Enneagram Essentials: Instincts

Here's something I've noticed after years of teaching the Enneagram: there's usually a moment when someone who knows their type well suddenly encounters something that doesn't fit. A behavior they can't explain. A pattern that seems to contradict everything their type is supposed to do. More often than not, the answer lives in the instincts.

In this episode — Episode 3 of our Enneagram Essentials series — Anthony and I go into one of the most undertaught concepts in popular Enneagram culture: the three instinctual drives. Every human being is wired with three biological survival drives — Self-Preservation, Social, and Sexual (or One-to-One). These aren't psychological preferences. They're primal. They predate the ego. And they operate in a hierarchy — which means that depending on which instinct fires first for you, two people of the same Enneagram type can look almost nothing alike.

We walk through all three instincts in detail: what each is oriented toward, what it looks like in everyday life, what its shadow side is, and how to start identifying which one is dominant for you. We also talk about the Repressed instinct — the drive that tends to be most underdeveloped — and why understanding it can explain a remarkable amount of friction in your closest relationships.

If you've ever felt like your type description is about 80% accurate and you can't figure out what the other 20% is — take a deeper look at instincts.

**This episode is part of the Enneagram Essentials series. Episode 4 builds directly on today's content, so listen in order if you can.