Enneagram Type 9w1 Childhood (A complete guide)

In this article, we will discuss Enneagram Type 9w1 i.e. type nine wing one ‘The Dreamer’ and the role of their childhood in their personality development. We will do that by initially giving an introduction to enneagrams, their structure, and wings. This will follow up by describing the dominant type Nine personality and its triad. We will move on to giving an overview of its subtype i.e. type 9w1. Finally, we will discuss the detailed role of childhood in their development.  

Enneagram Type 9w1: Childhood

Enneagram type 9w1 has the primary characteristics of type 9 and secondary characteristics of type 1 personality. These people are hard-workers who add creativity to their work. Generally, they are friendly yet idealistic and serious in daily life . Their core childhood conflict that makes them the way they are is ‘Rejecting their voice’. This means that they do not ask others for anything and diminish their needs to almost nothing. They do this to prevent destroying or wreaking havoc on others in their surroundings and themself.

Introduction to Enneagrams

Enneagrams are a map or typology of human personalities. It has its roots in spirituality, philosophy, and psychology. Multiple people contributed to its development among which George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, Oscar Ichazo, and Claudio Naranjo are the most prominent. 

It is divided into nine personality types that are spread across 3 triads i.e. Feeling triad, Thinking Triad, or Instinctive Triad. It describes a person’s fundamental psychological orientation in the form of good or bad traits and sees which triad quality i.e. emotion, intellect or instincts is most characteristic of his or her personality. 

An enneagram gives a personality type that is fluid and explains its change across time i.e. personality integration (during health, self-actualization) or disintegration (during ill health, neurosis). In other words,  a personality can become more healthy or unhealthy as it moves in different directions from its basic type. Enneagram also links one personality type with other personality types.

The structure of Enneagram

Enneagram symbol is a circle that has 9 points (each point is a personality type) present on the circumference. Each type is related to another as represented by the connected lines. Points 3,6, 9 forms a triangle. They are primary personality types that are blocked in some way from feelings, thoughts, or instincts. Whereas 4,2,8,5,7,1 form an irregular hexagram and are secondary personality types since they are mixed and not blocked from feelings, thoughts, or instincts. Each type is the result of a dialectic. In every triad, one type over-expresses its characteristic quality, another under-expresses it, and the third is mostly out of touch with it. 

Wings in Enneagrams 

The Basic Personality Type is the most characteristic of a person. Whereas wings add elements to the overall personality i.e. it is the second side of it. 

Example: If you are a personality type 9, you can have wing1 or wing8. So, such a personality can be understood by knowing the traits of the basic or main type and the secondary types. Usually, each personality has two wings, and both influence a person. However, at times people have one dominant wing along with their basic personality type.

The Instinct Triad: Personality Types Eight, Nine, and One

• The positive and negative traits of these personalities are dominated by instinct.

• When these types are healthy, they can relate to their environment with great wisdom from within. Thus, they can become good leaders.

• When they are unhealthy, they are out of balance and find it difficult to relate to their environment and people. 

• All three personality types have common problems linked with repression and aggression.

Enneagram Type 9: The Peacemaker 

Key traits: peaceful, reassuring, content, and neglectful. They are mostly out of touch with their instinct. So their reactions are not instinctive. This is done to maintain inner peace. It has two subtypes:

• The nine with wing 1 (Type 9w1)

• The nine with wing 8 (Type 9w8)

Type 9w1: ‘The Dreamer’

Type 9w1 has basic traits of type 9 and secondary traits of type 1. Type nine pushes these people to repress emotions for peace and type ones do that to maintain self-control. Thus, such types are more cerebral, interested in concepts, and ideas. They are emotionally calm and stable but have their moments of anger.  From being agreeable to shifting to critical and sarcastic comes easy to them. Philosophy and spirituality spark their idealistic side. 

Healthy versions of this subtype are wise, fair, objective, principled, and possess integrity. They are able to compare and contrast different schools of thought. They have a good imagination, are creative, expressive, and visionaries. People find them friendly yet serious, non-judgemental, helpful, and reassuring. They make good teachers, leaders, and therapists.  

Average versions of this subtype strive to make the world a better place within their capacity. They have clear opinions and ideas on different matters. Associated with them are emotionally-controlled, orderly, active, energetic, detached, and less passionate traits. They can achieve their long-term goals in an orderly fashion They can also be perfectionistic, thoughtful, and private.  Conflict avoidance and traditional approach describe their overall attitude towards life. Although they can get angry but do not do it in a loud explosive way to cause a scene because they are concerned about respect and propriety. Often, they feel they are morally superior to others. So, they use morality and rationality in their arguments with political and religious people. 

Unhealthy versions of this type have a withdrawn and schizoid type personality with limited emotional expression. Their anger and impulsivity are within range but often come out of the blue. Seeing injustice in the world creates resentment in them and a need to punish those people for their sins also arises. OCD-like traits can also develop in neurotic 9w1 types but with a degree of dissociation from their real-life problems. They can become extremely involved in their troubles and have emotional breakdowns yet dissociate from them later when nothing new happens in life. Long periods of no treatment may make them resemble autistic people who are mostly dissociated, helpless, in despair, and react suddenly with bursts of negative emotions. 

Examples of Type 9w1: Abraham Lincoln, Queen Elizabeth, Carl Jung, Walt Disney

Strengths of Type 9w1

• Accepting of multiple perspectives
• Good work ethic
• Open-minded
• Helpful to others
• Strong motivation and sense of purpose

Weaknesses of Type 9w1

• Neglect personal needs
• Self-critical
• Avoid conflict
• Perceived as cold and aloof in stress

If you’re facing this, it may be a good idea to seek the help of a therapist or other mental health professional. You can find a therapist at BetterHelp who can help you learn how to cope and address it.

Workplace and job 

Type 9w1 is open-minded, humble, motivated to help others, and good at making peace. They prefer to work in jobs that allow them to make a difference at a large scale and utilize their mediating skills e.g. nurse, counselor, diplomat, veterinarian, etc.

Source of Stress for type 9w1

• Disappointing others
• Making mistakes
• Ignoring own needs
• Being overlooked or not acknowledged
• Not being able to reach a goal

Basic fear 

Type 9w1 fear being cut off from the world and losing what is important to them.

Basic desire 

Type 9w1 desire to make peace both within and outside themselves. They strive to make the image of their idealized peaceful world come true. They are good negotiators who distract themself with their routine and avoid negative emotions, to defend themself.

Type 9w1 Childhood/development

We become any personality depending on how we have learned to respond to the world growing up. Our early childhood particularly our relationship with our parents governs how we unconsciously adapt to our family and the world. Genetics and temperament have their role as well. A person remains one personality type throughout life but may change and grow to develop healthy or unhealthy traits.  

In their childhood, type nines are connected to both parents and internalize their psyche. Most of their time is spent keeping it in balance and harmony. As children, they absorb a lot of messages and feelings from the people in their surroundings. This could include pain and conflicted feelings especially if the family is dysfunctional; leaving them the option of dissociation to escape from the overwhelming pain. They also learn to tune out the family conflicts in order to survive e.g. blocking out the sounds of parent’s fight by singing happy songs etc. However, if the family is peaceful, they have more time to make sense of the world. So, they are sensitive, open minded, and feel supported. 

With time, however, they realize that their identity is basically adopted and not who they are since it’s dependant on their parents’ agenda. Leaving no room for them. As a result, they try to find independence and autonomy. This leads them to spend time alone. They end up valuing their ‘me time’ highly. They spend their time in activities they feel strongly about and anyone questioning them makes them defensive and angry. With time, as they learn more about their inner self, they become calmer and start letting go of these activities and start to claim their needs. 

Since nines were subjected to discord or threat of parental separation, they are terrified by the idea of disagreement and strive to maintain harmony in life as a result. Even conflicts within themselves are scary, so they try to do good and feel whole. If they are less healthy, they imagine others as ‘well and whole’ even when they are not. Due to this, they start losing connection with the ‘real’ people they wanted to stay connected with.

 FAQs: Type 9w1-Childhood

Conclusion

In this article, we discussed enneagram type 9w1 in detail and the role of childhood in their development. We found that enneagram type 9w1 has the primary characteristics of type 9 and secondary characteristics of type 1 personality. These people are hard-workers who add creativity to their work. Generally, they are friendly yet idealistic and serious in daily life. Their core childhood conflict that makes them the way they are is ‘Rejecting their voice’. This means that they do not ask others for anything and diminish their needs to almost nothing. They do this to prevent destroying or wreaking havoc on others in their surroundings and themself.

 I hope you found this article interesting. If you have any queries or comments, please state them in the comment section 😊

Citations

https://www.crystalknows.com/enneagram/type-9-wing-1

https://www.psychologyjunkie.com/2020/03/10/the-childhood-wounds-of-every-enneagram-type/#

Personality Types – Using the Enneagram for Self-Discovery by Don Richard Riso with Russ Hudson

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