The Instinctual Approaches
For more on this and related topics, see Chapter Five of my book, The Instinctual Drives and the Enneagram.
To work with the Instinctual Drives, one has to “get out of the head” of descriptions and enter into the body, to practice physically sensing them in an embodied way. Each instinct can be located through different kinds of physical sensations. The instincts are backed by deep biological wisdom that the ego chronically interferes with. Thus, learning to encounter the energies of the instincts directly in the body is crucial for countering the ego.
Each instinct employs its own qualities of sensation, attention, and boundaries in meeting its respective needs, which I refer to as the Instinctual Approaches because they describe how we “approach” instinctual resources. These are attempts at describing and articulating the qualities of attention and sensation each instinct employs so that an individual can work with them directly in the body rather than merely reading about the instincts.
The Approaches are invaluable for working with the Instinctual Drives in personal development and inner work because the instincts have to be felt and accessed in the body in the present moment. Reading about them won’t do much to move the needle in our relationship with them. The instinctual drives being at the core of the ego and the basis of the personality structure, so deepening our contact with them via sensation is the most direct and powerful route of transformation.
The Instinctual Drives are motivational drives to meet specific biological and emotional needs. They are drives for different kinds of regulation. Each instinct, Self-Preservation, Sexual, and Social, require different kinds of instinctual resources for regulation, and to pursue different kinds of resources demands different kinds of attention, focus, and “energy” or excitation to motivate us, focus us, and influence our attention to be skillful in meeting our needs. In other words, when a particular instinctual drive is activated in us, it's accompanied by bodily sensations that shape our quality of attention and the way we uphold ego-boundaries. One’s attention, boundaries, and energy is different when encountering a friend arriving at the airport versus when exploring sexual tension at the end of a romantic date, for example. However, due to the interference of the ego, we misuse and mismatch Instinctual Approaches all the time, leading to embarrassment, dysregulation, and compulsive personality patterns.
The sensations belonging to our dominant instinct are associated with feeling “promising”, like registering them and following where they lead will be fruitful or necessary while sensations related to the blindspot instinct are dismissed or even avoided altogether. They seem like they will be a burden to address or we feel deeply unpracticed and childish with them. The Approaches, then, are the only path for truly integrating and balancing the Instinctual Drives, countering the dissociation characteristic of the go.
Integrating the blindspot supports our mental health and simply makes us more effective in achieving the aims of our dominant instinct. Moreover, it brings us out of the dissociated mental-emotional “loop” that makes up the ego and puts us directly in touch with the body in the present moment. This has the effect of relaxing the identification with the personality and instincts, which releases our Enneagram Type’s Passion and Fixation.
When we are present to the sensations of an instinct, its respective instinctual approaches flow naturally. They are like energetic currents in the body that “carry” our attention. When we are in touch with the sensation of the Social Instinct, for example, there’s a natural warmth and flow of sensation from the solar plexus through the arms and up to the face that invites openness and inspires body language of the face and arms. When we’re in touch with the Self-Preservation Drive, there’s a natural focus and steady direction of life force and attention emanating from the lower belly into the whole body that allows us to “stick with” certain tasks When we’re in touch with the Sexual Instinct, there’s a pulse of energy from the genital region to the bottom of the heart that excites us, motivates us to display ourselves, and allows us to hold on our end of sexual tension and polarity.
However, our identification with the instinctual drives leads to egoic fixation. The instinctual drives become structured in the pattern of the Instinctual Stacking, and this leads to distortions of the Instinctual Approaches. Depending on a variety of factors, we over-express certain instinctual approaches and under-express others. Typically, but not always, we “over-do” the Approaches of our dominant instinct and “under-do” those of our blindspot. Major influences like trauma can disrupt this pattern and lead to disorganized, compulsive expressions of the Approaches. We also tend to apply the Approaches of our Dominant Instinct to the needs of our Middle and Blindspot, creating a great deal of negative consequences and subversions of our aims and intentions.
Over-using or Over-emphasizing an Approach means being identified with the experience of that Approach, and thus, literally “approaching” situations using the Dominant Instinct’s Approaches to meet and address the needs of the Middle or Blindspot is a large part of what it means to “overemphasize” the Approach of the Dominant.
Self-Preservation Instinctual Approaches
These Approaches describe how the Self-Preservation Drive organizes attention, energy, and psychological boundaries to secure safety, support, and vitality. Whether the Self-Preservation instinct is dominant, secondary, or blind, these Approaches help us sense how we’re using or avoiding this instinct’s intelligence.
1. Grounding
Grounding is the capacity to center attention and energy within our bodies, but on a deeper level, it is drawing on that foundational, bodily rootedness to ground oneself in what is essential, stabilizing, and inwardly coherent. It is how we collect ourselves physically, emotionally, and psychologically so that we act from our inner center rather than react to external demands.
Grounding lends a downward, anchoring movement of energy. It clarifies what supports us, what we can stand on, and what constitutes “home” in any situation. This isn’t just about being steady, it’s about being dynamically responsive from a rooted base.
When present, Grounding helps us locate what is foundational in our lives, within relationships, environments, routines, and principles, and supports our nervous system’s ability to settle, regulate, and recover. It also creates an inner structure from which discernment and action naturally arise.
When overemphasized, Grounding can become rigidity, routine, and hoarding of objects, comfort, or structure. It can express as compulsive safety-seeking, excessive self-soothing, or a fear of disruption. We might cling to familiar routines or possessions, or develop a chronic need to “prep” for every outcome. We may live heavily, burdened by the very structures meant to support us.
When underemphasized, Grounding may show up as scattered attention, overwhelm, or a lack of rest and refuge. We might outsource our stability to others - romantic partners, friends, or institutions - and feel lost when left to anchor ourselves. The result is a chronic sense of instability, lack of orientation, or inability to digest life’s experiences.
2. Sensing
Sensing is the basic sensitivity to our inner state. It’s our moment-to-moment sense of being alive. This Approach is how the body speaks to our consciousness: through taste, touch, pain, pleasure, and subtle impressions of support or tension.
Sensing bridges attention with physical experience. It tunes us into how the environment is affecting us - somatically, psychologically, and energetically. This includes how we’re impacted by space, materials, temperature, and aesthetics. When Sensing is active, we can register what supports or depletes us without needing conceptual interpretation.
The Approach of Sensing is foundational to self-care and awareness. Without it, we miss the body’s signals such as hunger, fatigue, overstimulation, and we confuse thoughts about the body with actual bodily experience. Developing this Approach lets us partner with the body’s intelligence rather than override it.
When overemphasized, Sensing may be distorted by reactivity, past associations, or nervous system sensitivity. We may become hyper-identified with discomfort or sensation, prone to overwhelm, and seek control over our states through avoidance, restriction, or indulgence. It is typical to feel over-exposed to one’s own state, such that one feels fragile and can’t put attention and energy on anything but the body’s discomforts. Alternatively, we might pursue extreme sensations to feel “alive,” risking harm in the process.
When underemphasized, we may neglect the body, override discomfort, or treat it as a machine. This can manifest as chronic tension, poor boundaries, or reliance on substances to manage unacknowledged needs. We might appear resilient on the surface but feel estranged from ourselves and unable to listen inward or respond with care. An absence of Sensing can lead to either physical self-neglect or over-indulgence in destructive experiences and substances.
3. Pragmatism
Pragmatism is the Self-Preservation instinct’s capacity to organize energy around results. It is a steady and consistently-applied quality of attention and energy of the kind we employ when giving attention to food we’re cooking or making it through a set at the gym. Via this Approach, attention flows in a methodical, steady, goal-oriented way - breaking tasks into steps, managing resources, and creating systems that support vitality.
Pragmatism attunes us to cause and effect, sustainability, and long-term processes. It’s how we keep going, keep track, and make things work. Whether feeding ourselves, navigating a project, or caring for our inner life, Pragmatism helps us endure and implement. It tempers impulse with strategy, and supports follow-through over time.
When overemphasized, Pragmatism can become rigid, joyless, or utilitarian. We may evaluate relationships, experiences, or ourselves based only on productivity or efficiency. This can lead to burnout, tunnel vision, and detachment. Life force becomes constrained by what “needs” to happen, and little energy is expended creatively or for its own sake. We might hoard tasks or tools, become obsessively logical, or fall into “no pain, no gain” mentalities that override the body’s limits.
When underemphasized, we may struggle to break things down into manageable steps. Tasks feel overwhelming, incomplete, or perpetually delayed. Our ideas and inspirations may never materialize. There can be a childish, petulant, or helpless quality to someone who doesn’t integrate this Approach. We may romanticize creative or spiritual experiences but lack the grounded attention needed to bring them into form. Life becomes improvisational, without structure or sustainable support.
Sexual Instinctual Approaches
The Sexual Drive focuses attention and energy toward sexual attraction, sexual display, and creative vitality. These Approaches express how we pursue what excites and awakens us, seek energetic matches, dissolve boundaries, and emanate our unique energetic “flavor.” Whether dominant, secondary, or blind, the Approaches of the Sexual Instinct shape how we meet intensity, desire, and change.
1. Pursuing
Pursuing is the instinctual impulse to go directly toward what attracts, excites, or stimulates creative or interpersonal chemistry. It sharpens attention, intensifies energy, and tunes our inner radar to what galvanizes us. It can feel like “honing in,” zeroing in, or locking onto a specific person, goal, or possibility.
This is not necessarily the action of being in pursuit of someone. This Approach is describing an energetic “locking on.” It is the internal sensation of isolating something that is vitalizing and moving toward it with immediacy and intensity while tuning out everything else. Pursuing supplies the focused drive necessary for engaging in creative or erotic trajectories, drawing us to what holds transformative or enlivening potential.
Pursuing also contains a receptive aspect. Sometimes we’re the one chasing; other times, we surrender to being pursued or penetrated, riding the energetic current that arises between ourselves and the other. True Pursuing lets us build, contain, and hold charge without compulsively discharging it.
When overemphasized, Pursuing becomes compulsive: we’re always chasing the next hit of intensity, fixated on people or experiences that mirror unresolved dynamics. Life becomes a series of obsessions, idealizations, disillusionments, and withdrawals. We confuse transgression or excitation with transformation. Attention collapses onto specific objects or people as if they hold the source of life. Jealousy, possessiveness, or rapid burnout follow. We may confuse chemistry with love, or intimacy with fusion. Desire becomes a demand, not a doorway. Energy leaks through premature discharge, emotionally, sexually, creatively. Relationships become reenactments of unresolved Object Relations. This Approach, when untethered from presence, can feel vampiric, addictive, and destabilizing.
When underemphasized, we lose access to the part of us that knows what we want and moves toward it. There can be a lack of discernment around what is enlivening or an avoidance of transformative experiences altogether. Energy is diffuse, meandering, and easily distracted. We may feel passive, disengaged, or resigned - waiting for life or others to activate us. Others may find us aloof, energetically non-receptive, or hard to reach.
Without Pursuing, we may feel unvital, invisible, psychologically stagnant, or emotionally impotent. We may reject our desires, or view attraction with suspicion or shame. This can lead to loneliness specific to the Sexual Drive: a sense of being unfused, unrecognized, and unmet - not just by others, but by ourselves.
2. Magnetism
Magnetism is how the Sexual Drive broadcasts itself through presence, energy, display, and subtle signaling. It’s the means of revealing our “flavor,” our unique sexual energetic transmission, in ways that pull others in or repel others. It doesn’t aim to be liked or approved of. It aims to be felt, to leave an impression.
This Approach plays with presence and absence, push and pull. Eye contact, attention, voice, dress, timing, creative expression each becomes part of a courtship display, conscious or not. Magnetism creates mystery, provokes curiosity, and evokes attraction through tension. The Sexual Drive is not a motivation to be attractive and appealing to everybody and anybody. It’s a drive to find our sexual complements, which entails inviting repulsion and putting some people off. Repelling discordant energies is nearly as important as cultivating sexual attraction.
Energetically, this Approach feels like charging up our field and letting it radiate outward, then pulling back. It filters connection by evoking strong responses-attraction or repulsion-as a way of drawing complementary energies and dismissing incompatible ones. It’s not necessarily about being “sexy” in a conventional sense, it’s about letting our essence glow through the body and behavior. This Approach also represents a fascination with ourselves that isn’t narcissistic but a healthy, creative, and vitalizing self-interest that motivates us to attend to our “inner flame”, supporting us to remain dynamic and alive in self-discovery.
When overemphasized, Magnetism can become performative or provocative, fueled by insecurity or unmet needs for attention and sexual narcissism. We may dominate the room, consciously or unconsciously drawing sexual energy into spaces where it isn’t appropriate or wanted. Others may feel objectified, manipulated, or alienated, even when it's not our conscious intent. Sexual attention becomes a kind of currency, and we become addicted to being fascinating, captivating, or wanted. Over time, this can lead to burnout, shallow relationships, or unwanted projections. What was meant to attract becomes repellant or exhausting, for both ourselves and others.
When underemphasized, we may feel bland, invisible, or unremarkable. A vital part of us, our unique spark, remains unseen or undeveloped. We might struggle to receive attraction, deflect compliments, or feel awkward with flirtation. Our energy may feel wholesome but asexual, warm but flavorless. There is a way that we can be disinterested in ourselves and our inner life, diffusing or neglecting our creativity and parts of ourselves that seem impractical or don’t fit into practical plans or the expectations of others. Without this Approach, when “charged” attention comes our way, erotic or otherwise, we can not know what to do with it, becoming awkward and embarrassing ourselves.
Without access to Magnetism, we may unconsciously suppress desire, shame our erotic power, or experience our own radiance as dangerous or embarrassing. The result is a subtle self-alienation, a disconnect from the part of us that wants to be seen, felt, and energetically met. Neglecting this Approach leads us to neglecting to tend our inner spark.
3. Intensification
Intensification is the amplification of energy, excitation, and emotional charge both inwardly and interpersonally. It’s the Sexual Drive’s way of heightening sexual intensity to create impact, erotic tension, transformation, or a sense of aliveness. Intensification is necessary to drop the psychological barriers within oneself as well as between oneself and others. Sexual experience on both literal and psychological levels requires a loosening of boundaries, and the excitation of this Instinctual Approach provides both the charged energy for it and gives psychological “permission” to do so. This Approach isn’t just about drama or volume, it’s about turning up the frequency until something breaks through.
When this Approach is present, attention moves toward what’s vital, provocative, or charged. It stirs the air between people, magnifies feeling, and creates openings through emotional heat. Intensification isn’t always loud - it can be silent but penetrating, pressing on unspoken edges until something real emerges. It seeks depth through friction. This Approach brings the power to transform, ignite, and expose. When misused, it destabilizes or overwhelms. When avoided, it dulls life’s edges. But when presenced, Intensification becomes the fire of awakening - a heat that purifies, provokes, and reveals what wants to come alive.
When overemphasized, Intensification can become volatility, reactivity, or emotional combustion. We may unconsciously provoke, escalate, or dramatize situations to generate energy. Conflict, seduction, and intensity become substitutes for contact. Others may feel pressured, manipulated, or exhausted by our presence, even if we’re unaware of the effect.
This can create a “too much” quality. Excessively pushing or overstimulating ourselves and others in a way that burns through connection rather than deepens it. We might confuse activation with truth, or emotional arousal with intimacy. Our energy may spike and crash, leading to cycles of obsession and depletion.
When underemphasized, we may feel flat, uncharged, or incapable of penetrating our own emotional field let alone someone else’s. Life lacks vividness. Our interactions may feel polite but uninspired. We might fear taking up space, stirring the pot, or showing up in a way that makes waves.
In this state, we often settle, relationally, creatively, sexually, out of a fear that being “too much” will cost us love or safety. But the cost of suppression is the loss of our own depth, desire, and impact.
This should say “Availability”, but my graphic designer isn’t designing graphically anymore
Social Instinctual Approaches
The Social Instinct is concerned with connection, impact, place, and participation in the wider relational field. Its Approaches orient attention toward interpersonal presence, subtle relational cues, and the inner life of others. These qualities are not about extroversion or people-pleasing—they shape how we navigate groups, sense belonging, and attune to human systems.
1. Availability
Availability is opening and expanding one’s field of attention and psychological boundaries in a way that is receptive, available, and invitational. In exercising this Approach, we are not only open to others, we’re relaxed enough so as to be able to be fed by impressions of other people's presence and contact. This Approach is not about seeking anyone in particular but about softening one’s boundaries to allow others in, creating space where contact, connection, and resonance can happen. This gives us the capacity to attune to the emotional, energetic, and psychological atmosphere of others by being open and getting “out of our own way” for others. It’s a kind of active receptivity, an inclusive mode of awareness, encompassing both the social landscape as well as an attunement to the inner life of others, to read feelings, states, and intentions.
Whereas the Sexual and Self-Preservation instincts are often more directional and aimed toward a particular object or inwardly toward oneself, Availability is non-targeted. It’s an inclusive orientation toward the interpersonal field. It reads tone, body language, emotion, and social cues not by analyzing but through relaxed attunement. When Availability is active, the boundaries soften and awareness expands, particularly in the solar plexus and arms, and there may be a felt sense of “holding space.”
Overemphasized, Availability becomes porous and scattered. We lose discrimination. Our attention gets hijacked by whoever or whatever enters our field. We may appear “nice,” agreeable, and flexible, but underneath we’re off-center, disconnected from ourselves, and vulnerable to self-abandonment. Excessive Availability often manifests as anxious monitoring or people-pleasing and over-tuned to others’ moods, expectations, and judgments. This can lead to self-erasure or a collapse of boundaries as we try to avoid rejection or create harmony.
Underemphasized, a lack of Availability creates interpersonal constriction. We present as unavailable for others contact or attention. We can’t let others in or to read them clearly. The result is chronic loneliness, detachment, or being out of sync with social flow. Others may feel unseen by us or that we are too defended to be impacted by real contact. Others may feel unseen, misunderstood, or intruded upon.
2. Signaling
Signaling is how we broadcast who we are through body language, personal style, and energetic presence. It expresses our social identity and social flavor and communicates how we want to be seen and by whom. As social animals, we are constantly giving off data about the kind of person we are and continuously gathering data on who others seem to be, and much of human interaction is mediated through a vast array of symbolic, intuitive, and gestural communications as opposed to direct and clear communication.
We are also perpetually interpreting one another on a bodily level. Our presence has an effect on others and we can be aware of how our presence, our words, body language, and other avenues of communication impact and are received by others. Signaling, therefore, refers to an instinctual understanding of how we as social animals influence and impact one another, including how we are understood by others. It’s how we convey information about who we are, and how we can relate to one another in such a way as to harmonize disparate agendas. Someone adept at Signaling has charisma, for example. Charisma is far less about what is said than how something is conveyed in body language, tone, intonation, gesture, quality of attention, and expression.
Signaling is the Social Instinct’s version of Sexual Magnetism. From the perspective of this Approach, we recognize that we have a voice, figuratively or literally. Healthy Signaling provides a felt sense that we have something to contribute because, by our very existence, we are always impacting the people around us. This Approach is a sensitivity and awareness to that impact and the means by which that impact is directed or skillfully managed.
When overemphasized, Signaling becomes performative or image-obsessed. We shape our identity around how we’re seen, leading to branding, posturing, or chronic self-curation. We may over-identify with roles, ideologies, or group identities and fear being seen as contradictory or “off-message.” Others may feel a subtle falseness or strategic quality in our expression. It can become an addictive need for visibility or a hyper-fixation on being seen in a particular way, as valuable, as cool, or simply preoccupation with not embarrassing ourselves. Relationships become more about selling an image of ourselves than actual contact.
When underemphasized, we may struggle to represent or communicate who we are in ways others can register or respond to, and thus, we can be energetically “blank” or too mysterious for others to orient themselves to. We may feel unseen, misunderstood, or misrepresented. Even when we’re sincere, our presence may seem muffled, muted, or energetically vague. Others may sense us as absent, overly private, or hard to engage. A lack of Signaling can lead to feelings of social invisibility and under-recognition. We might be full of value, creativity, or substance, but without this Approach, there’s no transmission.
Social Approach: Navigating
Navigating is the instinctual capacity to sense and track social structures, dynamics, roles, and hierarchies and how we “fit” in a social field and what’s happening within it. This Approach is akin to Self-Preservation’s Pragmatism, in that it's a kind of consistently applied attention, but one applied to the flow of social information. Using this Approach attunes us to the social field in such a way that we can read what’s occurring in interpersonal situations and skillfully operate in coordination with whatever boundaries, rules, expectations, or dynamics need to be honored. Where Availability makes contact, Navigating orients us within the context of that contact by tracking both body language in individuals and the flow of interpersonal interactions. It’s the felt awareness of the rules, flow, expectations, and emotional subcurrents within a social space. It is how we “read the room,” track unspoken dynamics, and pick up on micro-signals like posture, tone, eye movement, facial tension, silences. Attention moves outward with curiosity, picking up the felt sense of the other without necessarily making it explicit.
This Approach gives us the intelligence to adapt: to know when to speak and when to hold back, to shift roles fluidly, and to sense how to contribute meaningfully. It reads the “layout” of a room, a culture, a group, or even a one-on-one exchange and recognizes how energy is distributed and what’s possible within the given structure.
Navigating also opens the door for us to plug into something greater than personal interest. It’s the instinctive mechanism by which we align ourselves with larger purposes, mutual goals, and collective participation. This is the approach that knows how to coordinate, collaborate, and function politically — not in the manipulative sense, but in recognizing the many moving parts of human systems. It helps us see our place in the bigger picture and respond with intelligence, empathy, and flexibility. It roots our actions in relational discernment.
Overemphasized, Navigating becomes over-calculation. We become obsessed with social perception, roles, rules, or status. Our identity fuses with our function, and we shape-shift compulsively to gain approval or stay relevant. Intuited social dynamics and boundaries come to be interpreted as if they were concrete facts or objects. We may become territorial, performative, overly strategic, or anxious about our social place. The instinct begins to serve the ego’s need for affirmation or superiority.
Underemphasized, Navigating creates a kind of social illiteracy. We may struggle to understand how our actions impact others or misread social cues entirely. We’re clumsy, too blunt, or oblivious to timing, tone, and collective flow. Without this instinct online, we may flounder in relationships, careers, or communities, not out of lack of heart, but lack of contextual awareness. An absence of this Approach can result in failing to find a vocation to devote ourselves to, and as a result, we can fail to develop gifts, talents, and skills that would otherwise open up new vistas and possibilities in our lives.