Soul Joy: Ditch Burnout and Fall in Love with Life

The Art and Science of Professional Intuition

• Dr. Julie Merriman

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Your primary instrument is you. Just as no one wants a surgeon with a dull scalpel, no client deserves a helping professional who hasn't maintained their most essential tool—their own clarity of mind and intuitive capacity. 

Dr. Julie Merriman unpacks the profound connection between intentional self-care practices and our ability to maintain clarity and access our professional intuition. Rather than vague concepts, these qualities emerge as precise professional assets that directly impact our effectiveness and resilience in helping roles.

Clarity, as explored in this episode, extends far beyond clear thinking. It's a multidimensional quality encompassing cognitive clarity (processing complex information under pressure), professional clarity (understanding roles and boundaries), empathic clarity (connecting deeply without becoming enmeshed), and ethical clarity (navigating moral ambiguities with confidence). Without cultivating these forms of clarity, we risk becoming reactive, inefficient, or even harmful in our practice.

Meanwhile, professional intuition is demystified as the sum of accumulated knowledge and experience processed at the subconscious level—those informed hunches and gut feelings that help us recognize patterns and subtle cues that explicit data might miss. This isn't mystical prediction but rather your brain's remarkable capacity for rapid pattern recognition, especially valuable in emotionally charged or fast-paced situations.

The episode offers practical, accessible approaches to cultivating both clarity and intuition through mindfulness, movement, somatic awareness, and reflective journaling. Each practice creates space for the mental quiet and bodily attunement necessary to sharpen our professional capacities. Dr. Merriman emphasizes that even five minutes daily of these practices can transform our effectiveness, comparing the process to polishing a lens that allows us to see more accurately or tuning an instrument that produces more harmonious sound.

Ready to refine your inner compass? Download this week's activity guide by subscribing at juliemerriman-phd.com and commit to a simple practice that will enhance your clarity and intuition, transforming both your professional resilience and personal wellbeing.

Speaker 1:

Hey y'all, I'm Dr Julie Merriman and welcome to Soul Joy. Today we're moving to the third eye chakra and exploring two vital qualities clarity and intuition. And we'll discover how cultivating these internal assets is deeply rooted in our commitment to embracing self-care practices. Because, my friend, this is a very necessary component of holistic, sustainable self-care practices. Because, my friend, this is a very necessary component of holistic, sustainable self-care. All right, all right, all right, welcome, welcome. Thank you so much for taking a few minutes to hang out with me today.

Speaker 1:

So last week I talked a little bit about a bulldozer being in the front yard and construction workers in my bathroom, and that's much the same thing this week. But I am excited to have these, uh, the projects completed. So, yeah, you put up a little bit right to get what you want. So let's see what. What else is going on this week. It is summer here in Texas. Well, not just in Texas, it's summer, and here in Texas it's pretty hot, and this year my husband and I we planted a gorgeous garden and I tell you we have got tomatoes and okra and squash beans. I I mean, we've got all kinds of treasures coming in from the garden. So I'm really enjoying hanging out with the dogs in the morning and watering the garden and picking the garden and just all those mother earth kinds of things. It's kind of fun. So that's what's going on at the merriman household this week.

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So, okay, professional helpers, this podcast is dedicated to preventing and overcoming the occupational hazards of the career we chose specifically burnout, compassion, fatigue and vicarious trauma. But, as I say every week, this podcast is for everyone. If you are having a human experience, this podcast is for you. In our demanding fields, whatever it might be, we're constantly bombarded with information, emotions, critical decisions. It's easy to feel overwhelmed, to lose our footing or to second guess our instincts. But imagine operating from a place of quiet confidence, where your thoughts are clear. Your professional intuition acts as a reliable compass. Wow, that's what we're aiming for today.

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Let's start with clarity. Okay, that's one that I think well, personally, I've struggled with in the past. I think it's an important component to work with and y'all, for us helping professionals, clarity isn't just about clear thinking, it's multifaceted. Okay, we're looking at cognitive clarity, the ability to process complex information, identify core issues and make sound decisions, even under pressure. It's cutting through the noise to see the signal. Professional clarity that is, understanding your role, your scope of practice and your boundaries with precision and your boundaries with precision. This prevents overreach, burnout and ethical dilemmas. Next we have empathic clarity the capacity to deeply understand and connect with others' experiences without losing your own sense of self are becoming enmeshed. It's about clear differentiation. Then we have ethical clarity. Clarity this is the ability to navigate moral ambiguities and consistently align your actions with your professional values and ethical guidelines. Y'all without clarity, we become reactive, we become inefficient or y'all we could even harm unintentionally. Okay, so that's clarity.

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Now let's take a gander at intuition. This is often misunderstood as some mystical force, but in a professional context, intuition is far more grounded. It's the sum of your accumulated knowledge, experience and pattern recognition processed at the subconscious level, informed hunches. It's that gut feeling or immediate insight you get about client dynamic, a team interaction or a potential risk. It's not a magical prediction, but rather your brain rapidly recognizing patterns. It's seen before, often below the conscious awareness.

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I believe in the counseling field and my PhD is in counseling. That's where I'm speaking from. Our field is very much art and science and I think this intuition is part of our art, if you will. I tell my students that often and it's that gut sense you know, and really it's that pattern recognition. I think that makes good sense. This intuition is it's speed of insight.

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While logical reasoning is sequential, intuition can offer instantaneous understanding, allowing you to respond effectively in fast-paced or emotionally charged situations. And y'all. It's beyond the data. Sometimes the explicit data doesn't tell the whole story. Intuition helps you pick up on subtle clues body language, tone of voice, unspoken anxieties that inform a more holistic understanding.

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However, intuition is a muscle that needs training and refinement. It's crucial to distinguish genuine, informed intuition from personal biases, anxieties or projections. This is where clarity and self-awareness come in. So how do we cultivate this powerful duo of clarity and intuition? The answer lies in intentional self-care practices holistic, sustainable, intentional self-care practices, particularly those that connect us more deeply to our bodies and minds. For helping professionals any professional, any human your primary instrument is you and, just like any instrument, you need regular tuning and maintenance. None of us want to go to a surgeon with a dull scalpel and no one wants to go to a therapist who is not regularly experiencing tuning and maintenance. This is where practices like mindfulness, movement and somatic awareness become invaluable. These aren't just nice to haves. They are fundamental tools for professional resilience and effectiveness.

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So let's dive in a bit on mindfulness for cognitive and empathic clarity. The practice Simply paying attention to the present moment without judgment. Attention to the present moment without judgment. This can be through focused breathing, a body scan or mindful observation of your environment. The benefit mindfulness helps to quiet the mental chatter, reduce rumination and create space between a stimulus and your reaction. This mental spaciousness y'all it's critical for cognitive clarity because it allows you to see problems more objectively, y'all. It also enhances empathic clarity by helping you observe your own emotional responses without getting swept away by them, and this allows you to be present for others without losing yourself.

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And then let's take a hot minute to explore movement and somatic awareness. This includes elements of yoga, but for intuition and stress reduction, okay. So the practice here is engaging in physical movement that connects you to your body. This could be walking, stretching, dancing love me some of that or structured practices like yoga. Yoga, for example, is a fantastic practice that combines physical postures, breathing exercises you've got to breathe through some of those moves and meditation. So the benefit here is that our bodies hold stress, tension and even unprocessed emotions.

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Practices that involve movement and somatic awareness help turn into bodily sensations. This helps release this accumulated tension. So the movement, the somatic awareness, you feel it in your bodily sensations and through this you're releasing accumulated tension. The physical release can lead to mental spaciousness, opening up some bandwidth for yourself. The deep breathing and focused movement found in yoga can calm the nervous system. It helps to reduce the fight or flight response that often clouds judgment. Lots of research behind this and by regularly checking in with your body, you become more attuned to those subtle gut feelings, the informed hunches that are the essence of intuition. It helps you recognize the subtle signals your body sends when a boundary is being crossed or when a situation just feels off. You know, I mean, had I learned to tune into that stuff early in life, I would have saved myself some heartache. It is worth going through the practice of somatic awareness. I mean it's going to increase your quality of life.

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Also, let's explore journaling for self-clarity. So here's what the practice looks like. You're regularly writing down your thoughts, feelings, observations. This can be free form or you can use prompts. You know what you prefer. I prefer my clients actually write things out kinesthetically. I think there's something mind-hand connection there. But if you're absolutely against, that typing works as well.

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The benefit here is that journaling allows you to externalize your internal dialogue right, and this makes your thought pattern more visible. This process fosters self-clarity by helping you identify biases, understand your emotional triggers and clarify your own needs and values. It's also a powerful way to process complex client interactions and gain deeper insights that might lead to intuitive breakthroughs. Lead to intuitive breakthroughs, I always. I mean if I'm a supervisor for a newly licensed counselor, or if I'm supervising my students still in grad school, or if I'm just working on my own self-awareness. I believe if something is triggered within us by a client, that is a beautiful opportunity for growth and awareness and that only happens by sitting down and doing some journaling and really getting to the bottom of that. See, integrating these practices into your life is not about adding more to your already overflowing plate. It's about investing in the foundation that holds your plate steady.

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Even five to ten minutes a day of mindful breathing, few stretches or a quick journal entry can make a profound difference. You're worth the time and effort. Think of it this way A clear lens sees more accurately right. I'm always, especially since my husband's had his brain tumors and it's impacted his eyesight and he's got a special pair of glasses. I'm always looking up at him and seeing how dirty those glasses are and taking them off to clear those lens so he can see more accurately. A well-tuned instrument produces a harmonious sound.

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When you invest in your own mental, emotional and physical well-being through intentional, holistic, sustainable self-care, also known as wellness, you polish your inner compass, you're sharpening your clarity and refining your intuition. This not only benefits you personally, but exponentially enhances your capacity to serve others with presence, wisdom and resilience. And we want that others with presence, wisdom and resilience and we want that, don't we want to bring our best self to our counseling room, to our surgery room, to our classroom, to whatever place that we are practicing our trade. Okay, subscribe to my email list to get the weekly podcast email, which includes a bonus PDF of the weekly activity that I create for you. All you have to do is hop over to my website, wwwjuliemerrimanphdcom. I also have a counseling page. If you're interested in any counseling, I also have a counseling page. If you're interested in any counseling, you can hop on my calendar. I offer a free 15-minute consultation. See if we're a good fit, and I also have my book for sale on that website. Okay, so there's my quick little commercial. So the activity I have planned for you today, my friends, is called my Inner Compass, cultivating Clarity and Intuition.

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Man, I wish I had had access to this podcast when I was in my 20s and 30s. I mean, I was fumbling around Really. You know, when I think back, oh, I had my life. It was not a straight arrow. Anything I ever did did there was nothing straight. My daddy always told me I did things the hard way, which probably was true.

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But you know, I graduated high school a year early. I graduated my junior year. I just I hated, I just did not enjoy high school which is crazy, because got in college and I have never left college since the 80s. I'm either teaching or a student, so it's interesting. But anyway, I graduated a year early. Went um was not in a good relationship situation, um, and I'm not going to bore y'all with all that right now but ended up going to um, a hair school. I was a hairdresser. I worked as a hairdresser as I worked my way through college, loved it. My grandmother was a hairdresser. I'm a very creative person, had a great time with that, but I stumbled and stammered in my early years.

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I was a young mom, didn't start on my college journey until about the time I was 25, I guess, and I really didn't feel like life started. Now, the best thing that happened to me were my two boys. I love and adore my children and they're a gift from God, and where I'm rambling here, I'm talking about this inner compass to create clarity and intuition. I was roaming around without clarity and intuition, intuition. I was roaming around without clarity and intuition, and I really feel like that hit for me when I met my husband and I think my boys would tell you this too Our life really started, felt like life began, and Kelly tells me this too I truly believe we're soulmates, but together and I think that's a really important thing about relationships you're better together. Together, you help make each other better, and I believe that's true for both of us. But in this I was, you know, through a lot of mistakes. I've been able to find my inner compass and cultivate that clarity and intuition, and I want this for y'all. I want this for any client I work with, I want this for my students, I want this for any client I work with, I want this for my students, I want this for this audience. So I've created this activity for you. That's a lot of introduction, huh, thanks for hanging in there.

Speaker 1:

So by reflecting on current challenges and committing to specific self-care practices holistic, sustainable you will enhance your professional clarity and intuition and personal. You can't just do it for your professional, especially as a counselor. We are the person of the counselor, so if you're doing it for your personal, you're doing it for your professional and vice versa. So step one here is initial reflection and I just invite you and I know maybe not right this minute, but download the PDF, but find a quiet space where you can focus without interruption, allow yourself to notice any particular concepts that resonate strongly with your current professional practice and these are concepts that we've talked about in this podcast thus far and I invite you to jot down a couple of initial thoughts or feelings that come up regarding clarity, intuition or self-care in your work. Don't overthink it, just jot it down.

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Next, identify fuzzy areas and intuition blocks. So part A of this is clarity challenges. Think about your current professional role or your current role. Identify a couple of areas where you often experience a lack of clarity. This could be cognitive difficulty of making decisions or feeling overwhelmed by information. It could be professional, unclear boundaries, unclear scope of practice, empathic difficulty separating your emotions from a client's or colleague's feelings Well, difficulty separating your emotions from the clients or colleagues. And maybe you're feeling emotionally drained. Or maybe it's ethical, navigating complex ethical dilemmas. Briefly describe the fuzzy area.

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Then part B we're going to kick into intuition obstacles and I invite you to reflect on times when maybe you felt your intuition might have been trying to tell you something. Oh honey, I can think of some, but you either missed it, dismissed it or found it clouded. So often, y'all, we have been trained since childhood not to trust our emotions or intuition. Our loving parents they did not do it to mess with us, they, we parent the best we can but so often we might have had a feeling about I don't know something, let's say a weird aunt or uncle or something, and and they would dismiss it. Or or you had a. You know you were, your feelings were hurt and I said oh, you're fine, brush that off. I mean, so often we've been trained not to trust our intuition, so no wonder there's times we find it clouded. So what I invite you to do here is to think about what the circumstances, what were the circumstances where this clouded intuition might have come up. What do you think might have blocked or distorted your intuition in that moment? Could be stress, fatigue, external pressure, overthinking Anyone else. Have a gold star in that Overthinking emotional reactivity. Briefly, describe a couple of instances or common patterns that you have noticed about yourself.

Speaker 1:

Then step three you're going to integrate self-care for clarity and intuition. So part A here is personalized self-care practice. Read my book big proponent of self-care, review self-care categories, and the categories are mindfulness, movement, which would be somatic awareness, including yoga, and then there's journaling. So those are the three categories we're looking at. Choose one that you feel would be most beneficial for enhancing your clarity and intuition right now, and then engage in the chosen practice. Mindfulness practice, okay. So choose the one. I want you to engage in that practice for about five to seven minutes, and then I want you to move on, and that would be mindfulness. Okay, I hang with me, I will get this out, oh my heavens. So to engage in the chosen practice, we're gonna do it for five to seven minutes and this is what it's going to look like.

Speaker 1:

If you chose mindfulness practice focus, breathing, a body scan or a mindful observation you could do movement somatic awareness by doing some gentle stretches when you wake up in the morning cat-cow, child's pose, mountain pose, just something really simple. Focus on your body, sensations and breathing. Or maybe you're going to choose journaling and you're going to just free ride about one of your fuzzy areas or intuition obstacles from the step above. So for five to seven minutes, do one of those three things and I'll get it out. You're going to do your mindfulness practice, you're going to or you're going to do a movement somatic awareness or you're going to do journaling. So mindfulness, let's say breathing, mindful breathing, movement, somatic awareness, some yoga or journaling where you're free, writing about a fuzzy area of intuition. After the practice, write down what you observed or felt. Did you notice any shifts in your clarity or emotional state? Once you've done that your five to seven moments of practice and reflected on that, move to Part B, where you're connecting to clarity and intuition. How do you foresee this chosen practice helping you specifically with the clarity challenge you identified in Step 2A above, in step 2a above? How do you foresee this chosen practice helping you specifically with the intuition obstacle you identified above in step 2b? Because I promise consistent practice will help you with this clarity and intuition, accepting, understanding, trusting your intuition.

Speaker 1:

There's a good book I read back in grad school and that's back in the 90s Women who Run With Wolves. Is that it? That's really all about how we have clouded our intuition over the years. Good book If you haven't read it, I really encourage you to grab it. Okay, then we go to step four, and that's commitment and action. Choose one of the self-care practices you engaged with above, or maybe one that you just know that you like to go to Go there.

Speaker 1:

Commit to incorporating this practice into your week, even if for just five to ten minutes a day or every other day. You know it's not overwhelming. You have five minutes of scrolling on your phone that you could set that down and choose to take care of yourself instead. Set a realistic, actionable goal for the next seven days. For instance, I will practice five minutes of mindful breathing before starting my workday, or I will practice five minutes of mindful breathing before starting my work day, or I will do 10 minutes of general yoga stretches three times a week, or I will journal for seven minutes on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. I mean, you can do this. Write down your specific commitment. If we write it down, we're more likely to do it. Identify one potential barrier to this commitment and one strategy to overcome it. Okay, now I know I kind of jumbled that up, but I do apologize. But if you subscribe to my email list, you'll get a PDF where you can read through that and practice this all by yourself.

Speaker 1:

Then I want you to please do the reflection questions. What was the most surprising insight you gained from engaging in your self-care practice with the intention of enhancing clarity and intuition? Right, this is very intentional. How might consistent engagement in these practices transform your professional resilience, and what support do you need to maintain your commitment to these practices? All right, so that's the activity for today. That's all for this episode of Soul Joy. Thanks for being the compassionate, dedicated professional you are. Remember you're not. Your well-being is not a luxury, it's a necessity. Until next time, take care of you.