NINE LENSES ON THE WORLD: Enneagram Styles and Adaptive and Maladaptive Schemas

Jerry Wagner, Ph.D.

Schemas are stable and enduring patterns of thinking that develop during childhood and are elaborated throughout our life. We view the world through our schemas, which are important beliefs about the world and ourselves. Since we accept these schemas without question, they become self-perpetuating and are very resistant to change. To the extent that our schemas represent reality fairly well, they are useful and self-serving. If our schemas distort reality, they end up being self-defeating.

Schemas exert their influence on our behavior and strive to ensure their own survival through three processes of schema maintenance, schema avoidance, and schema compensation. In this workshop we’ll consider how these processes operate in the nine Enneagram styles.

We’ll see how our schemas maintain themselves through exaggerating information that confirm them or minimizing data that contradict them. We’ll discover how we cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally avoid triggering our maladaptive schemas to escape the negative emotions they stir up. And we’ll investigate how we compensate for these schemas by doing the opposite of what they suggest so we can evade triggering the pain they cause. 

We’ll discover some adaptive or useful schemas for each Enneagram style and what are some typical maladaptive and not-so-helpful schemas for each type.

This workshop will involve input, personal reflection, small group sharing, and large group feedback.

Event Calendar and Enrollment Information