Personality tests of all types pepper the home pages of entertainment sites and are sure to get a few laughs–whether your spirit animal comparison to a newt is accurate or not. There is one test that is sweeping social media, garnering just as many memes as an intellectual and psychological discussion: The Enneagram. If you haven’t heard of it yet, we’re here to introduce you. And if you have come to love The Enneagram, sit back and enjoy our interpretation of how each type of milspouse fits into the numbers at the end of this article.
What is The Enneagram?
Now that we’ve got your attention, and perhaps a stink eye because you saw yourself in a few too many of those, let’s dig into the specifics of the system. To give a basic overview, The Enneagram is a personality map for self-discovery and enlightenment that features the numbers 1 through 9, each coordinating to a specific tendency in the way a person thinks, feels and behaves based on core fears and desires.
We chatted with enneagram guru and co-founder of Milspo Gurus, Kellie Artis, who stumbled upon the enneagram test during a bout of identity crisis and stress. GIFs and memes flood our social media feeds, boasting the best comparisons to each number, but Kellie explained that the system itself has come and gone for centuries, even being applied to modern psychology in the 1960s.
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Your Enneagram By the Numbers
Below are each of the types, described in simplistic, one-word answers. Obviously this does not encompass the full spectrum of each type, but serves to convey the general highlights often seen in each number.
Type One – the reformer
Principled, purposeful, self-controlled, and perfectionistic.
Type Two – the helper
Generous, demonstrative, people-pleasing, and possessive.
Type Three – the achiever
Adaptable, excelling, driven, and image-conscious.
Type Four – the individualist
Expressive, dramatic, self-absorbed, and temperamental.
Type Five – the investigator
Perceptive, innovative, secretive, and isolated.
Type Six – the loyalist
Engaging, responsible, anxious, and suspicious
Type Seven – the enthusiast
Spontaneous, versatile, acquisitive, and scattered.
Type Eight – the challenger
Self-confident, decisive, willful, and confrontational.
Type Nine – he peacemaker
Receptive, reassuring, complacent, and resigned.
Today, The Enneagram has proven itself a useful tool in maintaining self-awareness and stimulating mental health. Kellie and her co-founder, Claire, each have a similar origin story and came to The Enneagram as a relief point. Both military spouses, they discovered why they were acting out in the specific way they were by applying The Enneagram to themselves.
Both women realized the unmet need in the military spouse community and wanted to do something about it.
“I think we are perpetually in a state of baseline stress. We cover it up; we’re resilient,” Kellie said in regards to military families. “But it’s always there.”
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Addressing the way you react to certain things in the middle of stress, as well as in contentment, will help you face the next obstacle and deal with it accordingly. You can pinpoint why you want to lash out, catch yourself before it happens and place healthy coping systems into your life. The Enneagram is a helpful tool in relationships because it can help each partner further the understanding of the other.
“We know why we clash,” Kellie said, speaking to her marriage. “[My husband] knows the language; [The Enneagram] gives us the shorthand.”
Some numbers tend to reflect particular stereotypes, and gender norms can sometimes make you apply yourself to a certain number when you could be something else. Be careful projecting social norms onto your analysis of yourself.
For example, just because you’re a woman, it doesn’t mean you’re always a 2. Kellie says, “It’s okay to be a female 8.” It’s also okay to be a female 2.
Your Military Spouse Enneagram Type as Told in GIFs
When a 1 just wants to help the movers.
A 2, promising to fix all of the new neighbor’s mold problems in their house.
A 3, preemptively absolving themselves before every friendly game that happens in the neighborhood.
4s at the end of the first military spouse squadron event they attend.
Every time a 5 goes to the commissary.
A 6, answering all of the pity-filled head nods during the first month of deployment.
The Military: “You’re PCSing to a shack in the desert.” 7s:
When the Tricare rep has kept an 8 on the phone for an hour and still pronounces her name wrong.
All 9s in general.
To get a head start on understanding The Enneagram and your number, give the Milspo Guru’s podcast a listen or head over to their website for more information!
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