Feeling Stuck? The Struggle of Type 9s

Can you relate?

It’s not that you’re not hard-working and don’t have dreams, it’s just that you don’t always feel motivated to take action. It’s likely you don’t even know what you want. A new job? A different relationship? Free time for a hobby? You just know you feel stuck in whatever situation you’re in.

If you do know what you want, maybe you just don’t have the energy to go after it. You may get initially inspired to make a change in your life, but that passion quickly fades. Life takes a lot out of you and it’s easiest to just stay where you are, even if where you are isn’t really where you want to be.

Maybe you start thinking that where you are isn’t so bad. You’ve been managing and can keep managing. It’s okay that you’re not really happy, or fulfilled, or satisfied, or “fill in blank.” It’s fine.

But is it?

What’s going on?

If you can relate to the above, there’s a good possibility you might be a Type 9 on the Enneagram, which is the most common type.

Type 9s are really great. They’re easygoing, agreeable, can get along with most people, and most people love being around them. Their very presence often brings peace, and they strive to create peace wherever they go. Type 9s are very good at reading a room and intuitively know how to act with different people. They are a genuinely selfless type and don’t think it’s any trouble to put others before themselves.

However, like every personality type, Type 9s also have their struggles, and the greatest among them is inertia. Type 9s, better than any other type, understand that objects in motion will stay in motion and objects at rest will stay at rest. They really struggle with starting tasks, and more importantly keeping the stamina to finish the task.

Type 9s can look lazy, but it goes deeper than that. They expend more energy than any other type to accommodate and always be mindful of others, which leaves less energy for themselves. So, they get drained more quickly than most other types.

How to grow

The good news about Type 9s is that their growth path leads to healthy Type 3s, who are energetic, ambitious, and highly driven.

Type 9s need to be checked in on because they often struggle with sharing their thoughts and opinions, but it’s important to check in on yourself. How are you feeling? What is making you feel this way? What is that you need right now? These are always important questions to ask yourself.

Understanding yourself better is a good start to overcoming the inertia you experience throughout your life. But here are practical steps to take when you’re feeling stuck:

• Write down a plan
• Take things one step at a time
• Excercise
• Practice saying no
• Practice staying focused
• Practice speaking up

Type 9s get overwhelmed very easily, so whatever it is you want to do, break it up into steps. Focus on one step at a time, and you’ll find this may be much easier to keep you moving forward.

Dig a little deeper

Adult Type 9s have learned how to suppress their desires, needs, and wants from a young age. Many Type 9s grew up in homes where they felt overlooked, or that their feelings and opinions were less important than others.

If you’re a Type 9, then perhaps you grew up in lots of conflict, or maybe you were raised among other more assertive types. Whatever environment you grew up in, you learned from an early age that it is not okay to assert yourself, or if you tried, that you would be ignored.

Since Type 9s are so sensitive to the moods around them, you probably never felt okay until everyone and everything around you was okay. This is because you deeply desire peace and harmony, and you learned how to be very good at bringing those things to others. But you probably often brought peace at the expense and neglect of your own needs.

Because you are so good at suppressing yourself, it may be extra difficult for you to even know what you want or how you really feel. Not knowing these things can keep you stuck. Even if you do know what you want, you’ve also been so good at neglecting your desires and needs that it’s a struggle to actually pursue them.

In order to move toward the direction of growth, it’s important to recognize how much you matter – your opinions, values, experiences, all of it. Type 9s have learned to move through the world believing deep down that their presence doesn’t matter and that their needs aren’t as valuable as other people’s. YOU DO MATTER.

Because you matter, your desires also matter, which includes your desire to continue moving forward in life. Know that you don’t have to stay stuck just because you’re okay dealing with it.

The bottom line comes down to actively engaging yourself instead of neglecting, suppressing, or avoiding. Remember, YOU MATTER. So learn to live in a way that constantly reflects that truth.