It’s A Gut Thing: Talking About the Action Center

“I just had a gut feeling.” 

You’ve probably heard these words before. This common phrase often shows up in movie scripts, novels, and everyday conversations. Heck, there’s a good chance that you’ve said these words before. 

We use the term “gut feelings” to refer to the deep instinctual pulls we feel in different situations. While all of us have gut feelings, for some individuals, these instinctual inclinations play a larger role in the way they process and respond to the world around them. 

In the Enneagram world, we like to call these people members of the “Gut Triad.” 

The Gut Triad is one of Enneagram’s three Centers of Intelligence. The Gut Center is comprised of three Enneagram types:

• • Type 1: The Principled Reformer
    These moral perfectionists strive to be upright and ethical in all of their actions. They are deeply motivated to avoid making wrong or bad decisions.
  • Type 8: The Passionate Protector
    These individuals aim to protect themselves and those closest to them by finding opportunities to prove their strength.
  • Type 9: The Peaceful Accommodator
    These natural peacekeepers will go to great lengths to avoid conflict and maintain peace and harmony in situations and relationships. 

The Gut center is also known as the Action Center. Guided by instincts, these individuals are driven to act based on what their gut feelings are telling them to do. They often experience a strong sense of right and wrong and this drives them to action. 

Individuals in this triad are united by a core desire for justice. They strive to act in a good and upright way and hold themselves and others to a high standard of justice. 

While experiencing “just” situations is motivating for this triad, when these individuals witness or experience situations that they would deem “unjust” it is often deeply upsetting.  For this reason, members of the Gut Triad tend to deal with anger as their underlying or core struggle. 

Although anger is a core struggle and emotion shared by these three types, it manifests in wildly different ways. For example: 

• Always striving for the highest moral integrity, 1’s often view their natural anger as a slip from the moral high ground. For this reason, they work hard to subdue or repress their anger in order to maintain the high level of moral integrity they desire.
• Type 8 typically have no problem displaying the fullness of their anger to themselves or others. They believe that communicating their anger at unjust situations is just another tool to help them control the narrative and maintain a sense of protection.
• Although 9’s also experience deep feelings of anger, this emotion creates an interior struggle with their deep desire to maintain the peace. These individuals will often deny their feelings of anger (to themselves or to others) in an effort to avoid conflict at all costs. 

See what I mean? 

If you were to put a 1, an 8, and a 9 in a room together and task them with responding to an unjust situation, their outward disposition and behavior would likely look incredibly different. However, the deeper underlying emotions and desires of the three types would be remarkably similar. 

They share core desires and fears but the outward manifestation can be as unique as the individuals themselves. 

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Article was contributed by: Maria Lees, Team Writer with Sarah Boxx