Deeper into Type Seven

Excerpt from the Essential Enneagram Reference Guide

Sevens are upbeat, fun-loving, curious, creative, and distractible. Sevens are motivated to avoid pain, seek novel experiences, and prevent feelings of boredom or emotional distress. Sevens want to ensure they always have positive and exciting plans and constantly think of ways to satiate their need for the new, exciting, or unexpected. Sevens are often visionaries who easily see how enjoyable and happy others could be if they could just expand their minds. Sevens are mental types and struggle with anxiety. However, they reframe anxiety into opportunities to experience fun and excitement. Fear in the Seven arises when they experience something unpleasant, sad, or limiting. They fear being mired in negativity and drown in a swamp of pain.

Center of Intelligence: Head Center 

Motivation: To avoid emotional pain and boredom through planning and excitement 

Core Fears: Being bored, in pain, commitment, stagnation, and disappointment 

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Pain Avoidance and Variety 

Sevens prefer dealing with the broad picture and will thus pass minutiae to others. They are frequently charming, intellectual, and quick. They aspire to be well-traveled, worldly, and to enjoy the avant-garde and unusual. 

Sevens learn they won't have time to get caught under a wet blanket if they constantly create novel and fascinating distractions to avoid pain. Sevens have quick minds and easily imagine various options. However, this gift can be their weakness. Sevens experience resistance to commitment and can become compulsive about the need for freedom and variation. Many Sevens leave trails of unfinished projects, half-baked ideas, and compelling but ultimately empty, promises or plans. If a bigger, better deal comes along, they will gladly abandon old plans, people, or situations for shinier, newer, fascinations. 

Visionary and Creative

Sevens are creative types, and they are often quite multi-talented. However, they rarely, if ever, take the time to master their various interests and aptitudes. Their fear of being exposed as a charlatan or superficial fraud creates a defense mechanism that allows them to default to being dazzling, entertaining, zany, brilliant, storytellers by which others are fascinated. They use their considerable mental curiosity to learn about many different things, and as such, they are renaissance people who leverage their experiences to adapt well to new situations. They are, however, acutely aware that their skills, emotions, or knowledge lack depth, which stirs feelings of inferiority. 

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Inferiority/Superiority and Reframing 

When Sevens feel inferior, they compensate by becoming superior. They employ intellectual arrogance, dismissiveness, and a biting or sarcastic sense of humor to place them back into a position of superiority. Ironically, Sevens prefer egalitarian environments. If no one is in charge, then no one can tell them what to do, and they can avoid being trapped in boredom or pain. However, if they can't be equal, they prefer the superior position and may often take on leadership roles and lead others into uncharted (and hopefully exciting) new territory. Overall, Sevens don't like restrictions, rules, regulations, or limitations. 

Sevens thrive in environments where they can generate intriguing ideas and options but feel uncomfortable with execution, particularly with detail-oriented work. Sevens have a low tolerance for emotional pain and compulsively reframe any experience that isn't ideal into something interesting, fun, or positive. Compulsive reframing and manic-like activity keep them busy and distracted from pain. Conversely, this defense also prevents them from experiencing their own emotions or the emotions of others. 

Boredom and Selfishness 

Sevens feel an inner scarcity, and their method of dealing with feelings of emptiness is to fill ther lives with mental planning, activity, and the gluttonous satiating of their whims and desires. Gluttony represents the Seven's primary vice. As they consume more and more experiences, they grow cynical and jaded, and soon nothing is compelling, and they require inordinate variation, intensity, and excitement to feel anything at all. 

Unhealthy Sevens can be selfish, reckless, highly distractible, commitment-phobic, and superficial. When unhealthy, Sevens will say and do whatever is needed to get their way. From here, Sevens can easily throw temper tantrums or con other people to chase their personal happiness and get what they want. Sevens can be champions of self-pampering and advocates of treating oneself to whatever indulges arise. They may even encourage others to participate in excessive behavior (drinking, shopping, sex, partying, etc.) as a projection of their fear of being limited or in pain. They typically have trouble limiting themselves and can be prone to addiction or indulge in many vices. 

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When Healthy and Balanced

Healthy Sevens learn to stop and savor their experiences. Following through with commitments creates greater feelings of satisfaction for longer. Healthy Sevens understand that negative emotions will not swallow them. Dealing with what they're evading creates a greater depth that others appreciate and find equally as interesting as their hyperactive, entertaining façade. At their best, Sevens are resilient and allow all positive or negative experiences to exist without premature reframing, evasiveness, or avoidance. They help others see positive possibilities through their infectious and genuine joie de vivre. 

Exemplars

Brad Pitt, Steve Jobs, John F. Kennedy, Lily Tomlin, Whoopi Goldberg, Dick Van Dyke, Joseph Campbell, Mila Kunis, Ashton Kutcher, Russell Brand, Erol Flynn, Robert Downey Jr., Charlie Sheen, George Clooney, Shaquille O'Neil, Kevin Hart, Jack Nicholson, Michael Kors, Vincent Price, Bob Fosse, Cher, Ava Gardner, Robin Williams, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jude Law, Harry Styles, Matthew McConaughey, Steve Irwin, Goldie Hawn, Kate Hudson, Paris Hilton, Miley Cyrus, Giselle, Charlize Theron, Cate Blanchette, Ron Howard, Stephen Spielberg, Liza Minelli, Samuel L. Jackson, Blondie, John Mulaney, Seth McFarlane, Michael Bublé, Britney Spears, Jim Carrey, Cookie Monster, Zendaya, Blake Lively, Eva Mendes, Lil Wayne, Lil John, Salvador Dali, MIA, Andy Cohen 

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