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Type Eight
The Protector

How do you know you're a Type What are your strengths?

Eight?
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How has knowing about your What are your challenges?

type helped you in your life?
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Protectors believe you must be strong and powerful to assure protection

and regard in a tough world. Consequently, Protectors seek justice and are
direct, strong and action-oriented; they also can be overly impactful,
excessive and impulsive.

Focus of attention
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Injustice, not being controlled by others, and getting things moving in work or play the videos?
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Life lesson Learn more

To harness the life force in productive ways, integrating self-assertion with

vulnerability Take the
Enneagram
Speaking style test
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Eights are direct, authoritative, zestful, firm, and oriented to truth and justice.
Others may perceive Eights as confrontational, intimidating, loud and controlling.
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What Type Eights tell us about themselves program
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I thrive on having lots of energy in my body and enthusiasm for life.
I am strong and protect the weak.
I am direct, willing to confront when the need arises, and express my anger
immediately.
People see me as aggressive, intimidating, intense and impulsive.
I have trouble staying with my own vulnerability and sad feelings.
I have a strong sense of knowing what is fair or right in my body center

Relating to Eights
Be direct and forthright, yet flexible and open.
Stay steady and present in the face of confrontation and conflict; hold your
ground.
Call them on destructive or threatening behavior, while being empathetic to
their underlying hurt feelings.
Express your own feelings, including softer, tender ones.
Join them in getting things moving in work or play.

Click on the tabs below to learn more.

Psychology Spirituality Somatics

Eights take charge of situations and step into leadership roles. They place a high priority on
fairness and justice, and will assert control over their environment to protect themselves
and anyone else who is part of their family or group. Eights’ challenge is to combine
assertion and control with interdependency and cooperation, and to curb their often
excessive appetites. 

Basic Proposition
You gain protection and respect by becoming strong and powerful, imposing your personal
truth and hiding your vulnerability.

Strengths Challenges
Courageous, strong, fair, truthful, Excessive, angry, dominating, lustful, afraid
determined, generous, protective of others of vulnerability

Defense Mechanism
Denial – the forceful re-directing of attention and feeling based on willfulness and control

Eights use denial to avoid vulnerability and to maintain a self-image of being strong. They
seek to impact the world and other people rather than be receptive. The pressure to deny
 vulnerability reduces their emotional energy and keeps them from receiving all of life’s gifts.

Awareness Practice
Observe your habit of mind or focus of attention with as little judgment as possible. Ask
yourself the following questions, while noticing your feelings and how your body responds:

How does my big energy express itself?

When do I just go for what I want without thinking?
In what ways do I assert control, power or my sense of justice over others?
How do I divert attention away from my own fears of being hurt?
In what ways do I forget to be sensitive or tender toward myself and others? 

Transforming lives. Creating a more compassionate world.

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