Burnout, Boundaries & the Enneagram: A Map for Coming Home to Yourself
A photo of the Country House in the fall.
October carries its own kind of velocity. It’s a time of year that asks a lot of us with Q4 deadlines stacking up and school routines being in full swing. Whether you may be conscious of it or not, it’s a time when burnout can start creeping in.
What Does Burnout Look Like for You?
What does burnout even look like, though? I think it might be about missing your own signals because you're focused on everyone else's, or the things going on around you. It’s knowing you need to rest but choosing to research flights instead, convincing yourself you're being productive. (Ask me how I know.) For my clients, it can be saying “yes” to that next meeting because being busy feels better than looking exhaustion in the face.
The Enneagram as a Compassionate Lens
This is where the Enneagram can be a compassionate lens. It helps name not just what we do under stress, but why. Our patterns can be predictable, and they often come from a deep need for safety, love, or control.
Sevens, like me, will do almost anything to avoid discomfort. Instead of sitting with the stress of a looming project that doesn’t light me up, I found myself down a rabbit hole trying to plan a trip I’d already told myself I didn’t need to plan yet. It was pure distraction, but it felt familiar. Familiarity can often masquerade as safe.
Familiar Isn't Always Home
That’s when we can get in a pinch: we confuse what feels familiar with what is good for us. In this case, I’m speaking to a good home.
Growing up, my family and I lived in a home we later called the “Country House”. It was my home for 20-ish years, and my main base as I bopped around in my 20s, as well as foundation for us as we began having kids in our 30s. There was something magical about it, and other people noticed, too. They could feel it when they walked in the front door. A favorite ritual of mine there: we’d gather around the piano before leaving to head back to our own houses (my house, my sister’s house, our friends’ houses), singing songs together while my mom played. A frequent hit was the song, "Feels Like Home” by Chantal Kreviazuk.
Thinking about this blog post - the meaning of familiar versus home - is the line: "Feels like home to me. Feels like I'm all the way back where I belong."
The Country House is the kind of home I want to come back to - the home of what’s true in myself. It’s a home I can take with me, inside of me, wherever I go.
Knowing Your Type, Not Just Your Triggers
I don’t want to come home to conditioned responses or default patterns. I want the one that feels intuitively right, even if it’s uncomfortable.
When we look through the Enneagram lens, we see that each type responds to stress in a patterned way. For instance,
Type 2 leans harder into helping others, avoiding their own needs.
Type 6 spirals in worst-case-scenario thinking.
Type 8 doubles down on control, trying to power through.
These patterns can keep us from the grounded center of who we really are. They are simply strategies of what we know best. Sometimes, though, what we know well isn’t what we need.
The Power of Naming It
Naming the pattern is often the first shift. Language helps bring our prefrontal cortex online, allowing us to pause, reflect, and - maybe - choose differently.
That’s where I think the boundaries come in. Sometimes these can bump up against real fears that we have.
For a Type 2, it might mean saying no even when someone seems to need you.
For a Type 6, it could be pausing the doomsday planning and asking: What else might be true?
For a Type 8, maybe it’s letting someone else take the lead or trusting you can just “ride the wave” instead of trying to control it.
These boundaries help us come home to ourselves.
Coming Home
So as the leaves turn and the pace quickens, notice what you are defaulting to that may not be helping you. Then ask: Is this the kind of home I want to come back to? Or is it just what I’ve always known?
Coming home to yourself is a truth. It means noticing when you’re running on autopilot and choosing to return to what feels deeply right.
Maybe that’s a walk without your phone. Maybe it’s naming the thing that’s weighing on you. Maybe it’s singing an old song around the piano.
Whatever it is, may it feel like home because it brings you back to who you really are.