Enneagram Part 3: Instincts for survival

Be sure to read Part 2 before diving into this article.

The Enneagram is a wonderful map for helping you expand your view of the possibilities in your life. All humans have unconscious and automatic behaviors that hold them back from what they really want. In order to live daily with purpose and intention, you’ll need to become aware of your own unconscious influences. In addition to your Enneagram type’s Passion, or unconscious emotional influences, you also have one of three instincts for survival that is overused and drives you unconsciously.

Basic Human Instincts for Survival

If we look to the animal kingdom, we can clearly see three instincts for survival also found in humans. They are: the instinct for self-preservation, the instinct for social belonging, and the instinct for sexual (or one-to-one) bonding.

In the animal kingdom, these instincts rise and fall more naturally as needed than they do in humans. For example, a penguin will honor the need for self-preservation by hunting for food or protecting its eggs. When penguins huddle together and rotate positions in order to stay warm, or work together to distract predators, they illustrate their instinct for social connection to aid in their survival. When penguins mate, they’re exhibiting the one-to-one (or sexual) instinct for survival.

As humans, we have the same instinctual drives for survival. The problem is that we tend to over exercise one instinct (which we identify as your dominant instinct) and underutilize another (often called the repressed instinct). The third instinct sits between those two extremes.

As part of your Enneagram journey, you’ll want to identify your core Enneagram type as well as your dominant instinct. Identification of your dominant instinct is part of the Enneagram Level 1 package. The following are generalized descriptions of each instinct.

  • The self-preservation instinct is all about meeting your basic needs for survival and keeping yourself alive. This can include food, water, shelter, and self-protection. When this instinct is dominant, the amount of attention given to the self-preservation needs is much more than is necessary for staying alive. Some traits of this instinct may include avoidance of risk, concern with self-care themes, and desire for self-sufficiency.

  • The social instinct is all about the importance of a group for survival. This could mean belonging to a group (family, friends, or other), working together, or connecting with the group. When this instinct is dominant, these things receive much more attention than is necessary for survival. Some traits of this instinct may include the need to be important and concern with approval, recognition, and image.

  • The sexual (or one-to-one) instinct is about one-to-one bonding (and not just about sexual bonding). This means placing high importance on gaining relationships with specific and important individuals. When this instinct is dominant, it means placing enormous attention on having a merging-like bond with another person. Some traits of this instinct may include aggressiveness, impulsiveness, and high energy.

It’s helpful to know the order of your instinctual sequence (which is based on the Enneagram subtypes work of Claudio Naranjo and built upon by Beatrice Chestnut), but it’s not necessary for the beginning of your Enneagram journey. Eventually, learning and observing the impact of your full instinctual sequence empowers you to bring greater balance between all three instincts so that they rise and fall as necessary.

Instead of using wings (the numbers on either side of your core type) to help explain differences between people of the same Enneagram type, I use the subtype method which identifies your dominant (or overused) instinct and how it specifically plays out for people of your Enneagram type.

Subtype = Dominant Instinct + Core Enneagram Number

It’s helpful to understand what the instincts are in their pure and isolated form—as in the examples above—but your dominant instinct can change its flavor when it’s combined with the Passion of your Enneagram type.

For example, the Passion for Type 4 is Envy. Envy evokes sadness and creates the underlying belief that something is missing.

  • For the Type 4 who has a dominant Social instinct (SO 4), the response to Envy includes a lot of visible sadness.

  • For the Type 4 who has a dominant Sexual instinct (SX 4), the response to Envy is anger that covers up the sadness.

  • For the Type 4 who has a dominant Self-Preservation instinct (SP 4), the response to Envy is ignoring this feeling by working hard to get what they believe to be missing.

When you can understand and observe the far-reaching impacts of your dominant instinct, you gain the ability to rein it in and put limits on it so that it doesn’t derail your intention to live each day with purpose and meaning. When you see the ways in which your instinct combines with your Passion, you wake up to the unconscious habits that limit your truest potential.

Let’s move on to the fourth and final part of this series of Enneagram basics. Read Part 4 »

Want to identify your core Enneagram type and subtype?

Leslie McDaniel