Enneagram Type Seven
The Freedom Seeker
We call 7s The Freedom Seeker because their primary motivations are to feel a sense of limitless possibility, to experience all that life has to offer, and to engage freely with what brings them joy, vibrance, and fulfillment.
When 7s are connected to Essential Freedom, all things from the mundane to the extraordinary delight and nourish them. Because this moment provides everything they need, Healthy 7s experience a simple, causeless joy and bear witness to reality with gratitude and awe. This is true freedom — the inner boundlessness to savor each moment without needing to optimize it to "enjoy it more." In this grounded place, Healthy 7s are ecstatic, visionary, manifesting, resilient, patient, and savoring.
The joyous, celebratory spirit of Healthy 7s is contagious. It is hard to be down for too long in the presence of such sincerely buoyant people who see the world as bursting with creative possibility. Because their minds are so open, Healthy 7s see synergies among all things in their awareness. Their quick, visionary minds naturally generate creative ideas, and Healthy 7s are powerful manifesters because they have the magnetic optimism to attract people to projects and the focus to see them through.
Healthy 7s get that that they will not be able to experience everything they want to in the world, and ironically, it is because of this that they are able to fully surrender to the present moment. Indeed, what Healthy 7s get most of all is that their satisfaction depends not on the content of their experience, but on the depth of their presence. This is a profound awareness that allows 7s to “stay with” any experience without needing to escape it, whether it be pleasant or painful, invigorating or tedious, exciting or banal. While Healthy 7s do not especially love dark emotions like grief and remorse, they do not bypass or bounce out of them when they arises. Healthy 7s are able to see the silver lining in almost any situation, and they trust that they have the resilience to move through any difficulty. Consequently, their delight in life is genuine and all-encompassing, since it embraces the totality of their inner experience, not just the parts they like.
When 7s lose touch with Essential Freedom, they begin to harbor a nagging sense of deprivation. In their mind's eye, they can envision the ideal of what would be optimally fulfilling, but reality keeps falling short. So 7s scan their environments and imaginations for potential sources of fulfillment and keep themselves in motion to sample them all. It’s easy to see how this can spin out of control into scattershot consumption, stimulation junky-ism, outright hedonism.
Fixated 7s are anxious that if they let themselves "drop into" inner pain for too long, it would trap them indefinitely. So their strategy is simply to delay or avoid processing painful experiences by not focusing on them and doing exciting things. “What’s the point of stewing in negative feelings?” Boredom is the first sign that 7s are close to the danger zone, so they rev their engines, put their hands in lots of cookie jars, and stay in motion to keep boredom at bay, lest they be subsumed by whatever lies beyond it.
Because Fixated 7s are avoiding inner pain, they are usually successful at stuffing it beneath conscious awareness and preventing it from bubbling up by keeping themselves stimulated. Of course, many 7s wouldn’t relate to this framing, since they are simply focused on trying to enjoy life rather than "avoiding pain." But consciously or unconsciously, Fixated 7s are attempting to avoid the typical drudgery and suffering that accompanies a human life by having the most stimulating and fulfilling experiences possible, and by filtering their experience through a frame of cognitive positivity that does not incorporate their heart.
As the backlog of unprocessed pain grows inside 7s, they become more anxious, frenetic, and cavalier. Packed schedules, half-read books (which they talk about as if they are experts), and unfinished projects become commonplace. In this state, Fixated 7s may steer conversations away from topics that bring them down, dismiss problems through nimble reframing, and “bright side” to make everything seem alright. Fixated 7s may use others for entertainment or simply to help them get what they want, neglecting to take others' feelings into account. For example, as leaders of organizations, Fixated 7s may ideate wildly and expect others to build their shifting vision in lockstep behind them, all while they neglect protocol, leave wakes of emotional damage, and let others clean up their mess. While some people may find Fixated 7s thrilling and enlivening, others may be exhausted by their buzzing insatiability, instant-gratification seeking, and childish self-centeredness and avoidance of responsibility.
Some 7s may deceive themselves that they are confronting their inner emptiness head on by, for instance, meditating for hours or charging into flavor-of-the-week modalities of inner work. While these efforts are sometimes sincere, Fixated 7s are often getting a rush from the way these experiences unlock exciting new insights or bring them to the edge of what they can tolerate. This is a form of spiritualized thrill-seeking that must be sustained like any other form of gluttony, lest the effects wear off and the 7 has to confront the inner emptiness again.
What 7s really want is to enjoy life to the fullest. Their ability to generate creative ideas, envision exciting possibilities, and reframe difficult experiences are admirable superpowers. But by delaying digesting painful experiences, 7s lose touch with their hearts, feed their anxiety, and desensitize themselves to the point of insatiability.
As 7s cultivate enough stillness to recontact Essential Freedom, they become grounded in the awareness that all experiences are "for" us, not just the ones we prefer. Healthy 7s discover that they have the strength to face grief, loss, and remorse, and when they do, they rejoice in learning that do dark feelings not only have a lifespan, but impart lessons that lead to greater life enjoyment. Healthy 7s who turn towards their pain paradoxically find themselves even more appreciative of life and awaken their virtue of Sobriety — the inner spaciousness from which they see that reality is always fresh and fulfilling and need not be any different than it is. The fact that they get to witness the shimmering wonder of it all overwhelms Healthy 7s with gratitude. From this place, the joy, vibrance, and full-hearted positivity that Healthy 7s bring into the world is truly a marvel to behold.
