Self-Sabotage vs Sense of Self

How often do you find yourself teetering on the edge of burnout, unsure of who you’ve become? Today, Dr. Julie Merriman shares her raw and honest journey through the maze of self-sabotage, burnout, and rediscovering a resilient sense of self. This episode of SoulJoy is a deep dive into the essential elements of creating a holistic, sustainable self-care plan that fortifies your mental wellness. We recount the real-life events that tested the Merriman household, from demanding home renovations to life-altering personal challenges, showing how even the strongest among us can falter without proper self-care.

Drawing from her professional expertise and personal battles, Dr. Merriman opens up about the occupational hazards faced by professional helpers. She examines the pressures of burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma that can erode one's mental fitness. Through candid anecdotes and practical advice, this episode offers a heartfelt guide to maintaining a strong sense of self, ensuring you’re mentally equipped to face life's adversities head-on. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or just beginning your self-care journey, tune in for invaluable insights and strategies to keep yourself grounded and resilient.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey y'all, I'm Dr Julie Merriman and welcome to SoulJoy. In today's episode we're going to explore Sense of Self or Self to Sabotage Okay. So, as always, this is a key element in maintaining holistic, sustainable self-care, also known as wellness. Okay, so that might have been confusing, shocking. Let me explain a little bit more of what I'm talking about here. When we're looking at really holistic, sustainable self-care, we really need to understand that we need to put self-sabotage, kick it to the curb and really develop a healthy whole sense of self. So we're going to look at that a bit today. Develop a healthy whole sense of self. So we're going to look at that a bit today. But, friend, I am so glad that you have tuned in today and hop back onto the podcast. It just makes my heart happy to do this podcast.

Speaker 1: 1:16

I want to give you just a hot update about what's going on at the Merriman house. I don't know if y'all remember we recently redid the bedroom, loved it, turned out beautiful. And then I looked at the bathroom and I was like, well, that master bath ain't going to work anymore. So we're in the process of remodeling that bathroom and I tell you I admire builders because just the decisions I had to make to get things going in that bathroom. Oh, my lanta decision fatigue. In fact, I procrastinated for quite a bit because I was just overwhelmed with the decisions, but I've gotten that done and I'm excited to see how that's going to turn out. So that's what's going on at the Merrimans. So, okay, professional helpers, that's what's going on at the Merrimans. So okay, professional helpers, this podcast is dedicated to preventing and overcoming the occupational hazards of this career that we've chosen, and those are burnout, compassion, fatigue and let's not forget the neglected, vicarious trauma. We see a lot of stuff and our brain reacts to a lot of stuff, so we need to be sure that we have a really holistic, sustainable self-care plan in place, okay, and this podcast is designed to help you with that. So today, let's further explore this topic of having a sense of self, or are we self-sabotaging? As I mentioned, self sense of self is elemental in our mental wellness, and I didn't say it just like that. But when I talk about wellness and holistic, sustainable self-care, I'm talking about mental wellness. We need to be mentally fit, not only because we're professional helpers, but because we're humans and life is better when we're mentally fit. So if you've read my book.

Speaker 1: 3:22

You know, I went through a pretty bad period when I crashed and burned. I did everything I'm telling y'all not to do. I woke up one morning, y'all, and I honestly did not recognize who I'd become. I'd been out of body for so long I mean for so long I didn't even see that somehow I'd become the professional or the seasoned professional at work. I was no longer that big eyed newbie, I was the seasoned professional and I mean I had been out of body. I had no clue of how that time had passed. I didn't know what the hell had happened. Truth be told, I mean I was just. I was spiraling. Sadly, at that same time as I mentioned, I was really deep in my own burnout and I felt yeah, I just felt so broken. It really was a living hell, it was miserable and I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

Speaker 1: 4:34

I'm going to spare you the gnarly deets. I've outlined them in gory detail in my book, but let's just suffice it to say that many life events that would tip that life event scale that we use with our clients, it would tip that scale into me being at severe risk for breakdown. And it had occurred. All these life events had occurred on top of my burnout condition. I mean, it went from husband losing jobs, kids moving out of the house and just all kinds of gory details in between. Let's just suffice to say I was not in a good headspace to deal with any of these things and I didn't deal with them with grace at all.

Speaker 1: 5:33

I and and you know, the really sad thing is that I was so unaware at the time of how burned out I was, of how burned out I was, and I had so much, I lacked so much self-awareness that I truly thought well, I'm a therapist, I'm bulletproof, none of this stuff is going to impact me. Ha, let me just say that again. Ha, I was in this coma state brought on by all these life changes and this burnout, and in this mind headspace that I was a therapist, so I'm bulletproof. I just soldiered through this time, making one bad decision after another and y'all. I was too ashamed to ask for help. So I self-sabotaged and in fact I would say I was in so much pain I couldn't even fathom backing up and taking a look at what all was going on. And you know, on the outside on the outside, or so I told myself on the outside I looked like everything was okay, that I had it together, but I was lost and terrified on the inside.

Speaker 1: 7:02

Misery honestly ruled the days. Misery honestly ruled the days. It didn't last forever. It lasted far longer than I'm proud to say. It lasted because it went on for years before I finally somehow found my way to therapy. And in doing this it opened the space for me to start experimenting with the tools and techniques that I call holistic, sustainable self-care and that I outline in my book.

Speaker 1: 7:37

I'm here to say any helping professional, I don't care if you're a firefighter or if you are a masseuse, or if you're a nurse or a physician, a teacher any professional helper needs to have a therapist and keep themselves in therapy. And I'm not saying weekly. I see my therapist maybe every six weeks or every few months. But having that relationship helps me stay current with my sense of self, helps me stay current with my holistic self-care practice. It's eminently important, important. So back to my story.

Speaker 1: 8:32

Once I found myself in therapy and began this very painful journey back to me, I began to let others in and I was able to trade all the self-sabotaging for a sense of self, a sense of self that I can say has become a healthy sense of self, an acute self-awareness and man. Please know it took lots of work and lots of energy to get there and not to negate lots of energy work as well. I've got a phenomenal therapist who practices a lot like I do. We focus on energy, we focus on humanistic things, we focus on somatic things. I mean it's a very holistic process and I thank God I found her. I think that was a saving grace. But do know the road back to me was a long journey, just like that journey from our head to our heart is the longest I think we take. That was a long journey but it was well worth it and that is why I chose to write In Pursuit of Soul Joy. It took me a little while to get it written, but I line out everything my journey and the things I did to get me back to that sense of self.

Speaker 1: 9:56

But this podcast is designed to share some of these things with you as well. So the activity I want to share with you today, I call it the freedom to reconnect. Because what happened? I lost myself. I became completely disjointed from myself. I was just this floating head who was not connected to a body or any self-awareness. I don't know how therapists get there, but I do enough therapy with other therapists that I know we do. We get there and there's no shame in that. But this activity is called freedom to reconnect, and I think that an effort to begin to discern who you are, that sense of self.

Speaker 1: 10:57

So first I would ask you to ask yourself what do you really want? What do you really want? Not what do you think someone thinks you should want, but what do you really want, what makes your heart smile with pure bliss? What do you really miss in your life? And then I'd ask yourself, which is a therapist? I know we don't like to say this but then I'd ask yourself why? Why do you really miss that in your life? And how can you make time for that thing or that person or that in your life? And what are you willing to commit to without regret or resent or resentment rather so in that. What are you willing to commit to? It could be I'm going to commit to doing something joyful once a week, or I'm going to commit to sending my family birthday cards, or I'm going to commit to just whatever it might be. But this commitment cannot be followed by resentment. It must be pure bliss or just pure yes, this is what I want to do, and I'm not going to regret it and I'm not going to resent it. So then I would say do that, do that. So then I would say do that, do that.

Speaker 1: 12:49

Okay, so that's pretty simple. If you will subscribe to my email list to get these weekly emails that I send out with this podcast link and a PDF it's a bonus PDF of this activity that I include with the email If you'll subscribe to my email, I'm happy to send this to you. All you have to do is go to my website, juliemerrymanphdcom, and if you'll sign up for my seven-day self-care challenge, you will get on my email list and you will get these bonus PDFs weekly. So, okay, that's it for today. Please also subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, and please leave a review, which helps me reach more people. I'd love to hear from you, okay? So until next time you take care of you.