A colour wheel

It is worth remembering that we are not just one Type but have all Types in us. It is just that we have one that is dominant and that dominant Type manifests as a way of functioning based on a very specific and primal fear and, from that, a specific desire. Our Type is often referred to as where we are fixated. That is more accurate as it acknowledges that we are made up of all the Types but that we are pulled, in a sense, more in one direction than the others. Our Type, therefore, is where we are actually out of balance. Sometimes it is easier to think of the Enneagram as a colour wheel with all of the Types as a different colour. As with numbers, no colour is better than another but viewed together we can start to understand the full spectrum of possibilities, with each colour a different energy, a different way of being in the world. The more entrenched we are in our Type, the more entrenched we are in our ego and the more limited we are in our behaviours. We see repetitive patterns at play and self-defeating behaviours as we have less range in the way we respond to life because we are limited in our ability to access or tap into the energies and the behaviours of the other Types within us. We are, to put it simply, less balanced. However, the less entrenched we are in our ego, the more we are able to access the other Types within us, their energies and behaviours, so we have an increased range of response and are better able to manage our lives and what may be demanded of us.