By Rhiannon (sx/so 6w7 694)

Hi! I’m Rhiannon. I’m a type 6, although not for lack of hoping and wishing and praying to be any type but. Mostly because a lot of type 6 descriptions kind of suck. Apparently lacking the deep creativity of 4s, the ambition of 3s or the toughness of 8s, 6s are relegated to hard-working team players, responsible citizens, loyal soldiers, eternal sidekicks in their own lives. Practical and logical and safety obsessed. 

All of these traits can apply to type 6. But so can the opposite. Anyone can fail to relate to a laundry list of generic traits associated with their type, but 6s - complex, contrarian 6s - tend to especially struggle. Understanding an enneagram type only really comes from understanding the underlying structure.  

Structure and building blocks have never been my strong suit. Blame my 7 wing for just wanting the fun bits. Give me short easy bites to see myself in, real-life examples of what sixes do, tell me what sandwich I am based on my enneagram type, and let me go on my silly shallow way. But trying to understand the enneagram this way leads to endless triple hexad SX-dom mistypings and “I’m a type 4, does anyone relate?” Reddit posts - and hole-spotting 6s to keep insisting that they’re not 6s because of all the holes they’ve spotted in the 6 descriptions. So I’ll do my best.    

Each enneagram type can be broken down into four triads, and for type 6 these are:

• Head centre 

• Attachment 

• Superego/Compliant

• Reactive

I’ll still be including some anecdotal examples and observations - 6s love our concrete examples. To include a little disclaimer, these will be very much coloured by my typing, with lots of frustration-heavy complaining and withdrawn gut, and will in no way apply to all 6s. That would be pretty much impossible, anyway.  

And another disclaimer, this article is mostly the same as my Type 6 video on the Enneagod Youtube channel, so it might not be too useful if you’ve already seen that. But if you prefer text or struggle to understand the incomprehensible nonsense noises of a British accent, this article is for you :)  

Head Centre

6s are head types, which means their core wound centres around Fear. The way that head types cope with or handle fear is through their mental orientation of the world. For 6s as attachment types, this means looking outside of themselves for sources that will help them construct a consistent, reliable mental structure to safely navigate the terrifying, complex, confusing world that they’ve been stranded in. The problem for 6s is that they ultimately lack trust in themselves to handle the unknown and unexpected. Without that, no structure can ever feel secure enough, and needs to be endlessly, exhaustively reassessed. This is where the torture of type 6 lies.  

Imagine standing on a platform, high above a ravine. Imagine it’s a ravine full of spikes. Or tigers. Pick your certain death. And imagine that the platform is balanced on a single, central spire, so that it can never quite stay still, never quite balance - and if you didn’t have something to cling onto, you’d have no way to stay on that platform. To stay safe. To stay alive. So since what you’re clinging to - a rope, a guardrail, whatever - is so crucial, you become minutely aware of anything that could go wrong with it. Is the rope fraying? Do I need to grab onto something else? Does the guard rail look safer after all? Welcome to the type 6 brain, where if it’s not perfectly sound, maybe it can’t be trusted at all, and how can you hold onto something that you can’t trust when your life depends on it?       

Head types are all tracking data, but where 5s and 7s meet their needs more through the discover process - 5s narrowing down and refining the data, 7s discarding it and seeking something new when it doesn’t meet their idealism - for 6s, their needs are met in the answers. The uncertainty of not yet knowing those answers is a place of horror for 6s, who need to be able to fit data into their existing framework of understanding, or develop a new framework in which it fits. Not that 6s can’t be imaginative or want to learn new things - in fact, this trait can give 6s a desperate need to know everything about a subject that’s important to them. But 6s on some level want the world to be neat, tidy, black and white, without annoying little exceptions or grey areas that can complicate the trust you have in your external source of choice. 6s often love categorising systems - the enneagram, MBTI, astrology, Kibbe, social labels, political affiliations - because these provide a means of understanding the world and where you fit into it in a systemic, organised way. 

6s are frustratingly detail oriented, at least when the details don’t perfectly line up. They are acutely aware when something does not make perfect sense, and can struggle to understand why an exception does not completely disprove an external source. This is very obvious when 6s are in a typing crisis, because they will immediately call attention to any part of a type description that they feel doesn’t fit them - I remember a couple of months after I was typed I had a follow-up call with Sofie where I bombarded her with “Yeah but what about this? And what about this? Are you sure??” questions for about three solid hours. If a 6 can’t see how it lines up, they must question it until they can make it line up.  

The reason 6s are so fucking annoying in this way is that it’s a way of vetting a source, usually to prove that you can feel secure in it. However, 6s can also be doing this because they want to be able to completely discard a source when they don’t want to have to listen to it. Because 6s lack trust in their head centre, they often can’t just discard a source outright, so somebody coming along with contradictory information means suddenly having to reassess the framework yet again. This honestly gets fucking exhausting, so finding a reason - even a shallow one - that it’s safe to write that source off is enough to reassure the 6 that they’ve done their due diligence. One of the reasons I finally had to accept being a type 6 was that I realised I had been doing this constantly during my (months long) core type crisis. I’d want to discard any description of type 6 that resonated, or any type 4 description that didn’t, so I’d try to find reasons that I didn’t have to listen to them - the author’s a big mean gatekeeper, or they’re mistyped themselves, or look at all these other authors that don’t agree with them…  

This is why shitty descriptions of type 6 as flocks of loyal sheep that just follow whatever they’re told are so frustrating, because 6s feel this need to vet EVERYTHING. Yes, they are the type most likely to be slavishly devoted to an authority if they truly believe in it, but they’re also just as likely to question it and rebel against it. 6s are naturally averse to blindly trusting in the word of others if it doesn’t line up with their understanding of the world. I do think this partly stems from 6s knowing, even subconsciously, just how thorough their way of tracking and analysing data is, so if an ‘authority’ seems blase about something causing the 6 worry, the fear for the 6 is that actually, the authority might not be conscientious enough to have even seen the issue. I once worked with a type 6 YESBRO boss who questioned every single thing I did - not because they thought I was bad at my job, but because they didn’t understand my job. They couldn’t have that internal security that comes for 6s from totally understanding and vetting the situation themselves, so quizzing me until they felt secure enough was the only alternative. Taking me at my word would have been trusting in things to work out fine despite their own uncertainty and lack of control - the exact opposite of everything the 6 personality structure is trying to do.    

There’s a feeling for 6s that if you could just know the absolute, indisputable, black-and-white truth of a situation, you could finally relax and trust in the flow of the universe. But of course, there is no objective truth to be found, and for 6s growth lies in learning to accept uncertainty and trust in themselves to handle it. Unfortunately, though, personalities develop around protecting the core wound at all costs, so people aren’t naturally inclined to grow in this way. A 6s self-torturing inclination is to just keep on seeking that truth, to keep landing on new explanations that finally make sense of everything, and then to find problems with them anyway and start the ridiculous cycle all over again. In other words, to attach and reattach to their found sources of guidance. 

Attachment

Along with 3s and 9s, 6 is an attachment type - also known as adaptation, primary, or triangle types. All their reactive head type nonsense can make 6s really picky about words, and I originally reacted pretty negatively to the idea of being an attachment type because it brought up images of sad little limpets, just clinging on to things without personalities of their own. But of course attachment isn’t a lack of personality, individual thought, interestingness, whatever (and hexad isn’t automatically the opposite.) Attachment types unconsciously need to adapt in response to the outside world - both towards and against it - in order to attach, stay attached, or reattach to whatever it is externally that is meeting their core centre’s needs.

For 6s, the core need that is met through attaching to things outside themselves is the need for orientation and guidance. Attachment types are all separated from their core centre, so even though 6s are still head types with ten million thoughts constantly running around in their gremlin brains, their heads are actually kind of useless in building their framework for understanding the world. The separation from the head centre makes it feel insecure and unstable, so 6s cannot trust in their own thoughts. They seek constant input from outside sources - ‘authorities’ - to try to stabilise and ground their heads, and the moment something comes along to cause doubt, they have to question that same source again. Paradoxically this makes 6s feel more secure in the source they’ve attached to. “Oh good, another hole has been fixed, I’m safe here again. Clearly there are no more holes in this. I’ll definitely feel safe here forever… Wait, is that another hole? Better patch this one up!” But the vigilance of finding and repairing holes gives 6s the security that there aren’t bigger, more dangerous holes that they could be blissfully failing to see.     

The idea of 6s being ‘authority seekers’ can be another triggering phrase for 6s who don’t want to admit they’re 6s, but for clarity it more often than not doesn’t refer to a social authority figure - a teacher or police officer or whatever. The authority that 6s seek can be any outside source that they outsource their head centre guidance and understanding of the world to. 6s can have a really strong ‘gut sense’ (more on that later) about what they want to do in a situation, but still need to run it past someone else before trusting in their own intuition. Or 6s can immediately lose certainty about a fact or opinion the moment somebody else questions it or states an opposing opinion a little too firmly - even if the 6 knows, deep down, that the other person is wrong.    

6s tend to have fears surrounding judgment and losing support, so there can be a feeling of needing to be beyond criticism. This doesn’t necessarily mean perfectionism, although it certainly can, but 6s can also just become wishy washy the moment somebody might be depending on their opinion. 6s are also notorious for making disclaimers to try to protect themselves. They’ll insist that they’re not completely certain of what they’re saying, that it’s just something they’ve heard, that they might be misremembering - “don’t quote me on it” is a quintessentially 6y phrase. A while ago I went to a restaurant with some friends and was waxing lyrical about how amazing the pate is there, then immediately went into a 6 internal panic when my friends decided they were going to order the same. Because what if I had misremembered? What if they’d changed chefs? What if the pate came out and it was terrible, and people had to suffer because of my bad advice? How could I bear the responsibility of disappointing them so deeply? So I had to start assuring them that I hadn’t been for a long time, I was only remembering and I might be wrong. Because that way, they’d have no choice but to let me off the hook if the Terrible Potential Pate became a reality. Right? 

Another way 6s will try to avoid your judgment is by just straight up telling you the bad parts of themselves or mistakes they’ve made before you ever have the chance to notice by yourself. For 6s, pointing out their failings allows them to control the narrative - to self-efface, make jokes, minimise the damage. This is different I think to how 3s for example may want to take control of a narrative to maintain their image - rather than putting a spin on their flaws, 6s want you to know that they’re all too aware of them. They might want you to know that they’re innocent and undeserving of punishment, or that they’re already taking accountability like a responsible superego citizen, or that they’re just lovable goofs, cute and relatable with all their human failings. It’s not intentional and it’s not consciously manipulative - nor is what 3 is doing - it’s just a reaction to fear.   

 6s are sometimes referred to as always preparing for the worst, and when I first read this I assumed this meant something very SP - that 6s are obsessed with home security, or fire safety, or building fallout shelters for the apocalypse. But it really does apply to 6s in much smaller, less obvious ways. 6s can be very conscious of anything that could get them into trouble, like a holdover from childhood that is never quite grown out of. It’s like a constant feeling that you may have to explain yourself to a big bad parental authority figure who could punish you for it. I see some of the 6s I know - myself including - preparing verbal arguments to defend themselves if they think somebody might question them about some miniscule thing they’ve done. “I didn’t tidy my desk before I left work today, do you think it’ll matter? Well, if anybody says anything, I’ll just tell them I had such a busy day and a customer came in just before we closed, and I just didn’t have time!” And from an outside perspective, it’s like - who the fuck is going to question you about why you didn’t tidy your desk? Who cares? From an outside perspective, it’s easy to see 6s as being a little ridiculous at times. But internally, it doesn’t matter how unlikely or silly the possibility seems - if you’ve spotted a potential problem, it’s very difficult to just discard it without figuring out how you could handle it. 

To avoid trouble, 6s are also quick to project and blame others. Not so much in the sense that they’ll say “I didn’t do that, it was actually them!” if it’s not true, but 6s can do a lot of finger pointing to try to minimise their responsibility for their actions. This could look like blaming the way another person acted beforehand for triggering an emotional reaction in the 6, pointing out that somebody else approved the action or gave permission, or looking at other people doing the same ‘wrong’ thing as the 6 as proof that it was ok to do it too. I’m only speeding to keep up with the flow of traffic! Because if everybody is breaking a rule, well, it must be ok - they can’t punish everyone, right? Something else I’ve noticed in myself related to this is that if I’m in deep, deep superego shame over something I’ve done, I need to find somebody who can reassure me that they’ve done the same or worse. Not to excuse what I’ve done and do it again or anything, but just to combat that superego feeling of being an irredeemable piece of shit.   

6s are called the ‘tribal’ type, because no matter where social is in the stacking, 6s do tend to see people as a support system of some kind. People are often where you find your guidance - either from specific other people or from social systems, like religion. SO-middle 6s can seem quite concerned or even anxious about social, but I find mostly want social to be a nice, fun, easy place where they can go to get their anxieties soothed and dominant needs met. SO-dom 6s, on the other hand, can be very focused on problems in the social realm and how those should be fixed, and are the type most likely to be really into politics and social justice.   

6s in general though have a really strong sense of justice, of fairness and equality - either in this wider social sense or in a more internal sense. 6s can be the most bitter or envious type - not the same as 4 envy - because they notice when they themselves seem to have less or somebody else has more than they ‘deserve’. This internal sense of equality means 6s tend to feel that everybody should be compromising to make things fair for everyone, and can be very focused on why other people aren’t doing this or following other rules - why do they get to be so selfish? This is attachment, but is also related to superego. 

Superego

Like 1s and 2s, 6s are Superego types, also called Compliant types - another word I think a lot of 6s are not so fond of. This doesn’t refer to compliance to demands or orders from other people - a lot of 6s are pretty staunchly rebellious - but about compliance to your own superego morals. Superego types need to feel like they and their actions are morally right and justified. Perhaps due to their lack of grounding in the self/core centre and tendency to focus on the negative, this leads to lots of 6s having quite deep-rooted issues around the idea of being a ‘bad person’. These very present feelings of shame can bolster a lot of 6s in their mistyping as 4s, the assumption being that if you feel a lot of shame, you must be an image type. However, image types are constantly refining their image to avoid having to confront that core shame, whereas 6s tend to be all too conscious of it. At the same time, though, you get plenty of 6s very assured of their own moral goodness and superiority, and as with anything related to type 6, plenty of 6s who vacillate between the two extremes.

Being a Superego type means having a separated head centre and therefore issues with the Guidance funcion - or as Enneagod puts it, Superego types all have daddy issues. This separation from their own head’s authority is why 6s must seek an outside source to act as a dependable metaphorical daddy to guide them safely through the world. In a sense it’s like 6s can never quite fully grow up in this regard - always finding problems with that daddy and rejecting it like an angsty teenager, then seeking it out again (or a replacement) because alone you feel like an abandoned child in a supermarket, terrified of being lost forever.    

Being separated from the head centre is most painful for 6s, I think, because they can’t help but try to use their separated centre despite the lack of stability found there. If I try to demand guidance from my head centre, especially in a crisis, it’s honestly horrifying - my head centre feels unsteady, helpless, like it’s flailing and grasping for anything to hold onto. So 6s have two modes to deal with this hell - they are either overdoing thinking, paralysed in inaction and the fear of being wrong because all they have is a mess of ungrounded thoughts, or they are undergoing thinking by using the scramble of their heart and gut centres instead. I don’t feel super confident explaining the scramble - what do I ever feel confident explaining, really? - but essentially, 6s when in this mode are using the values and emotions of their heart centre as superego moral justification and passion that is used to fuel their gut centre actions. 

Something you can see in 6s a lot is that they can dither and be incredibly anxious about taking any action for themselves, but will stride fearlessly into battle without a second thought for any friend in need. By nature, I’m pretty shy and self-conscious, but if someone I love is feeling that way, then I must become what they need. I’ll ask their awkward questions, send back their wrong orders, take the first turn at karaoke, whatever. 6s can do this because when acting to defend or help someone else, there’s no need to make a decision based on mental understanding or weighing up consequences - you just do what you feel is right based on your gut instinct, your emotions, and the superego moral of loyalty to the people you care about.

One of the more painful things about accepting my 6ness was the idea of being a head type. So many of the descriptions I’d read described head types as being like computer programs, analytical and stuck in their thoughts, and that felt so wrong to me when I’ve always been so over-identified with my emotions. But 6s so often are emotional. 6 isn’t separated from the heart centre, so feelings can be experienced as a much more concrete, grounded, stable place for 6s than their heads - even if the emotions themselves are very much not stable. 6s are also Reactive types, so there is a need to respond when emotions are triggered. This combination of superego and reactive is one of the reasons that 6s are generally such genuine, caring, loyal friends. Authenticity of the heart and emotions can be massively important to 6s.

Reactive

The reactive types - 4, 6, and 8 - are also referred to as the ‘assholes of the enneagram’, because when their needs are not met, they must draw attention to it and indulge the negativity associated with it. Reactivity is why 6s don’t simply notice flaws or holes, they also need to loudly call attention to them and have them acknowledged. 

How 6s do this can depend on their trifix. I have double withdrawn fixes, and I do see myself giving up on the need to draw other people’s attention to an issue pretty easily, instead withdrawing into myself with a bitter, irritated sense that it’s all pointless anyway. A double assertive 683 on the other hand is likely to want to shout about the issues for a lot longer. In general though, 6 crises are loud, annoying, and demanding of the people around them. 6s are rarely good at keeping their reactivity and negativity to themselves, although due to fears of judgment and losing support they might bring up problems in a joking way or immediately insist that there’s no more problem the moment that it’s acknowledged. 6s can be really quick to soothe you and insist that it’s ok if you apologise for an issue they’ve brought up, because they mostly just needed to express it, and your remorse can bring up uncomfortable feelings of responsibility or even shame.

Not so long ago, I heard a 6w7 I know referred to as having a “finely honed bullshit detector”, which is something that I think applies to 6s pretty generally. With their natural inclination to spot holes combined with the reactive need to acknowledge them, 6s tend to see and call out bullshit as a matter of course. 

Negativity tends to feel real and truthful for 6s, as it does in different ways to other reactive types. This is part of why ‘authenticity’ is such a 6 buzz word, and also what contributes to some of the less pleasant tendencies of type 6. 6s are anti-narcissism - while secretly often feeling pretty superior themselves - and they can be really quick to tear down anybody who they think is presenting a false or overly polished image of themselves, anybody who seems too happy, or sometimes just anybody who dares stand out too much. Modern British and Australian culture are really prone to these 6ish qualities, in what I’ve heard called ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’ - the idea that somebody who stands out will be the first to be cut down, in what I guess is a kind of superego punishment for daring to think so highly of yourself that you feel justified in putting yourself ‘above’ other people. Of course, the Tall Poppy might not actually see themselves as better than others, but 6s can be very sensitive to the idea that other people are seeing themselves as superior, mostly because it can be hard for 6s to admit that they themselves are the ones keeping themselves small.

6 is a very self-sabotaging type, and most painfully, they’re also one of the most self-aware types, at least when it comes to their own flaws and deficiencies - that self-awareness being a superego tool to keep yourself beaten down into submission. 6s are so aware of everything that can go wrong, so horribly conscious that ‘the nail that sticks out gets hammered down’, so prone to ‘waiting for the other shoe to drop’, that it can honestly feel easier to just ruin everything for yourself and not have to deal with that anxiety any more. It’s a sort of Schrodinger’s Cat situation, except that instead of waiting for the box to be opened to see if the cat is alive or dead, 6s would rather throw the box off a cliff and guarantee that they get the worst outcome. (6 Disclaimer: This is a metaphor, 6s do not want to kill cats.) The uncertainty and the not knowing if something bad will happen is so fraught with anxiety and pain for a 6 that it feels like it’s even worse than the bad thing actually happening - or so the 6 convinces themselves, because ultimately, the unhappy certainty of ruined dreams feels so much safer than the possibility of a wonderful future. After all, if I sabotage myself before I’m happy, I don’t have to live in fear of something coming along to ruin my happiness.

This in itself pretty much sums up what it actually means to say that 6s are preparing for the worst. The world is unpredictable, which is terrifying and I cannot handle it, so I need to prepare constantly, endlessly, for all the little things that could go wrong. I am so unable to allow anything to catch me off guard that it’s better to ruin something I really want or love if it means preventing that from happening. 6s need to be laser focused on exceptions and inconsistencies, of rules and how they’re being broken, because that’s where things could go wrong. That’s where things aren’t safe.

I’ve nearly finished, honest

6 is a frustrating type to describe (and to be around, let’s be honest.) Even within individual 6s you’ll find opposites, contradictions, and extremes. 6s can be hilarious, irritating, deeply caring, emotionally fragile, the most loyal friend you could wish for one day and an argumentative, overemotional arsehole the next. They are brilliant in any crisis that doesn’t involve them and functionally useless in any crisis that does. It’s a really varied type - for better or worse. 

It took me about a year after discovering the enneagram to realise that I’m a 6, and that mistyping journey was really painful. This was in no small part thanks to shitty enneagram type descriptions that make out type 4 to be the only interesting type and attachment types to be mindless, boring, and lacking in identity. Accepting that I was a type 6 felt like having everything beautiful, emotional, and poetic ripped from within me. Like I was going to be stripped of everything I actually liked about myself and just left with the worst parts of me - the frightened little rabbit, the obedient rule-following child, and all the petty, mean, pathetic parts suddenly exposed under cold fluorescent light. But that’s just some of the pain of being an attachment head type - with every outside source of information needing to be considered, there’s no easy escape from the pain of an insulting description. If that’s what type 6 is, then is it true of me too? What evidence do I have that it’s not? Even after finally getting through my typing crisis, I honestly felt like I needed a shower for a few weeks afterwards – like everybody could see my ugly, glaring 6 traits screaming out of me in every single thing that I said and did.

But I did have to acknowledge what I’d been getting out of my mistyping as a 4, and while yes, there was an over-glamorising of the idea of hexad types not constantly looking to the outside world, there was something more devastating to it for me. I had come across the enneagram at a time when I was very focused on self-growth and healing, and the messages I’d read for how type 4 was meant to overcome their type patterns actually provided extra fuel for my type 6 patterns. The recommendations for type 4 to stop wanting more and appreciate the moment, to not constantly be seeking their idealised image of how things should be, to be grateful and not indulge in the frustration - I hated that advice, but it was so easy to absorb into the constant internal messages that 6 has to keep themselves small. To feel like maybe I should stop complaining, stop wanting things to be different, even stop having dreams. I ended up using my mistyping as a 4 to further my type 6 self-sabotage, self-minimising, and self-defeating. Finally accepting that I am a 6 meant the horror of facing up to these tendencies, to admitting that for all the excuses I’d made and blame I’d placed on others, I’d actually spent my whole life talking myself out of my goals and sabotaging myself out of fear. That my endless wallowing in self-hatred and self-victimising was in part a way to keep me safe and dependent on seeking guidance from the outside.

These are patterns I still haven’t quite figured out how to break. 6s are fantastically self aware and fantastically bad at doing anything with that self awareness. It can also be easy as a 6 to feel like the solution is just to swing drastically the other way and do the opposite of what you think a 6 would do. Turns out that’s just 6ing all over again in a different way - which is the real horror of the enneagram I guess, that your type patterns are so deeply ingrained that you could still be doing them even when you think you’re overcoming them. I think the first real relief came a couple of months after my typing, when I finally accepted that I don’t have to try not to be a 6. That actually, there’s plenty to being a type 6 I like - and not just the objectively wonderful traits of loyalty and care for others, but that half the reason I turned into a petty, critical bitch in the first place is that it’s fucking fun.  

Accepting my core type didn’t just bring peace after months of questioning but also the chance to really start noticing the fears that have really fucked my life up. To start stepping back and observing them, trying to go on that line to 9 and be ok with not knowing. With relaxing into uncertainty. With trusting that this universe of endless possibilities and unseeable futures has the potential to bring good and not just bad - and that I can handle it either way. 

To read even more about the inexplicable 6, check out Sarah’s article.