Sixes, your superpower is scanning the world for threats and what can go wrong. You love making plans and by that I mean, you have Plans A-Z of what to do if something goes wrong.
Your one powerful underlying motivation is being safe and you believe you can do this by following all the rules, which means you get frustrated when others don’t.
When you are healthy and whole, you reflect God’s faithfulness.
You can also grab this free resource about what the Enneagram is, what it isn’t, and what you want to know about your personality type. Your Quick Start Guide to the Enneagram walks you through how to determine your type, what’s up with wings, and Enneagram resources you’ll want to check out.
Please know that I’m not an Enneagram expert, merely a lover of it. What I present to you is based on my own research, feedback from men and women of each type, and peer review. If you learn better through audio, take a listen to this Grace In Real Life podcast episode with Enneagram Six Dr. Camden Morgante.
All Things Six
Here’s the basic foundation you need to understand about yourself or about the Sixes in your life. In this post, we cover what arouses anger in a Six, books for spiritual growth, what causes you stress at Christmas, your biggest fear, gift ideas, goal-setting, parenting, and what the pandemic of 2020 has been like for you.
What Sixes believe
You believe it’s The Worst to let down your defenses, and you should only expect the worst. You tend to see threats everywhere. Other people aren’t to be trusted until you get a good read on their intentions.
Where Sixes struggle
Sixes, you struggle with doubt, endless questioning, and overanalysis. You may worry too much, allowing anxiety to drive you. You struggle with indecision and ever feeling safe enough. Sixes endlessly cycle between thinking then applying logic then questioning yourself.
What makes you angry
Nothing gets a Type Six angry faster than inconsiderate behavior. Type Sixes are especially sensitive to disingenuousness, bullying, demands on their time, and injustice. Your anger may stem from the hurt you feel because you weren’t shown respect or made to feel valued, two qualities you give others.
Fellow Type Six Abby McDonald said that she gets angry, “…when people don’t follow through with something important that they said they’d do (without any real explanation) or when people try to rush me into making a big decision.” Because your type reflects God’s trustworthiness, you get angry when people show a lack of faithfulness toward you.
What’s behind your anger
Because Type Siexs are in the Head Center, you’re concerned with having and maintaining safety and security. Your first reaction isn’t anger. Instead, your primary emotion is fear. You fear that everything will go wrong. From this root, spring fears of trusting others and not having guidance or support. Deep down, you want security.
How you express your anger
How you express your anger depends on how much you care about the other person. If you’re angry at an acquaintance, you may pick your battles carefully and handle the situation very factually. If you’re mad at someone you love deeply, you may either avoid the person altogether out of a fear of conflict or directly confront to restore the hurt relationship. Your anger, which masks your fear, may take the form of yelling, having outbursts, and/or stomping away.
How to process your anger in a God-centered way
1. Take the root of your anger, which is fear, to Christ. Ask Him to remind you that true peace and security are found in Him alone. Ask Him to heal your heart from the hurt others have caused.
2. Spend time in silence listening to God remind that He is watchful over you. Hear Him say that when bad things happen, God is always with you and will never leave you.
3. Find a safe person or grab a journal and share what’s bothering you. Memorize and repeat God’s word when you feel overcome by anger.
Want to read more truth by someone who’s also a Type Six? Check out the sites of these fellow Type Sixes and reviewers of this portion: Janel Guevara and Sarah Crickenberger.
“As a Type Six, I perpetually carry deep, deep worries about the worst-case scenarios in my life. I wonder how I could go on if I lost the people I love or suffered greatly. Corrie ten Boom lived all my worst fears. As they lived in a concentration camp, her sister said, “Corrie, you have to tell everyone – tell them there is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still.” Corrie’s story in The Hiding Place reminds me that God is deeper and stronger than my fears and that He will use pain and suffering for His great good.” – Jessica Smart of smarttereachday.com
Your goal for Christmas is to keep your holiday anxiety and chaos to a minimum.
How you came to that goal: As a Type Six, you crave security in relationships and consistency, which makes Christmas with all it’s new routines, potentially awkward family get-togethers, obligations, and gift-buying stressful. You’re doing your best to keep your anxiety level low by doing all you can to stay in control.
What happens when you work to reach your goal: To keep your stress to a minimum, you work to control as much as you can. You may overly prepare for a party you’re hosting or plan for every conceivable worst-case scenario. In an attempt to avoid awkwardness, you research recipes, gifts, and hosting as much as possible. You feel the stress of trying to do All The Things well and you fear disappointing others so you often feel exhausted by the end of Christmas break.
Three ways to have a healthy Christmas:
1. Ask your friend Jesus to remind you that you are secure because you are in Him and He never changes. He made you, sees you, knows you, and is for you.
2. Remember that as much as you feel a need to plan, you are also allowed to rest. When you rest and stick to your boundaries, you show Christ to those around you.
3. Have fun! Christmas is the celebration of the birth of our Savior so rejoice in your real life: laugh, eat good food, or hang out with people who make you smile.
BONUS: Check out the book The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom.
Want to read more truth by someone who’s also a Type Six? Check out the sites of these fellow Type Sixes and reviewers of this portion: Erica Hearns, Abbie Rudibaugh, and Katie Carper.
What Type Sixes Fear: Your bottom line fear is that everything will go wrong. From this root, spring fears of trusting others and not having guidance or support. Deep down, you want security.
Why You Fear: Type Sixes crave security, support, and reassurance, therefore fear arises when these things are lacking. In the unpredictable and uncontrollable nature of life, your inner doomsday committee spins out worst-case scenarios for you all day long. This committee makes you doubt yourself and fear picking the wrong next step. (Written by Kira Bridges)
How Your Fear Manifests Itself: Because of your fear, you worry a lot and tend to make a Plan A then Plans B-Z just in case. You often feed distracted as your brain works overtime to find solutions. Your type seeks control and can overthink situations.
How to Work Through the Fear:
1. Remember that you are safe because there is nothing that can separate you from God’s love: not death or life, not angels or demons, not the present or the future, not any powers, not height or depth, nor anything else in all creation!
2. Practice silence. When you are literally silent (no podcasts, webinars, music allowed!), you’ll be able to hear God whisper how much He loves and cares for you. In silence, you’ll hear the truth about who you are and how God provides for you. It brings clarity to your hunt for assurance and quiets your churning thoughts. To silence that inner committee, tell your thoughts you’ll come back to them later, but that you can’t talk to them right now.
3. Journal. Journal out your fears and worries and offer them to God. Your words will serve as a testimony to God’s faithfulness and love for you.
**Would you like a free printable of these three spiritual practices? Just go here.**
Want to read more truth by someone who’s also a Type Six? Check out the sites of these fellow Type Sixes and reviewers of this portion: Lauren Burk Miller and Kira Bridges.
Gift Philosophy: Gifts should be practical and meet a need.
You can take or leave gifts both for yourself and others. There are so many feelings and thoughts mixed up in gifts!
As a gift-giver, you love giving meaningful gifts you know your people will appreciate and use, but you hate the shopping and stores required.
As a gift-receiver, however, you have a hard time receiving the gifts of others for several reasons:
- You’re a minimalist at heart and find it hard to receive more “stuff.”
- You really, really, really prefer gifts that are practical and useful to you.
- If a gift wasn’t on your list, you wonder how and when you’ll use it. If you never use the gift, you feel like a terrible gift-receiver.
- It’s hard for you to let go of gifts (even unwanted ones) because you grow sentimental about the items and the person who gave it to you.
- Unwanted gifts end up as clutter, which you hate. You end up with a lot of stuff because throwing a gift away feels like throwing away the relationship AND decision-making is really hard for you.
Gift ideas for every Enneagram Type Six: “If you’re going to get me anything, please make sure it’s something I can use.”
You don’t like clutter or what you perceive as wastefulness so the best gift for you is something you’ve asked for, a gift card, or cash. You’re not impersonal, you’re practical. You can be hard to decipher so you prefer for people to ask what you need or want instead of them trying to piece it together on their own.
Six-approved gift ideas include:
- Conference admission
- Books. For spiritual growth books, go here. For parenting books, go here.
- Experiences like theatre or concert tickets
- Money or gift cards, especially for restaurants and coffee shops
- A weighted blanket
- T-shirts, mugs, or any items that support her favorite team. Your Six is loyal to the core after all!
No-No’s for those buying a Six a gift:
- No trinkets, knickknacks or tchotchkes. Show your Six how much you take note of him by giving thoughtful gifts.
- Clothes or decorative pieces unless you’re 100% you get her style.
- The “I feel socially obligated to get you a gift” gift. Your Six would rather not get a gift at all than an impersonal, mass-produced one.
- Items she didn’t ask for.
Reviewed by Clarissa Ma and Claresa Smith
How do you view goals? Loyalists need goals to keep moving forward, but because of your tendency to over-analyze, it’s hard for you to know what goals to set.
Do you set goals? Yes. You’re great at setting goals, but you can often overthink them. Sometimes you have too many goals to count, while at other times, your goals are too high.
How do you accomplish your goals? When you feel stressed, you act like a Type 3 (Performer), meaning that you work, work, work yourself into exhaustion until the goal is met. You also tend to worry and analyze each goal to death.
How do goals make you feel? For you, goals can be a source of worry as you wonder how they’ll impact others. You feel added pressure to achieve the goals you’ve set, which might lead to to burn out. You may also beat yourself up if you fail to reach a goal.
Healthy habits for the Loyalist:
1. Be realistic and break goals into smaller steps.
2. Remember that goal setting isn’t just about achievement, it’s about taking one step at a time.
3. Give yourself grace and take one step at a time, even when you fear something will go wrong.
4. Ask the Holy Spirit, not your “inner committee,” to guide you because He alone will give you clarity and peace.
5. Remember that Jesus holds you in the palm of His hand.
Extra resources for the Loyalist:
The pandemic feeds into your worldview that the world is unsafe and you must be on your guard. This season may be the worst-case scenario you’ve ever thought through.
Your superpower is thinking about what might go wrong, strategizing ways to solve it, then preparing for it. In other words, Sixes, you have the potential to be the calmest in this crisis because you’ve already thought through all the options and scenarios. This may be your finest hour because you’ve planned and prepared.
But for some Sixes, it also may be the time of most anxiety because you’re worried about your health and safety and the health of those in your family. You wonder if you’ll ever be safe again.
To cope, you absorb and sort information and then imagine what might happen next. On one hand, this might be helpful to take data and act on it.
But for most Sixes, this just means you become preoccupied with research then formulating a plan then doubting that plan and doing nothing or frantically doing a lot of inconsequential activities.
Yet this is also an opportunity for you to grow by trusting in God’s sovereignty, that no matter how much data you have, only God can make you feel safe and confident. This may be a time when God strips away the blinders that keep you from seeing how capable, competent, and smart you are and how much agency you have to act on your behalf.
Graciously reviewed by Karen Rapp, Clarissa Moll, and Alexis Bailey.
The pandemic feeds into your worldview that the world is unsafe and you must be on your guard. This season may be the worst-case scenario you’ve ever thought through.
Your superpower is thinking about what might go wrong, strategizing ways to solve it, then preparing for it. In other words, Sixes, you have the potential to be the calmest in this crisis because you’ve already thought through all the options and scenarios. This may be your finest hour because you’ve planned and prepared.
But for some Sixes, it also may be the time of most anxiety because you’re worried about your health and safety and the health of those in your family. You wonder if you’ll ever be safe again.
To cope, you absorb and sort information and then imagine what might happen next. On one hand, this might be helpful to take data and act on it.
But for most Sixes, this just means you become preoccupied with research then formulating a plan then doubting that plan and doing nothing or frantically doing a lot of inconsequential activities.
Yet this is also an opportunity for you to grow by trusting in God’s sovereignty, that no matter how much data you have, only God can make you feel safe and confident. This may be a time when God strips away the blinders that keep you from seeing how capable, competent, and smart you are and how much agency you have to act on your behalf.
Graciously reviewed by Karen Rapp, Clarissa Moll, and Alexis Bailey.
As most people who aren’t sixes and like the enneagram, the fact that there are two variances of six. What you have described is for those that are phobic sixes, but who are more counter-phobic sixes charge at our fear. We hate the fact that we have so much fear that we choose to face it and try to conquer it. I believe this little fact about the dual variances of six gets over looked too much and short changes all sixes.
Clint, thank you so much for pointing this out. There are phobic and counter-phobic Sixes. I appreciate you including this detail. Thank you! -j