# Is It Possible to Change Your enneagram Type ?



## Abbaladon Arc V (Jan 16, 2018)

I ask this sometimes to myself to experience others Enneagrams only to have an different view.


----------



## Karkino (May 25, 2017)

Abbaladon Arc V said:


> I ask this sometimes to myself to experience others Enneagrams only to have an different view.


As far as I'm concerned, no. It is impossible to change enneatype over time. I would be like changing you entire core needs, fears and compulsions based on your enneatype.

That being said, I think some people might appear behavior-wise like another type from time to time. I'll give myself as an example :
As a core enneatype FOUR, my long-lasting fear is to have no identity, to be unoticeable and ordinary. I do sometime fit the stereotype of being melancholic, aloof and moody sometimes, but most of the time, I'm funny, always telling jokes and energetic. Does that mean I'm a SEVEN? No, of course, but I do partially fit the SEVEN core fears of avoiding pain and suffering by focusing on variety and stimulation. I you believe in tritypes, that would be a possible answer to why people might not fit into their types when looking at their behavior. The SEVEN in my tritype tend to diverge the attention of lacking self-worth and using self-deprecation of the FOUR into something more positive, less painful. That's why it's harder to me to focus on problems because I want to avoid pain as part of my tritype schematics, not to mention my NINE fix whose needs enhances the positivity even further.

There could also be something else at play, mainly the strength of your wing. If you have a very strong wing, sometimes it feels like it's your core type instead of the reverse.

Finally, there's the idea of subtypes. Each enneatype has three different expressions that color the main needs and fears of the type and one of those three is called a countertype because they don't really fit and act like the main type. For example, most THREE descriptions that you find in books are describing typical social THREES, who are really into perfecting an image and pleasing the crowd. However, the countertype of THREE is the self-preservation THREE, because it goes against the core sin of deceit of the main enneatype and prefer to blend more in the crowd. They secretly yearn for recognition, but on a more low-key level than social THREES. The sexual THREE is another THREE subtype that doesn't look like the typical description. They focus on seduction and attractiveness on order to be noticed and praised for their image. They are somewhere in between social and self-preservation in the ego-manifestation, which means that they recognize to a degree that they use vanity in order to trick people into buying into their image that they've created.


----------



## Pippi (Dec 24, 2016)

Abbaladon Arc V said:


> I ask this sometimes to myself to experience others Enneagrams only to have an different view.


There's no point in changing your enneagram type. It isn't about defining and identifying yourself as the type, or finding the right job for you or the right paint color (like the article I posted about earlier).

"By learning about what kinds of things one habitually attends to and puts energy into, one can observe oneself more accurately and develop more self-awareness. By enhancing one’s self awareness with the help of the Enneagram, one can exercise more choice about one’s functioning rather than engaging in patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior in an automatic, habitual, unconscious way."
https://www.internationalenneagram.org/about/the-enneagram/


----------



## Pippi (Dec 24, 2016)

Abbaladon Arc V said:


> I ask this sometimes to myself to experience others Enneagrams only to have an different view.


Oh, I was replying to your thread title, and forgot to read this part.

To experience others' enneagrams--no, because you'd be faking it. But you can relate to all of them, probably, to some degree or another. Probably the best way to approach that is through the "passions". If your predominant passion is fear (6), for example, you can still relate to envy (4). But there wouldn't be any value in trying to strengthen the 4 passion of envy within your soul. Likewise with the other types' passions--you can relate to them, but no point in trying to make them predominate in your psyche.

Two good books that go into detail about the various passions are The Enneagram of Passions and Virtues and The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram, by Sandra Maitri.


----------



## enneathusiast (Dec 15, 2012)

Abbaladon Arc V said:


> I ask this sometimes to myself to experience others Enneagrams only to have an different view.


IME, we don't change Enneagram type but we can shift our awareness between types on a regular basis. We don't become a different type (personality behaviors, traits, characteristics) with this shift. We simply become aware of the world through a different type of focus. It most easily happens when you're with someone else of a different type. The trick is to let go of your habitual type of focus so that you can allow the other person's type focus in.


----------



## Janna (Aug 31, 2018)

I don't believe that our core personalities change over time, no.

What I do believe is that knowledge of the different enneagram types can be used deliberately to have a more balanced view of a situation. So, if your question is not actually whether or not we fundamentally change as human beings, but instead if we could make an effort to put ourselves in each other's shoes by using the enneagram, then hell yeah. 

It can even be used as a checklist (now forgive me for this very crude simplification, I'm just trying to make a point about the overall use of the model instead of specific types). If you're undertaking a big, important project, wouldn't it be prudent to ask all these questions?

- E1; What would it take to do this well?
- E2: Is this actually helpful?
- E3: How would this be done in an efficient, successful way?
- E4: Is this meaningful?
- E5: Is this actually the truth about this matter?
- E6: What could go wrong, and how to be prepared for that?
- E7: What else could we do with this?
- É8: Are we doing this, and how do we proceed?
- E9: How can we achieve this in a way that everybody's more or less happy with?


----------



## ReliK (Feb 24, 2019)

Per the theory, you supposedly can not. 

You retain the core fixation throughout your life, though you can move around all over the place through different levels of health, wings, variants, lines of integration and disintegration. Let's say I am a 6. I have fairly equal access to both wings (5 and 7). So now through lines of integration/disintegration I can take on a lot of 3 and 9 energy (from my 6), 7 and 8 (from my 5w) and 5 and 1, from my 7w. But wait, there's more. IF tri theory is anything beyond a way for Ne users to speculate endlessly, I have a core with wings in the other two triads (gut and heart/anger and shame). So now, maybe I even have a bit of 2 in there.
Throw in the variants for each tri, combine it all with a particular mb flava (and remember, diversity within a type can be a lot, via age, experience, order of processing, etc) I don't know how many combinations this could make, but it's a LOT. Enough that, no one would ever likely know *with certainty* that someone's core did indeed, change. 

Did Ichazo ever provide a reason for why it can't be changed? I'm curious about that.. really curious. Yeah Yeah, I get 'the theory says, the theory says' but I mean, there are people who have strokes, neurodegenerative issues, disassociate psychogenic amnesia, people who fall into coma's and wake up speaking languages from lands they never knew existed. 

Our minds are powerful, is my point. Is it really impossible for someone to become so aware of a core fix (which I just see more as the defense mechanism itself -Reaction formation, Repression, Identification, Introjection, Isolation, Projection, Rationalization, Denial, Narcotization - because if you don't have this, you don't a type) so consciously aware of it, that they transcend it as a primary approach? I'm not talking about taking on the positive qualities of ones growth point, I'm saying someone that completely outgrows the defense mechanism finding it no longer useful or necessary? 

Why is that not possible?


----------



## tanstaafl28 (Sep 10, 2012)

Abbaladon Arc V said:


> I ask this sometimes to myself to experience others Enneagrams only to have an different view.


No, however, part of the process of becoming healthier is recognizing the behavioral patterns our types draw us into and circumventing them or modifying them. 



> The purpose of the Enneagram is not to put you into a box, but to help you identify both the strengths and the limitations of a preferred strategy and to give you guidance on how you may develop more capacity beyond it. And of course it is a tool for understanding others too.


What is the Enneagram?


----------



## Surreal Snake (Nov 17, 2009)

Sure go to Form Actions click Edit Profile change Enneagram Type


----------



## nablur (Mar 9, 2017)

since there is no way to test, the answer isnt 'knowable empirically'... but im certain there is no way to change enneagram type.


----------



## ReliK (Feb 24, 2019)

nablur said:


> since there is no way to test, the answer isnt 'knowable empirically'... *but im certain there is no way to change enneagram type.*


What makes ya think so? I'm not arguing with you, I'm just curious about the line of thought or observations you've made that would lead this.


----------



## nablur (Mar 9, 2017)

ReliK said:


> What makes ya think so? I'm not arguing with you, I'm just curious about the line of thought or observations you've made that would lead this.


examine the people youve been around your whole life. theve been the same enneagram the whole time... the same character, more or less. people get healthy or unhealthy , but they dont change character.


----------



## Kintsugi (May 17, 2011)

Every Enneatype pattern exists within you if you look long and hard enough!


----------



## mushr00m (May 23, 2011)

The enneagram type is an ‘ego fixation’. This is a cage of motivations which rather than expands your worldview, works to enclose it, to create another type of tunnel vision. Switch types? Switch tunnel visions.


----------



## Abbaladon Arc V (Jan 16, 2018)

Smart new 6 and red.


Good


----------



## Qloshae (May 7, 2014)

Abbaladon Arc V said:


> I ask this sometimes to myself to experience others Enneagrams only to have an different view.


Well, if you really experienced their type, you'd know where they're coming from.
3s copy whatever traits they feel are desirable in a situation and can often lose themselves in that copying, that's probably more so what you're feeling.




> They may appear to be sincere, friendly, modest, kindly, repentant, virtuous, and truthful, although they may not be. They may have only adjusted their image to meet the demands of the moment so that others will think well of them. What they appear to be and what they actually are begin to be quite different. Thus, there is an element of slickness, an emotional hollowness about average Threes because much of what they say and do is not a true reflection of who they are. “Who they are” is becoming ever more difficult to identify, both for others and for themselves.


 - Personality Types: Using the Enneagram for Self-Discovery (p. 113).


----------



## lametaoist (Mar 25, 2017)

Abbaladon Arc V said:


> I ask this sometimes to myself to experience others Enneagrams only to have an different view.


R&H identify the highest level of health as "liberation" at which point a person is not constrained by their Enneagram type, or any other type.

If you were to exchange one ego fixation for another, you would still be constrained by an ego fixation. As one gets healthier, it is possible to see the world through the eyes of another. After all, the ability to understand and feel someone else's pain is called "empathy."

While personality constraints empirically remain relatively consistent over time, there is no empirically validated test for the Enneagram, so in practice, we have no way of knowing whether a person's Enneagram type remains stable over time. One of the conditions for empirical validity is test-retest reliability, and since there is no way to consistently test it over time, there is no way to be certain that it doesn't change.

Even if you look at the description of levels of health, as a person becomes healthier, they identify less with the core elements of the type, so it's not that their Enneagram type changes, as much as it is no longer a useful measurement tool for their behavior, andno longer has much predictive validity.

So it raises the question: why are you the Enneagram type that you are? Is it because the unconscious decisions that you have made, or at least wish to take ownership of, can be strong together in a marginally consistent narrative? So you would only need to change the narrative. But why would you change the narrative? I

f your primary defense mechanisms change, perhaps. What would cause your primary defense mechanisms to change? Life or death situations, because that's generally how they formed to begin with.

So can you act like another Enneagram type? Maybe. Will you know what it's like to be another Ennegram type? Probably not until you have lived with a core fear based on a perceived struggle for survival.


----------

