The Enneagram is the most powerful personality tool I’ve come across. That is because it does not focus on showing us who we are. It focuses on showing us who we are not.

I’m an Enneagram Type 3. But actually, what the Enneagram is really telling me is that I am not a Type 3. The personality of the Type 3 is the armor I have put on over my essence in order to survive.

To put it in Internal Family Systems language, the personality of the Type 3 is is the way my parts have had to twist in an effort to protect myself.

What’s so challenging for the Type 3, even if they are extremely self-aware like I have always been, is that we have so identified with the masks we wear, that we convince ourselves we are our masks. We are our performance. We are our results.

It feels like I am a robot put into the world and told I’m human. But I’m a robot so being human doesn’t come naturally to me. I have to watch how other people become human and mimic that the best I can.

As a robot I can see that humans get their needs met the easiest when they are admirable. Admiration is how we stay in dangerous people’s good graces. Admiration is what gives us money. It’s what makes people want to connect with us.

So even though I am a robot, I must perform “being human” well otherwise I will not get my needs met.

And if the humans don’t validate my performance with admiration and praise and rewards, that is, if I fail, all I am left with is the shame of emptiness inside. Because I have no sense of inner worth. I am a robot. My worth is only based on the value I give to others. It is dependant on other people’s opinions of me.

So it is unbearable if other people have anything short of admiration for me. Because only admiration saves me from the emptiness inside. Only admiration distracts me from the realization that I am inherently worthless underneath my performance. Only admiration distracts me from remembering that I am an empty worthless robot in a human world.

When I first discovered and felt this emptiness, it was all I could do to just not die. Many parts of me would rather die than feel my inner emptiness.

It’s like I go inside myself and open all these doors in this big empty mansion and find there to be nothing. Behind the door where my true desires are? Nothing. It’s empty. The room my worthiness should be in? Empty. The room where my humanity should be? Empty. It’s all empty in there.

All of my parts are looking at each other like, “Are you the real Jordin?”

I don’t know. I don’t feel real. Are you the real Jordin?

I don’t think so. I don’t feel real, either.

Will the real Jordin James please stand up?

Nobody does. All we know inside is our fakeness. Is our fakeness real? Is our performance real? Is there anything underneath our performance?

What about when we are working? No, that’s mostly just performance and strategy to make us more admirable.

What about when we are with family? Not really. That’s just us playing the role we play in our family.

What about when we are with friends? Honestly, that’s mostly just us trying to impress people so we feel less lonely.

There is just nothing real in here. Is there ever a time when I am being my true self? Do I have a true self?

It doesn’t feel like it. It just feels like emptiness. I just feel like a robot trying to be human.

There is just all these masks. And all this shame at our failure to perform well enough to avoid coming back to this painfully empty space.

But this inner emptiness is the point where we really start to uncover the depths of the self-deceit of the Type 3.

I thought this empty feeling was the bottom. It felt as painful as a bottom should feel. It was unbearable. I would rather die than feel that emptiness.

But it wasn’t the bottom. There is another layer of self-deceit and pain to uncover.

Because the emptiness isn’t true. I was born with a self. I am not a robot. I am a human and I have an essence.

BUT, as a Type 3, it is more bearable to experience and face the emptiness than to experience and face the possibility that I do have an essence, it just does not live up to the admirable image that I believe my essence has to be in order to be worthy.

It is far easier to look inside and see nothing than to look inside and see how unadmirable I am at my very core.

I have this image of who I need to be in order to get my needs met–in order to be admirable enough to be worth taking care of. If I look inside and see that who I really am is nowhere close to that image. It literally feels like death. Because chasing admiration is literally a survival mechanism for Type 3s. If it turns out I am completely unadmirable at my core, I will die. If it turns out I am just a normal human who is average and mediocre, I will die. At least, that’s what it feels like.

As I am uncovering all of these layers of my self-deceit, at times it is all I can do to just not die. To not do something stupid. To reach out to others. I have a therapist and a coach. I need the support of other people as I am walking myself back through all of these layers of self-deceit.

I feel like Pita in The Hunger Games after he gets his memory messed with by The Capitol and has to constantly ask, “Is this real? Did this actually happen?”

Turns out, as painful as the emptiness was, it wasn’t even real. What was even more real than that was that my essence does not live up to the admirable ideal I believed I was on the surface. The existential pain of seeing this clearly made me miss the pain of the emptiness. It’s like each layer of self-deceit I peel back uncovers more and more pain. I think this is because the pain keeps getting more and more real. But even this pain is not the bottom.

Comparing my true essence with my ideal self is so painful because I am still seeing my essence through the eyes of my Enneagram Type 3 personality. My essence will never measure up to what the Type 3 personality thinks it should be. Because my essence is too human. It is too flawed. It is too real. And the Type 3 personality sees flaws and humanity as inherently unadmirable. As inherently unworthy. As a direct threat to literal survival.

This is why it is so painful to see my real self. This is why I’ve put so many layers between who I actually am at my core and who I am on the surface. This is why I’ve hollowed myself out to become a robot and identified with the robot version of me more than I did the human version of me–because at least the robot version of me had hope of being admirable. It had hope of surviving.

While the pain of discovering how ordinary my essence is compared to the ideal image I have of myself is still not the bottom of my pain, it is a key transition point.

If I can just stay with this, I can begin to start seeing through the eyes of my essence and not my personality. I can realize that the pain of being true to myself is less painful than betraying and deceiving myself. So as I consciously choose to say true things and take the time to discover what is real about my essence, I slowly embody more of my essence.

What I realize as I do this, is that my essence actually isn’t so bad. I’m actually really sweet. I’m actually extraordinary in my own way, but only because I am not trying to be anything extraordinary. My essence is completely fine with being ordinary because it doesn’t really think in those terms. It doesn’t see everything as a strategy to achieve admiration because my essence knows admiration has nothing to do with love. My essence can see admiration for the smoke and mirrors that it is. My essence knows I am enough just as I am, even though I am just a dorky awkward human with lots of needs.

This is when the real bottom of my pain sets in, which actually isn’t the most painful. I think this is because the peace that comes with embodying my essence after a lifetime of betraying myself far outweighs the pain. But there is still some pain. It’s the pain of how I’ve had to twist to survive.

It’s the pain of my own heart breaking for how I’ve hollowed myself out to become a robot. How I’ve betrayed myself over and over again to win the admiration of others. How I’ve spent my entire life trying to impress the people that make me feel the most lonely. How I’ve missed out on living my true purpose because I was too busy trying to be someone else. I’ve missed out on being me. And connecting deeply with others as my true self.

This is as far as I have gotten in my journey. It has been a painful road and I am sure it is not completely linear. I still feel pain when I see my essence through the eyes of my Type 3 Personality. I still am trying to practice embodying my essence more.

My practice right now is focusing on saying true things. It’s not that I would speak only lies before. Everything I said was earnest in its attempt to be true, but only in the way a robot attempts to be human. It’s inherently false because it is a performance instead of a natural embodiment.

I’m still getting the hang of how it feels to say something true. It is hard for me to tell the difference between what is true and what isn’t true in me. But there is a difference now. There is a different quality to it that just feels more real. More vulnerable. More embodied and less like I am trying to mimic something true.

I think everything I’ve said in this article is true but I still get some tinges of my trying to mimic or perform or dramatize this experience. Now that I think about it, I’m certain some of these words came from the eyes of my Type 3 personality instead of my essence. But it feels at least 80% true?

This is what it feels like to wake up as an Enneagram 3. Even when you keep pulling back the layers of self-deceit, it takes practice to be able to identify what is your personality and what is your real self. Even when I am earnestly trying to be my true self, my personality gets in there and starts embellishing and twisting without me even being aware of it. It is so automatic. It is so sad. Self-betrayal is literally the mechanism I’ve used to survive and it run so deep that it is hard to tell if I am even betraying myself or not. It feels like I can convince myself of anything. When I’m not in touch with my essence, this inner confusion could literally make me inside. Going insane was my biggest fear for a very long time and perhaps still is.

But I’ve learned that if I can just clear out the noise to get in touch with my essence, truth just comes out of me. I seep authenticity without even trying. It’s when I start trying to be authentic that I can sometimes turn back into a robot mimicking authenticity. It’s crazy making!

But I do have hope that as time goes on, I’ll become more and more grounded in who I really am. I’ll be able to connect with people from that place. I’ll be able to stop the survival pattern of betraying myself to chase admiration so I can actually thrive.