Soul Joy: Ditch Burnout and Fall in Love with Life

The Neuroscience of Exhaustion

• Dr. Julie Merriman • Season 1 • Episode 9

Share episode

Send us your thoughts!

What does it really mean to experience exhaustion in the helping professions? Join me, Dr. Julie Merriman, as I uncover the neuroscience behind this pressing issue, sharing deeply personal stories from my own life, including my husband's courageous battle with brain cancer and a recent heart-pounding escapade with some unruly calves. We will dissect the hidden dangers of burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma faced by caregivers and healthcare workers, revealing how these stressors can lead to severe mental and physical health problems if left unmanaged. 

In the latter part of our discussion, I'll underscore the critical need for integrating self-care into our daily lives. Don't miss the chance to access exclusive weekly PDFs and a free seven-day self-care activity by joining my email list at juliemerrimanphd.com. Plus, learn why subscribing and leaving reviews on the podcast platform of your choice is crucial for expanding our community. Let’s navigate the challenges of helping others together, and ensure we support ourselves in the process.

Speaker 1:

Hey y'all, I'm Dr Julie Merriman and welcome to SoulJoy. So in today's episode we're going to explore the neuroscience of exhaustion. It's real, it's well-researched and we're going to talk about it. This, I believe, is foundational in sustainable, holistic self-care, also known as wellness. Okay, so here we are. It is a new week. It is a fun week, is it? I don't know, I'll just say it is Okay. So I'm so glad y'all are here. I appreciate you taking time to plug in and you know, take care of you. This is about you taking care of you. So, friend, I want to talk about the importance of understanding what all's behind self-care and that lies in the neuroscience. But before I jump there, just give you a little bit about what's going on at the Merriman House.

Speaker 1:

We have had a busy week. Kelly is getting stronger, my husband's getting stronger every day, so you can beat brain cancer. He's actually out moving cows and trying to get the crops under control and things that have just kind of not been a priority as we've been playing hospital roulette. But it's a better time. So this week we had some pretty big cows, calves, out in the pasture that needed to go to the cell barn and I'm telling you these puppies were crazy. It has been years probably 30 years since we had a batch of calves that were chasing us up on the fence and just not having it. Man, they did not want to get in that trailer. I really felt like we were living an episode of Yellowstone, but we survived. Cows got in the trailer, all is well. But life, you know, life is, it's fun. We are living such a fun life right now. My husband and I and I just wanted to share that little adrenaline rush with you. It was fun. Well, it was terrifying at the time, but it's fun now that I look back at it it's over. But back to professional helpers.

Speaker 1:

As y'all know, this podcast is dedicated to preventing and overcoming the occupational hazards of the career we chose, and that's to help others. And I specifically look at burnout and compassion, fatigue, and again, I always say, yeah, let's throw in a little vicarious trauma as well, because that certainly is a component of the occupational hazards. So this week let's look at the neuroscience of exhaustion. Neuroscience fascinates me. I bring it into my therapy sessions with my patients a lot because it's just so fascinating how our brain is wired and how, you know, sigmund Freud at the turn of the century was really talking about some of these things that we can now back up with pictures of the brain, you know, mris and brain imaging showing where our brain is firing in various places. I just find it fascinating In this.

Speaker 1:

I believe it's all but impossible to separate the person of the helper from the person of the personal life, just as professional helpers, we show up in the world very differently from, say, if we were, I don't know, a checker at the grocery store. I've never done that, but I have been an aerobic instructor and I could certainly leave that at the gym. So it's just when we're helpers our brain starts wiring different. We approach every situation just a wee bit differently because of the career we've chosen. You know y'all, it's who we are. We're here to help. Research shows us that more than 78% of professional helpers are impacted by these occupational hazards of our field. And again, that's burnout, compassion, fatigue and vicarious trauma. And research also shows us that if these constructs are left unattended, they're going to rob you of the quality of your life, y'all. If we continue to ignore the situation and leave these constructs unattended, they can even lead to life threatening illnesses.

Speaker 1:

I believe the breast cancer that I went through last year. I was just thinking about that. I was walking out to the mailbox a moment ago. It was last October, so I'm almost a year out from my reconstruction. My double mastectomy was in July a year ago, but I firmly believe that that cancer could be traced back to all the stress and trauma and heartache I had gone through and not managing my life as well as I should have. I mean, you know I preach this stuff, I try my best to manage. But I'd really been hit with not only I was working as a dean at a university. My stepdad had gone through leukemia and died and I was my mother's caretaker. My husband had gone through melanoma that was spreading throughout his body and had just undergone a brain surgery to remove brain cancer, the melanoma that spreads to his brain. We'd moved to Arizona for treatment, just plus I was seeing clients. I mean, I just had a lot of things hitting me that impacted me tremendously. I was very compassion fatigued, I was very burned out and there was a lot of vicarious trauma and I believe that had something to do with the breast cancer I experienced. So that's what I'm saying.

Speaker 1:

These constructs can, if we ignore them, they can lead to life-threatening illnesses. Sadly, many helpers suffer in silence, as we often feel shame for being impacted, thinking that we've done something wrong, instead of stepping back and seeking out support and understanding that this is just an occupational hazard that we need to be aware of. If we become impacted, there is no shame, y'all. All it really means is that we've given more than we have to give, and we know this job that we do is hard and demanding, and these occupational hazards cause us to relive negative events that we have either walked others through or witnessed. Right, they make us feel very hyper, aroused. See, we get terribly exposed. We've been exposed so much to a lot of negative life experience, a lot of negative life materials, vicariously from all these people that we're helping.

Speaker 1:

And the interesting piece here, y'all, is that our brain doesn't know that all this traumatic material is not ours personally. See, when we're really good at connecting with those that we're helping, our brain cannot discern between our stuff and their stuff. I know that's crazy, but it's true. When our brain responds as if it's our stuff, this triggers our polyvagal system and we get a dump of all those negative hormones. They get dumped cortisol and just all the negative hormones that go, with our polyvagal system being triggered, those hormones get dumped into our system and we cannot will them away any more than we could will away the effects of having drank two bottles of wine. You have to allow your system to metabolize those hormones and in that we experience the side effects of those hormones and in that we experience the side effects of those hormones and y'all, when we are chronically exposed to this state from being helpers. This puts a strain on our cognitive skills and our neuroendocrine I can't say it neuroendocrine system. Left unattended, this impacts our body, our minds and our souls and y'all this. Again, it's nothing to be ashamed about. This occurs because you're good at what you're doing, you're connected with those that you're helping, but your body is responding when or if we leave these things unattended and our body, mind and soul becomes impacted. You begin to feel lonely and powerless. You find yourself getting sick more frequently. You feel empty and again, it's because you're good at what you do. You're at risk for being impacted. No man, you're not crazy, you're not weak, you're not broken.

Speaker 1:

I've done research studies with police departments here in Texas and as I'm doing the mental health component I mean it's been a team of us. We've got medical lab science folks looking at cortisol. We've got criminal justice folks getting us into the police stations departments and then you've got the mental health people myself giving mental health assessments, like the PHQ-9 and the GAD-7 and other instruments. We're looking at compassion, fatigue and burnout and all those things that happen to first responders and what I hear, have heard so many of those officers and law enforcement worried about that. They don't want to be flagged if something's wrong with them, if they're being impacted by what life is dishing out to them. I mean it's hard to work a birder case or it's hard to be continually badgered by someone. I mean I'm married to a state trooper, genuinely badgered by someone, maybe you. I mean I'm married to a state trooper. When he stops cars, people get pissed off and say ugly things to him. I mean you know he responds very professionally but it still impacts his person to hear those things. So where I'm going with that, you're not crazy and you're not weak and you're not broken and you're not weak and you're not broken. My youngest son is a firefighter and I've listened to his stories from the station. I mean they see some horrendous things. You can't help but be impacted by these things. But again, you're not weak, you're not broken, you're not crazy, you're good at what you're doing.

Speaker 1:

The only tweak that needs to be made is to adopt holistic, sustainable self-care and hop on the road to healings, and by healing that really is. If you think about the armor that oh these superhero movies about the armor that, oh these superhero movies. And Iron man, let's say, iron man is that one? I think it might be, but the suit that he wears. Robert Downey Jr I forget what the movie is, but he, you know, he plays that guy that gets in the suit and he's able to fly and do whatever. We don't have a suit like that to put on, but sustainable, holistic self-care acts as such to protect us from these occupational hazards of our field. No-transcript. That leads to healing body, mind and soul.

Speaker 1:

So it's important to learn to hold space for you and your feelings. As a professional helper, we spend so much time focusing on others that we neglect us. We do, we just do so. I want to share a tool that can help get you on the road to healing and, if you'll listen, all of my podcasts leave you with a tool. I share an activity in every podcast. I am a very not going to sit on your ass kind of therapist. If you're with me, we're going to be doing stuff, and these activities are things I've used over the years with my clients in my therapy room that I found helpful. So every podcast I share one. If you've missed podcast, I invite you to go back to the beginning, because I also talk about the body scan that I think is so important. I give you the thought model, the superpower model that helps you manage your mind, and I also talk about the chakra system. I don't talk about it in every podcast, but anything we do, I invite you to take through a body scan, a superpower model, and check out which chakra is being impacted.

Speaker 1:

So today I want to take you through what I call the three-step release formula and this can help to just kind of get your mind wrapped around. Where am I with sustainable self-care, holistic sustainable self-care? Where am I with this? How am I being impacted? That I might need to address as I'm designing my sustainable self-care. So step one in this three-step release formula and also y'all this is a good formula to use if you've had a really rough day and you're carrying a lot of heavy energy, heavy, dark energy from folks that you've worked with all day, and you just need to clean your energy centers and let's go home with clear energy so I can enjoy my family.

Speaker 1:

So step one is to welcome the feeling Now. This means you focus on the issue that you want to feel better about. Simply feel the feeling and allow yourself to feel whatever you're feeling in the moment. There's no right or wrong. There's no I should or I could. There's just being and noticing in that moment what you're feeling. Notice also where you're feeling this in your body. Where is the feeling showing up. And I want you to welcome the feeling. Y'all. It is what it is. And then I want you to grab your journal and write about it, because that is very therapeutic. We can think about it all day long, but you need to get it out of your head and onto paper. So that's step one.

Speaker 1:

Step two I want you to ask yourself these three questions. Question one could I let this feeling go? Now, remind yourself that you can let any emotion go. It's like dropping something that you're holding. Say, you're holding a pen in your hand. You just drop it. You could let any emotion go. So you just ask yourself could I let this feeling go?

Speaker 1:

The second question is would I let this feeling go? The second question is would I let this feeling go? Excuse me, consider whether you would rather hold on to the pain, the stress and suffering or would you prefer to be free. Would I let this feeling go or would you prefer to be free? Would I let this feeling go? And I could go on a tirade about this. Just personally, I have chosen to hold on to pain and suffering and stupid things that I would perseverate in lieu of just letting it go so I could be free At 60,.

Speaker 1:

I've figured it out and I've let most of it go, and I'm the one who's free. But that's a really good question to ask yourself. Would I let this feeling go? And if not, there's even a what about holding on to this is helping, you know, okay? So the third question is when? If I would let this feeling go, when? So set a time. What you're doing here is creating an invitation to do it now. Yes, I want to let this go and bite gumballs on doing it right now and just picture it in your hands and you're dropping it. Just let it go.

Speaker 1:

So that's step two. You ask yourself those three questions and then we move on to step three and in step three you repeat this process until you feel free, y'all. In some cases it's going to be quick, it's ripe, it's ready to go, it goes. In others it's going to take time and repetition and practice to let it go. You repeat the process of letting go and you find that you can let go a little more each time. Now, keep in mind y'all, this is a heart thing, not a head thing. So you might want to do a body scan where you're really focusing on that heart chakra and see if there's any tight energy there and try to see if deep breathing or some grounding or a walk outside might help you release some of that. So that's the three-step method, or the three-step formula, or the three-step formula.

Speaker 1:

And if you join my email list, I follow up these podcasts with a. I email out the podcast but I also email out a PDF to the activity that I've gone over. If you want to join up on my email list, you can go to my website, juliemerrimanphdcom, and I have a seven-day self-care activity there that it's free, but that will get you on my mailing list and I'd love to have you on there so I can get these PDFs to you each week. So, okay, that's it for today. Please subscribe to this podcast. Wherever you listen, please leave a review. It really helps me to reach more people and again, I'd love to hear from you. So until next time you take care of you.