Part II: Enneagram Types as Children

(upbeat music) Hello and welcome to part two of Enneagram Childhoods here on You've Got a Type. I'm your host Colton Simmons, and I hope you're ready for another deep dive into the most pivotal season of our lives, which is our childhood. I'm just gonna roll right into type six, which is where we left off, but if you're looking for types one through five, please check out part one of this two-part series on Enneagram Childhood Experiences. All right, ready? Let's get into it. Type six, the loyalist. As children, sixes felt the serenity of nines as they were truly present to everyone and everything around them. Sixes had a primal knowledge of the interconnectedness of all things, and they were not easily frazzled and assumed the best of all those around them. However, as sixes grew up, they started to experience an imbalance in their parental figure's ability or desire to protect them. Many sixes report having one playmate parent, usually the father, and one stricter disciplinarian, which was typically the mother. And this imbalance fractures the perfect harmony of the type nine essence and is replaced with the trademark anxiety of the six. The six's anxiety is caused by things feeling misaligned, and they feel like they have a parental figure, but they intuitively sense the flawed humanity of one or both of their parents from a very young age. And this causes sixes to feel torn because every child wants to be supported by a parent, but no child wants to be controlled, especially by an authority figure that lacks stability or integrity. This internal paradox sparks a lifelong journey through anxiety. And type six children seek to alleviate their anxiety through an alliance with the protective figure, usually the father, so they can resist the overly controlling or burdensome presence of the nurturing figure, which is normally the mom. And this perceived imbalance of authority in the home causes sixes to feel ambivalent about their parents' role in their life or lose respect for them altogether. But sixes have a magical ability to maintain relationships with just about anyone, no matter how chaotic they are. So they don't typically leave their parents behind, no matter how little esteem they may have for them. But no matter the quality of their parents' character or how secretly rebellious they may be, sixes almost always prefer that the family just stays together and everybody keep playing their part simply because it's a familiar structure that provides some semblance of security. And ultimately the lost childhood message of the six is simply that you were safe here. Type seven enthusiasts. As children, sevens had the mental fortitude of fives and they had a vivid imagination that kept them satisfied and somewhat solitary. However, as their sense of reality expanded to include the negative aspects of life, such as suffering, pain, boredom and death, they fought to subvert the growing presence of darkness in their reality with a constant revolving door of new playmates and activities. And one key characteristic of the seven's childhood is in an unconscious disconnection with their nurturing figure, which is usually the mom. Not because she's unloving, but because she just isn't traditionally soft or attentive towards the seven. And some childhood psychologists chalk it up to being cut off too early from breastfeeding and thus they feel a sense of, well, I guess I gotta take care of myself now. One of my friends that's a type seven told me a story about coming home one day with an injury after playing with his older siblings. And his mom just looked at him and said, well, if you wanna play with the big dogs, you gotta learn to pee in the tall grass, which is a saying I did not know existed, but apparently it's pretty common. But there was no, oh, poor baby, let me patch that up for you. And another type seven I know grew up in a home full of foster children. So his mom was constantly looking after a new traumatized child. And instead of getting jealous over his mom's divided attention, he would simply make the new child his new playmate. This lack of maternal nurturing causes a deep sense of frustration within the sevens. Despite their external projection of playfulness and joy. And ultimately the lost childhood message of the seven is, it's okay to be hurt, you will be taken care of. Type eight, challengers. As children, eights were extremely needy like twos. For a moment in time, no matter how brief, they deeply enjoyed a sense of loving adoration and felt a great deal of maternal warmth and paternal affirmation. And it felt right that love and attention were so freely given. However, this feeling ends early and abruptly as most eights report that they had to grow up fast due to a lack of support in the home or looming danger in their environment, like growing up in a rough neighborhood. And many eights had a dad that left them when they were a kid. And that keeps survival issues at the forefront of their mind for the rest of their lives. In my experience of eights, they can trace this survival instinct to a unique experience of feeling betrayed, rejected or abandoned as a child. And the fascinating thing is that most of them wear it like a badge of honor rather than a deep wound still in need of healing. Their stories of past trauma are recounted with bravado rather than remorse because they have no value for gentleness or even perceived weakness, only the ability to rise to power. Ironically, many eights love little kids for two reasons. First, they're not a threat to the eight's power. And second, eights have a deep desire to rekindle the innocence of their expedited youth. I've seen type eight dads really struggle to embrace their sons as they grow up because they lost their childhood innocence at such an early age and they see themselves in their sons. So they don't know how to embrace their sons, innocence or meekness, especially once they start reaching middle childhood or adolescence. And ultimately the lost childhood message of the eight is that you will not be abandoned. And I would hope that eights can pass that message onto their children rather than teaching them that toughness is a way of avoiding the pain of abandonment. Type nine, peacemakers. In childhood, nine start out looking like threes and they exude a sort of boisterous confidence because of the praise that they seemed to easily attract. They feel capable of attaining any goal right up until their external environment shows them how incapable they actually are. And many nines experience a familial trauma early on in life, like the death of a sibling, a messy divorce, or I hate to say this one, but it's so common, some sort of sexual trauma. And that causes them to resign from any participation with the outside world. Ironically, nines rarely describe their childhood as unpleasant or traumatic. And this is because they develop an instinctive reaction to disassociate from painful experiences. And this often causes nines to endure long-term relationships with extremely unhealthy people because they don't feel the pain of the relationship in a visceral manner. The positive side of this reaction is that it allows them to become incredibly effective mediators as they have the ability to remove themselves from all consideration or offense. And that's a perfect example of how our deepest wounds can often become our most profound gifts. Now, taking a step back, type nine children found that it was best to be a low-maintenance child and that expressing their needs or emotions, especially anger, cause way more problems than they solve. And this prevents many nines from becoming independent people as they learn to love being in the background of someone else's environment. Nines suppress the energy of their type three essence. And so they start looking to other people as a fuel source to motivate or direct their lives. And ultimately, the lost childhood message of the nine is that your presence is powerful and you can direct your life. Okay, that's a wrap on Enneagram Childhoods. I know these past two episodes may have dug up some very uncomfortable thoughts and distant memories for you. So I wanna leave you with just a few comforting lines that I love from a T.S. Eliot poem that have helped me make peace with this whole messy process. And it goes like this. We shall not cease from exploration. And at the end of all our exploring we'll be to arrive exactly where we started and to know the place for the first time. I wish you the best on this long journey towards self-awareness and self-acceptance. And I hope that as you reflect on your childhood that it gives you a fresh perspective on who you really are at your core and that you can eventually reach a place where you can go home and see yourself for the first time. Thank you for tuning in. As always, I'm your host Colton Simmons and I'll see you next time on You've Got a Type.