The Floating Head Syndrome And The Real Reason You Can’t Heal Compassion Fatigue

Do you sit in your driveway for ten minutes after a shift just staring at the garage door? You aren't checking emails. You are hiding. You are dreading the moment you walk inside and someone asks you for "one more thing."

You are the most competent person in the room but you have become a "floating head" who is completely severed from your own body. This isn't just exhaustion. This is a biological and spiritual crisis that bubble baths cannot fix. Standard self-care is failing you because it doesn't address the root cause which is Profound Disconnection.

 In this episode Dr. Julie  attacks the "resilience" narrative and reveals why the people who heal others are often the most disconnected from themselves. We are getting into the dirt to uncover:

• The Biological Betrayal where ignoring your physical needs like holding your bladder is actually a sign of Functional Freeze and a blocked Root Chakra.
• The Ugly Truth regarding why you secretly resent the people you love the most and how this rots your Heart Chakra.
• The Somatic Reset which is a real-time research-backed exercise to stimulate your Vagus Nerve so you can stop performing and start feeling.

You cannot pour from an empty cup is a myth. You can. But eventually, you will become the empty cup. 

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

So let me ask you a question that might make you Hmm. Uncomfortable. Have you ever sat in your car, in your own driveway for 10 minutes after shift staring at the garage door? Just because you couldn't bear the thought of walking inside and having someone ask you for one more thing if you nodded your head. Stay right here. You are not crazy. You are not tired. You are in the middle of a biological and spiritual crisis. 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. Today we are going to war against the normal. We are going to talk about why you're high functioning capability is actually a trauma response and why. The standard self-care advice or just take a vacation is actually making you sicker. Here are three reasons I need you to stay and listen to the very end of this episode. First, you're going to discover why your bladder during a shift or session is actually a signal that your root chakra has shut down and your nervous system is in a functional freeze. Second, we are going to talk about the ugly emotion. No one admits resentment. I'm going to explain why you secretly resent. The very people you love the most and how to fix your heart chakra without becoming a veritable, doormat. And third, I'm going to walk you through a very specific somatic activity to reconnect you to your purpose. If you feel like you've lost your sacred why this activity is gonna help you find it. Okay, so y'all, let's talk about the diagnosis.'cause it is not stress, it's disconnection, and I'm gonna tell you why. So let's get into it. We need to start by defining what is actually happening to you. Sweet friend. I treat women, healers, over 50 doctors, nurses, therapists, social workers, clergy educators. You are the strong ones. You are the ones who hold the department together. You hold the family together, you hold it all together. But here's the ugly truth, y'all. Burnout, compassion, fatigue. It is not just exhaustion. If you were just exhausted, a weekend of sleep would fix it. You've tried sleep. I know you have. You're still tired. That's because this is compassion fatigue. It is a systemic injury to your soul and your biology, and the problem isn't that you work too hard, although you do the problem, my friend, is disconnection. When we live in a state of high stake survival mode for 30 years, which is what a career in healthcare is. We survive by disconnecting. We disconnect to get through the trauma of the er, of the client. Of the student. We disconnect to handle the client's grief. We disconnect to manage the hospital politics. We disconnect to manage the university politics, but you cannot selectively disconnect. Y'all. You can't turn off the pain that you turning off the joy, you numb things. You can't turn off the overwhelm without turning off the purpose. Today we are looking at three great disconnections that cause suffering. We are going to map these to the science of the nervous system, and we're going to map them to ancient wisdom of the chakras because you need both. One without the other is hollow, huh? Science without spirit is sterile. Spirit without science, it's just ungrounded. So first, let's talk about disconnection One. Body and the root chakra. The first casualty of high functioning burnout is your body. I want you to think about your last shift or session or class, your last week of work. Did you skip lunch? Did you hold your bladder for four hours because someone needed you? Did you push through a migraine? I just gotta do it. Just gotta get it over with. Society tells us, oh, this is quite virtuous. It tells us you are a dedicated professional. And I'm telling you that this is violence against self biologically. This is a state of functional freeze. So in polyvagal theory, your nervous system has assessed that it is not safe to have needs. If you are in a war zone, you don't stop to eat. You don't stop to pee, you just keep going. You, your body has learned over the years that safety equals ignoring self. You have trained your nervous system that your survival depends on suppressing your biological signals. This is why you can't feel your hunger until you are starving. This is why you don't feel exhaustion until you crash. So let's look at this energetically as well. Energetically, this is a blockage in your root chakra, and remember that root chakra is at the base of your spine. It governs our right to exist. It governs our safety, our survival, our physical needs. And when a healer has a blocked root chakra, they feel ungrounded. You feel ungrounded. You might feel anxious, lighty, or like you are constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. Just there's that unease. Something's, something's up. This is because you are essentially floating above your body because it's too painful to be in your body. You're a floating head of competence. If you're disconnected from your body, you cannot heal. You are a house built on sand. You might be brilliant. I'm sure you are. I bank on it. You might be saving lives. You might be making a difference in a lot of lives, but you are slowly girl. You are slowly dying on the inside because you have ignored your root system and it's withering. We have to stop calling self neglect, resilience. It is not resilience. It is trauma. Okay, absorb that. We're move into the next disconnection relationships and your heart chakra. We're gonna go a little deeper. Let's go to the plays that carries the, the most shame. Disconnection from relationships and y'all, here's the scenario. You spend all day being the most empathic person in the room. You listen to patients, you listen to students, you listen to clients, you validate pain, you hold space, then you come home. Just getting home used to be a challenge for me. Huh? The drive. The drive home, I'd be so exhausted. I would just think, how am I gonna drive home? Your husband, ask where the catchup is. Or maybe your adult child calls to complain about their job. And we love when they call, but sadly, instantly you feel a flash of rage. You think, why does everyone need a piece of me? Why can't anyone do anything for themselves? And then the shame hits and you think, well, hell, I'm terrible. I'm a terrible mother. I'm a terrible partner. I'm supposed to be the caring person. But here's the truth, girl. Sweet. So you are not terrible. You're empty. This is the ugly truth about compassion fatigue. When you give from an empty cup, you know that myth? Oh, you can't pour from an empty cup. When you continue to give from an empty cup, the liquid you pour out is resentment and you become the empty cup. So energetically, this is your heart chakra. This center right here in your chest, this center governs love, compassion, and connection. And when we are burned out, we don't just close the heart chakra, well, we build a fortress around it. We build a wall of stone to protect ourselves from being drained further. But here is the paradox, the wall. Keeps the drain out, but it also keeps the nourishment out. You feel alone, even when you are surrounded by the people you love. You feel invisible even when you are the center of attention. We have to move the walls to gates, permeable boundaries. A wall is a blockage, A gate is a latch. Has a latch as well. You can open it and you can close it. That's why it's a boundary. A boundary is not mean. A boundary is the only way to sustain love. Saying it again, A boundary is the only way to sustain love. If you were feeling resentment, I want you to validate it. Resentment is a signal. It's your soul speaking to you. It's your soul's way of saying, I'm overextended. Don't judge the resentment. Listen to it. Be curious about it. So disconnection three. Is the sacred why we've disconnected from the sacred why, and our crown chakra, this is the third disconnection, the that disconnection from your sacred why is in big, that's your purpose. You feel that when my purpose is disconnected, I feel flat and depressed and. Keep thinking what is going on with me? I'm just not me anymore. When I'm connected, it's like a kid in a candy store. I'm having a big time. I'm motivated. Y'all. This disconnection is the deepest pain for women over 50. When you went into medicine, therapy, social work, education, counseling, clergy, wherever your calling is, you had a calling. You wanted to heal, you wanted to help. You wanted to make a difference. You had that spark, but now, now it feels like paperwork. It feels like insurance codes. It feels like office politics. You look at your career and you think, is this it? Is this what I sacrificed my health for my time, for all that education? Huh? So the science behind this would call this a moral injury. It happens when we are forced to work in systems that violate our core values, and it causes pro found. It causes a profound sense of grief and cynicism. This relates to your crown chakra. This is your connection to the divine, to wisdom, to that big picture. When the count, when the crown chakra is blocked by burnout, compassion, fatigue, we lose our vision. We become cynical. We feel trapped. We, we feel like a cog in a machine rather than the healer of souls, the helper of souls. But I want you to listen to me, your purpose. Oh honey, your purpose did not leave you. It is buried under the debris of the system. You are entering your second act, the wisdom years. This is the time when you are meant to transition from the warrior. Who fights the disease to the sage who teaches wisdom, you need a new path, a next chapter. That doesn't necessarily mean quitting your job. It's not what I mean. I don't invite you to quit your job tomorrow, but I do invite you to find alignment. And if that means quitting your job, you do you, but you find your alignment. So here's what we're gonna do. I told you we just wouldn't talk. I don't believe in that. I'm gonna give you an activity every single time to take it from knowledge to application. Bloom's taxonomy. We are going to do something good. We cannot think our way out of burnout. We cannot mindset our way out of a fried nervous system. Research into the vagus nerve shows. That we must feel safety in the body to turn off the alarm bells of our amygdala. Hmm. So we're going to do a somatic anchor exercise to reconnect the root and heart chakra. So if you're driving, just please keep your eyes. Well, of course, keep your eyes open. Whatever you're doing. I just need you to hear my voice. And if you're at home, please close your eyes and, and do this or come back to it later. I want you to squeeze your glutes. We're starting at the root chakra. Squeeze your glutes. Push your feet into the floor. Feel the resistance. Hold it, hold it, release. Feel the blood flow back into your legs. Tell your body I'm here. I'm safe. I have the right to take up space. Now take your right hand, place it firmly over your chest, over your heart. Take your left hand, place it onto your belly. We are going to take a deep breath into the belly. Push that left hand out. Inhale 4, 3, 2, 1. Hold and exhale. Make that sound ha. Visualization here is for you to imagine a golden cord connecting your heart to the earth. With every exhale, send the resentment down to that cord into the earth. The earth can hold it. You don't have to hold it. Let go do this for three breaths. Inhale, peace. Exhale, resentment. Okay. It's simple. My activities are simple, but dude, if you will do them on a regular basis, you will be different. Okay? We're gonna summarize what we learned. You're not broken, you disconnected. You have disconnected from your body, the root chakra to survive the stress. You have disconnected from your relationships, the heart chakra to protect your energy, and you have disconnected from your purpose, the crown chakra because of moral injury. We rise together by reclaiming these parts, all these parts of ourselves, of we go eat lunch. We set boundaries and we dream of that next chapter. Girl, if you recognize yourself in any of these disconnections, if you felt that pain and go, oh God, that's me. Then you need to know exactly which archetype of burnout is running your show. I have a specific tool of design for this, and I want you to go to the show notes right now. There's a link to. The shadow healer archetype quiz takes two minutes. It's gonna tell you exactly which chakra is your primary blockage and give you a roadmap to clear it. So go to the show notes right now. Click the link, take the quiz. The world needs you. I need you whole, not hollow. So let's find your radiance and I'll see you next time 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.