Enneagram Basics: The 3 Instincts

The Enneagram isn’t about putting us in a box—it’s a powerful tool for understanding motivations, behaviors, and the “why” behind how we show up in life and relationships.  

In today’s episode, I focus on instincts. I believe it’s important to first understand which instincts drive you (and which is your blind spot) before seeking out your number or type.  

This knowledge allow you to enhance the health of the important relationships in your life (even if you don’t yet know your type!).

Main Points:

• It’s About Motivation, Not Just Behavior: The Enneagram helps us look beyond what we do to why we do it—revealing our deepest motivations, fears, and desires.
• The Power of Instincts: We each operate from three core instincts—self-preservation, social, and one-to-one. 
• Self-Compassion is the Secret Ingredient: Growth happens best when we notice our patterns without judgment. 

Links 

• Join Kelly's Group Coaching Program

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Transcript

0:09

Welcome to the Live A Vibrant Life podcast. I'm life coach Kelly Titz, and each week I'll be here to encourage and equip you with the tools you need to grow in self-awareness and invest your best energy in your dreams and your purpose. I believe self-awareness changes everything. Let's get started.

Kelly Tibbitts-Life Coach: 0:30

Today we're gonna be talking about self-awareness through the lens of the Enneagram. We're gonna be talking about three things. What is the Enneagram? What are the fundamentals of the Enneagram, and how can the Enneagram help if we don't know what our type is? Over the next five weeks, we're gonna be taking different pieces of information from the Enneagram and helping you put them together, like a puzzle. Our first thought comes from Beth McChord who says The Enneagram is like a non-judgmental friend who names and addresses the core dynamics of the heart. What the Enneagram does so well is invite us onto a path of discovery and growth. So if possible, as we're learning about ourselves, it's important to grow without any kind of condemnation or self-judgment. Maybe it's a new skill for you, when you notice something feels a little uncomfortable, we could say something like, how human of me. Every single human has strengths and weaknesses that the Enneagram helps to identify. The goal is to help you grow in your own self-awareness. I think the more grace we have for ourselves, the more it ripples out into the world as love and joy and peace. The Enneagram is a self-awareness tool, like Myers Briggs and Strength Finders, and should help you grow in your understanding of why you think and feel and do life the way you do. The Enneagram, the word itself comes from two Greek words, ennea meaning nine because there's nine paths and Gram, which is a figure or a drawing. The Enneagram drawing of the nine ways that personality types can be explained, mostly through the motivation of each of the nine paths, but also the behavior that we see in each of these different paths. One main path is going to help describe your personality. It's going to help you understand your why. Why do you think that way or feel that way, or do life the way you do? And that path is deeply ingrained by the motivations and the fears and the desires that you may have never even noticed. Now you're gonna have access to the behavior of other types. No one is locked into one type. I love how Ian Cron says it. It's not that the Enneagram puts us into a box. It helps us discover the way out of that box. It helps us to understand how to live with joy and with peace, and with really compassion for ourself and others. When you begin to grow in your understanding of the Enneagram, it'll make such a difference in how you invest your time in both your own self-development and also your purpose and your dreams. I truly believe that every single human was made on purpose for a purpose. I think your dream matters. So I hope that figuring out where your energy is going and helping you to align it to what's important will be one of the biggest gifts you give yourself as you go down this path of self-awareness. So there's a few fundamental tools that we wanna be talking about. Some words you maybe never heard before, like instincts and triads. And my hope is if you're listening to this on the recording, you can listen as many times as you need to to make it make sense. You can slow down the way that I speak. You can use the workbook and know that it's a very cyclical way of learning. Self-awareness is to do the work of the Enneagram. Each time you go a little bit deeper, you're gonna discover some more insights. So today we're gonna start in a place that I think is important, and that is the fact that there are three instincts that are part of being a human being. One, you have easy access to, one, you access quite easily when you're in health. You lose that access a little bit when you're in stress, and one is a little bit hard for you to notice and use on a regular basis. Noticing the difference of these instincts. We'll help you understand why some relationships seem really easy and some seem a little bit harder. When our instincts are different, it's a little bit harder to understand each other. And if you were to notice that each of these nine paths has the possibility of all three instincts right away, we're talking about 27 different ways of thinking, feeling, and doing life. No wonder the Enneagram can feel really overwhelming. So the biggest gift you can give yourself today is, as I'm speaking, see if you can notice any of these words that feel true for you, and anything that doesn't feel true. Sometimes it's almost easier to notice what isn't true about ourselves as we begin to do the nuanced work of finding our path. So the first instinct is called the self-preservation instinct. This is the instinct that helps you take care of you and yours. You focus on your safety and your health and your wellbeing, and making sure that there are enough resources for you and yours. This is the instinct that drives my behavior. So if you come into my house, you're gonna notice that I'm very aware of temperature and food and make sure everybody has a blanket and a first aid kit. The next, next instinct is the social instinct, and this is the focus that allows us to be in groups together. It's an awareness of other people, and when you have the social instinct driving your behavior, you're very much aware of how your actions and attitudes affect others. People whose lives are starting with this social instinct are often going to be the people that join a community group and serve. And then the third instinct is the one-to-one instinct. It's the one that helps us to focus on intensity and intimacy. It's an awareness of chemistry where that's possible and where that's not. This is, in fact, my third instinct and the one that's hardest for me to understand. But all three instincts are going to impact and affect our behavior. We're going to use all three. One will be dominant, one a little bit easier when you're in health, and one that's a little bit hard to access. It's often considered a blind spot. And the goal for today is to begin to notice if you can find your primary, secondary, and repressed instinct. Socrates says it this way, to know thyself. That's what our goal is today, to grow in our own self understanding. So I'm gonna describe three instincts. Ideally, you would have a piece of paper or a way to recognize some of these words are connecting with you. Let's write them down and notice them. Some seem hard to understand. Let's notice that as well. So first, we have self-preservation. This is the energy that is given to make sure that you and the people you love are safe and secure. You're constantly looking at the resources and noticing if there's any danger. You're focusing on your physical needs, making sure there's a warm temperature or a cooling temperature if it's hot outside. Making sure you have all the material needs you need, making sure you have your bills paid and money in the bank and the resources you need in case there was an emergency. You're the person who's gonna check the weather app before you go for a drive and make sure that you know if there's a rainstorm coming. People would describe you as grounded, practical, serious. You can often appear introverted because you're taking your energy to make sure that you're preserving yourself and those that you consider part of yours. And then when other people are around you often notice that you have a high need for security. You'll notice which door is the easiest one for you to access, how to get out of a place. You'll notice this also depends on who you're with, how deep that sense of security need might be. For instance, if you're taking care of a small child, it might be different if you're out with a group of peers. The next instinct is your social instinct, and again, as human beings, we need all three of these instincts, so there shouldn't be any that you don't feel you ever access. It's just which one is your primary why that is gonna serve you as you find your path of the nine paths. The social instinct is gonna help you to focus on belonging. You're gonna recognize the value of relationships, and you see the importance of social groups. I often describe it as you notice the value of the y'all. Having a herd mentality means that you're focusing on you and your family. So your family might be extended, maybe it's your Girl Scout troop, maybe it's your work community. You're highly aware of how your actions and your attitudes affect other people, and you tend to focus on having a positive impact on people, communities in the world, and people would describe you as warm and open and engaging. So again, there's these three instincts that are driving your human behavior. One is easy for you to notice. One, you're recognizing that you use that instinct as long as you're healthy and one feels more repressed, harder to understand, and just interesting to know that when your instinct is different from other people's instincts, it makes relationship a little bit harder. So as I began to discover this, I noticed that my husband and I were self-preservation, and two of our three daughters are one-to-one instinct. And what's so interesting is the one-to-one instinct that drives their behavior is my repressed instinct. Without this information, I found them hard to understand because everything that I'm doing is based on preserving me and my people. I'm trying to keep them safe. In fact, if I could, I would bubble wrap them, and they're looking for one-to-one intensity intimacy. They're recognizing chemistry between themselves and others, and they prefer intense. Stimulation if they could find a new way to drive on a busy highway that feels awesome to them. And as you can see, a self-preservation that feels like a calculated danger that's unnecessary to take. So again, you're going to use all three of these instincts just in different ways. Maybe one of the instincts is 70% of the time, one 30% of the time, as long as you're in very good energy and one five to 10% of the time, it'll be interesting for you to notice. And our goal as self or humans is to begin to notice, notice with compassion and without judgment, and begin to use these skills to grow in the other areas. If you have the one-to-one intensity, people might describe you as more competitive, aggressive, emotionally intense. So again, how would you describe yourself? Do you appear more grounded, practical, and serious, like self-preservation? I. More warm, open, engaging, like the social instinct or more competitive, aggressive charged. Do you enjoy those deep conversations, the connections that happen when you can have a real deep, intense, intimate conversation with somebody? Since this is my repressed instinct, it's not something I constantly long for, I'm absolutely fine having just light. How are you and how are the kids type conversations? But knowing this makes it possible for me when I'm in a relationship with somebody who does have the one-to-one instinct to know how important that conversation would be to sit and be thoughtful and have the time and the space to go deep. So your first thing you're noticing is, does one seem to be more highlighted? Did you write down the words or circle them or highlight them? That seem true of you? If you do the work slowly, you might begin to notice 80% highlighted in one column. 10 to 20% in another one, and maybe one or two things in the third, and it's okay for you not to know yet. When I began to do this work, I did not have any self-awareness at all. I couldn't have even done a page like this at all. I would've in fact said I really am warm, open, and engaging because so much of my life had been on purpose doing roles that had a social instinct to them. It was in doing the work that I realized, I'm actually self-preservation. That's what's driving my behavior, and that was really important for me to discover about myself. So it's very helpful to identify your instinct before you find your way to your type one of the nine paths, because where Mistyping happens, where the test doesn't work is where your instinct is different than the primary instinct of the number. For instance Enneagram two tend to be people who go through life and we're looking outside of ourselves. We're trying to be compliant, and because of that I could look like someone with a social instinct and it makes so much sense. I was a teacher and a pastor and a mom. Why I think, feel, and do life the way I do is I'm an Enneagram two. I'm heart-based, but I have a self-preservation instinct. I'm actually trying to preserve myself and my children. That's why it took me a while to find my number. The self-preservation instinct looks like the Enneagram four or five and nine, and the one-to-one instinct looks like the three, the seven, and the eight. It might be nuanced for you. I've worked with a lot of people and they've discovered their Enneagram type and sometimes there's a match in any year three with one-to-one intensity finds their number easily, and Enneagram five with self-preservation can find their number easily, and an Enneagram two that has the social instinct can find their number easily, but when that match is not there, it can actually make it a little bit hard to find your number. That's why we don't wanna do all this work just to say what number we are. We're doing this work to grow in our self-awareness. Why do we think and feel and do life the way we do? So nothing's gone wrong. If you're noticing your repressed instinct first, that's actually very common. If one of these three types is really hard for you to understand their motivation, I promise you, just that to discovery is going to make relationships easier. You're going to notice how much easier it is to be in relationship with people whose instincts match yours. And don't forget, the more stressed we get. You lose access not only to that third instinct, but also to the second one. And when you're in health and the person you're in relationship with is in health, we're going to have two of these instincts that we can access easily. So there's the match, but as you get stressed or they get stressed, we might lose that connection. And now we're finding the relationship a little bit harder. When you have the same primary instinct as another person, it just makes the relationship easier. Relationships are harder. When your primary instinct is the repressed instinct of another person, it's almost hard to understand why they think and feel and do life the way they do. So that's why we wanna grow in healthy self-awareness. We wanna be curious. We don't wanna be judging ourselves or others. We're all just having a human experience and doing the very best we can with the tools that we have. So, growing in your self-awareness, it's gonna make easier relational connections. It's going to allow you to be more flexible. You'll have more tools at your disposal, but at the end of the day, we cannot change another person. They get to think and feel and do anything they want, but since you are a hundred percent valuable, you get to decide your boundaries and boundaries mean what you will and will not do. We cannot put them on other people. So for instance, if you are a self preservation energy, you get to decide that you're going to think and feel and do things that help you preserve yourself. But what we cannot do, and this was a hard lesson for me to believe, is I cannot teach anyone else to do it the way that I do it. They get to live life the way they do, and if that's their repressed instinct, it's not going to be where they put very much of their energy. So in times of great stress, you're physically sick. Something is going on in your world that's hard. You lost a job or you had to move. Don't be surprised that you shrink back into that one primary instinct. Nothing's gone wrong, but now you know, it might be time to bring some tools into place to help you with that.

15:37

Thank you for joining the Live A Vibrant Life podcast. I hope our time together encourage you and we'll equip you with the tools you need to move into the vibrant life you desire. I'm here to help you live a brave, creative. Purpose-filled life. And if you'd like to learn more, you can follow me on Instagram or Facebook, Kelly tibbits life coach, or visit my website kelly tibbits.com. I look forward to connecting again soon.