Self-reflection on results from the Enneagram test

B253 Collaborative Practice - 25528

Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis

After taking the Enneagram Personality assessment, I found out that I was a type 1. Type 1 is the reformer, high in orderliness, and can also be called the idealistic type. People in this category are principled, purposeful, self-controlled, and perfectionists. Type ones have a really good sense or right and wrong and are afraid of making a mistake as they try to maintain higher standards. After looking over what type ones are like, I feel as though it describes me pretty well. The description of type one says that a type one person has a basic fear of being defective or corrupt, and this truly relates to me. I always fear that people see me as odd and defective, like I’m dumb and don’t understand certain things. This is truly a fear because I want people to see me as a whole human being who is good and helpful, not someone who corrupt, only wanting attention or power, and definitely not someone who is defective and can’t be loved or taught anything. The basic desire for type on is to be good, to be balanced, and to have integrity. I really do feel the desire to be balanced. I want a balance in all parts of my life. I want to be nice, but I don’t want to let people walk all over me. I want to learn and go to school, but I also want a fun social life.

One thing that stuck out to me about type one’s is that they always want to be right. I do not find that I always want to be right. The description of type one makes it seem as though type one’s throw fits if they are not right, which I do not believe to be true to me. Type one’s also feel the need to justify themselves. I feel like this really fits me because I always feel that I need to explain to everyone why I do what I do or why I say what I say. In the description of type one, reformers are seen by others as self- controlled and rigid while type one’s themselves as holding in their feelings for good reasons. I never really thought of myself as someone who seems rigid, but when I look at how I act around my friends and classmates, I do see how I could come off as rigid, because I don’t like to show my feelings as I don’t want to anger anyone, make someone feel bad, and I don’t want to look like I do not have self-control.

I am at an average level for health, which means that I am at a level 4, 5 or 6 for type one. Those levels show that one’s at an average health are dissatisfied with reality, afraid of making mistakes, and highly critical of themselves and others. I feel like this really does not relate to me, but I can see how I could be at an average level someway. I am very afraid of making mistakes which is at an average level 5. I don’t want to make a mistake and look bad or hurt someone from my mistakes, which does affect how I live my life. Since I am afraid of making mistakes, I work extra hard to be careful and think hard about decisions so that I don’t make a mistake My highest results for the Enneagram test were orderliness and helpfulness. I believe that high orderliness is beneficial in nursing. Having high orderliness for me means that everything has a place and a time. In nursing, it means that I would have all of my patients in order, know who to go see first and when, and would be able to help other nurses organize if they need help. I remember being told that nurses in an ICU setting need to be organized and now I know that my personality type fits with the type of nurse I want to be, NICU. I believe that my high score of helpfulness can be both beneficial and harmful in nursing. I feel like that for me, if being helpful is part of my life and I always want to help people and allow myself to be pushed around if I believe that I am helping someone. I think this can be harmful as a nurse because I will help other nurses with stuff they need to get done, let them push me around, when I don’t have enough time. This can be harmful to my patients and me because my patients don’t get my undivided attention like they should, and I could get burnt out really easily. I think that helpfulness can be beneficial as a nurse because nursing is all about caring for patients and trying to give them the best outcome possible. Being helpful means that I would be willing to go the extra mile to make them comfortable and get things they need. This is beneficial because the patients would trust me and know that I truly care about their outcome, which makes them more compliant when I need to do things like give them medicine or give them shots. This can also be good because then the other nurses and healthcare professionals know that I am willing to help them out if they need help and take my job seriously.

My lowest results for the Enneagram test were intellectualism and aggressiveness. I think that my low scores can be both beneficial and harmful to my role as a nurse. Being low in aggressiveness as a nurse can be both a good and bad thing. I feel like being low in aggressive can be bad because I will just let other nurses, healthcare professionals, and patients push me around. I would not stand up for myself and be aggressive in trying to get the right treatment for a patient. I would not be able to stand up for my patient in front of a doctor which could harm my patient, or my patient could lose trust in me. Having low aggression could also be good because then I wouldn’t get mad at my patient for refusing to do something or not listening to me. My lowest score was intellectualism, and I feel like having low intellectualism can be both harmful and beneficial. Low intellectualism for me can be harmful because I do not seek to learn why something is right or wrong, I just accept that something is right or wrong. This can be a problem because I will know what to do for a patient who is going downhill, but I won’t question why I did what I did instead of doing something different. I just accept what I am taught and don’t try to figure out why it was taught that way. Low intellectualism can be beneficial for me because intellectual people tend to have problems with isolation, and I do not mind isolation. I believe that this is beneficial because I am okay working one on one with a patient or working on charting by myself. This is good for the patient because they get individualized care and their charts are up to date faster.

Intellectualism, calmness, and aggressiveness are three scores that I should improve upon. I need to get better at being aggressive so that I don’t let people walk all over me. If I do not become more aggressive and I let other nurses, healthcare professionals, or patients walk over me, I will get my feelings hurt a lot, and I would burn out really quickly. To improve on my aggressiveness, I need to work on getting mad at people when they are rude to me, instead of making up excuses as to why they did what they did to me. I need to work on standing up for myself, starting with my family, and working up to classmates and friends. I need to start being more aggressive to be a better nurse. Another thing I need to work on is my intellectualism. I need to work on being more curious, especially in the nursing field. To do this, I am going to start asking questions and question why things are the way they are or why a certain procedure is done. I need to get myself more interested because this will help me be a better nurse. This will help me be a better nurse because then I will be able to explain to a patient why things are done, and it will help me understand what is going on more. The last thing I need to improve on is being calmer. I need to become calmer so that I can comfort patients and so that I don’t overwork myself and burn out. I need to be calmer so that my coworkers and patients want me to help them and want to work with me. To be calmer, I’m going to work on finding what makes me feel calm as well as work on taking deep breaths and not trying to control everything around me.

After reading through the results of my Enneagram test, I have learned a lot about what I can do to improve my ability to communicate with patients. After reading about how people find that type one’s are highly self-controlled and rigid, I know that when I am with a patient, I need to be willing to show some sort of emotion. I need to be able to connect with a patient on an emotional level and to do that I need to be able to show emotion. I want my patients to be comfortable around me, and I know that it is hard to be comfortable around people who are ridged, so I need to learn to show more feelings, not just bottle them up. I feel like sometimes as a nurse it is a good thing to hide emotions and bottle them up when in front of a patient. So as a one, I believe the ability to bottle up and not show emotions can come in handy when a patient is having a bad day and is taking it out on the me. It gives me the ability to keep level headed and try to understand when the patient is coming from without taking what the patient says to heart.

There are many ways that the results that I got from the Enneagram test will help me be able to work with other nurses and other healthcare professionals. My organizational skills will allow me to make sure all of my patients are where they need to be and have what they need. I will be able to organize things like physical therapy or respiratory therapy around the patients wants, the physician needs, and my schedule. This will make it easier on all other healthcare professionals because they don’t have to deal with clashing of schedules. Knowing my high score of helpfulness will help me to remember that I am always willing to help others. This will help me with other healthcare professionals because I will always try to help out my coworkers when they need help. I am willing to take on that extra responsibility if it helps some. I feel like this will let the people I work with know that I am serious about my job and care about others around me. It will let them know that they can always ask me if they need help.

References

Enneagram Institute (2017). Type Five. Retrieved from https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/type-5

Enneagram Institute (2017). Type Nine. Retrieved from https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/type-9

Enneagram Institute (2017). Type One. Retrieved from https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/type-1

Enneagram Institute (2017). Type two. Retrieved from

https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/type-2

Similar minds. (n.d.) Enneagram Test results. Retrieved from https://similarminds.com/cgi-bin/similarminds.pl.