Soul Joy: Ditch Burnout and Fall in Love with Life

Achieving Soul Joy: Holistic Self-Care for Professional Helpers

• Dr. Julie Merriman • Season 1 • Episode 10

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Ever wondered how to truly achieve "soul joy" through holistic self-care? Join me, Dr. Julie Merriman, as I share a heartwarming personal story about my horse, Rex, and the immense joy that our fur babies can bring into our lives. Together, we'll explore how professional helpers can combat burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma by incorporating evidence-based holistic practices. Say goodbye to those frazzled, confusing moments and embrace a life filled with wellness, purpose, and a refreshed sense of self. Remember, the journey to well-being requires consistent effort and a structured self-care plan.

Stay connected and motivated by subscribing to my email list for weekly updates, including new podcast episodes and an exclusive PDF of related activities. Take the first step towards a better you by joining my seven-day self-care challenge on www.juliemerrimanphd.com. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on your favorite platform and leave a review to help us grow our community. Your feedback is invaluable, and I'm excited to engage with each of you on this transformative journey.

Speaker 1:

Hey y'all, I'm Dr Julie Merriman and welcome to SoulJoy. In today's episode, we will look at how holistic, sustainable self-care I also call wellness creates SoulJoy. I also call wellness creates soul joy. Y'all, this understanding is really essential in maintaining holistic, sustainable self-care. Okay, so I said it seems like I said that a lot huh, holistic sustainable self-care. Well, I really believe in it and I probably did. But hang with me. I'm going to tell you why I think this is so important and how I believe it leads to soul joy. So I welcome you and I thank you so much for dropping by today to listen to this episode. I hope you're returning and I hope you're telling friends about this podcast. I want to help professional helpers live the most joyful life that we can. So before we get going, I'd like to tell y'all just a hot bit about what's going on here at the Merriman House and all that's coming to me today. I mean, it's been a pretty good week.

Speaker 1:

I keep thinking about my horse, rex. He is gosh. I love him. Horses are just. They're really just like big dogs. I think they are so unique and have the most. They all have such personalities. Of course our cows do too. Every cow has their own little personality, but Rex, he loves food. Now, I don't think he's unique in that, but he thinks that when the cows get cubes, he too should have these cubes, and these cubes aren't really made for horses. The other day we were out doing some work with some of the cattle and I looked around and Rex had gotten into the back of the truck and had torn open a bag of cubes. It took, oh, it took a lot to get that horse out of those cubes, but he did. I got him out of the cubes and, and I'm happy to say, I just saw him out in the pasture. He's fine. He evidently has adjusted to being able to eat these cubes. So anyway that's. I just thought I was just thinking about Rex today and just how special he is.

Speaker 1:

I'm sure y'all have a special fur baby in your life as well, and I'd love to hear about them. Fur babies, I think, really help us when it comes to self-care, when it comes to having joy in our life. Those fur babies, just especially when and I know not everyone listening is an empty nester, but when you are an empty nester, those fur babies really move into a special spot in your life. So Rex is just one of our big fur babies. So, okay, professional hoppers, this podcast is dedicated to preventing and overcoming the occupational hazards of this career that we've chosen, and specifically looking at burnout and compassion fatigue. But we can't negate how vicarious trauma pops in there as well. It sure does, I think.

Speaker 1:

Today we're really going to focus on how holistic, sustainable self-care helps to create the soul joy that I talk about a lot. And for me, soul joy is really that process of falling back in love with yourself and your life. And to fall back in love with yourself and y'all I'm talking about, and to fall back in love with yourself and y'all I'm talking about. I'm going back to when I crashed and burned with my horrible burnout stuff back I was in my late 40s. I'm 60 now, so it's been a few years back but I really had to go in and create some self-support which I'll talk to you about later and I'm going to leave you with an activity around that. But I didn't have any self-support and you know that leads to self-efficacy and just that belief in yourself and just the belief in yourself that you're worth the effort.

Speaker 1:

If you don't have that soul joy is going to be elusive and creating some really yummy, holistic, sustainable self-care helps you get there. Creating some really yummy, holistic, sustainable self-care helps you get there. So here's what I believe this type of self-care helps you get to and, first and foremost, it's wellness. It gets you to wellness. Now, research has also helped me uncover that sustainable, holistic self-care helps you overcome feeling frazzled and confused and, just you know, drained and really, I sum it up, it helps you overcome that just blah feeling, just where you know nothing sounds good. Just thinking about doing your hair feels like a chore. Or, guys maybe, shaving feels like a chore. You know, everything that is involved in life just feels like a chore and you're just overcome with this feeling of blah. This type of self-care encompasses holistic practices that are evidence-based, and these practices help you balance your energies, reframe your brain and take control of your destiny. Can I hear an amen Take control of your destiny. And amen, take control of your destiny.

Speaker 1:

When you practice this type of self-care consistently, you're going to feel refreshed, you're going to find your purpose and passion and feel filled to the brim with these, and you feel confident. You know you're able to own all of you. So I screw something up? Meh, it's going to be okay. It's not the end of the world. So I did something fabulous. I'm going to feel good about that. But no, there's lots more to come. You feel good about relationships. You feel connected again. You care about relationships, you take time for relationships. You take time to do your hair. Every day feels like a, a gift. That blah feeling has passed you by. However, y'all this kind of self-care and I I say it a lot because it's true, it's not one and done it takes every day effort.

Speaker 1:

You don't just happen upon it, you architect it, is that something, you build it, there's a blueprint for it, you have a plan and you respect your plan. And, as a professional helper, you know there's going to be days where you barely make it home. I mean, I can remember when I was running a psych unit. I get out to the car and I mean I just live a few blocks from the hospital, but I would think I don't even know how to start this car, let alone get home. How do I even get home? I was just so drained and exhausted and that happens as professional helpers. There's going to be days where you barely make it home and you don't know how in the world. You're going to have the energy to see a plan through.

Speaker 1:

I need you to make space to be okay with those days, because with holistic, sustainable self-care, you've got those days covered. You've got something in place, and maybe it's not the full-blown plan, but it's a plan B. Let's call it emergency plan if you will. That this is what I'm going to do when I'm having those kind of days and maybe it's as simple as I'm going to lay on that sofa and I'm going to call in a pizza and we're going to be okay that we have just a kind of chill veggie evening Beautiful, that's part of holistic self-care, that's great.

Speaker 1:

But you've got to be okay with yourself when those days happen and put all those shoulds, as Alice would say, all those mustapatory things. Get rid of those, because those messages are robbing you from feeling at peace with having had a really rough day and I'm going to have a really chill evening and it's fine. You've got those rough days covered. And it's important, y'all, when we do have those rough days because, depending on your caseload and if you're law enforcement or first responder, whatever it might be you're doing it's important that you have that plan B in place and have those really rough days covered, because you don't want to revert to those numbing behaviors that lead you further down the road of burnout.

Speaker 1:

And numbing behaviors I'm talking about over drinking, over shopping, over Netflixing, over scrolling. I mean the numbing behaviors. We need to be cognizant of what those are and where those are and not build those into our plan because those don't help us. Those do not help us fold soul joy into our life. This plan and practicing new behaviors help to rewire your brain because it's neuroscience. I think last episode we talked about the neuroscience of exhaustion. There's neuroscience of soul joy too, and what you're doing is you're rewiring your brain to these healthy behaviors, to these non-numbing behaviors that lead you to the holistic, sustainable self-care that results in soul joy. But you have to practice these new behaviors on a consistent basis because that helps that rewire, lead to wellness and I promise, as I said a moment ago, you're going to have bad days where you're just exhausted, but y'all, I don't know if it's hormonal, I don't know if it's just some days or just some days, but you're going to have effort days.

Speaker 1:

You are, I promise, and it doesn't mean you failed, it doesn't mean you've done anything wrong, it just means you're human and today you're allowing an effort day. You're going to love yourself through it and you're going to acknowledge that. While today is an Effort Day, I've had fewer and fewer of those since I've been practicing this holistic, sustainable self-care. I promise you're never going to get to 100% of not having an F? It day. Um, I mean, I'm not. Well, yeah, I do.

Speaker 1:

I build in a plan for those days and I hold self-compassion for myself for those days and I dig deep and think what's really going on here. Maybe it's the anniversary of my daddy's death. Maybe it's the anniversary of something other horrible that's gone on in life. That we just need to hold a little space for yourself. That's okay. We allow that. We allow those. Well, like I said, we allow those days and we don't browbeat ourselves about being a failure. Oh, I screwed it up. That's not the case. The case is that you have a plan and these effort days are actually part of that plan, and that's okay.

Speaker 1:

We're looking for consistency that leads to change, that leads to falling back in love with your life. Again, we're rewiring our brain. There's neuroscience going on. This consistency becomes the superhighway to your soul joy, y'all. You're going to feel better, you're going to look better, you're going to live better. Soul joy is full of vibrant life that is protected by holistic, sustainable self-care, also known as wellness. And, as I mentioned in the beginning, a foundation to this type of self-care is having a strong belief in self-support, having that tank full.

Speaker 1:

So let me walk you through an activity that I call the self-support worksheet. Now, I just noticed, before I start this activity, I just noticed that our neighbors are on their ranch today and they've got a shooting range. I don't know why they put it so close to our house, but it is, and I just heard them shooting. So if you hear that in the background, just know we are out in the middle of nowhere in Texas and it's perfectly okay. It's just a target practice and everyone's okay. Okay, back to self-support worksheet.

Speaker 1:

So I invite you to just open some space for this and just be open. So there's several strategies here. We've got strategy number one, which is I call four memories, and in this I want y'all to know that self-support is about building a strong, nurturing relationship with yourself, as if you're the best friend you've always wanted. You trust yourself, you keep your word to yourself, you respect and honor yourself. This self-support translates to a healthy practice and a healthy life. You're putting your needs first, and that is necessary.

Speaker 1:

So I want you to grab a piece of paper, just a piece of printing paper or a legal pad, or just if your kids have some notebook paper. Just grab a piece of paper and I want you to fold it into quadrants. So fold it in half and then fold it in half again, and in each quadrant you're going to draw a memory of a time with yourself, just you. This offers an opportunity to explore your relationship with yourself and to recognize areas for growth. And again, no judgment. We only bring curiosity to this activity.

Speaker 1:

So I mean, stop the podcast, get out some colored pencils, markers maybe you just want a ballpoint pen. This is not meant to. I mean, you don't have to be an artist to do this. It could be stick figures. You, just, in each quadrant, you draw memory of you with yourself, something. If it's you and yourself, it could be any kind of memory from any time in life. So allow yourself some time to do that and when you've done that, pop the podcast back on and we'll process.

Speaker 1:

So what we're going to do once we've drawn the, once you've drawn the pictures. I want you to sit with them for just a hot minute. And once you've sat with them for a hot minute, I want you to go back and label each picture with an emotion. Now you could really go big with this and turn on your iPhone or whatever kind of phone you have and turn it to video and make a video of yourself processing each memory and then play back the video and make notes on the picture of any epiphanies that come up for you while you do this. I have found when I record like that and watch it again, I really go deeper with my work than I would just just the writing. But I want you to hold space for emotions that come up and stay curious and stay the observer for each of those emotions. And you know, if you have a therapist, you might take this activity to your therapist and process it with him or her and process it with him or her.

Speaker 1:

So that is the four memories activity and I hope that you find that helpful. I find it really valuable when I have to, when I'm working on my self-care plan and I'm wanting to update it because I think again, I've told you before, but I believe we need to update it at least quarterly. Going in and doing my self-support worksheet really helps me garner an understanding of where I am in this moment in time with support, because it ebbs and flows. I'd love to say that we do it and it's there forever, but y'all, we can do this and a life event happens and we go backwards, and that's okay. I found we don't go backwards quite as far, but we need to allow space for that and love ourself through it and get back to our self-care as soon as we can. Okay, so that's it for today.

Speaker 1:

I do invite you to subscribe to my email list to get the weekly email where I email out these podcasts and the PDF of the activity. If you go to my website and sign up for my seven-day self-care challenge, you can get on my email list and I'll get those to you on a regular basis. My website is wwwjuliemerrimanphdcom. So please subscribe to the podcast. Wherever you listen to podcast, please leave a review, which helps me reach more people, and I would love to hear from you. So until next time, take care of you.