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Enneagrams have become an increasingly popular way to examine personality archetypes.

Self-awareness and self-knowledge are starting points for better living and healing.

Accepting ourselves and working with our style is the most ideal way to grow.

My book club recently read one of the many available Enneagram books on the market. I had heard some about the Enneagram but didn’t know much about it. I was also, admittedly, initially somewhat skeptical of a non-scientifically based domain, but having this “assignment” prompted me to embark on closer examination.

At first, I thought this might be a pop-culture personality quiz or a more detailed version of the Myers-Briggs; however, those assumptions were incorrect. The Enneagram arena is quite expansive, and the ancient references to this system are fascinating. There appear to be unclear spiritual origins, but Oscar Ichazo is associated with expansion of the modern Enneagram. Chilean psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo introduced the system to the U.S. in the 1970s, credited with combining psychological terminology within the framework. The field has since expanded with many books, courses, and assessment tools.

Enneagrams Everywhere

Enneagrams seem to have become a bit of a social phenomenon, even though the system has been around for centuries. The current cultural adoption is believed to be due, at least in part, to visibility on social media, making it more accessible to many more people than ever before. There are also increasingly more corporate organizations and spiritual communities utilizing Enneagram typing to develop better understanding among team members.

As I read more about Enneagrams in preparation for the book club, I began to see and hear about it everywhere: library programming events, parties, podcasts, headlines. Some of this might relate to the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, the frequency illusion, which is the brain’s proclivity towards patterns. When we learn something new, we unconsciously scan our world for matches and are alerted to confirmations. Just like when we discover a new word or product, we then seem to come across it more frequently. We are primed, pay attention, and see it “everywhere.”

Deep self-analysis often requires significant exploration, but one of the intriguing discoveries of the Enneagram is how many people immediately connect with their type descriptions. While we understand that humans are complex and........

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