This type idealises the universal inner quality of Will (name given by A.H.Almaas). The personality constellates around manufacturing this inner quality. How do we go about embodying personal will in the world? By doubting and testing, going after what is solid and supportive, being responsible and dutiful, being loyal to people and systems of thinking, and acting fast to remove life’s uncertainties, even if our only tool is psychological projection. The central feature of Enneagram 6s, their Passion in Enneagram terms, is Angst, which is most in evidence in the area of their dominant instinct.

Names given to Enneagram Type 6

The Loyal Skeptic (the Narrative Enneagram), the Loyalist, (the Enneagram Institute), the Loyal Person (Jerry Wagner), Striving to be Secure (Mario Sikora), Courageous Change Agent (Khaled ElSherbini).

Core characteristics of Enneagram Type 6*

*According to Enneagram teacher and seminal author, Beatrice Chestnut from her book, the Complete Enneagram: 27 Paths to Greater Self-Knowledge

Seeking to find safety through the protection of others or by taking refuge in their own strength.
Scanning for danger in a scary world, and defensively managing fear and anxiety through fight, flight or friends.
Challenging to define in one set of characteristics. Complex emotional, thought and behavioural characteristics.
Having excellent analytical minds and extremely steadfast and loyal friends to those that they can trust. Good strategists, troubleshooters and problem solvers.
Being calm and effective in crisis (due to living with underlying sense of anxiety).
Excelling at planning and preparation, but overly focussed on worse-case scenarios, so much so that they fail to take action and to move forwards. Get stuck in doubt.
Questioning authority in important ways, and fixate on mistrust and rebellion of authorities.
Confusing accurate intuition with projection of own fears onto others.

One of the Head Centre types

Along with types 5 and 7, Enneagram 6 belong to the Head triad. If you care about inner development and transformation, you want to ensure that you understand the significance of the Centers. If you intend to self-study, I recommend getting a copy of something like the Wisdom of the Enneagram or the Enneagram Triads.

Because each triad share characteristics, this aspect of the Enneagram can also help you to know whether you are the type you think you are, or whether you have mistyped. Below are some general characteristics that have been associated with the Head types.

Characteristics of Head triad*

*From Enneagram teacher Peter O’Hanrahan. See: https://theenneagramatwork.com/defense-systems

Priority: Ideas and concepts; rational thinking; and creating security by understanding the world and other people.
Strengths: Heightened individual consciousness; mental discrimination and analysis; effective plans and strategies; and intellectual work that contributes to the community.
Neurotic style: Distrust leads to withdrawing from contact in order to figure things out and establish safety (paranoid/schizoid process).
Defense: Concentration of energy in the mental center makes it possible to detach from feelings and the body while living in the mind. Fear of life (and death) is countered by thinking, explaining, and rationalizing. Personal wants and needs are intellectualized or simply not felt. Variations of style: hoarding (5), agreement-seeking (6), or re-framing (7).
Key phrase: Detachment/upward displacement.
Primary emotional layer: Fearfulness (even when not experienced directly).
Life challenge: Integrating mind and body.

Enneagram Type 6 Subtypes

As discussed on the instincts page, ‘subtype’ is the name given to what happens when our Enneagram type intersects with the instinctual part of us. Some teachers prefer to simply name this situation as a ‘type/instinct’ combination, versus giving it a special name

Remember that descriptions are approximations. The descriptions below are from Dr Beatrice Chestnut, whose work built upon the teachings of Claudio Naranjo, and Russ Hudson, who has slightly different descriptions (which he shared over a series of Tweets once).

Self-preservation 6s

‘Warmth’ or ‘Affection’ (Ichazo, Naranjo and Chestnut)

Doubt and question things in an effort to find a sense of certainty and safety (that often eludes them).
Seek to be warm and friendly to attract allies as a form of outside support or protection in a dangerous world.
Search for an ‘idealised other’ for protection and have issues that look like separation anxiety.
Tend to be in a good mood and have a pleasant disposition.
Fear disappointing others, especially those closest to them. Also fear anger, aggression, provocation, and confrontation.
Much hesitation, indecision, and uncertainty – they ask many questions and answer hardly any.
Doubt themselves and doubt their own doubt.
Two realities: the external reality of warmth, tenderness, serenity, and peacefulness, and inner reality of fear, guilt, anguish, and torment.
Feel heart-centred on the outside but head-centred internally.
Wants to find a strong person to lean on.
Can look like 2s.

‘Responsibility’ (Hudson)

More serious about responsibility, willing to do even unpleasant tasks if it means maintaining the safety and security of what they care about.
Don’t need glory, they just want the work done.
May show love by supporting others through taking care of the self-preservation details of life: paying bills, doing contracts, saving money, and doing chores, etc.
Worry and focus on issues of security, safety, stability, and ‘planning for a rainy day.’
Generally cautious and methodical.
Feel it is their duty to be the custodian of the safety of not just themselves, but also their loved ones.
Home is a sanctuary to be protected.
When troubled, all 6s can have issues with anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and aggression.
At their bests, Self-preservation 6s contribute their intelligent awareness to maintaining the foundations necessary for life.

Sexual 6

‘Strength’/’Beauty’ – the ‘Countertype’ (Ichazo, Naranjo and Chestnut)

Cope with underlying fear by appearing strong and intimidating to others.
Tend to be risk-takers, contrarians, or rebels.
Strength is often physical, they seek to be strong in terms of endurance and to feel tough in the face of fatigue, repression, humiliation and pain.
Moving towards risk and danger as confronting danger is what gives them a sense of safety. Convinced that fear as an emotion should be eliminated systematically.
Tend to disconnect their emotions (aggression is disconnected from fear and sex is disconnected from love and intimacy).
May have the illusion that they are spontaneous, but tend not to be. Very contrarian (can be relied upon to take the opposite position).
Look like Type 8s and can also look like threes in action orientation and hard work ethic.

‘Feisty Vulnerability’ (Hudson)

Able to play the required roles, but also protest them.
The men have a flirty, almost feminine side to their masculinity, and prefer hanging out with gal pals.
Tend to draw their sense of security from the quality of energy more than from structures, inner or outer.
Trust their intuition more than other 6s, and may live edgier lives.
Often see themselves more as 4s or 8s.
Attraction comes upon them powerfully and often suddenly, and they also know how to attract.
Seek consistency and stability less than the other subtypes, and may be drawn to exciting or even dangerous forms of fun (adrenaline).
When troubled, Sexual 6s experience extremes of emotion (like 4s) and can be erratic in their relationships.
At their best, they are engaging, dynamic, creative and bold trail-blazers for others. They blend tradition and innovation.

Social 6s

‘Duty’ (Ichazo, Naranjo and Chestnut)

Deal with fear and related anxiety by relying on abstract reason or a specific ideology as an interpersonal frame of reference.
Find safety by relying on authority or the authority of reason, rules and rationality.
More intellectual types who find a sense of safety in following the guidelines of a system or way of thinking to feel protected by a kind of impersonal outside authority.
Tend to be logical, rational, and concerned with reference points and benchmarks.
Tend to be shy and have little ability to be touched or moved by something or someone.
Can be controlling, judgemental, impatient and self-critical.
Can be perceived as cold or cool.
Many characteristics of Self-preservation 1s and love of precision and efficiency can also make them look like 3s.

‘Engaging Support’ (Hudson)

Seek intelligent, trustworthy authority and information.
Because it was so hard to find, will defend what has made sense to them.
Approachable and enjoy sharing stories and good times with friends.
Can resemble 9s, but with strong 6ish vigilance.
Willing to make sacrifices for the greater good like 1s, particularly for family or friends, and are often moved by selfless acts of others.
Connect through shared interests: a sport, a hobby, playing in a band, and are often dedicated learners.
Not particularly “gushy”, but want their friends and allies know that they “have their backs.”
Don’t want to hang out with people all the time, but understand the importance of cooperation to get anything done.
Usually friendly and can be excellent communicators.
Approach others with warmth and sometimes humor as a way of disarming.
Feel a strong obligation to support their communities, and being of service to others is a value regardless of their profession.
When troubled, prone to paranoid views of other groups, creating an us-against-them mentality.
At their best, they are loyal, hardworking friends, inspiring and enrolling others toward shared goals and dreams.

Types connected to 6 (and how connected)

Type 3 – the ‘Stress’ (Hudson) or ‘Resolution’ point (Paes/Chestnut)

The inner lines are important when it comes to a growth path. As a general rule, the more dynamic movement between the arrow points and core point, the less fixated we are in our types. And the more conscious the movement, the greater our depth of presence (and freedom from the patterns).

The lines can also help us to know for sure that we have typed correctly. Following Russ Hudson’s teaching on the lines, moving to this style helps 6s who have been ‘6-ing out’ too much. It’s called the stress point because we tend to go there because the strategy of the core type has been over-exhausted.

When 6s go to 3 unconsciously, they “get more self-conscious/anxious about appearance/image; experience more fear about approval, acceptance by audience/authorities; the need for recognition becomes more desperate; and they take refuge in status and achievement, or go for success but fears it”.

When the movement happens consciously, “6s moving to 3 performs without procrastinating; trusts own authority and becomes ‘the one’ who is recognized, ‘the elected’; values own achievements; and keeps going, despite fear” (ideas from Paes/Chestnut).

Type 9 – ‘the Security’ (Hudson) or ‘Energising’ point (Paes/Chestnut)

Many of us struggle to own the behaviours we see at the security point for our number, in particular the ‘low’ behaviours. However, as discussed elsewhere on this site, the integration of the security point becomes a way of knowing if we’re making progress in our inner work.

When 6s move to 9 unconsciously, they “lose focus and anxiety gets dispersed; become vaguer; vacillate between mistrust and over-reliance on others; their self-doubt turns into self-forgetting; their anxiety about potential conflicts intensifies; and their mistrust of authority goes underground and gets expressed more passively”.

On the conscious/positive side, being at 9 helps a 6 to “check reality to counter imagination of fearful scenarios; take a wider view of things; be more receptive and trusting; less suspicious; gain a sense of bodily trust despite fear; become more grounded in body; relax and reduce anxiety; and connect more with others more easily, despite questions” (Paes/Chestnut).

The ‘Wings’ or types on either side – Types 5 and 7

The presence of the attributes of the types on either side of our core type is another way of knowing whether we have typed correctly. They may be important from a growth perspective too, although they are not as important as the connection points (above).

Enneagram teacher and direct student of Naranjo, Micheal Goldberg, teaches that each Enneagram type is formed out of a reconciliation of the forces of the Wings.

For a 6, they are caught between the Stinginess and hide and hoard of the 5 and the planning of 7. It is a stretch between ‘not enough’ and ‘plenty’, an uneasy intersection between moving away from, and moving toward, to which the 6 responds by doubting, stuttering, and vacillating. Doubt begins to feel like certainty. Between inner emptiness and needing to feel upbeat – they end up not knowing what they are feeling.

In terms of practical interventions, when 6s access their 5 wing, they “access more of inner observer and authority rather than seeking external validation; base judgments on experience and reason; and get perspective on fears by analyzing what is going on”.

When they develop their 7 wings, they “borrow from 7’s optimism, being less inclined to imagine the worst; develop trust in the goodness of others; and access extroversion, playfulness and light-heartedness” (Integrative Enneagram Solutions.