The Identity Crisis You Can’t Ignore: Why Your Nervous System Is Rebuilding the Woman You Lost (Women Healers 50+)

Have you ever stood in your kitchen, stared into the refrigerator, and suddenly realized you weren’t actually looking for dinner—you were looking for yourself?

This show helps women healers over 50 who have spent decades being the "reliable one"—the clinician, the fixer, the mother—only to hit midlife and realize the old life no longer fits. If you are feeling burned out, numb, or resentful, you aren't "broken" or having a midlife crisis. You are experiencing a profound Identity Evolution that your nervous system is orchestrating for your survival.

In this episode, Dr. Julie Merriman—burnout researcher and counselor of 30 years—unpacks the intersection of developmental psychology, neuroscience, and menopause to explain why you feel so lost, and why this is actually a sign of transformation.

Listen to discover:

• The Biology of "I Don't Care": Why your nervous system is shifting from decades of sympathetic overdrive (fight/flight) into shutdown/recalibration—and why this feeling isn't laziness, it's a biological demand for rest.
• Erikson’s "Generativity vs. Stagnation": A psychological framework to understand why this season feels so disorienting, and how to navigate the hidden grief of letting go of the "performer" you used to be.
• 5 Soul Joy Steps: Actionable tools to gently reconnect with desire and curiosity, moving you from "I'm lost" to "My identity is being returned to me."

If you are ready to stop measuring your worth by your productivity and finally center your own needs, start by listening to this episode now!

Next Steps:

• If this episode resonated, please share it with another woman healer who needs to hear it.
• [Freebies]: Tap the links below to grab the Compassion Fatigue Cure Starter Guide and the From Burnout to Radiance Reset.
• [Take the Quiz]: Discover your burnout style with the What's your Burnout/Compassion Fatigue Archetype? quiz.

We rise together.

This podcast supports women healers over 50 navigating burnout, compassion fatigue, and midlife transitions with strategies for nervous system regulation, trauma-informed boundaries, and chakra alignment to heal resentment and self-neglect while cultivating soul joy, radiance, and a purposeful next chapter of freedom and inner peace.

THE DIAGNOSIS: Are you the Martyr who can't say no? Or the Warrior who fights until she collapses? You cannot heal what you cannot name.

👇 Take the 60-Second Quiz to find your Burnout Archetype: [CLICK HERE TO REVEAL YOUR ARCHETYPE]

Join the Rebellion: If this episode woke something up in you, share it with a colleague who needs permission to stop. We rise together.

Reach out to Dr. Julie

Episodes drop every Tuesday at 5am and every Friday at noon.

Special guest episodes drop the 4th Thursday of every month at 7am.

Transcript

0:03

Hey, have you ever wondered, well, have you ever, have you ever stood in your kitchen at 2:00 PM stared in the refrigerator and realized you weren't looking for dinner, you're looking for yourself, or maybe you opened your closet and thought, who even is this person wearing these clothes anymore? If you've ever had that eerie sensation of being a stranger in your own life, girl, you are not alone. You are not broken, and you, my friend, are in the right place. I am a woman over 50 who has personally lived through the identity plot twist that comes when a roll shift. Happens and you're left with a quiet you don't yet know how to inhabit today. Y'all we're good. I got you. Today we're diving into that lost feeling. So many of us gals over 50 describe, especially those of us who've been in healthcare or any kind of helping profession from teachers and beyond. Counselors, professors, therapists, social workers, nurses, caregivers, on and on. The helpers, the fixers, the ones who always showed up, the physiological. Well, okay, so here's what you're gonna walk away with, the physiological and psychological reasons you feel this shift backed by developmental psychology, neuroscience, and polyvagal theory. Why feeling lost is not a failure. Y'all. It's an identity evolution. Your nervous system is recalibrating, and this is actually a sign. You did your job way too well for way too long. You're also gonna get some practical steps on how to reconnect with your joy, with your desire, and the version of you that has nothing to prove anymore. This is not motivational fluff. This is Grounded Healing is grounded healing work that's rooted in nervous system science with humor sprinkled in because midlife requires this. Okay, y'all, let's take a big deep breath. We go be honest and let's get to it. Welcome to Soul Joy, the podcast for empowering brilliant women in healthcare over 50, transform burnout into purpose, reignited your spark to create a life that energizes you every single day. I'm your host, Dr. Julie Merriman. Let's get to it. Okay, so why this hits us gals over 50? And why it hits us helpers most. So, see, no one told us midlife would be a less gentle journey. It's a it, it is a gentle glide into wisdom and more like being dropped off into a psychological escape room with no map and no timer. But you definitely feel it. You don't see it, but you feel it. So let's talk just a hot minute about the research. Developmental psychologist, and he's a, he is classic. I don't care what degree you have, you've heard of this guy, Eric Aon called this stage that we're in generativity versus stagnation, which is an academic language for. Is this the rest of my life? Is it going to have meaning? What am I gonna do with it? Tell me something. Or am I just going through the motions until I die? Here's what makes this complex for us. Helping overeducated professionals. Your entire adult life was built on doing for others. You're serving without keeping score. You're handling crisis. Others couldn't see you show up when no one else would show up. You absorb other people's trauma as part of your job description for 20, 30, maybe 40 years. You were the one who held it together. Then one day the noise kind of stops. You know, the kids grow up. I don't know about y'all, but the job loses, meaning your energy changes, your hormones go rogue, and suddenly you have zero tolerance. Zero tolerance for nonsense. Your parents need care, the roles that wants to find you, mom. Daughter, provider, fixer, expert loosen their grip. Y'all, this is not a personal failure. Oh, please. It's anything but that. This is not, well, no. This is disorientation, not personal failure. This is identity being returned to you. Returned to you. You've spent decades proving your worth through productivity. You never had this much freedom before. You just haven't learned how to desire again. So here's why healthcare professionals, us helpers and healers feel this more intensely. If you're a counselor, a therapist, a social worker, a nurse, a physician, a teacher, but wherever you might fall, you're at higher risk for this identity earthquake. Why your professional identity was built on other directedness. See, your worth was measured by how much you could carry. Your success was tied to others' outcome, other people's outcomes. I think that makes more sense when that external validation system shifts. When clients terminate, caseloads change, you retire or scale back, you lose the scaffolding that held your identity in place. Compassion fatigue. Research tells us helpers burnout differently. It's not just overwork. That's not what it is. Although there is some of that. It's over caring. It's the slow erosion of self that happens when you spend years putting everyone else's needs ahead of your own nervous systems Signals. Yeah. Right. Okay, so let's just take a minute. Big deep breath. Send us all some love.'cause we have done the best we can with what we had, and let's just celebrate that we've made it this far. Right. And let's dive into a little bit of this nervous system science. My friend, here's what's actually happening in your beautiful body and why it feels like you're losing your flipping mind when you're actually finally just powering down. Your nervous system has been in crisis mode. I've been telling you this for years. You earned your worth through productivity. Your nervous system ran at high sympathetic arousal. Flight or flight. Flight or fight mode. But here's the thing, you weren't running from danger. You were running towards everyone else's needs. I know. Sounds like I say this a lot because it's so true, and we have not had the courtesy of people telling us what's been happening to us. We just. Power through suffer through dread the day and just deal with it because we've accepted that's just what life is, and it's not, it's not your nervous system. My friend could not tell the difference that you were not running from danger. It just knew you were running. So here's a little humorous truth. Your nervous system has been in command, central crisis mode for so long. It thinks silence means something's wrong. It's like your body is going, wait where? Where's the emergency? You gotta gimme something to fix a person to rescue, a board to chair. I'm deeply uncomfortable with leisure. Yeah. Raising my hand. Oh, this isn't because we're broken, friend. It's conditioning, and it started way back for me in undergrad. Certainly in Masters. Let's not even talk about the schooling beyond your masters. We've been conditioned for a long time, gals. So here's someone I really think highly of. Dr. Steven Porer, por pge, je. Someone email me. The pronunciation. I could say it if I weren't trying to say it right here, right now. But anyway, this guy, he's got great videos on YouTube. He, he's got great books, great articles if you buy, well, I've got, uh, he's in some of my libraries that I've creating for y'all. But he created the polyvagal theory and y'all, this explains the lost feeling. So let's dive in. Dr. Steven. His polyvagal theory teaches us, our nervous system has three main states, so we've got, we have got three main states, and those are the ventral vagal. That's our safe and social, where joy, connection, play, and creativity live. We don't go there near enough, y'all. This is where you can actually feel alive. It's a good place to be. Then we have the sympathetic, the fight or flight where most of us have been living in high alert, always scanning for the next thing to handle conditioned. And three, there's the dorsal vagal, and this is shut down. This is complete shutdown. This is where you go when you've been in sympathetic too long. You get numb, you're gonna get disconnected, and you're gonna do a Netflix, a vino, or a snack dissociation, and that's not relaxation. See when you hit 50, especially perimenopausal or postmenopausal, your body forces a recalibration. Your hormones shift, your energy shifts your tolerance. Oh my Lord, your tolerance shifts. The nervous system that's that's been running on adrenaline for 30 years starts to power down. Ah. It starts to power down. And why my friend, this feels like we're being, well, like we're lost. When your nervous system finally gets permission to rest, it feels like apathy. Nothing sounds good. Confusion. Who am I without my to-do list? Sadness, grief, for years given away restlessness. The inability to just be. Or emptiness where? Where did my purpose go? It's not depression. This is identity transition. Your system is saying, we're finally safe. We're safe enough to stop performing now. What the hell are we gonna do now? What? So see, this is neuroscience plus the hormone factor. Ooh, that sounds scary. Kick us back to middle school, huh? Neuroscience tells us new identity formation requires quiet, novelty, curiosity, rest. Play. Your brain needs space, my friend. But that space feels uncomfortable because you've been trained to fill every flipping gap with productivity. And let's get real about perimenopause and menopause Estrogen. Estrogen doesn't regulate your period. It regulates your mood, your energy. Your stress resilience, your cognitive clarity, and your ability to tolerate bum bumbo, other people's nonsense. When estrogen drops your stress level, excuse me, your stress threshold, the level goes up, your threshold goes down, things you use to handle. Set a difficult client, passive aggressive colleagues, boundary violating, family endless demands suddenly feel intolerable. And this is not because you're being too sensitive. Please, this is your body saying, girl, we are done accepting unacceptable things. Bada bing bada boom. Done. This is biology giving you permission to prioritize yourself. And if you spent 50 years not prioritizing yourself, that permission, oh, Mylan, that permission feels like a full blown identity crisis. You don't know what to do. So let's talk about. The grief that no one mentions. Let's talk about what we don't say out loud. There is grief in this transition, and it's okay even if you are relieved, your kids are grown, even if you wanted to retire. If you hated your job, there's still gonna be grief. I still, I mean, my kids are in their forties and late thirties, and I mean that empty nest thing, I still grieve that. I miss those babies being in this house. Grief goes long and strong. Uh, I think we hang on to not retiring because we fear that grief, even if we hate the job, but we have to accept there's gonna be grief. It's okay to not be okay, and let's talk about it. So what you're grieving. Here's what you're grieving. The version of you who could do it all, even though it was killing you. Oh, my lanta, getting up at five in the morning. Go to 10 at nine. The roles that gave you structure, even if that structure was suffocating, the identity of being needed, even if being needed, meant being used. The years you gave away, even if you chose to give them away the version of yourself, you never got to meet because you were too damn busy. Being busy and being what everyone else needed. Why helpers struggle to acknowledge this. So friends, if you're a counselor, therapist, social worker, healthcare professional. I mean, we're all healthcare professionals. Therapist, teacher, I meant, um, caregiver, just a healer. You're gonna struggle to give yourself permission to grieve because we've been trained to hold space for others and not for ourself. And that's especially true for those of us in the therapy world. You feel guilty for feeling sad. When you have so much to be grateful for, you're used to being the strong one. You're afraid if you start crying, you won't be able to stop. Here's the truth, unpro unprocessed grief becomes stagnation. Unprocessed grief becomes resentment. Unprocessed grief becomes the very burnout you're trying to escape. You cannot skip this part. You have to feel it. I'm sorry, but it's true. You gotta feel it. So. Just take a minute to digest that. We gotta feel that grief. We gotta have a way to feel that grief. Find a good therapist, find a good friend. Find a way to get that expressed. And then let's talk about why find your purpose. Advice makes it worse. So see if we can talk about this a hot minute. Most midlife advice is horribly unhelpful. Horribly unhelpful. You've probably heard, girl, this is your time. Reinvent yourself. What's your passion project? You just need a new goal. And if you're like most women, I work with hearing that makes you want to scream or throw a plate against the wall or do something. Here's why this misses the mark. Because you're not suffering from lack of goals. You're suffering from goal fatigue. Girl. You have spent 30 years setting goals, hitting goals, moving goalposts, managing outcomes, tracking metrics, and proving your worth. The last thing you need is another goal. You need permission to exist without a goal. You don't need a new purpose. You need to reconnect with desire, and here's the difference. Purpose is heavy, outcome driven, performative desire. That's light, process driven, playful purpose asks, what should I do with my life desire? Ask. What makes me feel alive right now? Hmm. Feel that difference. The energy is very different. Purpose, and we talk about, I mean, I talk about wanting to find purpose, but I think desire leads to purpose. But, well, that's a whole other, that's a whole other thing. Purpose is a heavier energy. In this instance, you've gotta have an outcome, desire that's playful. That's let's come alive and just experience life. Let's just do this very different energy, actionable soul joy steps. I'm gonna give you some right here, right now that you can take as you're vacuuming and listening. I do that with air Budds as you're picking your garden, although it's getting a little late in the year for that as you're driving, whatever you might be doing. Riding your bike, whatever. We're gonna get practical. Here's what actually helps. Real nervous system regulation and identity reclamation. First, stop trying to figure it out. The goal is not to figure out your purpose or have a plan. The goal, the goal girl, is to feel alive again. That's it. Start here. Next two. Claim one hour a week for curiosity, not productivity. Screw that. Curiosity, not self-improvement, not a new skill to monetize. Curiosity, pure and simple. Curiosity. Ask yourself, what would I do if no one was watching and I didn't have to be good at it? What did I love? Before I learned pri to prioritize usefulness overjoy, I made mud pies, man, I, I did, um, needle point with boomie, my grandmother, I learned to sew. I water painted. I finger pan, just finger painted. Just fun, joyful. I want you to do that thing for one hour a week. You gotta find it. You gotta do it one hour a week, not productivity. Curiosity. Number three, I want you to do one small thing that feels joyful, not useful, joyful. Paint a mug badly. Bike glitter pens. Do goat yoga Come out here and the Merriman Ranch. We're gonna be having goat yoga on Sundays. Dance at the kitchen. Grab that. Yummy, man. You married and dance for me. I'm gonna grab my yummy man and dance in the kitchen. I love to do that with him. Touch the grass like an absolute weirdo. Hold a warm cup with two hands and do nothing else, especially now that it's getting colder. That feels so good. These actions, my friend, help to retrain your nervous system to associate rest with safety. Not laziness. And I think a lot of us in this age group, having grown up in the sixties, our parents kinda had a different idea about, about do what? Doing nothing meant. We do have to retrain that system. I'm not being lazy. I'm not being lazy. I'm training my system to be safe. Four, say this out loud once a week, I'm allowed. To take up space in my own flipping life. Say it. Even if you don't believe it yet, say it. Especially if it makes you cry. I don't wanna make you cry, but if you, if you cry, you really need to say it. This is identity work, boundary work, nervous system work. I am allowed to take up space in my own life. Fifth Step. Work with your nervous system, not against it. Your nervous system needs specific support, so you need somatic practices. Think yoga, tai chi, walking in nature. You need breath work longer. Exhales signal safety. Big, long exhale, bilateral stimulation. EMDR. Find you a good EMDR therapist. Learn the butterfly, tap in your earbuds. Alternate music, bilateral stimulation is amazing. Co-regulation, safe relationships where you don't have to perform. I'm the luckiest woman on earth with, I married Kelly Merriman and he, ugh. Just it's game changer. You wanna marry someone that co regulates with you. You cannot think your way out of nervous system dysregulation. You have to feel your way through it. You, you can't escape. It's worth feeling your way through. It's not, you know. So often we wanna take shortcuts, especially those of us that are way too overeducated and know these things like, yeah, yeah, I just wanna do this. No, you gotta do the same shit you're telling your people to do. It's the only way there is to it. Okay. I. Six. And last one, reframe the narrative. I just had a session on that today. Um,'cause I believe in it and I talked to a lot of my patients about it. But you gotta reframe your narrative, girl. You're not starting over, you're not reinventing yourself. You are. Returning to yourself, maybe some inner child work. Mm. Highly recommend that there's a version of you that existed before you learn to people please before you learn to perform, before you learned to try to prove your worth. And sweetheart, she is still there. She has been waiting for you. Okay. So that's all I have for today. Let's, let's do a quick summarization. Here's what you learned today. First, feeling lost after 50 is normal. Developmental transition, Ericsson's, generative generativity versus stagnation. Look it up. There's a lot of stuff on the net. Second, your nervous system has been in crisis mode for decades. The loss feeling is your body recalibrating Third hormone shifts. Force identity recalibration. This is biology, not weakness. Fourth, if you're a healthcare professional or helper, you feel this way more intensely because your identity was built on other directedness instead of self-directedness, you're directed at others. Compassion fatigue compounds This. Fifth grief is part of this process. Girl, you can't skip it. Sixth, you don't need a new purpose. You need to reconnect with your heart's desire. Seven, joy comes back through small actions, nervous system, regulation, and presence, not self-improvement projects. And girl, the truth. You're not behind. You're not late. You're not supposed to have this all figured out. You are entering the chapter where life finally becomes your own, and that can be terrifying, and that can be beautiful, and that's exactly what it's supposed to be. You're right where you need to be. My final thought for you, if this episode. Spoke to you. Please share it with another woman over 50 who has always been the strong one, the one who shows up for everyone. The one who never complains. She could use someone sitting beside her in the dark waiting for her light to return. Okay. I invite you to download your free Soul Starter guide. It's a five, it has five science backed steps to protect your energy, prevent burnout, and restore your joy as a helper. I've got, um, the link in the show notes. Just hop over to wherever you listen to your podcast and click on that link and get you, uh, that free starter guide. And until then, sweet friend, be gentle with yourself. You are doing harder work than anyone else sees, and I'll see you next time.