Core Fixation

Core Fixation

Once the Center has been over-activated in response to the wound, it begins to form a looped response pattern — a psychological structure that attempts to resolve the loss of stability using the same tools that were shaped by the injury itself. This is where the Core Fixation emerges.

There are three core enneagram types in each center of energy. Each Enneagram type follows a distinct internal sequence — a three-part script made up of the Object Relation, the Hornevian Group, and the Harmonic Triad. This defines the exact relationship that the individual forms with their center of energy.

With self-understanding and accurate insight on your type, you can unwind this looping pattern by releasing the responsibility of thinking from one dominant center, and allow different aspects of your mind (heart, head, gut) to process the information they are supposed to process respectively. This is the starting key to integration. *read more Function of Centers, Information Processing, and Becoming Whole.

The Hidden Triads

Each type is composed of internal points that give rise to the overall quality and purpose for the type. Think of it as the notes that make up a chord in a musical scale.

Object Relations

Foundational reaction to feeling of lack. This triad describes what sort of feeling causes stress reactions, and the measures we take to resolve them. 

• Frustration (+): “Something essential is missing — I should fix, chase, or perfect it.”. ego-identified with continuously increasing charge. Seeking to move beyond center’s need for something more “right”. 

• Rejection (–): “This need disrupts clarity — I must reduce, control, or go without it.” identified with constantly releasing *extra* charge. Deepening into getting the center’s needs met with the most all-encompassing and effective strategies. For this reason, rejection types slow down movement that tries to go beyond the center’s need. 

• Attachment (=): “I need to preserve connection by finding the bridge between my need for sovereignty and capacity to adapt — without it, I lose orientation.”. identified with preventing surges in charge. Actively questioning the “why” of the center’s need and their own role in achieving it. For this reason, these types are seen as the quintessential representation of each center of intelligence in its broadest form.

Energy Reaction/Style (or Center Orientation Style) (Previously Hornevian Group)

Describes how the psyche moves and utilizes energy to get its needs met.

• Assertive (+): Moves against the world to take what is valued — takes up space, imposes will, reclaims ground. Automatic assumption that they can take what they want from the world. Energy is oriented externally. 

• Withdrawn (–): Moves away from the world to protect what is valued — self-sources, pulls back to avoid contamination or exposure. Inner world/psyche/desires are seen as a sanctum to be refined and developed. 

• Superego (Transactional) (=): Moves in response to the world. Living in the "membrane"  so to speak. Establishes bonds to give and take value through building transactional relationships. Correctness, effort, and external alignment. 

Attitude Style (Operating Future Narrative/ Narrative/Framing Bias) (Previously Harmonic Style)

Regulates emotion and frames reactions to what has happened; a means of interpreting outcomes when expectations aren’t met.

• Positive Bias (+): Reframes or bypasses pain and negativity to prioritize the silver-lining that maintains momentum through optimism.  Focuses on positive potential as a means of navigating obstacles. Attachment to the depth in positivity

• Reactive / Negative Bias (–): Amplifies emotion and disagreement — seeks the unseen truth through confrontation or removal of falsities.  Focuses on what’s wrong to find what is true. Attachment to the depth in negativity.

• Competency / Neutral Bias  (=): Suppresses emotional chaos and biases — prioritizes control, function, and performance to operate better. Focuses on minimizing emotional involvement to ensure capability in every scenario. Attachment to a fact-oriented and impersonal reaction.

Instinctual Triad

Fundamental orientation of a type's focus. Determines the person's quality of sphere of influence.Each type creates a specific aura that is then amplified or complexified depending on their instinct stack.

Discovered by The Hidden Enneagram. Inspired by David Grey's descriptions of instinct stacks. 

• Desirability-Seeking (+): The structure of these types is oriented toward beautifying the self and creating an aura of desirability around themselves and their objects of interest. Each of these types curates a feeling state that magnetizes people around them - making those in their sphere feel a sense of significance.

• Autonomy-Seeking (-): These types are oriented toward stabilizing and deepening their locus of control, becoming a pillar of knowledge resources that they protect - and offer to others under their sphere of influence

• Update-Seeking (=): Update seeking types are oriented toward continuous movement and shifts, not accepting the past and present of the self - seeing each step as a rung on the ladder of update. Their sphere of influence is about direction and change. They create an aura of potential and growth direction and include others in their sphere of influence.

This is a self-reinforcing circuit. The psyche begins with a specific wound to the Center, filters that wound through its inborn motivation, and generates a strategy to resolve it.  With repetition, this strategy becomes a well-tested methodology that both serves as a lens to understand the world and the means to reaffirm the core type’s disconnect. 

In essence:

• The Type Story is your interpretation of what life is and what must be done to stabilize the loss.

• It reflects what the child concluded about their place in the world based on what was missing and how they had to adapt.

• The story becomes self-reinforcing, selecting information that supports its worldview and rejecting that which contradicts it.

The personality is an emergent structure that is then crafted on top of the life-script. and like any script or program, it runs in the background with a mixture of false and accurate beliefs until it’s brought into conscious view, line by line.