Survival to Authenticity: The Journey of Enneagram Type 8
At the core of Enneagram Type 8’s personality lies a drive for survival, paralleling the primary defenses of early organisms: withdrawal, armoring, and attacking. For Type 8s, these survival instincts have evolved into psychological defenses, driven by their need to maintain control and independence in a world they often perceive as threatening.
Eights have developed the feeling that the strong rule the world and the weak have drawn the short straw. For this reason they have decided not to be good, not to conform, but to develop strength, to resist, to break the rules, and to order others around rather than to let themselves be ordered.
— Russ Hudson, The Wisdom of the Enneagram
Podcast Discussion: Instincts
Survival Mechanisms
- Withdrawal: Emotionally withdrawing from vulnerability to avoid feeling exposed or weak.
- Armoring: Constructing emotional walls to shield from perceived threats, much like early organisms evolved physical armor for protection.
- Attacking: Preemptively confronting challenges to ensure dominance and control, both verbally and emotionally.
All of us have the instinct that amounts to the basic drive for physical survival; it’s part of being human. All social and sexual instincts are linked to survival. All our powerful needs and instinctual drives can become a force that completely eclipses the love of truth.
A. H. Almaas, Spacecruiser Inquiry
Vulnerability as Threat
Vulnerability is seen as a weakness by Type 8s. They divide the world into strong, weak, safe, and dangerous. This fear of vulnerability leads them to reject emotional dependency, limiting their ability to form deep emotional connections. They believe control is essential to avoid harm, reinforcing their survival mechanisms.
Complete, one-hundred-percent, absolute and total vulnerability is the same thing as complete, one-hundred-percent, absolute and total invulnerability. In our attempts to eliminate our vulnerability, we create fear. The shell (ego) is always scared, as well as isolated. Separate from the world, there’s no unity, no support from the universe.
A. H. Almaas, Diamond Heart Book Three: Being and the Meaning of Life
A Core Survival Strategy
Fierce independence defines Type 8. Depending on others introduces vulnerability, so they rely on themselves to maintain control. This can come off as dominance or resistance to authority, but at its root, it reflects their need for autonomy and protection from potential betrayal or control by others.
Dependency becomes structured into the soul not in the normal sense of dependency that many individuals have, but in a more fundamental orientation toward experience and life. The infant’s experience is that whatever the soul needs comes from her caregivers and the physical environment. In other words, what she needs can only come from outside her.
A. H. Almaas, The Void: Inner Spaciousness and Ego Structure
The Armor of Strength and Control
Type 8s project physical and emotional strength. Their body language—confident posture and assertive movements—conveys power. However, the most significant aspect of their defense is emotional armoring, suppressing emotions like sadness or fear that might make them feel weak. While this armor protects them, it also isolates them from intimacy and deeper emotional experiences.
Control is an expression of distrust, so if you allow yourself to lose the control, the distrust will be exposed. This distrust needs to be explored because its absence makes you feel frightened, and therefore, having to control.
A. H. Almaas, Facets of Unity: The Enneagram of Holy Ideas
Softening the Armor
Type 8s must learn to embrace vulnerability as part of their strength for growth. This involves softening their emotional armor and recognizing that allowing themselves to be open doesn’t equate to being weak. Integrating vulnerability with strength leads to deeper, more authentic connections, allowing Type 8s to live with more emotional balance.
Letting go is ceasing the activity of resistance. When you surrender, you realize that you are pushing and resisting, and then you understand it so that you are not as interested in the resistance.
A. H. Almaas, Facets of Unity
Evolving Beyond Defense
Like all enneagram types, eights’ growth lies in transcending survival strategies. Their path to wholeness involves integrating their power with vulnerability, moving from mere survival toward authenticity and deeper connections. By letting down their defenses, Type 8s discover that strength and openness can coexist, allowing them to live from a place of compassionate power.
The Diamond Approach® incorporates the Enneagram to delve into the specific ego structures of each type, offering students a deeper understanding of their inner workings. For Type 8s, the focus is on exploring how their drive for autonomy, control, and strength often limits their emotional and spiritual growth potential. The Diamond Approach helps Type 8s inquire into their patterns of defense and reaction, working toward greater self-awareness and freedom from their ingrained survival strategies. Through open-ended inquiry, students gradually dissolve the rigid boundaries of their type and open to the fuller expression of their true nature.
The dynamism of Being drives the evolutionary thrust of the self at all stages of its development… This evolutionary force moves the self towards greater clarity, luminosity, creativity, depth, expansion, individuation, and richness.
A. H. Almaas, The Point of Existence
How Diamond Approach students who are Type 8 engage with the work:
- Recognizing their Ego Ideal: Type 8 students examine how their idealization of strength and self-reliance distorts their perception of themselves and others, leading to a rejection of vulnerability and dependence.
- Working with their Specific Difficulty: Type 8s confront their deep-seated fear of being controlled or dominated and explore how this fear drives their need for control in relationships and life circumstances.
- Understanding Type 8’s Avoidance: Type 8s learn to recognize their strong aversion to vulnerability and emotional openness, and they explore how avoiding these states keeps them disconnected from deeper emotional experiences.
- Challenging EnneaType 8’s Delusion: Type 8 students challenge the belief that being open or vulnerable is equivalent to being weak. They work toward understanding that true strength comes from integrating vulnerability rather than avoiding it.
- Working with Type Eight’s Specific Reaction: Through inquiry, Type 8s learn to soften their aggressive and confrontational responses to perceived threats, cultivating the ability to engage with life in a way that includes strength and receptivity.
In this way, Type 8s, through the Diamond Approach, learn to move beyond their survival mechanisms of control and domination, allowing them to access a deeper sense of freedom and authenticity.
Free Session for Enneagram Type 8s
Are you an Enneagram Type 8 seeking to move beyond survival instincts and into deeper authenticity? Type 8’s strength, independence, and need for control are powerful but can also limit emotional connection and true freedom. Through the Diamond Approach, we explore how vulnerability and strength are not opposites but can coexist to bring about real, compassionate power. Join me for a complimentary session to dive into your core patterns, unravel defenses, and uncover your authentic nature. Discover how softening the armor can unlock your true potential.