An Enneagram test can give you a great deal of insight into your personality type and what that might mean for you from everything from romantic relationships to how you react to problems big and small.

But your Enneagram type can also give you a list of amazing personality traits that you never realized could cause you to deal with toxic people or fall into a toxic relationship with someone.

There are nine basic Enneagram types, each with a list of unique personality traits.

If you’re having difficulty finding a lasting relationship or wondering why your relationships seem toxic at some point, you may want to look at the personality traits of your Enneagram type which you can identify by taking an Enneagram test.

There is a “healthy” and “unhealthy” version of yourself that influences the type of partners you attract and the type of relationships you create, which you can determine by taking an Enneagram test.

When fear is the driving force behind what you think, say, and do, you emerge into the world from that fear and slip into an unhealthy use of your personality traits.

When love leads the way, you use the highest version of those same personality traits. Knowing the difference between how your personality shows up in fear or love is the key to stopping attracting toxic relationships.

This is because you attract fear into your life. You attract what you seek, so if you’re looking for threats or toxic relationships — yes, even to protect yourself from them — this is what you’ll find.

Depending on your Enneagram personality type, there are traits that you distort into unhealthy expressions when you are in a state of fear. Each personality type will do this differently.

Here are the nine Enneagram personality types and how the associated traits that arise from fear may attract toxic relationships into your life:

1. Enneagram Type 1: Perfectionist

Perfectionists have a driven need for integrity and doing things right. You fear being bad, corrupt, evil, or defective.

You must always know the “right” thing to think and do or fix what is not “right” in yourself and others. The need-to-fix trait requires something or someone to fix and thus attracts people who appear to be broken/imperfect.

Although these people may also believe they are damaged, they resist being “fixed.” Instead of feeling grateful for your help, they feel controlled. Their resistance and negative reactions threaten your need to be seen as good for your efforts.

Because you are trying to fix someone who does not want to be fixed, a battle for control ensues and the relationship becomes toxic. You can stop creating toxic entanglements when you let go of the necessity of being “perfect” and instead question your assertions about what is “right.”

Naturally, you will begin to accept the fullness of differences and realize that “the right thing to do” is to be you. When you accept and honor yourself and your partner in this way, the need to control everything will fall away. This means you will stop looking for/attracting people who need your “fix”.

2. Enneagram Type 2: The Helper

The helper has a driving need to be loved due to an underlying fear of not being worthy of love.

If you are a helper, you need to be in demand; This proves that you are worthy of love; It requires people who need you. Helping people who need help is not a problem in itself, and it can be healthy. But when you don’t feel worthy unless you need it, it’s not.

From this unhealthy version of the helper trait, you can attract people who come across as needy, demanding, and never satisfied.

This creates a never-ending toxic cycle of not being worthy while trying to prove yourself by catering to someone who will never be.

In contrast, a healthy expression of the helper trait is given from a space of “perfection,” where a genuine desire to help is activated without any conditions related to the value of the connection.

A healthy version of the achiever trait can be activated by successfully doing what you want to do to achieve your sense of fulfillment – not someone else’s.

4. Enneagram Type 4: Individualistic

Individualists need to be themselves. You fear being without identity or personal importance.

When you fear irrelevance, you need others to see you as special and unique. You are afraid that you do not “exist” as an individual and, therefore, do not matter. This means you attract people who prove your point.

You are feeding this unhealthy version of individual perspective through busy, self-absorbed people who don’t care about your uniqueness. Then, you waste your time and energy trying to make them see you, and you resent them when they do exactly what you thought they would do, and they don’t see you.

They take away your need to be seen and become a constant game of chase.

The desire to “see” can be a healthy thing; When you decide to see yourself as a unique individual. You value your importance and shine from that space.

You embrace yourself and attract others who see and embrace what shines in you and don’t waste your time with people who can’t be bothered.

5. Enneagram Type 5: Investigator

The investigator wants to be seen as competent. You fear being considered useless, incapable, or incapable.

Your competency trait becomes unhealthy when you focus too much on unhelpful disciplines to the point where you ignore necessary connections and work.

You absorb the unachievable: knowing everything there is to know about a given topic. However, you know that you can never know everything there is to know, which is why you will never be satisfied.

When you approach the world from this desperate place of being “competent,” you ask people who support your point of view that you will never truly be competent.

You surround yourself with people who do not recognize your abilities and experience. You focus your attention on their lack of appreciation and delve deeper into achieving competence.

As you try to prove yourself to them, they doubt you at every turn, making you double your efforts.

The cycle goes on and on until you decide to see yourself as competent; Even though you don’t know everything and even though others doubt you.

When you recognize your competence, not to achieve everything there is to know, but by knowing that you can educate and train yourself for anything you want, you will see your true competence.

This healthy acceptance of what you’ve already learned inspires the desire to teach yourself more.

You become the driving force behind your need to learn, not what others think of your expertise.

6. Enneagram Type 6: Loyal

The loyalist wants to feel secure by having support and guidance. If the Savior does not feel safe, they will end up making a lot of rules and holding onto beliefs to feel safe and protect themselves from pain.

This means that you will be established in the belief that if you let your guard down, you will get hurt. This requires that you remain alert at all times and remain somewhat closed off. You will attract untrustworthy, unreliable, and unsupportive people.

Instead of trusting your ability to deal with pain, you try to avoid it. Even though you think you need to keep your guard up, you want to feel safe enough to let him down.

Because you don’t trust yourself, you want the other person to be trustworthy, but they’re not… because you attracted them from a place of fear.

When you start trusting yourself, you emphasize a healthy version of a self-protective trait rooted in the belief that you’ll know when you need to be careful instead of always shutting down.

After your walls have been appropriately brought down, you are open to establishing relationships with trustworthy and dependable people.

7. Enneagram Type 7: Enthusiastic

The enthusiast wants to see the bright side of things and chase pleasure. Your basic desire is to be happy, and you fear what might disturb that happiness: in particular the feeling of deprivation, or the experience of being trapped.

To avoid these experiences, you cultivate the trait of escapism—being in constant motion to avoid dealing with difficult things.

When you avoid discomfort by running away from it, you must be evasive so that your forward movement is not impeded. If you are constantly afraid of being held back and having limited options, you will attract people who distrust and doubt you. They will watch you like a hawk or keep you close, within sight and within reach, afraid that you will run away again.

You will feel trapped and become more evasive, and they will suppress and detain you.

Your trait of looking on the bright side and moving forward, when you’re healthy, shifts from desperately avoiding pain to choosing to move toward a positive, feel-good experience after processing pain that seemed so scary.

You face the music, have a tough conversation, and then go have a good time with people who appreciate your enthusiasm for life and your spontaneity.

8. Enneagram Type 8: Leader/Challenger

The boss or “challenger” sees himself or herself as the smartest and most capable person in the room at any given time.

Because you are the smartest and most capable – in your mind – you need to assert your superiority… especially since your driving need is to protect yourself.