Let’s have a look at the Enneagram Coronary heart Triad, one of many three intelligence triads that the Enneagram proposes.
Although it’s highly effective to grasp your dominant Enneagram sort or sorts, understanding whether or not it belongs to the Intestine, Head or Coronary heart Triad additionally helps you know what your dominant emotional theme is and get a deal with in your fears and wishes.
What Are Triads?
To provide you some context, there are 9 Enneagram persona sorts, numbered 1 to 9, and every belongs to one of many three intelligence triads, known as the Intestine triad, the Coronary heart triad, and the Head triad.
Every is a novel method of understanding and interacting with different individuals and the world round us.
Varieties 8, 9 and 1 belong to the Intestine triad; 5, 6 and seven kind the Head triad, and 2, 3 and 4 kind the Coronary heart triad. Because the sorts inside every intelligence triad are all adjoining, the usual Enneagram diagram provides us a pleasant visible illustration of the triads:


Let’s look extra intently on the Enneagram Coronary heart Triad.
What’s the Enneagram Coronary heart Triad?
As we all know, the Enneagram Coronary heart Triad consists of Enneagram Varieties 2, 3 and 4. It additionally contains 4 of the eighteen wing sorts, 2w3, 3w2, 3w4 and 4w3, whereas the wing sorts 1w2, 2w1, 4w5 and 5w4 are partially within the Coronary heart triad. To maintain issues easy, we’ll deal with Varieties 2, 3 and 4, nevertheless it’s fairly potential you’re a wing sort.
You would possibly see this known as the Feeling triad.
The three Enneagram Coronary heart triad sorts share some widespread traits. An individual centred in one in all these sorts tends to…
- have excessive emotional intelligence,
- see emotions as a way to attach and empathise, somewhat than vulnerabilities,
- need love, acceptance and validation,
- base selections on emotion somewhat than chilly, laborious knowledge,
- expertise disgrace as a response to difficult conditions,
- handle human relationships utilizing their feelings,
- be forgiving and compassionate.


The challenges of being a Coronary heart sort embody growing a way of self-validation that’s much less reliant on the constructive opinion of others, specializing in oneself in addition to others, and elegantly expressing and channeling emotions.
Within the Enneagram there may be the concept that every triad has one predominant emotion related to it: anger (Intestine triad), disgrace (Coronary heart triad) and worry (Head triad).
I perceive why the Enneagram theorists describe it on this method, however I discover it laborious to imagine that these are the three dominant human feelings and that your sort absolutely determines which one you expertise. It appears reductionistic and oversimplified to me.
The Enneagram Coronary heart Triad: Varieties 2-4
Let’s look just a little on the three sorts that kind the Coronary heart Triad. You’ll discover that they’re comparable sufficient to kind a gaggle, however totally different sufficient to be distinct sorts.
Enneagram Sort 2: The Helper
The Ennegram Sort 2 known as the Helper. Helpers are empathetic, caring, and attempt to assist others as a lot as potential. The two is beneficiant, compassionate, selfless and sort. They readily put others forward of themselves, and are nice workforce gamers.
2s dislike competitors, comparability and lies since they create boundaries between individuals, and to compensate they’re fiercely sincere and loving in speech and motion.
Like all Enneagram sorts, the two’s strengths can be weaknesses. They have an inclination to keep away from battle with others, overlook about their very own wants, and count on love and appreciation in return for his or her selflessness.
Enneagram Sort 3: The Achiever
Sort 3 known as the Achiever. This kind is industrious, goal-oriented and pushed. 3s doggedly pursue their objectives, with unusual ranges of persistence, and acquire nice satisfaction from realising them.
Sort 3s dislike mediocrity and people which might be proud of the abnormal and customary. They will’t stand being one other quantity among the many plenty, in order that they search to excel and stand out.
Their goal-orientation usually has a number of drawbacks, like a necessity for validation, an insatiable thirst for extra, and deep self-loathing when issues don’t go to plan. They are often excessively aggressive and overwork themselves.
Somebody who’s a 2w3 predominantly reveals Sort 2 traits however a major variety of 3 traits, and vice versa for a 3w2.


Enneagram Sort 4: The Individualist
The Enneagram 4 known as the Individualist. This kind is very artistic, curious and self-expressive. 4s are introverted and deeply expertise their interior lives.
They spend plenty of time self-reflecting and have a tendency to expertise nagging melancholy and self-doubt, which means they always pursue unattainable beliefs within the numerous areas of their life, and may really feel unfinished or incomplete as an individual.
They pursue creativity, self-expression and distinctive work to exhibit and manifest their distinctive persona and deep interior world, generally forgetting to be sensible and pragmatic.
Somebody who’s a 4w3 predominantly reveals Sort 4 traits however a major variety of 3 traits, and vice versa for a 3w4.
Within the Enneagram Coronary heart Triad? What to Do Subsequent
Maybe you’ve taken a take a look at or learn the descriptions above and have garnered that you just’re predominantly an Enneagram Sort 2, Sort 3, or Sort 4, or one of many all-Coronary heart wing sorts (2w3, 3w2, 3w4, or 4w3). What do you do with this data?
To start with, your persona sort and triad is neither essentially good nor dangerous. All 9 Varieties and three Triads have nice upsides and drawbacks. In sure conditions they assist, in others they hinder.
For me, it was very useful to uncover my sort as a result of I realised that lots of my persona traits, together with the quirky ones, are primarily regular and to be anticipated given my sort. Isn’t that an enormous reduction?
You possibly can then start to ask how your sort and triad assist you to reside absolutely within the totally different domains of your life, like work, household and friendships. The place do they offer you an edge or important expertise that you’d be misplaced with out?
Then again, the place do your sort and triad hinder you in these domains? The place do they create points in your life?
It’s vital to not suppose that your persona sort and triad definitively describe who you might be and can at all times be. We’re remarkably moldable and adaptable, and in any case all these classes and labels are simply approximations, shorthand methods of describing us. They don’t outline us.


I wish to suppose that our sort and triad current particular challenges that it’s our job to work with, to work by, somewhat than be accosted by. For instance, when you’re a Sort 4 and spot you’re always striving for a great, simply realise that, observe your self when caught on this behaviour, and watch how its each a blessing and a curse.
Then you may work to intensify the constructive and iron out the unfavorable. Maybe as an antidote to this fault-finding and striving, you resolve to apply gratitude. After some time, you would possibly realise that you just’ve reworked or transmuted this inherent high quality of 4 in order that the professionals are accentuated and the cons are tempered.
The identical goes for the numerous qualities of the kinds and triads. Be self-observant and artistic as you channel them to your profit.
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