The Good Girl Detox™: Unmasking High-Functioning Burnout and Emotional Exhaustion

Are you a woman over 50 in the healing professions feeling trapped by emotional exhaustion and high-functioning burnout? 

In this episode of Compassion Fatigue Cure, Dr. Julie Merriman explores the deeper roots of identity burnout influenced by the "Good Girl" conditioning that once served you but now contributes to compassion fatigue. Discover how your nervous system, through the lens of polyvagal theory, reacts to setting boundaries and why this survival instinct can feel like anxiety or physical pain.

Dr. Merriman guides you through somatic healing techniques and chakra mapping, focusing on blockages in your Root (safety) and Throat (truth) Chakras that keep you stuck in patterns of over-responsibility and silence. Learn to rewrite your nervous system's autopilot responses with the Micro-Boundary script, reclaiming your power and fostering self-compassion.

Join us to begin your Good Girl Detox™ and move beyond burnout towards sovereignty and radiance. 

Click here to listen and start your healing journey.

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. 

Burnout isn’t your failure—it’s the cost of caring too long without support.
In Pursuit of Soul Joy: A 12-Week Guide for Overcoming Burnout and Compassion Fatigue is written for women healers ready to stop surviving and start living again.

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Reach out to Dr. Julie - Tell her how you're feeling to get a personalized plan to feel alive and thrive.

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

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

Transcript

0:02

Have you ever looked around at the successful, responsible life? You've built the career, the family, the reputation as the one who can handle everything and thought, I created all of this, so why does it feel like I'm trapped? Inside a cage of my own making. This episode is for you. Empowering brilliant women in healthcare over 50 to transform burnout and compassion fatigue into renewed passion. Reigniting your spark to create a life that energizes you every single day. I'm your host, Dr. Jules. Let's get to it. Okay. I need you to stay with me until the very end of this episode because today we aren't just talking about stress. We are dismantling the root cause of your fatigue. Here is why you need to listen. Number one, I'm going to prove to you that you aren't burned out because of your workload. You are suffering from something I call identity burnout, and number two. We are going to map exactly where the good girl lives in your body using the chakra system, specifically your throat chakra and your root chakra, so you can physically feel where you are blocked. And number three, I'm going to teach you the concepts of the micro boundary. A nervous system hack that lets you say no without triggering any kind of a panic response or feeling like a bad person. So let's get honest here, shall we? You are tired, but y'all, it's not. The, I ran a marathon kind of tired. It's a deep soul level exhaustion that doesn't get fixed by sleep. In my 30 years as a clinician, treating nurses, doctors, therapists, women who hold up the sky. I have found that we are addicted to a very dangerous drug and it's not caffeine, surprisingly, and it is not sugar, it's competence. We have been taught that good equals helpful, and that worthy equals available. We call this the good girl conditioning. But at 50, 55, 65, this isn't cute anymore, y'all. It's lethal. You see, compassion fatigue isn't just about caring too much. It's about the resentment that builds when you are over-functioning for everyone else and under-functioning for yourself. I want to introduce you to a term. Identity burnout work burnout is when you have too many asks. Y'all are familiar with that. You can fix that with a vacation. Identity burnout, y'all. This is when the person you have been pretending to be is no longer sustainable. I mean, that's a deep purpose wound. You aren't tired of nursing. You aren't tired of counseling. You aren't tired of being a physician. You aren't tired of being a mother. You are tired of the performance and your performance being tied to your worth. You're tired of the mask that smiles and says, oh, I've got this. Your spirit is screaming. Help me. This is high stakes because if you don't drop the good girl identity, your body will do it for you. It will force you to stop via illness, via anxiety, via depression, or a full-blown identity crisis of sorts. So I've got good news. Let, but let's dissect this a bit before we get into the good news. I wanna look at the science of the polyvagal theory. You know, I love that. And the protest you might be thinking, Julie, I want to say no. I want to set boundaries, but I physically can't. And I believe you been there, done that, have that t-shirt. But here is the science of why, and I wish someone had told me this. As I was earning that t-shirt, we need to talk about your nervous system. In polyvagal theory, we talk about safety, and for most pe, for most people, safety looks like rest. But for the good girl, safety looks like fawning, and fawning is a trauma response. It's a please and appease response. When you were young, you learned to be safe. We all did. We all liked to be safe. We had to be liked to be safe. You had to be the helper and so forth. So now 50 and beyond. When someone asks you to take an extra shift, watch the grandkids when you're exhausted. You think about saying no, your body interprets that no. As a threat to your very survival, your amygdala fires up, your heart races. You feel a wave of guilt that feels almost like nausea and that guilt. It's not a moral compass, it's a chemical withdrawal. Withdrawal symptom. You are addicted to the validation of being the good one. When you try to stop, your body goes into full blown protest and this is why you feel trapped. You're biologically wired to abandon yourself. What do we do about this? That when you're, when you try to stop and your body goes into that protest and you begin to feel trapped, yeah. You're biologically wired to abandon yourself. Think about that. You do this to save connection with others, but here is the truth. Self abandonment is not a virtue, not at all. It's a slow suicide of your soul. Okay? We're gonna move to the energy part of this, but I want you to bear that mind suicide of your soul, which also. Kills that purpose. That purpose that when it's ignited, we feel so motivated and energized. And I refer to it as like, I'm a kid in a candy store. I just have the best time. But that's when I'm plugged into my purpose and my soul is alive. So what can we do about this? We've looked at the brain. Now let's look at the energy body. Because the good girl takes up residence in very specific places in your system, I want you to take a deep breath and check in with two specific energy centers. Your root chakra, which is from your sits bone, all the way down to your tippy toes in your throat chakra. Let's start with that root chara. This, as I said, it's at the base of your spine. It's about survival, safety, and your right to exist for the healer. Suffering from burnout and compassion fatigue, the root is often tremendously destabilized. Why? Because your safety is tied to your utility. Your worth is tied to what you do. Do you feel. You only have the right to take up space if you are fixing something you aren't needed. If you're not fixing. And if you aren't needed, you don't feel branded. So now let's move up to this throat chop. This is your center of truth. The good girl. Girl, she lives here like a lump in your throat. How many times have you swallowed your truth to keep the peace? How many times have you said, oh, it's fine when it wasn't? And how many times have you apologized for taking up space? That's energy constriction. When we don't speak our purpose and our truth, that energy gets stuck. I mean like concrete, and do you know what? Some energy becomes resentment and eventually thyroid issues, jaw attention and neck pain. Yeah, we've got a detox from the Good girl so your throat can speak your truth without an apology. Loosen up that throat chakra. Allow your voice to be heard. So here's the boundary I invite you to try. Here's the activity, which is a boundary I invite you to. It's called the micro boundary. And this is how we fix this good girl business. We don't do it by burning down your life tomorrow. That's too scary for your nervous system. And we're not here to traumatize stuff. We do it with this micro boundary. And this is your homework for this week. I want you to memorize this phrase the next time someone asks you for anything. Ride a shift. Pick up a client favor a decision. You are not allowed to say yes, and you're not allowed to say no. You are only allowed to say this. Write it down. Let me check my calendar and I'll get right back to you. That's it. Giving you time to write it down, period. That's all you say. Why does this work? Well, y'all, it buys you time. It breaks that autopilot fawn response or reflex. It allows your nervous system to calm down so you can ask yourself, do I actually want to do this? And it trains people to treat your time as a limited resource. Not an open buffet. If you decide to say no later, you can do it via text or an email when you are calm. But in the moment you say, let me check. I need you to try this at least once a week. Watch the panic rise. Breathe through it. Realize the world did not end. That is how you reclaim your freedom, your purpose, and your motivation. Okay, so here's what we covered today. You learned about compassion fatigue and it is often identity burnout. You are tired of the performance, you're tired of your worth. Being tied to your performance, we mapped out the blockage in your root system. It is your root system in your root chakra system, and that's safety in doing. We talked about your throat chakra and how we don't wanna swallow our truth, we want it to come out and you have your tool, the micro boundary. And remember, it's lemme check. You may not answer in the moment. Let me check. Listen to me closely. You have spent decades saving everyone else. It is time you save yourself. Girl, you're not broken. You are just ready for your next chapter. You know that Radiance chapter, so girl, if. You identify with any of the burnout symptoms we talked about today. You need to know exactly what shadow, healer archetype you are operating from. All you have to do is go to the show notes and click on my Shadow healer archetype quiz, and you're gonna get all kinds of amazing answers. You deserve to do this for yourself. We rise together. If this episode hit home, don't just nod and move on. Give yourself what you actually need. Tap the show notes right now, and girl, if you know another woman healer who's running on empty, please share this episode, y'all. We rise together.