“Born” sensitive to peace and harmony, the young Nine looks around their world and naturally sees a lot of conflict.  

But how can a child sensitive to peace and harmony do anything about creating this in the world they are born into?  

For every type on the Enneagram, it is important to understand that this is the original dilemma – we want to create a certain quality through the personality, and this is mission impossible. 

It is a common childhood experience described by Nines that their environment seemed full of big personalities or some version of others taking up a lot of space. There may have been conflict going on, fighting between parents or undercurrents of power struggles. Perhaps siblings took up a lot of space. The young Nine’s sensitivity to conflict interacts with the sense of a crowded or contentious environment. Somehow the Nine child looked around and didn’t see room for themselves, at least not as another big personality. They somehow “chose” to just blend in or disappear. This is the child’s effort to create peace by not adding to the disturbance. 

A person cannot create the essence they are sensitive to in the world. The essence already exists, and it is not the job of the person to create it- but we don’t understand this. Because we can’t create this essence at the level of personality, there is a twist or distortion that occurs.  

The fundamental distortion of the Nine personality is to try to create peace and harmony by avoiding conflict. Nines make themselves smaller in the world in this attempt to find peace. Taking on a strategy of not rocking the boat, not adding to the disturbance, the Nine becomes low-maintenance, agreeable, easy-going, in the woodwork, not taking up space, invisible.  

The next twist is that this distortion is turned inward against themselves. Inside the Nine comes to feel unimportant, not part of the main action. Their sense of self becomes minimized, they have a feeling of insignificance, of not mattering.  

This core painful feeling is reflected in the Unconscious Childhood Message “It's not ok to assert yourself” and in the Lost Childhood Message “Your presence matters”. 

Nines have an Inner Critic that demands they focus their attention on everyone else. The Inner Critic message for Nine is “I’m good or ok if everyone around me is ok”.   

So, the personality becomes organized around the missing harmony in the world, the belief it is the Nine’s job to fix this, and their sense of themselves as not mattering – a structure based on minimizing themselves while trying to make everyone else ok. 

It can seem confusing that the Nine is “after autonomy” in life when they are focused on avoiding conflict, getting along, and feeling connected. The Nine strategy seems to be all about others and minimizing self- so how does this fit with autonomy being the underlying drive? 

This is the inner struggle of the Nine- they are wired around the need for autonomy, but they have no direct way to go after their own wants or assert their own will. Because the personality structure requires them to focus on others and be easy going, the solution Nines attempt is to push their own needs out of awareness.  Then, as we will see, the drive for autonomy surfaces in distorted ways. 

This strategy of supressing themselves also explains why the Nine needs to withdraw- Nines get in touch with themselves when they withdraw.  

Another way of understanding this inner dynamic of the Nine is to recall that they are in the Instinctive or Gut Center of Intelligence. Nines are said to be “blocked” to their Gut even though they are in this Center, because they block their instinctual energies for the sake of being calm and peaceful. The underlying Anger of this Center is also pushed out of awareness and the Nine appears placid. As we will see, it is all this suppression that creates the “sleepiness” of the Nine.