended on my mood, if i really didn't feel like dealing with something, I didn't I avoided the fear, though I could get very fed up with certain behavior of mine at others at times, and it a better mood I would often defend people of whom I thought needed support. But sometimes I would be really bad at defending another person, and I would get called out for being a pussy and such, which could either make me go into phobic mode, or could make me very angry. At all times fear and because of that a search for security was the main driving force behind my behavior and actions.

Often I would develop close friendships with such people, yes. Though I would not say these are the best friendships I ever had, sometimes people that are in a very bad condition, and still very young can take a lot of energy from me, since I am not completely stable or very experienced either. One friendship at a point started feeling like more of a burden, and I had such difficulty in ending the relationship, since letting go of this bond really felt like I was completely destroying my own security, and it created a lot anxiety within me. 

At a certain point in the friendship I got very confused, and things got very personal, I had to step out of it, and I still feel bad about the way I handled it all, but looking bad there is nothing much I could have done considering my experience, and stress at that point. The funny thing was, even though I had 0 desire to be around this person anymore, I still almost wasn't able to end it, because I had the feeling it would turn people against me, make me a defective person, that it would fuck up my security, and even though I was very much aware of my existential anxiety, I slipped right back into my natural state of mind and during such a stressful time. Well, at least I can be more aware next time.



> The assessment I made was based on a lot of personal experience with her, as well as information I didn't include in that post. I was describing her simply to show one of the ways type 6 can manifest, not to prove that she was a 6, which isn't going to be possible here as I can't present enough data to make that possible.


Looking at what you wrote before, I can see your point.


> Why would the types be equally distributed? As we're dealing with core motivations and not traits when we talk about the Enneagram, you can't be in-between types, so there's no reason to expect the distribution of the types to resemble a normal distribution (unlike, for example, the MBTI or Big 5 dichotomies). In addition, if we subscribe to the theory that one's type is formed by a combination of childhood experience and genetic predisposition, it's expected that some types would be less common than others, as certain childhood experiences are more common than others and the gene pool is not normally distributed. If, as I strongly suspect, type 6 is one of if not the most common type, that's not an unexpected finding given that type 6 is commonly produced by what most people in the west would consider a "healthy" parent-child relationship, the parent caring for and protecting the child from harm and thus creating a fear in the child of being without the support they knew in childhood.


Well, if you believe that Enneagram is only based on nurture, than that would make a lot of sense. Though I do see what you mean, it could just as easily be based on a good portion of nature and nurture, which would make the types far less equally distributed. Though, my parents, were not so strict in protecting me from harm, rather I was very much against the ideas my parents proposed, I didn't want to go face my fear, even as a very tiny baby, my parents mentioned I seemed rather fearful, though I was born too early and too weak to just survive on my own, and I was therefore hooked up to a lot of noses which I didn't seem to be especially fond of, I'm sure this early birth could be somewhat of a scary experience, though just as easily barely have any effect.

That I want to believe that 6 is not a common type is not strange, of course I have the human desire to be unique, and I can be far more annoyed than I'd like to admit when I realized I had both the most common tritype, and one of the most common Enneagram types. At the same time, I do see that a lot of people around me do not seem to display this tension, and when I discuss things with them deeply they can relate, but they do not seem to carry the same motivations, even though some where also born early, had very protective parents, and etc. I've only encountered 3 people who are without doubt a six (in my mind), but so many just seem to carry motivations that seem very alien to me. So I don't think I can say anything conclusive about this.


> As for why I do this, it's mainly because I think there's something to this theory that may, with sufficient thought and proper operationalization, be possible to turn into an actual science. I'm exploring the possibility that I may be able to use this to inform proper psychological research in my post-doctoral career. But even if that doesn't pan out, it's a fun mental exercise.


I would love to see such a thing happen, I myself am interested in doing such a thing, only I'll have to wait a bit longer. 

Though what is also interesting is that, I turn to systems for a sort of security, because they seem to be able to explain my inner frustrations and what not, and from time to time I can rely far too much on a given system, like the Enneagram or MBTI, and I realize that I can get way too personally invested in this, since this system explains something I struggle with daily, I can also get very defensive about it. What I think is also very important for a me and maybe for other sixes too is to realize, is that sometimes you need to stop focusing on the Enneagram and start focusing on your inner strength, instead of relying on something as the MBTI for your stability, because I've noticed myself becoming unstable because when I couldn't identify with a certain type anymore, or when somebody was talking down type six in a semi-intellectual manner I would start to feel very anxious and like I had nothing to rely on, so that's another little contradiction that caught my attention.


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## d e c a d e n t (Apr 21, 2013)

Hmm, seems like type 6 is fairly common (assuming people type correctly), though I think that would mostly have to do with the type's focus/fear/motivation being more basic compared to some types. Like take type 4. I can see the value in it, sure, but is the type's mindset necessarily as useful for survival?


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## Jaune (Jul 11, 2013)

6 and 9 are pretty common guesses for me.

I also tend to guess heart triad a lot, I think heart fixes are often easiest to spot.


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