The Enneagram Heart Triad Explained

Let’s look at the Enneagram Heart Triad, one of the three intelligence triads that the Enneagram proposes.

Though it’s powerful to understand your dominant Enneagram type or types, knowing whether it belongs to the Gut, Head or Heart Triad also helps you know what your dominant emotional theme is and get a handle on your fears and desires.

What Are Triads?

To give you some context, there are nine Enneagram personality types, numbered 1 to 9, and each belongs to one of the three intelligence triads, called the Gut triad, the Heart triad, and the Head triad.

Each is a unique way of understanding and interacting with other people and the world around us.

Types 8, 9 and 1 belong to the Gut triad; 5, 6 and 7 form the Head triad, and 2, 3 and 4 form the Heart triad. Since the types within each intelligence triad are all adjacent, the standard Enneagram diagram gives us a nice visual representation of the triads:

Let’s look more closely at the Enneagram Heart Triad.

What is the Enneagram Heart Triad?

As we know, the Enneagram Heart Triad consists of Enneagram Types 2, 3 and 4. It also includes four of the eighteen wing types, 2w3, 3w2, 3w4 and 4w3, while the wing types 1w2, 2w1, 4w5 and 5w4 are partially in the Heart triad. To keep things simple, we’ll focus on Types 2, 3 and 4, but it’s quite possible you are a wing type.

You might see this called the Feeling triad.

The three Enneagram Heart triad types share some common traits. A person centred in one of these types tends to…

• have high emotional intelligence,
• see feelings as a means to connect and empathise, rather than vulnerabilities,
• desire love, acceptance and validation,
• base decisions on emotion rather than cold, hard data,
• experience shame as a response to challenging situations,
• manage human relationships using their emotions,
• be forgiving and compassionate.

The challenges of being a Heart type include developing a sense of self-validation that is less reliant on the positive opinion of others, focusing on oneself as well as others, and skillfully expressing and channeling feelings.

In the Enneagram there is the idea that each triad has one predominant emotion associated with it: anger (Gut triad), shame (Heart triad) and fear (Head triad).
I understand why the Enneagram theorists describe it in this way, but I find it hard to believe that these are the three dominant human emotions and that your type fully determines which one you experience. It seems reductionistic and oversimplified to me.

The Enneagram Heart Triad: Types 2-4

Let’s look a little at the three types that form the Heart Triad. You’ll find that they’re similar enough to form a group, but different enough to be distinct types.

Enneagram Type 2: The Helper

The Ennegram Type 2 is called the Helper. Helpers are empathetic, caring, and strive to help others as much as possible. The 2 is generous, compassionate, selfless and kind. They readily put others ahead of themselves, and are great team players.

2s dislike competition, comparison and lies since they create boundaries between people, and to compensate they are fiercely honest and loving in speech and action.

Like all Enneagram types, the 2’s strengths can also be weaknesses. They tend to avoid conflict with others, forget about their own needs, and expect love and appreciation in return for their selflessness.

Enneagram Type 3: The Achiever

Type 3 is called the Achiever. This type is industrious, goal-oriented and driven. 3s doggedly pursue their goals, with uncommon levels of persistence, and gain great satisfaction from realising them.

Type 3s dislike mediocrity and those that are happy with the ordinary and common. They can’t stand being another number among the masses, so they seek to excel and stand out.

Their goal-orientation often has several drawbacks, like a need for validation, an insatiable thirst for more, and deep self-loathing when things don’t go to plan. They can be excessively competitive and overwork themselves.

Someone who is a 2w3 predominantly shows Type 2 traits but a significant number of 3 traits, and vice versa for a 3w2.

Enneagram Type 4: The Individualist

The Enneagram 4 is called the Individualist. This type is highly creative, curious and self-expressive. 4s are introverted and deeply experience their inner lives.

They spend a lot of time self-reflecting and tend to experience nagging melancholy and self-doubt, meaning they constantly pursue unattainable ideals in the various areas of their life, and can feel unfinished or incomplete as a person.

They pursue creativity, self-expression and unique work to exhibit and manifest their unique personality and deep inner world, sometimes forgetting to be practical and pragmatic.

Someone who is a 4w3 predominantly shows Type 4 traits but a significant number of 3 traits, and vice versa for a 3w4.

In the Enneagram Heart Triad? What to Do Next

Perhaps you’ve taken a test or read the descriptions above and have garnered that you’re predominantly an Enneagram Type 2, Type 3, or Type 4, or one of the all-Heart wing types (2w3, 3w2, 3w4, or 4w3). What do you do with this information?

First of all, your personality type and triad is neither fundamentally good nor bad. All nine Types and three Triads have great upsides and downsides. In certain situations they help, in others they hinder.

For me, it was very helpful to uncover my type because I realised that many of my personality traits, including the quirky ones, are essentially normal and to be expected given my type. Isn’t that a huge relief?

You can then begin to ask how your type and triad help you live fully in the different domains of your life, like work, family and friendships. Where do they give you an edge or vital skills that you would be lost without?

On the other hand, where do your type and triad hinder you in these domains? Where do they create issues in your life?

It’s important not to think that your personality type and triad definitively describe who you are and will always be. We are remarkably moldable and adaptable, and in any case all these categories and labels are just approximations, shorthand ways of describing us. They don’t define us.

I like to think that our type and triad present specific challenges that it’s our job to work with, to work through, rather than be accosted by. For example, if you’re a Type 4 and notice you’re constantly striving for an ideal, just realise that, observe yourself when caught in this behaviour, and watch how its both a blessing and a curse.

Then you can work to accentuate the positive and iron out the negative. Perhaps as an antidote to this fault-finding and striving, you decide to practice gratitude. After a while, you might realise that you’ve reworked or transmuted this inherent quality of 4 so that the pros are accentuated and the cons are tempered.

The same goes for the many qualities of the types and triads. Be self-observant and creative as you channel them to your benefit.