Introduction
The Enneagram of Personality (the Enneagram) is a pseudoscientific model used to identify personality types. Enneagram Tarot is our visual tool for changemakers to recognise your style, strengths and areas for development, and those around you.
I’ve drawn on my love of collage and professional experience of community-building, making social change and creating inclusive and equitable conditions to create this visual ‘Tarot Deck’ of nine cards. It’s for your personal growth and to help you better understand why and how you and others influence social change.
We all make decisions based on a mix of logic and emotion. Some of us listen to our head more than our heart, others trust their gut. To spot this at a glance, the cards are colour-coded with a yellow (gut), blue (head) or green (heart) strip to demonstrate how each type makes its snap decisions when under pressure.
Enneagram type 2s tend to operate from the heart. Your mode is feeling. Your heart goes out to people. You might refer to yourself as an empath or say that you wear your heart on your sleeve. You’re attuned to emotions and make your decisions based on your personal values and how you feel.
Type 2 – The Helper
- Core Desire: To feel loved and needed
- Core Fear: Being unwanted or unloved
- Basic Motivation: Helping others to gain affection
- Key Traits: Generous, empathetic, people-pleasing
- How you can grow: Set boundaries, separate your self-worth from your service
- Common Pitfalls: Neglecting your own needs, manipulating to gain affection
You step in when it’s messy, volunteering in crisis relief, organizing community meals, and rallying support for caregivers. Your generosity creates lifelines for people who frequently face neglect, such as older people, disabled young people and their carers, survivors of abuse. You care deeply about fairness and make sure no one falls through the cracks.
Your Changemaking Style
- You connect grassroots volunteers with under-resourced neighbourhoods.
- You translate between service users and funders, ensuring everyone’s needs and voices shape solutions.
- You mentor emerging leaders from marginalised communities, sharing networks and skills.
- You advocate for policies that prioritise care, such as paid family leave, community health centres.
Balanced vs. Under Pressure
- When in balance, you support colleagues while maintaining healthy boundaries and inviting reciprocal care.
- Under pressure, you overextend yourself, neglect your own needs, and burn out, leaving the people you’ve been working with scrambling.
How to Support Yourself
- Practice saying no to extra tasks so you can give focussed help where it matters most.
- Schedule regular self-care with culturally resonant practices such as community dance, faith gatherings, or art therapy.
- Delegate logistics to trusted partners from diverse backgrounds to share workload and perspective.
- Seek feedback on how your help lands across different identities and adjust accordingly.
How to better support Others
- Notice when help becomes obligation. Reconnect to your authentic purpose.
- Reflect on whose agency you might override—invite people to lead their own solutions.
- Celebrate moments when you empower others rather than trying to rescue them.
- Draw on your emotional intelligence to hold space for underheard stories without trying to fix people.
When you balance generosity with self-care and share power, your compassion evolves into sustainable, inclusive impact.
Just for Fun
Spirit animal: Faithful puppy
Fun fact: In China, the attitudes towards dogs have changed over time. During the Neolithic age (more than 7,000 years ago) dogs were kept for hunting, protection and food. During the Ming Dynasty well-off Chinese began keeping dogs, particularly Pekinese, as pets. Nonetheless, the lack of meat drove the population to consume dog meat. A later spread of Buddhism and Islam throughout China led to this becoming a social taboo amongst many.
The soundtrack to your life: Umbrella by Rihanna
Famous people: Mother Teresa. Desmond Tutu.
