Descriptive Essay: “Enneagram Personality Types” – 20 Topics to Consider and Use

Topics and ideas
Posted on January 21, 2016

If you are tasked with writing a descriptive essay about nine personality types and the Enneagram, you have to select a topic that is truly of interest to you personally. The more engaged you are with the topic, the easier you will find the research and writing process to be. That being said, picking a topic can often be the most challenging aspect of any writing which is why you will find twenty potential topics listed below. These are meant as a guide and may or may not be ideally suited to your writing task as they are, but they can nonetheless function as a wonderful starting point for you to come up with a topic that you love:

  1. The Benefits of the Enneagram
  2. Three Centers of Intelligence
  3. The Origins of the Enneagram
  4. Personality Type 1: Strengths and Problems
  5. Personality Type 2: Higher Emotions
  6. Personality Type 3: Speaking Style
  7. Personality Type 4: Lower Emotional Habit
  8. Personality Type 5: Archetypal Challenge
  9. Personality Type 6: Speaking Style
  10. Personality Type 7: Strengths and Problems
  11. Personality Type 8: Lower Emotional and Higher Emotional Habits
  12. Personality Type 9: Archetypal Challenge
  13. Heart Personality Types
  14. How Understanding Enneagram Personality Types Creates More Compassion
  15. The Use Of Automatic Habits and How Enneagram Personality Understanding Stops Their Power
  16. What Creates Automatic Actions and Thoughts and How Personality Influences Them
  17. Head Personality Types
  18. How Each Personality Type Works with the Others (Or Two or Three Personality Types Of Your Choice)
  19. Body Personality Types
  20. The Effectiveness of the Narrative Tradition with Enneagram Teachings Worldwide

Sample Descriptive Essay on the Benefits of the Enneagram

Every Enneagram boasts a unique way of acting, feeling, and thinking which come from inner motivations. The Enneagram is a tool for personal transformation by way of greater understanding of the world, an understanding which is meant to transcend cultural, religious, gender, and national differences. Determining one’s personality by way of the Enneagram allows people to better express themselves and understand automatic habits which might interfere with their daily living. Automatic habits, or automatic thoughts, are those responses, those unconscious patterns by which people handicap themselves without realizing it. An event in the past may trigger an unconscious thought pattern that doctors are to be ridiculed for thinking they are gods, something which a person allows to influence their judgment over doctors and anything medically related in the present.

By understanding what automatic actions or habits a person has, they can look for the signs of them and begin to work through them so as to lead a more fulfilling life. This results in healthier relationships and a better connection to oneself. If a person automatically assumes their significant other will leave them in the end, as a result of a childhood lesson that formed a habitual thought, then that automatic and unconscious thinking will influence a great many decisions, thoughts, and actions in current relationships. By identifying the root and working past it, individuals can maintain healthier bonds while also coming to understand themselves in a deeper way.

Personality is meant to be a way to express oneself, but automatic thoughts and habits can cause people to become stuck. Understanding and alleviating these patterns with the Enneagram allows people to become more flexible and better skilled. Understanding what other people are thinking and feeling allows individuals to become more compassionate and tolerant. This means that individuals can learn not to take the negative reactions of other people as a personal affront. If, for example, an individual learns that their significant other suffers from severe headaches when their blood sugar is low, said individual not listening to a conversation or being rude can be understood as a result of the low blood sugar and severe headache. The individual in question can then avoid taking the rude behavior personally or as a result of anything they did.

This level of understanding reaches into the workplace too. If you have a colleague whose parents never acknowledge his worth and are always avoiding praise for his accomplishments and substituting demands for why he has not achieved more, you will better understand why that same colleague is continually seeking praise and recognition for every small accomplishment in the workplace from his colleagues and boss. By recognizing this, you become a more tolerant person, more compassionate toward your work colleague and in lieu of becoming irritated that said individual does not seem as mature as yourself and should be self-sufficient without needing praise from others, you will appreciate their situation and their background and offer praise where necessary. This level of understanding is what allows people to garner a unique ability to better read people’s thoughts, but also the environment. Negative reactions are not taken personally. Identifying emotional defenses and psychological defenses specific to your type allows you to grow and to heal from all situations. In addition to this, it allows you to develop an inner life whereby you recognize the spirit inside of you.

With these skills, individual can not only be more mindful of themselves but of others. They can cultivate a deeper understanding of each thought and action, where it stems from and how it influences the self. This type of self-awareness transcends all other boundaries and makes individuals much more cognizant of how their automatic habits influence daily interactions with others, and how others are influenced by their automatic habits too. With this deeper understanding, individuals can garner more compassion toward others, as understanding naturally breeds compassion and that compassion will become contagious in all things. This compassion will improve relationships at home and in the workplace, make communication easier and healthier, and ensure a better understanding of the world in which each person lives, and how they contribute to that world.

References:
Herman, C. Peter. “The Enneagram: Understanding Yourself And The Others In Your Life.”.PsycCRITIQUES 34.9 (1989): n. pag. Web.
Kale, Sudhir H., and Samir Shrivastava. “The Enneagram System For Enhancing Workplace Spirituality”. Journal of Mgmt Development 22.4 (2003): 308-328. Web.
Levine, Janet. Know Your Parenting Personality. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2003. Print.
Riso, Don Richard, and Russ Hudson. The Wisdom Of The Enneagram. New York: Bantam Books, 1999. Print.
Riso, Don Richard. Personality Types. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987. Print.
Sayre-Adams, Jean. “The Enneagram – A Means To Psychological And Spiriutual Awareness”.Spirituality Health 4.4 (2003): 24-31. Web.
Webb, Karen, and Jo Kyle. The Enneagram. London: Thorsons, 2001. Print.

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