Where is your lack of confidence?

The ego is our way of coping with, managing and compensating for a loss of contact with - ie: a felt sense of - an essential part of ourself. So when looking to find your Enneagram Type it can be useful to think about where you lack confidence as this stems from the area in which we feel that loss of contact, that sense of lack. If we have lost contact with the feeling of strength and control, for instance, our ego steps in to try to gain that (Type 8) hence the assertive, strong and take control character of Eights. If we feel a lack of contact with love, then our ego steps in to try to gain and give ourselves a feeling of being loveable and loved (Type 2) hence the giving and serving nature of Twos.

The problem is that the ego can't make up for the sense of lack that we have. Instead it gives us a version of something that looks like the real thing but is, in reality, a temporary and pale version of it. For example: If I have a loss of contact with my own sense of worth I may spend money on valuable things - jewellery, designer labels etc or I may try to be the best at what I do in order to make myself feel valuable (Type 3). For a while it may work but then someone else may gain what I have, or accomplish something I haven't accomplished and though I still have the jewellery and the designer labels and my accomplishments I don't feel much different than I did before I got them. In other words the sense of lack is still there. The secret is not to search for what we feel we lack via the ego. Instead, through awareness of the sense of lack, we can work on understanding it and what it means to us. Only by going deeper can we regain regain the felt sense of that elusive thing - be it strength, love, value, peace, security, goodness.... whatever, and so start to heal and become more whole.