Enneagram Type 9

The Easygoing, Self-Effacing Type: Receptive, Reassuring, Agreeable, and Complacent. The Peacemaker The Reassuring Ones, Who Try To Keep Peace Of Mind And Serenity Whether Inside And Outside Of Them.

People with an Enneagram Type 9 personality tend to be accepting, optimistic, and adaptive in their behavior. They like peace and tend to avoid conflict. They tend to enjoy time alone or with smaller groups of people.

The utopian who wants to keep heaven on Earth. Optimistic, a healer, and a serene spirit who wants to make peace a state of mind. Enneagram Type 9 usually avoids conflicts in order to keep a balanced and calm atmosphere. By increasing their mediation skills, they soften problems, although it could be better to face them. Like a spring breeze, Nines wash the air away with peace and serenity. They are honest and peaceful people who want to live free in a harmonious environment. Naturally good, Enneagram Type 9s are purely nice company; they know how to connect with others. Bringing people together and sharing experiences are things Nines are good at. They avoid everything that brings them trouble which sometimes turns into a passive attitude that can deeply hurt them. When the Peacemaker understands that boundaries, communication, and self-expression do not necessarily lead to conflict as they are just a display of self-love, they never lose themselves to conflict.

Enneagram Type 9s are naturally connected with life; in their best times they’re self-possessed and that’s something that brings calm to people around them. As a result, they create a peaceful environment, and everything flows like a river. Type 9s feel covered, as long as things keep rolling calmly. Nines are easygoing, down-to-earth and unselfish. Nines want peace in their environment. That’s why they’re often called peacemakers and mediators: They try to build a world without conflict around themselves. For Nines, it’s easy to see and value the perspective of others. It makes them amazing listeners. Nines try to get along with everyone by taking themselves back and letting others go first. On the other hand, Nines can be quite stubborn when they are pressured to leave their comfort zone.

Nines are kind and empathetic people. In relationships they are undemanding and like their lives and homes to be comfortable. They like to stay in the background, do their own thing and make sure everyone gets along with each other. Almost everyone likes Nines because they are inclusive and considerate and give people a safe place to be themselves. But they also tend to hold back their own opinions and desires, say yes to others before thinking about their own wishes and avoid conflict, even when it’s good for them.

We have called personality type Nine The Peacemaker because no type is more devoted to the quest for internal and external peace for themselves and others. They are typically “spiritual seekers” who have a great yearning for connection with the cosmos, as well as with other people. They work to maintain their peace of mind just as they work to establish peace and harmony in their world. The issues encountered in the Nine are fundamental to all psychological and spiritual work—being awake versus falling asleep to our true nature; presence versus entrancement, openness versus blockage, tension versus relaxation, peace versus pain, union versus separation.

Ironically, for a type so oriented to the spiritual world, Nine is the center of the Instinctive Center, and is the type that is potentially most grounded in the physical world and in their own bodies. The contradiction is resolved when we realize that Nines are either in touch with their instinctive qualities and have tremendous elemental power and personal magnetism, or they are cut off from their instinctual strengths and can be disengaged and remote, even lightweight. To compensate for being out of touch with their instinctual energies, Nines also retreat into their minds and their emotional fantasies. Furthermore, when their instinctive energies are out of balance, Nines use these very energies against themselves, damming up their own power so that everything in their psyches becomes static and inert. When their energy is not used, it stagnates like a spring-fed lake that becomes so full that its own weight dams up the springs that feed it. When Nines are in balance with their Instinctive Center and its energy, however, they are like a great river, carrying everything along with it effortlessly.

Also common in the conception of the 9s as peacemakers is an assumption that all 9s are conflict avoidant. While it is true that Sloth leads to a self-forgetfulness that engenders conflict avoidance, it's also true that it also creates a repository of rage seeking to be loosened. In the type 9 psychological structure, therefore, there is a disengagement from the self, in order to preserve their peace of mind & autonomy, and in order to stay in agreement with their environment. Due to this, they become very sensitive to their environment, and get easily overwhelmed by it. And that's because they unconsciously take on the environment's psychological weight, and find it difficult to shake themselves from it, which leads to an immeasurable depth of empathy, but also profound mood swings and a buildup of repressed rage. This rage, and all other emotional upheavals experienced somatically, are however, concealed behind a supposedly calm and vacuous exterior.

Healthy Enneagram Type 9

Peacemakers are inspiring and have a rare beauty. Their integrity, which brings everything inside them together, makes them feel great, have peace, and boosts their creativity. Nines admire themselves and become more independent. They no longer get lost in other people. They express their feelings with harmony and security, because they know that expressing their will is not necessarily confrontation. Freedom and breathable air runs through Type 9s’ veins; they can expel natural peace from their spirit. Finally, they feel at peace and stop feeling abandoned. Enneagram Type 9s have the most important and pleasing company: themselves. Troubles and tension can happen, but they’ve learned to face them in their own way, so they are no longer a problem!

While all Nines are good at valuing the viewpoints of others, healthy Nines have found their own unique voice. With a reclaimed sense of purpose, healthy Nines also discover their energy. They become productive and creative, and even though Nines generally don’t crave the spotlight, healthy Nines learn to enjoy it. They are amazing mediators and wise leaders. Like Abraham Lincoln and Queen Elizabeth II., they are able to heal conflicts, bring people together and restore peace. If there is an energy that can restore some kind of balance on this troubled planet, it is certainly the calm, reconciling spirit of healthy Nines.

Healthy Levels:

Level 1 (At Their Best): Become self-possessed, feeling autonomous and fulfilled: have great equanimity and contentment because they are present to themselves. Paradoxically, at one with self, and thus able to form more profound relationships. Intensely alive, fully connected to self and others.

Level 2: Deeply receptive, accepting, unselfconscious, emotionally stable and serene. Trusting of self and others, at ease with self and life, innocent and simple. Patient, unpretentious, good-natured, genuinely nice people.

Level 3: Optimistic, reassuring, supportive: have a healing and calming influence—harmonizing groups, bringing people together: a good mediator, synthesizer, and communicator.

Average Enneagram Type 9

Average Nines are easy going people who are more inclined to step back in favor of others. They prefer to be relaxed and comfortable instead of stepping into environments that challenge them and expose them to conflict, even when it’s constructive. Their focus is on keeping their peace of mind and staying in good relations with everyone around them. Average Nines are often kind sweethearts that understand everyone else but have no clear idea about their own identity. That’s why many Nines feel they are every other personality type of the Enneagram except their own.

Average Levels:

Level 4: Fear conflicts, so become self-effacing and accommodating, idealizing others and “going along” with their wishes, saying “yes” to things they do not really want to do. Fall into conventional roles and expectations. Use philosophies and stock sayings to deflect others.

Level 5: Active, but disengaged, unreflective, and inattentive. Do not want to be affected, so become unresponsive and complacent, walking away from problems, and “sweeping them under the rug.” Thinking becomes hazy and ruminative, mostly comforting fantasies, as they begin to “tune out” reality, becoming oblivious. Emotionally indolent, unwillingness to exert self or to focus on problems: indifference.

Level 6: Begin to minimize problems, to appease others and to have “peace at any price.” Stubborn, fatalistic, and resigned, as if nothing could be done to change anything. Into wishful thinking, and magical solutions. Others frustrated and angry by their procrastination and unresponsiveness.

Unhealthy Enneagram Type 9

The storm inside the calmness. Just bad weather and loneliness. How to get out of oneself? In an unhealthy state, Enneagram Type 9s are full of uncontrolled feelings. They feel anger, frustration, self-hatred, and they feel lost. All of their ignored creatures inside start an inner revolution. Calm is completely broken and Nines feel horrible, but why? Why is this happening to them if they prefer just the opposite? Well, conflict is part of life. The correct management of it could lead to growth, but ignoring it just deepens the wounds. It’s a time bomb that’s about to explode. And if the Peacemaker doesn’t have peace, they aren’t able to give it back to the world.

Their wish for inner peace drives unhealthy Nines to avoid not just conflict, but everything: life, the world, even themselves. They lose an understanding of how angry they truly are. Because they don’t recognize their anger, they don’t address it, but instead withdraw and stubbornly resist any help. Unhealthy Nines procrastinate obsessively, remain passive at all costs and try to remain in an artificial world of harmony, even when that’s impossible.

Unhealthy Levels:

Level 7: Can be highly repressed, undeveloped, and ineffectual. Feel incapable of facing problems: become obstinate, dissociating self from all conflicts. Neglectful and dangerous to others.

Level 8: Wanting to block out of awareness anything that could affect them, they dissociate so much that they eventually cannot function: numb, depersonalized.

Level 9: They finally become severely disoriented and catatonic, abandoning themselves, turning into shattered shells. Multiple personalities possible. Generally corresponds to the Schizoid and Dependent personality disorders.

Growth opportunities that are typically associated with the Enneagram 9 

• Recognizing that conflict is a necessary and beneficial part of life

• Engaging in physical activity to connect with their body

• Directly addressing an upsetting issue

• Facing and working through their negative emotions

Find your voice: Humility is not the same as making yourself small. Even if it sounds cliché when you put it in a few words like this: You matter! The world wants you to make yourself heard. Practice taking a moment to think about and express your own opinions before you automatically agree with those around you.

Practice saying No: While disappointing others never feels good, Type Nines too often neglect their own wishes in order to keep everyone happy. But you owe it to yourself to value your own time and energy as much as anyone else’s. If “No“ feels too terrifying, start with “Let me think about it and get back to you tomorrow“.

Think differently about conflict: What looks like a relationship-threatening confrontation to you is often just a run-of-the-mill disagreement to the other person. Take a moment before you zone out, to remind yourself that the stakes are almost always lower than you think. And more importantly: they are worth standing up for yourself.

Try staying with something difficult: True peace is not the same as avoiding unpleasantness. The next time you face something that requires you to step out of your comfort zone or endure a little bit of discomfort, know that you have the strength to make it to the other side and focus on how you will feel afterwards instead of how you feel now.

Make making decisions easier: The next time you are faced with a decision you feel you are unable to make, don’t turn to other people to tell you what you should do, but go take some time for yourself to find out what it is that you actually want to do – and then do it!