This is described as focusing on the “wrongness” of the world and feeling resentment that things aren’t the way you think they should be. But a fun thing I’ve learned about resentment is that it is usually brought on when someone is doing, feeling, or believing something that you won’t allow yourself to do, feel, or believe. For instance, someone is spending their free time taking a nap, and you feel resentment toward them for napping instead of helping you prep for guests. You probably want to take a nap yourself, or you hate prepping for guests, but your sense of responsibility and keeping up appearances with the guests means you won’t give yourself permission to nap and will force yourself to prep. However, if you simply said, “screw it” and napped (or didn’t force yourself to do quite so much prep), your resentment toward the napper would evaporate into thin air. 

Examples in writing and marketing:
Resenting the lack of support you get from your family. Resenting others for resting or having fun after their 9-5 when you have to spend your time after your 9-5 writing. Resenting others for writing in “hot” genres where they hardly have to do anything to sell books compared to your efforts. Resentment for all that you have to sacrifice to responsibly get the words done. Resentment toward collaborators for not meeting crazy deadlines that you kill yourself to meet.

This is a pattern of giving help or compliments not because someone needs it, but because you want them to love you. It’s a problem because it’s disingenuous, and when we lie or stretch the truth in our compliments to other people or give not because we believe they’re worthy humans who deserve to be helped but because we want something in return, it becomes incredibly difficult for us to believe any compliments we receive from others or trust that the help someone is giving us is done without expectation of future reciprocation. 

Examples in writing and marketing: Commenting compliments on posts from more well-known authors to curry favor. Volunteering at author events to “earn” attention from organizers and speakers, being overly generous with readers to create a sense of forced reciprocation.

This pattern is about creating a strategic image to present to others. It doesn’t necessarily mean doing yourself up like a supermodel, because that appearance might not be appreciated everywhere you go. If you go to a biker bar, vanity might look like wearing black leather and talking about that time you beat someone’s ass. If you go to a leather bar… it might also look like wearing black leather and talking about the time you… Well, you get it. Additionally, a Three will know exactly what style of black leather to wear to each of those places, and meet the expectation. 

The problem with this pattern is that it might actually work and get the Three lots of positive attention. And that in turn tells the Three that if they want to get the kind of praise they’re looking for, the #1 rule is to not be themselves. The vanity teaches them to continue putting on an act, which leads them farther and farther away from what they need for growth: authenticity. 

Examples in writing and publishing: Posting about your financial successes in “if I did it, so can you” tones as an excuse to present a successful version of yourself to the world, prioritizing meaningless public stats (followers, likes, sales rank, etc.) to profit’s detriment, writing books with pretty covers that take a swing at popular tropes but miss the mark on the deeper levels.

This is a pattern where attention stays focused on what is missing. Mostly, it’s about what’s missing from ourselves. You can pair it with the idea that we’re missing something that others have, and then you slip into jealousy, which is the accompanying emotional pattern of the Four. On its own, melancholy is already enough of a trap. The idea that something is missing creates a vacuum of space that longing fills, and so the Four wanders around in a state of longing they can’t explain. No, there must be something more! In many ways, this is correct; there is a lot more. But when you’re fixated on the idea that something’s missing, your attention skips over what is there, right in front of you, ready for you to experience, no longing necessary. 

Examples in writing and marketing: Reluctance to publish because “there’s something missing from the book,” inferiority about putting your face out there, wondering if you’re a “real” writer or not.

This is essentially a scarcity mindset, particularly around knowledge. But it’s also a stinginess around one’s energy, as well. The Five builds a fortress of knowledge so that they don’t need to invite others in to help, others who might ask something of them and drain their energy. Now, the Five can have this fixation in heaps and still let a few people in, that’s not a problem. It’s only the self-preservation Five who is the real recluse. Meanwhile, the social and one-to-one Fives either have a few people who are allowed inside the gate or they connect with groups of people who are allowed inside specific areas for a designated amount of time. 

The problem is that in hoarding their knowledge, believing it will keep them from being drained, they’re actually closing themselves off to the free flow of knowledge that happens between people who spend significant time together. They’re also severely narrowing their lens by not subjecting themselves to the other lenses of the Enneagram on a frequent basis. Perhaps this is why Fives tend to be the most isolated of any type in a single center (the head center). 

Examples in writing and marketing: Reluctance to invest your money in professional-looking covers, failing to build a network of fellow authors, staying home where in-person research may be more rewarding.

This is the pattern of focusing on the worst-case scenario. The intention is that by doing so, the Six might be prepared for anything that comes their way. What they end up doing by fixating on all the dangers, though, is occupying themselves so much in anxiety that they are less able to take necessary steps to address problems in the present when those problems might arise. They have psyched themselves out and are exhausted and in too deep with their fear to access the courage necessary to handle the situation and reestablish stability. 

Examples in writing and publishing: Running your idea by as many confident people as you can before acting, cutting character dialogue or scenes that may upset the wrong people, finding all kinds of delay tactics to avoid hitting that Publish button.

This pattern makes a lot more sense when you remember that Sevens are not only in the head center but the future-focused triad (along with Fives and Sixes). What do you get when you add a fear of deprivation with a future focus? Planning, baby! Lots of it. Sometimes this looks like double- or triple-booking themselves to make sure that they have something stimulating to do no matter what happens and allowing space for day-of decision on what might feel the best. What the fixation of planning doesn’t look like is living in the present enough to truly savor the moment. Sevens use planning for the future as a way to escape any present pain, but this fixation leaves them constantly running and perpetually unsatisfied. 

Examples in writing and marketing: Writing too detailed of beats for your book so that you’re already bored of it by the time you draft it, making way too detailed marketing plans that won’t realistically work for your attentional patterns, putting way too many projects on your calendar because they seem fun without a detailed plan of how you’ll pull it off (the fun is in the imagining, not the realism for 7s).

This pattern is not about justice. Vengeance and justice aren’t the same, and we all know that instinctively. The Eight’s fixation on vengeance comes from a place of anger and a need to rebalance the scales of power by force. Someone made the Eight feel powerless, and now they cannot focus on anything else until they return the favor. Seeking power over others is not the same as empowerment, the healthiest expression of power. Seeking power over others will never quench the thirst, and in fact, it makes the Eight thirstier. The collateral damage from the seeking of vengeance, however, can often lead to even more sources of strife for the Eight, who can find themself fighting battles on multiple fronts before long.

Examples in writing and marketing: spending time trying to get even with others instead of writing your books, attracting an ugly crowd to you based on shared dislike for others, becoming notorious for taking people down, generally seeming too dangerous for anyone but extreme sycophants to want to collaborate or network with.

Now there’s a word you don’t see every day. This is a pattern of diffusing attention that the Nines fall into. The goal is to make everything seem equally important and equally not a big deal so that the Nine isn’t forced into expressing an opinion and thereby risking tension and conflict with others. It’s a form of intellectual neglect, essentially. The problem is that in trying to avoid creating conflict, resulting from the fear of being cut off from others through conflict, the Nine is proactively creating distance between themself and others that is unbridgeable by the other person’s efforts. The Nine has retreated into themselves where others cannot follow, and the connection is severed in that way. 

Examples in writing and marketing: Getting lost in your WIP and not in the fun way, failing to give your book a shot at selling by neglecting the marketing, missing networking opportunities by appearing uninterested to others, simply not finishing your manuscript.

This would align with the sin of “wrath.” Sometimes anger can be a powerful force for positive change, so you will not see me hatin’ on anger. The problem is chronic anger, and Ones can fall into this. The anger comes from dissatisfaction with the way the world is. Add the “good girl” or “good boy” filter to that, and what happens is that the One only feels able to express that anger in “righteous” ways. What happens when there’s no readily available righteous way to express the anger as it manifests in the body? Health problems, baby! Hypertension, headaches, tight shoulders. On top of that, the One’s attempt to hold it all in until the appropriate time often leads to emotional eruptions and lashing out, frequently in the form of persecution and punishment of others. 

The antidote? Remembering that things already are as they are meant to be. Your vision of a better way is just that: a vision. If you’re not allowing it to guide you forward productively while letting go of the things you cannot change, then you’ll find yourself deep in anger.

Examples in writing and marketing: Blowing up or melting down publicly, stories read like angry sermons, wasting energy being mad at fellow authors, feeding the inner critic so that it’s impossible to write the book (and then you get even more mad at yourself for that).

This does not refer to pride in the usual sense we encounter. It’s not being proud of your hometown or your daughter’s perseverance on the soccer pitch or being openly bisexual. This form of pride is about not admitting that you are human like the rest of us and therefore have needs like the rest of us. Because the Two builds their idea of worthiness of love on what they can give to others, the idea of receiving from others can feel dangerously deflating. If you don’t accept the Two’s help, their pride will be wounded. But more poignantly, their self-concept of being lovable will be injured. This can lead to a downward spiral, as the Two gives, gives, gives, and becomes increasingly unable to receive until–blam! They hit a wall. Pride before the fall? Basically. They are out of gas, and the fact that they’ve refused all help doesn’t necessarily play into their assessment that nobody has helped them lately, ergo nobody cares about them the way they care about everyone else. 

The antidote? Accepting that human needs don’t make you needy. Learning that allowing others to help you is a sign of love for them, since we all want to know we’re needed. Shutting others out from fulfilling your needs in return can send the signal that they have nothing to offer. People don’t like that, and they will stop accepting your help, which may feel like rejection. 

Examples in writing and marketing: Offering help to other authors but never asking for it when you need it, helping people in your household rather than getting your book written, offering the kind of writing advice you need to others (whether they need it or not) and neglecting to take your own advice

Our first bonus sin! It’s kinda wild that this didn’t make the cut for the top seven, but whatever. The deceit of the Three is partially about the way they present a false image of themselves to the world to gain admiration, and it’s partially about the way the Three lies to themself about who they are. A lifetime of lying to oneself about how much it hurts to only be accepted for the roles you play can make it extremely difficult for the Three to discover who they are beneath all the masks and costumes. When you ask them what they like, they’ll tell you what they think you want them to like. For this reason, the deeper they slide into deceit, the farther out of reach authenticity becomes. It’s not that they’re afraid to be authentic, it’s that they don’t know what the hell that means anymore. 

The antidote? Slowing down. Not being so busy. Taking goals off your list. The urgency of the Three to do, do, do is the barrier that keeps them from being. And only in the silence and peace of being can they reconnect with themselves. If you’re a Three, you probably wanted a five-step plan to authenticity, but unfortunately, it’s just the one thing: stop doing and start being. This will mean disappointing people who you’ve promised things to. I assure you that it’s worth it to reconnect with what you want. No, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t keep playing the game and connect with yourself outside of it. You have to hit pause and deal with the pain of that. 

Examples for writing and marketing: exaggerating your successes and hiding your failure, wasting time and money presenting yourself as living the ultimate author life, lying to yourself about your motivations for writing what you write and helping others, not being fully honest about how you got to where you are, not giving credit to others where it’s due.

This is the emotion of comparison, if ever there was one. The Four looks at others as a way of judging their own significance, which either leads to a superiority complex or an inferiority complex. Reality check: those are the same thing. When the Four decides the comparison is favorable, they gain an air of superiority, criticizing the preferences and decisions of the other person. It’s the “Oh yeah, you like Hitchcock movies? What’s your favorite one? WRONG” sort of vibe. It’s the “I can’t believe they’re wearing that out of the house,” vibe. And sometimes it’s, “What a sellout for writing to market.” But this superiority complex it’s simply an inferiority complex in disguise, and it’s used to protect the Four from their fear that they are deficient and lacking something that someone else has. When the Envy really kicks in, this also turns to “they have something that I don’t… and I deserve it more.” That can justify a lot of poor behavior from the Four, because now we’re into entitlement territory. 

The antidote? Remember that if someone has something that you don’t, you also have something that they don’t. That’s what makes you unique and significant. Focus instead on what it is that you do have, and bring that into reality. Make sure that you don’t slip into the world of fantasy and instead take action to bring your vision to existence. Fantasy counts for nothing. Your brilliant idea for a book, for instance, doesn’t matter if you never write the thing.

Examples in your writing and marketing: getting discouraged by the attention others’ books are getting that “don’t deserve it,” letting a sense of entitlement to success hold you back from properly marketing, comparing your books to dissimilar books to validate self-defeating attitudes, publicly putting down other books then being afraid others will do the same to yours.

This is comparable to the sin of greed, in that it’s about holding on tight to things that ought to be shared. Avarice shows a lack of faith in the give-and-take of the universe, as well as a disdain for the collective. This can manifest in the Five cutting themselves off from their emotions, which seemingly flow in and out of us on their own schedule and present an uncomfortable counterpoint to the “rational” mind. In the Five’s search to know, they hoard knowledge, often failing to share it and severing the important flow of knowledge between people within a society. By severing that connection, they’ve also cut themselves off from the robust and full knowledge, called gnosis, that can only come from considering the subjective experience of others and the “knowing” in our hearts and bodies. The avarice compounds as the Five’s resources dwindle over time and they respond by sharing even less, worried that they’ll run out of the energy they need for their daily life. 

The antidote? Remembering that knowledge doesn’t exist in the head, but in everything, and that by limiting your exposure to the stories of others and what your heart and body have to say, you’re missing important information and will only appear foolish to others in the long run. 

In writing and marketing: feeling resistance to marketing, reluctance to do helpful things like cross-promotions, stockpiling your income rather than investing it back into your book business, missing out on connection with readers by failing to share your knowledge and personality with them.

Here’s your second bonus sin! But don’t we all have fear? Isn’t that one of the essential parts of Enneagram classification? Yes, we do, and yes, it is. This type of fear is more in line with anxiety. It’s a fear that the worst will come to pass, and it’s an excess of that. In effect, it’s a drastic lack of faith in… pretty much everything. It’s a fear that the Six cannot trust others, the world, or even themselves. Sixes exacerbate this emotional pattern by testing out their hypothesis that everything will eventually betray them. The problem is that when things pass the test, it doesn’t calm the anxiety. All the Six caught in fear sees is that they haven’t been betrayed… yet. So they keep testing, remain vigilant, and eventually their worst fears are confirmed! Sometimes this is a result of them creating tests for the world and others that are impossible to pass. This is certainty-seeking behavior at its finest. Once someone betrays a Six, the Six knows they cannot trust that person, but until that point, they have to wonder if they can trust the person, which becomes too much uncertainty for them to handle, so they broaden the definition of “betrayal” until their fear eventually comes to pass. 

The antidote? Remember that the antidote to uncertainty isn’t self-sabotage to create certainty but rather faith. If you don’t know whether things will work out or not, why keep defaulting to the assumption that the worst will come to pass instead of assuming that the best might occur? Or maybe there’s some middle option that’s tolerable if not enjoyable? Fearing future suffering doesn’t prepare us for it, it only makes us suffer twice. And constantly testing others is a great method to drive them away, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that they will betray you and leave you without support. 

Examples in writing and marketing: testing those you collaborate until you find confirmation that they aren’t 100% trustworthy, seeking 100% certainty in a marketing plan before taking action, anxiety getting in the way of your creativity, being unable to focus on your work unless your external circumstances feel totally secure.

This is an unquenchable thirst and generally relates to novel and energizing stimuli: food and drink, ideas, projects, places. It’s the feeling of dissatisfaction with the familiar. You can probably see how this emotional pattern then leads to the thought pattern of planning. When a Seven is stuck in the gluttony pattern, they’re trapped in la-la land, always future-focused, because the satisfaction one can gain from a single novel experience is so damn fleeting that almost as soon as one has experienced it, it’s gone. Then the yearning for the future and the disconnection from the present kicks up again. 

The antidote? Remember that all the interest and novelty you could ever need is present with you at this very moment. You must look deeper into the present to find it, though, and that requires you to focus your attention on what is right in front of you and inside you. Sevens can get stuck on the superficial (part of fearing being trapped in pain), and they miss the richness of their present environment. So when a Seven feels the restlessness kick in, learning to pause and ask “what richness am I overlooking in the present?” can bring about the true satisfaction they’re looking for. The present moment has enough to satisfy, if you’re sober enough to look for it.

What this looks like in writing and marketing: shiny object syndrome, wanting to write all your fun ideas right away rather than focusing on one or two at a time, wanting to play on every social media platform rather than mastering one or two, spending tons of money on going to conferences and faraway writer’s retreats but never sitting down to write the book.

This is sometimes perceived by others as the Eight being “too much.” Lust in this context is an excessiveness brought to a situation that overwhelms others, effectively putting everyone else back on their heels. So long as everyone else is feeling the need to take a step back from you, they’re unlikely to attack your weaknesses or even spot your vulnerabilities at all. It’s hard  for others to hear the silence between the notes when their ears are ringing from the volume, so to speak. Lust in this context doesn’t necessarily carry a sexual connotation, but it could. Along with the lust and desire for more, more, more intensity comes a troublesome conqueror’s mindset. The world is yours to take, in effect, but that always stems from a fear of someone coming along and conquering you. A strong offense is a strong defense, essentially. But of course, going around pummeling everyone is probably the best way to ensure that someone gets sick of that and does make it their mission to conquer you, if for no other reason than to protect themselves and others. Hello there, self-fulfilling prophecy! 

The antidote? Eights have lost their connection to their own innocence and gentleness, so remembering situations where they were able to not take an active stance and were still okay is the first step to allowing their vulnerability to exist without feeling the need to distract from or proactively defend it. Supporting others with less power in a situation is a great place to start, as it brings out the kindness of the Eight and, because they’re not afraid of this person harming them, provides a space to connect vulnerably with another person.

Examples in writing and marketing: All-or-nothing thinking about your book strategy, working yourself to exhaustion and then doing it some more to prove you’re not weak, missing the signs or refusing to admit that it’s time to pivot your strategy, coming on strong with other authors so they shy away from collaborations and networking

This is comparable to the sin of sloth. But let me be clear, rest is not laziness. Taking a break and vegging out even though you could probably get up and clean something in the house is not automatically laziness. Sometimes it’s rest, and you don’t need to justify that. The Enneagram version of laziness, however, is akin to emotional neglect. It’s checking out from your thoughts, feelings, and needs. It’s going numb and then continuing to numb. It could look like hours and hours of video games (no joke: I know a guy who got scurvy not once but twice in college because he played video games and only ingested pizza and Dr. Pepper for weeks on end). It could look like scrolling on your phone for hours. It could look like habitually drinking or smoking pot to avoid addressing inner conflict or trauma. However this neglect manifests, the result is that it keeps the Nine from taking meaningful action of any kind. It abdicates agency completely. Then, the problems the Nine is avoiding build until the pain of addressing them becomes too large to tolerate, and an invisible barrier now separates the Nine from both themselves and the world around them.

The antidote? Nines learn that distraction is not the same as true rest. Lying in a hammock, staring at the sky and thinking about life can be restful. Lying in a hammock, scrolling Reddit for hours is a pretty good approximation of passion of laziness, of neglect of one’s emotional state. I mean, really, when was the last time anyone looked up from their phone, realized an hour passed unaccounted for, then declared, “At least I feel totally and completely rested!” Nines must remember that you cannot avoid confronting internal conflict forever. Ignoring conflict does not create peace. Only taking action to address the conflict and find a solution creates true peace. 

Examples in writing and marketing: giving up on marketing before you even get started, neglecting your health until issues interrupt your ability to write, suppressing the creative impulse with numbing activities, general lack of motivation to keep up with the demands of running a creative business.