Purpose After Burnout and Compassion Fatigue: Understanding the Estrogen Void in Women Healers

Have you experienced emotional exhaustion or brain fog that leaves you feeling lost and empty? This episode dives deep into the challenges women healers over 50 face, including burnout, compassion fatigue, and the impact of perimenopause on cognitive function. Discover the concept of the Estrogen Void — a misunderstood condition that is not aging or dementia, but a hormonal shift affecting brain health and purpose.

Join Dr. Julie Merriman, Ph.D., LPC-S, as she explores somatic healing techniques, boundary setting, and the role of estrogen as a brain-protective hormone. Learn how functional mushrooms and a Solar Plexus chakra somatic reset can aid emotional recovery and promote self-compassion. This episode draws on polyvagal theory and trauma-informed nervous system strategies to help you regain clarity, confidence, and ignite your passion beyond burnout and compassion fatigue.

If you are a woman healer navigating the challenges of life after 50 and seeking to move from survival to restoration, this episode offers insightful guidance and support. Share it with someone who needs to hear these empowering truths — together, we rise.

This podcast is for women healers over 50 navigating burnout and compassion fatigue who want nervous-system-informed insight into exhaustion, cognitive fog, identity loss, purpose erosion, and embodied recovery so they can move from survival into clarity, stability, and restoration.

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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Transcript

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Have you ever walked into a room and felt a terrifying emptiness, not just forgetting while you're there, but feeling like a file was permanently deleted from your brain. 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 revealing the estrogen void that the medical system isn't really telling us everything we need to know. And we're gonna talk about the exact tools I used to rebuild my own brain when burnout and menopause collided. So, girl, I need you to listen until the very end, because you're gonna discover first the five brain systems that go dark. In the female brain after menopause and why your current supplements, your fish oil, your vitamin B, all the things we've been told to take is like trying to water a garden with a teaspoon when what you need is a fire hose. Second, I'm gonna tell you about the breakthrough research from neuroscientist Dr. Lisa Ani that shows how estrogen helps to protect your brain. And what happens when that protection vanishes, plus how the thoughts like you're having about your brain fog are making it exponentially worse. And third, a solar plexus activation. I call the solar resistance snap. I'm gonna show it to you. It uses. Somatic resistance, not breathing to snap your brain back into power mode when that fog hits. You're going to practice this with me today and y'all, I want you to feel the shift happen in real time, so I really tickled your, you're here today and you know if you are 10 to 15 years postmenopausal. And you've started wondering if this version of yourself, the one who forgets mid-sentence, who can't remember your colleagues' names, who stands in the kitchen with no idea why you were in there, is just who you are now, this isn't aging, it's abandonment, and I'm gonna tell you about it. Your brain didn't betray you. The healthcare system. That was supposed to support you through this transition, simply walked away, and what you're experiencing right now has a name, it's called Estrogen Void, and man, it is fixable. Okay? Before I dive into the science, I need to tell you something personal because if I'm asking you to trust me with your healing, you need to know I've been where you are. Around 15, maybe 18 years ago, I was facilitating a training for some lovely nurse practitioners. I've, I had 30 lovely women in the room and I was mid-sentence explaining the polyvagal ladder. And y'all, that's something I've taught hundreds of times and I just stopped. The word ventral just disappeared, not like tip of the tongue disappeared. Like I had never heard the word before. And I stood there, my face burning while these 30 pairs of eyes watched me fumble. And here's what my brain did. It told me I was a fraud. It told me I had no business teaching if I couldn't even remember basic terminology. And it told me maybe it was time to go flip hamburgers at McDonald's. That that voice, yeah, that wasn't the truth. That was the estrogen void speaking. But it was also something else, burnout, because y'all, I was in the middle of a complete and ugly breakdown. I'd just finished my PhD. I'd moved to a new town, closed my beloved private practice, and I was running on fumes. My estrogen was gone. My cortisol was through the roof and my brain was literally on fire from years of compassion fatigue. And sweet. So if you've had that moment where you question your competence, your value, your very identity, because your brain isn't performing the way it used to, I need you to hear this. Your brilliance is not gone. Your brain is caught in a perfect storm of hormonal loss and burnout, and both are fixable. So what happened to me wasn't personal failure, although if you asked me at the time, I would've told you it was. I just wanna validate that what's happening to you isn't personal failure. This is a systemic neglect of women's brains during the most vulnerable neurological transition of our lives. Happening at the exact same time, our careers demand the most from us. So today we're going to address what the medical system broke. Not with blame, not with shame, but with precision, with research, and with the fierce protective love. I call chocolate energy. Because I'm done watching all of you lovely, brilliant women disappear into the fog when the solution has been sitting in the research for over two decades. So this next section, I'm gonna call the research what they've been hiding from us. The five systems that go dark. So let me paint a picture of what's actually happening in your brain right now. Dr. Lisa Ani, who is a neuroscientist at Will Cornell, and one of the few researchers who actually studies women's brains. She wrote a book called The XX Brain, and in it she documents something rather extraordinary. Estrogen is not just a reproductive hormone, it's the project manager for five critical brain systems. So I want you to think of estrogen, like the foreman on a construction site. And when she's there, everyone knows their job. The cleanup crew shows up, the repair, the repair team fixes damage, the inflammation gets managed. But when the foreman walks off the job, mass chaos. So here are the five systems that go dark. System one, the neurogenesis and repair. This is your brain's ability to grow new neurons and repair damaged connections. Estrogen literally tells stem cells in your hippocampus. Hippocampus, and you know that's our memory center to wake up and build. When estrogen drops, that signal stops. And the construction crew packs up and goes home. System two, structural integrity. Estrogen maintains the myelin sheath. That's the protective coating around your neurons that make signals travel fast, and without it, your brain's wiring starts to fray. Messages get garbled. That's why you lose words mid-sentence, and that can feel scary. I mean, I've been giving lectures. You have been presenting. I'm just talking to my husband and I lose that word, and I think, am I losing my mind? No. The structural integrity is challenged because of our lower estrogen. And then system three, that's the cooling system. Estrogen has a powerful anti-inflammatory, and when it's gone, neuroinflammation, skyrockets. Your brain is literally on fire and nobody gave you a fire extinguisher. And then system four, that's the cleanup crew. There's a process called auto foggy, and I said that wrong. There's a process called autophagy, that's your brain's garbage disposal. It clears out damaged proteins, toxins, metabolic waste. Estrogen activates this, and when it drops, the trash piles up. That's system five. The gut Brain highway estrogen regulates the vagus nerve communication between your gut and brain, and when it's disrupted, your gut microbiome shifts, inflammation increases, and your brain gets fewer of the nutrients it needs. And here's the kicker. Your doctor probably never mentioned any of this. Because the medical model looks at menopause as an ovarian failure, not a whole body neurological transition. They're so fo focused on hot flashes and bone density that they completely miss the fact that your brain is restructuring itself without the support it needs. And y'all,, I gotta be honest, this makes my blood boil. Doctors know about this. The research has existed since the 1990s. Dr. Boone's work has been published in major journals. Dr. Sarah Gottfried has been screaming about hormones. About hormone brain connection. For years, the Women's Health Initiative study from 2002 flawed as it was, at least acknowledge that estrogen affects cognition. But here's the truth, they don't want you to know there's no profitable solution to offer you. They can give you synthetic hormone replacement, but the studies are mixed and many women can't or won't take it, even though we've just gotten the green light on it, and I believe in my hormones. I am not kicking hormones to the curb. I just want to present this to you from the research. We're often offered antidepressants that numb us further make sex absolutely unfun, or we're just patted on our heads and told to do a crossword puzzle, y'all. This is medical gaslighting. This is systemic abandonment of women's health, and it ends today because I am going to give you the exact tools I used to rebuild my own brain, and it was flipping, falling apart. You deserve better. You deserved better 20 years ago, and I'm just done being polite about it. But here's the really, but here's what they're really not telling you. The thoughts you're having about your brain fog are making it a hundred times worse. Every time you think, oh fuck, I'm incompetent. I'm losing my mind. Maybe I should retire. You're triggering a stress response that dumps more cortisol, creates more inflammation, and makes the fog even thicker. The biological loss of estrogen is real. But the thought spiral about that loss, y'all, that's optional and that's what I'm going to teach you to interrupt. So we're entering into the burnout, menopause collision. Can you visualize that? Oh, and really, there's nothing funny about it, but we just as well laugh. That gives us some endorphins, right? A little shot of hormone. Um, okay, so here's what nobody's really talking about. Most women hit menopause at the exact same time. They're hitting peak burnout. You're in your late forties, early fifties. You've been in healthcare helping profession for 20, 25, 30 years. You've absorbed decades of other people's trauma. Your. Ah, you've given everything to everyone else and your compassion fatigue is most likely maxed out, and then estrogen walks off the job. It's a perfect storm. Your brain is already depleted from years of emotional labor. Your stress hormones are already elevated from chronic compassion fatigue, and your nervous system is already stuck in survival mode. And when estrogen drops, it's like removing the last structural support from a building that was already crumbling. Y'all, this is exactly what happened to me. In my book, in Pursuit of Soul Joy, I detail my complete crash. On page one, I write, I lost my ever loving mind. It was a dark time. I was completely impacted by burnout and compassion fatigue. Everything I valued came close to being lost. My marriage and the life I had struggled so diligently to build that crash. It happened at 46 right when perimenopause hit, right when my brain needed estrogen. The very most, right when I needed my cognitive function to be sharp because I was finishing my PhD, the brain fog, the memory loss, the word finding difficulties. They weren't just menopause, they were burnout and menopause colliding, and the tools I used to climb out of that fing inhale. They're all in my book and they work for both the hormonal piece and the burnout piece. So see, this is exactly what I address in week three of my book, recovering Your Sense of Wellness. The complete title of my book is Em, pursuit of Soul Joy, a 12 week guide for Overcoming Burnout and Compassion Fatigue. And I need to be honest with you, my book is written for mental health professionals dealing with burnout. But here's the truth, if you are a woman healer helper over 50, and you're dealing with both burnout and hormonal changes. The tools in this book work for both. See, week three, I give you the superpower model on page 24, it's a CBT based framework I created to catch the thoughts that are making your brain fog worse. Because listen, you forgot a word. That's the fact. But when. Your brain says, well, I'm incompetent. I'm losing myself. That thought creates panic, which dumps cortisol, which creates more fog. The superpower model teaches you to identify the fact, forgot a word, catch the thought. I'm incompetent. Recognize the feeling, panic. Change the creation. That's the outcome, y'all. This is a cape worthy superpower because changing your thoughts is literally your superpower. Week three also gives you the embodiment practice. On page 25, this is a full body scan technique that gets you out of your spinning. That panicky head and back into your body where calm lives. I really believe this, and I call it this in the book, that this is the longest journey you're ever gonna take, and that is from your head to your heart. And here's the beautiful thing. These tools work. Whether your brain fog is from estrogen, loss from burnout, or from both. Because at the end of the day, it's all about nervous system regulation and thought management. I also give you three comprehensive self-assessment checklist starting on page 21. The basic personal needs, the basic work needs, and self-awareness, because these show you exactly where your burnout and compassion fatigue are hitting the hardest. But we're gonna come back to that. First, I want to explain why your current approach is probably not working. Now, I know that some of y'all are thinking, but Jules, I'm already trying For God's sake. I take supplements, I spend money out the ass on these things. I try to rest. Why am I still in the fog? Here's the truth. Most approaches address the body, but ignore the mind and soul. Supplements help a biological right, that's the biological piece. Perfect, but they don't catch the thought spiral that's keeping your cortisol elevated. Rest helps. It helps a lot with physical recovery and that's. I love me a nap, but if it doesn't address the compassion fatigue that's depleting your emotional reserves,, you're not gonna be rested. And meditation helps with stress, absolutely. But it doesn't rebuild the sense of self and purpose that burnout stole from you. You need a holistic. Sustainable self-care practice that addresses mind, body, and soul. And that's what my 12 week framework does. And sweet soul. I know you're tired of people telling you to practice self-care. I get it. But what I'm offering isn't bubble baths and wine nights. This is a PhD level self-care. Built on neuroscience, somatic practices, and energy work because that is what it is gonna take to rebuild a brain that's been through what yours has been through. So let's move into our shopper work, because I'm a big believer in that psychology. So we wanna bridge from empty brain to sacred authority, right? And we're gonna talk about the solar plexus collapse. So we've talked about the biology, but now I want to talk about what this feels like in your body. In your energy, in your sense of self, because here's what happens when your brain starts failing you in invisible ways, Julie, right here. Because here's what happens when your brain starts failing you in visible ways. You stop trusting yourself. You stop speaking up in meetings, you stop offering your wisdom because you're too terrified. You'll forget a crucial word. Mm. You become smaller, quieter, invisible, and when we lose our voice. When we lose our authority, when we start to second guess our own brilliance, that's a solar plexus collapse. See, the solar plexus chakra sits just above your navel. It's the center of your personal power, your identity and purpose, the will to act your digestive fire. And y'all. That's not a metaphor. This chakra governs your actual digestive system, which connects directly to your brain health through that gut brain highway that we talked about. When estrogen drops and your brain systems go dark, your solar plexus often follows, because how can you feel powerful when you can't remember? How can you claim your authority when you feel like you're disappearing? I call this the invisible woman syndrome. You walk into rooms and people talk over you. Your expertise gets dismissed. Younger colleagues explain things. You taught them five years ago. And every time it happens, your solar plexus dims a little more In my book, week six is called Personal Power, and it starts on page 47 with a chapter titled Fear is a Big Fat Liar because that fear you feel. That you're incompetent, that you should step back, that you're too old or too foggy to contribute. It's lying to you. That fear is your solar plexus collapsing, and it's fed by both hormonal changes and years of burnout. But here's the sacred truth. Your memory lapses are not a sign that you should step back. They're a sign that you need to rebuild from a deeper foundation. Let me introduce you to a concept I talk about extensively throughout my book, sacred Resentment. You know that feeling when someone tells you it's just aging or everyone forgets things, or have you tried doing some crossword puzzles? That flash of anger, that sacred because that resentment is your soul saying, this is not acceptable. I deserve better. This is not the fullness of who I am. Don't push that anger down. Don't spiritually bypass it with gratitude practices or affirmations. That resentment sweet soul is information. It's your solar plexus trying to come back online. The system wants you to believe this is normal. That you should quietly fade away, that your value is tied to your productivity, and when your brain slows down, so should you but friend. That's a lie wrapped in ageism and sexism and medical neglect tied up with a pretty little bow. Your brain fog is not a spiritual lesson. It's really not a spiritual lesson about surrender. It's a biological crisis. Your brain fog is not a spiritual lesson about surrender. It's a biological crisis that has biological solution plus a thought work component that you can control. And you have every right to be furious that nobody told you about it sooner. So this is what Week seven holding space for me of in pursuit of soul Joy is all about reclaiming solar plexus your personal power and your absolute certainty that you matter. Whether your brain is performing perfectly or not, and y'all, I get brutally honest in this chapter, pages 56 through 58, I detail how my burnout almost cost me my 35 year marriage, the drinking, the anger at my husband, the blame. I thought he had abandoned me when he was right there holding me up the whole. Time. I just couldn't see him. Through my brain fog and burnout, I write. I became angry with him. I blamed every negative thing that happened in our lives on him. I'm ashamed to say it, but he could not do anything right in my eyes. I was unhappy and miserable being around him. This man stood by my side. He loved me. When I could not love myself. That was the estrogen void plus burnout talking, and it almost destroyed everything. Then pages 59 through 62 give you the exact self-compassion practices and what I call nurturing nuggets. My personal morning routine on page 61, that brought me back. Two hours of alone time every morning that literally saved my life and my marriage. My nurturing nuggets include waking up early, planning my day, meditating, journaling, exercising, fasting until noon, and wrapping it up with a shower. Oh, and cat loving Type two. The template on page 61 lets you create your own nurturing nuggets based on what your soul needs. And then in week seven, I teach you how to hold space for yourself with the same fears, compassion you give your clients. Because sweet soul, your word is not measured by your. Recall speed. Your wisdom doesn't live in a word retrieval. Your value doesn't decrease because estrogen did. And we are going to practice embodying that truth right now. So in my work with burned out healers, I've identified several somatic patterns, ways we adapt when the system breaks us. One of the most common for women over 50 is what I call the empty nest healer. This is the woman who feels her usefulness ended when her kids left or her role changed. Who struggles to remember why she matters if she's not actively serving, who experiences the brain fog as confirmation that she's becoming obsolete? Who pours everything into helping others while her own foundation crumbles anybody. But here's the transformation that's available to y'all. The wise woman knows her value is not measured by productivity, but by presence. Her brain fog is a system failure, hormonal plus burnout. Not a character flaw her memory, oh, those memory issues are temporary, structural problems, not permanent identity shifts, and she deserves the same quality of care. She's given everyone else for decades. This shift from empty nest to wise woman happens in the solar plexus. It's the reclamation of your fire. Your absolute certainty that you, my friend, matter. And we're going to practice that shift right here, right now in your body using something I call the solar resistance snap. So, Okie dokie. It's time to move. I want you to pause whatever you're doing, if you can. If you're driving, bookmark this, save it for when you get home because we're going to do something physical together. This practice uses isometric contraction. That means you are creating tension without movement. This is brilliant for your nervous system regulation because it activates the ventral vagal pathway without relying on breathing. Which can be triggering if you're already anxious. It creates a strong proprioceptive signal that says, I'm here. I'm solid, I'm real. It engages your core in a way that directly stimulates the solar plexus and it forces your brain. Out of the foggy, dorsal vagal state and into clarity. So it's not meditation, it's not calm down and breathe. This is an active empowerment. This is you taking up space in your own body, akin this. Practice is based on week two of my book where I teach you about the chakra system and how to work with each energy center, the solar plexus and practices I teach on pages 13 through 14 help you reconnect with your own personal power when burnout has dimmed it. So, okay, let's do this together. I'm gonna guide you. Through. And then I want you to do three rounds. So finding the lock round one, bring your hands in front of your solar plexus. That's the spot just above your belly button below your rib cage. And hook your fingers together like you're making a prayer mudra, but then interlace your fingers more deeply. This is called a Ganesha Mudra in yoga, and it's all about removing obstacles. Your elbows should be out to the sides, forearms roughly parallel to the ground. Got it? Good. Now, I want you to try to pull your hands apart as hard as you can without letting them separate. Really, really pull. Feel your upper arms engage. Feel your chest muscles wake up. Feel the tension across your shoulders. Hold that pull for a count of 10 and then release. Shake it out and notice what you notice. Round two, adding the core. So let's go again. Hook your fingers, pull your hands. Apart, feel that same strong tension. But now while you're pulling, I want you to pull your belly button back towards your spine, not sucking in. This is drawing back from your deep core. Hold, the hand pull and the core engagement Count with me. 1, 2, 3. I'm here. 4, 5, 6. I'm powerful. 7, 8, 9, 10. And release and breathe naturally. Don't force the breath, just let it happen. And then round three the declaration. One more time. Hook your fingers, pull apart. With everything you've got, pull your belly back towards your spine. And this time as you hold, I want you to think or whisper. I reclaim my authority. My brain is rebuilding. I am not lost. 1, 2, 3. I reclaim my authority. 4, 5, 6. My brain is rebuilding. 7, 8, 9, 10. I'm not lost And release. God. Beautiful work, sweet soul. Now, I want you to notice, do you feel more alert, maybe more present? Maybe there's a warmth in your belly or a tingling in your hands that is your nervous system. Shifting from that foggy, disconnected state into ventral vagal engagement, you just gave your brain a clear signal. We're here, we're solid. We can trust this body. And here's the powerful part. You can do this anywhere in a meeting. In a meeting where you lose a word in the kitchen when you forget why you're there before a presentation. When you need to feel sharp. Three rounds, 30 seconds, instant recalibration. It's not a bandaid, it's a bridge. It's a somatic anchor that reminds your body. Girl, you're not broken. You are adapting and you have the power to shift your state. Okay, so let's take a breath and integrate everything we've covered because we saw this has been a journey today. You learned that the brain fog, the memory lapses, and the terrifying moments of blankness you've experienced, they are not personal failures. They are not proof that you are losing yourself or that aging means disappearing. What you're experiencing is the estrogen void, a systemic failure where five critical brain systems lose their project manager, and nobody gave you the blueprint to rebuild without her. But you also learned that this is happening at the same time. Most women, healers and helpers are hitting peak burnout. It's a collision. And you need tools that address both pieces. You discovered one, the brain systems that go dark neurogenesis, structural integrity, cooling cleanup, and the gut brain connection, and you learned that addressing the biology is important. But if you don't also address thought spirals and the burnout, you're only solving half the problem. And two, the real research from Dr. Lisa Ani showing what estrogen does for your brain. But more importantly. You learned about the superpower model, the thought work that stops you from making the fog worse with catastrophic thinking. In three, the solar plexus connection, when your brain fails you, your sense of personal power collapses. You become the invisible woman. But through practices like the solar resistance snap and the nurturing nuggets. You can reclaim your authority and rebuild your foundation. So before we go any further, I want you to do something for me. Please think of one woman in your life who needs to hear this. Maybe it's your colleague who keeps apologizing for forgetting things. Maybe it's your friend who's been told her brain fog is just menopause. And has not been offered any solutions. Or maybe it's your daughter who needs to understand what her mother's going through. Send this episode right now. Text her the link, post it in your group chat because friend, this information changes lives, but only if we spread it. Only if we forget to suffer. Right here, Julie, only. If we refuse to suffer in silence. But I need to zoom out for just a sec because this conversation y'all, it's something much bigger than whether you can remember where you put your stupid keys. I'm talking to me'cause I'm losing all the time. This is about a healthcare system that has systematically abandoned US gals over 50. You're not broken. The system is, you're not deficient. The system is, you're not failing. The system failed you. And until we start talking about this, until we start naming the estrogen void. And until we start talking about this, until we start naming the estrogen void, and until we start sharing the research that's been buried until we start demanding better for ourselves, our daughters, and every woman who will go through this transition after us. Nothing changes, and that's why I wrote my book In Pursuit of Soul Joy, but here's what I've learned from my readers. If you're a woman healer or helper over 50, and you're dealing with both burnout. And hormonal changes. This book's for you. My crash, it was perimenopause colliding with severe burnout and the tools I used to climb out of that, hell, oh. It works for both. We've been taught to give everything to everyone else while our foundations crumble, to normalize exhaustion, to push through brain fog and to smile through the invisibility. My book walks you through a 12 week framework to rebuild not just your cognitive function, but your entire relationship with your purpose, your body, your energy, your worth. I'm going to be really direct with you your brain is rebuilding right now, or it's degrading. There's no neutral. Every day you wait is another day. Those five systems stay dark every week. You spend thinking. I'll deal with this later is another week your hippocampus shrinks. Instead of grows another week, your thoughts spiral deeper. You felt something shift during the solar resistance snap. Maybe your shoulders dropped. Maybe you felt more alert. Maybe you had that moment of, oh, I'm actually here in my body. That's your nervous system saying yes. Don't let that window close. Hop over to my website, www julie merriman phd.com. It's also linked in the show notes. Do it right now, not tomorrow, not next week. While this episode is still fresh and that spark is still lit in your body, in pursuit of soul, joy isn't just information. It's not another self-help book, you'll skim and shelf. It's a 12 week roadmap back to yourself, back to your power, back, to trusting your brilliant mind, even when it's rebuilding. After you buy the book, come back and share this episode. Post it on your socials. Tag me at Dr. Julie Marryman. Send it to any woman who's been told her brain fog is just part of getting older because every time you share this, you're breaking the silence. You're refusing to let another woman disappear into the void alone. You're saying this is not acceptable, and here's proof we deserve better. See you next week. 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.