A Surprising Solution to Decision Fatigue and Burnout Prevention

You are making more than 35,000 decisions a day as a clinician—and every single one is draining your Solar Plexus until you are so depleted you can’t even decide what to eat for dinner.

If you’ve tried every productivity hack, planner, and time-management system and you are still exhausted, this episode explains why the problem was never your time.

In this episode, Dr. Julie dismantles the time-management lie that keeps women healers blaming themselves for burnout.

You’ll learn why burnout is not caused by poor organization or lack of discipline, but by an impossible workload that demands more time and resources than any human nervous system can sustainably give. Dr. Julie explains how decision fatigue—not laziness—paralyzes you after long clinical days, leaving you able to make life-and-death decisions at work but unable to make simple choices at home.

Drawing from In Pursuit of Soul Joy, this episode names the brutal loop that keeps you stuck: telling yourself you’ll rest, set boundaries, or reclaim your life “tomorrow”—while tomorrow never comes.

This episode reveals where decision fatigue actually lives in your body.

Dr. Julie explains how burnout depletes the Solar Plexus chakra—your Manipura—your energy center of willpower, self-esteem, inner strength, and personal power. When this chakra becomes underactive, you experience indecisiveness, exhaustion, low self-worth, digestive issues, and the inability to assert boundaries.

You’ll be introduced to the Power Matrix, a visual decision-making tool from Week Six of In Pursuit of Soul Joy that helps you delegate, delete, and reclaim your energy without adding one more thing to your to-do list. You’ll also learn a restorative practice designed to help you begin rebuilding your depleted power center.

This episode gives you language for why no planner has ever fixed your burnout—and a path toward restoring your power instead of forcing more productivity.

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

If this episode named your experience, the next step is deeper work.

Stop trying to "Self-Care" your way out of a physiological crisis.

If bubble baths and deep breathing actually fixed compassion fatigue, you wouldn't still be staring at the ceiling at 2:00 AM. Your burnout isn't an attitude problem, it's a biological pattern. You are stuck in one of four distinct "somatic signatures." Until you identify yours, you are just throwing water on a grease fire.

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Stop guessing. Find the leak. Fix the circuit.

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

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

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

Transcript

0:01

In this episode, you'll discover that you're making more than 35,000 decisions a day as a helper, as a healer, as an educator, and how this drains your solar plexus. 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. So I invite you to listen until the end so you don't miss an ounce of important information one. I'm gonna talk about the neuroscience. Proving burnout isn't about managing your time better. Two, we're gonna talk about solar plexus depletion cycle, and three, we're gonna look at a somatic practice that uses your solar plexus as a dec decision making compass. Alright, let's get to it. So let me guess. You've tried all the productivity hacks, right? I know I have. You've color coded your calendar. You've time blocked your day. You've downloaded apps that promise to make you more efficient. You wake up at 5:00 AM so you can get ahead. You skip lunch, so you can chart between sessions, you answer emails at 10:00 PM because you're just trying, good Lord, trying to sound top of things. And yet you're still drowning. So you tell yourself the problem is you. You're just not disciplined enough, not organized enough, not efficient enough. If you could just manage your time better, you wouldn't be so burned out. Right. Okay. Wrong, wrong, sweet. So that is a lie. The system sold us to keep us blaming ourselves instead of seeing what's actually happening. So here's what research actually is showing us. A 2019 study in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that burnout is directly correlated with job demands that exceed available resources. It's not with time management skills. The researchers were crystal clear about this young. They said burnout is an organizational problem, not an individual deficit. So I'm gonna say that again. Burnout is not you. Burnout is an organizational problem. And here's where I think it might get a bit interesting. That same research found that helpers and healers who are experiencing burnout showed significantly impaired decision making capacity, what they called resource depletion that affected cognitive function even outside of work hours. So the 2023 meta-analysis in frontier psychology that I think I've talked about before, confirms what you already know in your bones. Clinicians, helpers, educators, healers, y'all. We make an average of 35,000 decisions per day, and that's not hyperbole, it's science. So let's talk about what all those decisions are doing to you. Roy Balmeister, groundbreaking research on ego depletion published a couple of decades ago proved that willpower operates like a muscle. Every decision you make, every impulse you resist, every choice you force yourself through. Depletes a finite resource and get this a 2016 study in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found judges were significantly more likely to grant parole at the end of the day. Why? Because by then y'all have heard so much, you're like, F it, you're parole. You're gonna be fine. They're tired. You know, and, and they're, they're well trained like we are, but if they can't maintain fair decision making across a single day, what the hell do you think is happening to all us after 35,000 decisions? You can't. We just can't do it. We're making life and death treatment decisions at work all day. And by the time we get home, we're just done. I mean, do not ask me what I think about a report card or what's in the refrigerator that we might turn into dinner. One more decision. My prefrontal cortex is soup. By that time, it, it's done. And y'all, that's the part that's responsible for our executive functioning, our prefrontal cortex. And it, it's tapped out. It is tapped out and we just get to get up and go do it again. It's not just mental exhaustion, sweetness. It's not, it's also physiological. Dr. Bruce Mccuen's, uh, research on allostatic load, and that's the wear and tear on your body from chronic stress shows that when you're constantly making high stakes decisions and emotionally demanding situations, your body stays in a state of perpetual stress activation. Your Hypothalmic pit Pituitary adrenal axi, your HPA, y'all, it's just firing constantly. Pow, pow, pow. Your cortisol levels stay elevated. Your nervous system gets the signal that the threat has passed, but that never comes. It's waiting for that signal, but it never comes. Because in our professions, the threat hasn't passed. The impossible workload is still there tomorrow and the next day. And the next A 2022 study in BMC Health Services research found that those who are in helping professions. With high allostatic load showed significantly impaired time perception abilities. You're not bad at managing your time. You're stressed out and you're stressed out. Nervous system literally cannot accurately perceive how much time tasks will take. So you can't time manage your way out of a dysregulated nervous system. You can't productivity hack your way out of a system designed to extract every ounce of energy you have and demand more warm. And here's the trap. We keep telling ourselves that tomorrow we're gonna set better boundaries. You're gonna cut hours back next month. You'll take a vacation when things slow down. You'll address the burnout when you have more energy, but tomorrow it never comes because you're trapped in decision paralysis caused by decision fatigue caused by workload that exceeds human capacity. The research calls this temporal discount. When you're depleted, your brain prioritizes immediate survival over future planning, and you can't think about next month when you're barely surviving today. And the system loves this because y'all, when we're exhausted, we're not gonna organize. We don't speak up, we don't leave. We just keep showing up, making those 35,000 decisions, blaming ourselves. For not being better at time management. It's like on a hamster wheel. So let's talk about where this is actually living in your body, because decision fatigue isn't just a cognitive problem. It's an energetic crisis happening in your solar plexus chakra, and that sits below your rib cage around your belly button. And in chakra psychology, this is your energy center of willpower, personal power, self-esteem, and autonomy. Your ability to make decisions that lives here. Your capacity to set boundaries lives here, your sense of agency in your own life. Y'all all that lives in your solar plexus. It's a, it's an important one. And just think about it, when you're making 35 flipping decisions, 35,000, excuse me, flipping decisions a day when every boundary you set gets ignored by the system. When you have zero autonomy over your schedule, your caseload, your charting, your hemorrhaging, and, and I just say over our expectations, those get folded in there. Our responsibility load. But when we do that, we're hemorrhaging energy from our solar plexus chakra until there's just nothing left. And I know perhaps some of you're thinking, but jewels, I'm a scientist. I believe in neuroscience. What the hell is this chakra stuff? Well, stay with me because this is where Western neuroscience. And Eastern Energy Medicine are saying the exact flipping thing. Dr. Steven Po. Hayes Polyvagal theory explains how that nerve, that vagus nerve, that main component of your parasympathetic nervous system, runs right through your solar plexus area. When you're in chronic stress, your ventral vagal, that's your safety and connection SIF system. It's gonna go offline, and you're stuck in sympathetic activation or dorsal shutdown. Your solar plexus is literally the physical location where your nervous system processes safety, threat, and social engagement. Interesting, huh. And y'all, when this area is chronically contracted. And that contraction, that's what happens during constant sustained stress. We don't notice it, but we're we're, we're contracted, and this causes us to lose access to our ventral vagal state. Losing access to calm, to clarity, to choice. The chakra system has known this for thousands of years. Western neuroscience just caught up about 20 years ago, and underactive su plexes shows up as digestive problems. Hello, IBS that appeared out of nowhere. Indecisiveness analysis paralysis. Chronic fatigue that sleep just doesn't touch low self-esteem despite being objectively competent. Inability to speak up or advocate for yourself. Passive people pleasing behaviors. A complete loss of personal agency. I don't know. I don't know girls, any that sound familiar? I mean, I loved it. If you read my book, woo, what a journey that was. Do y'all have gut issues? You can't explain the wine. You just need to unwind the complete inability to make decisions outside of work the way you can't speak up at a staff meeting even when you know the policy is harmful. Now that that's, there's no shame in that game. It's, it's not weakness. Sweet friend. That's an interact, underactive solar plexus screaming, listen, I need help. A 2021 study in the complementary therapies in medicine, examine the relationship between chakra activity and occupational stress. And healthcare workers with high burnout scores showed significantly reduced energy in the solar plexus area compared to matched controls. Isn't that interesting? The researchers concluded that chronic occupational stress appears to create measurable disruption in the third chakra, correlating with the symptoms of ego depletion. And reduced personal agency. So y'all, science just proved what your body has been trying to tell you. Your solar plexus has been showing up for you every single day, making 35,000 decisions, saying yes when you wanted to say no and pushing through when you had nothing left. And what has the system given it in return? Oh shit. More decisions, more demands, more depletion, uh, sweet soul. Your power center is exhausted and that's why no time management app in the world can fix your burnout because the problem isn't how you're organizing your calendar. The problem is that your energy center of willpower has been systematically. Drained by impossible demands. So if traditional time management doesn't work for burnout, then pray. Tell what does. Well, I'm gonna teach you a practice I developed that combines somatic therapy, polyvagal theory, and solar plexus chakra work. And I call it the time energy body scan. This isn't about making better lists or blocking your Calen calendar differently, although y'all do need to own your calendar, but this isn't what this is. This is about using your body's wisdom and it's so full of wisdom, and specifically that solar plexus as. A decision making compass to identify which time commitments are actually draining your power center. Here's what research tells us. Dr. Antonio CIO's work on somatic markers proved. That your body register registers information about decis decisions before your conscious mind does. Your gut literally knows things your brain hasn't processed yet. That fascinating. These chakras, this is not woo woo. This has been well researched and it's. Imminently important that we apply this work, the chakra psychology to our lives. That's the only path back to soul joy, somatic work, chakra psychology, nervous system regulation. So let's move to Dr. Bessel Vander VanDerKolk's Trauma Research. The Body Keeps Score. It's a great book. Everyone needs to read that, I think. But what he tells us in this is that your nervous system remembers every time you overwrote a boundary. Every time you said yes, when you meant no. Every time you pushed through when you needed to stop. Your solar plexus is keeping a very accurate record of what's depleting you. Your body knows. When I was in my burnout, I couldn't have answered it. My body knew I just had to tap into my body. But when we're too busy making 35,000 decisions a day, we're too busy listen to it, and this practice helps to change that. So here's how it works. First, create your time inventory. Okay, before we do the body work, you need a list. So grab a piece of paper and write down all your major time commitments, not your to-do list, your time commitments, the recurring things that eat your hours. So direct care documentation, charting staff meetings, committee work, supervision, insurance, uh, lesson plans. Actual teaching, catching up on emails, covering for colleagues, professional development, voluntary projects that aren't actually voluntary. Don't edit yourself, y'all in this just list. And then two, find your baseline. You stand up. Let's see, from where I can do this. You stand up. Ooh, there's no head there, but I'm standing up. Oh, and that's not gonna work. You stand up, you place your right hand flat on your solar plexus, right below your rib cage in that soft area above your belly, and you close your eyes and you take three normal breaths. Not deep breaths, just normal breathing. We're not doing breath work here. We're establishing a baseline, and I want you to notice. What your solar plexus feels like right now? Is it tight, relaxed, warm or cool? Expansive, contracted heavy or light still, or fluttery? There's no right answer. Just notice and bring loving curiosity. And then step three, the time commitment body scan. Now keeping your hand on your solar plexus, I want you to read each time commitment out loud, one at a time. And here's the key. Notice what's happening in your solar plexus. When you say each one, say it out loud. And proud direct hair, whatever it might be. Go through all of'em. And then I want you to be curious. What did your solar plexus do? Did it expand contract? Get warm, feel heavy, flutter with anxiety, sink with dread, add and say the next one and note what happened. And you go through your entire list. And again, y'all, this isn't about judging. It's about being curious and know to sing your body. Y'all, your body is giving you data that your conscious mind has been ignoring. That's why this somatic work is so important. And step four, you sort by somatic response. And here's where we get active. You're going to physically sort these commitments into three piles based on your body's response. So pile one, solar plexus expansion. These are commitments where your solar plex is felt open and warm and lighter or energized. Put that paper in one physical location in your room and pile two solar plexus neutral. Commitments where your solar plexes had minimal response, not energizing, but not draining. So you put those in a different spot, and then pile three, whew. Solar plexes contraction. These are commitments where your solar plexes contracted. It got heavy, it felt tight, or created anxiety, and you put those in another pile. The physical act of sorting is very important. You are not making a mental list. You're using your body and your space to externalize what's been internal. And then step five, the reclamation ritual. You stand in front a pile three, that contracted pile where your solar plexus contracted, and you place a hand back on your solar plexus, and you look at those commitments and. Here's the somatic intervention for each commitment in that pile. I want you to physically pick up that piece of paper, hold it away from your body and say out loud, this commitment is depleting my power center and I'm noticing the cost. Don't say you're going to quit it. Don't promise to delegate it. Don't should yourself about it. Just state the truth. Your solar plexus is contracting for a reason. These commitments are extracting energy. You don't have to give. So the act of holding that paper away from your body, outside your personal space, while the other hand stays on your solar plexus, sends a signal to your nervous system. This is separate from me. This is not mine to carry, so it's not magic. We know it's not magic. This is applied polyvagal theory. When you name something out loud, while in physical contact with your solar plexus, you're creating what Dr. POEs calls neuroception. Your nervous system, subconscious assessment of safety and threat. And by holding the depleting commitments physically away from your body, you're giving your nervous system permission to register them as external demands rather than personal failures. And here's what the research on somatic therapy tells us When you create this kind of body-based awareness. You bypass the cognitive override that keeps you trapped in. I should be able to handle this. Your mind will tell you everything is important. Your mind is gonna tell you you're just not efficient enough, and your mind is gonna tell you to get your, get your ass up and try harder, but your solar plexes. Your cell plexes is telling you the truth. Now, I'm not gonna lie to you. You can't just quit everything in pile three tomorrow. We know that most of those commitments are probably required by your job, but here's what you can do. You can stop gaslighting yourself. Those commitments are depleting you. Your body isn't lying. The system demand. That's the problem, not you. You can start tracking every week. You can do this body scan again and watch what moves from pile to pile. Notice if new commitments land immediately in pile three, that your solar plex is trying to protect you, and you can make one different choice. Look at pile three. Is there one thing that could be delegated, reduced, renegotiated, done differently. You don't have to fix everything, but you can honor your suer plexus enough to make one choice in its favor. Just one. You can build your exit plan. If pile three is full of commitments, that can't be changed. That's important data that your body telling you. This workplace is fundamentally incompatible with your wellbeing. You might not be able to leave tomorrow, but you can start your exit plan and I've got all kinds of resources for you around that. The time energy scan isn't about fixing your time management, it's about restoring your relationship with your power center. It's about learning to trust your solar plexus again, because girl, if your body knows what's sustainable and it does, then we should listen to it. Your nervous system knows what's too much, and your solar plexus knows which commitments are draining your life force. You've just been too depleted to listen. So let's anchor what you just learned. Burnout is not a time management problem. Research confirms burnout is caused by job demands that exceed available resources, not by individual time management failures. Decision fatigue depletes your solar plexus. Each decision drains that chakra. And your energy center of willpower and personal power until you're paralyzed and research shows your stress nervous system literally can't accurately perceive time anymore. And then the time, energy body scan, you learned a somatic practice that uses your solar plexus as a decision making compass. Helping you to identify which time commitments are contracting your power center so you can make different choices without gaslighting yourself about what's sustainable. So do the time, energy body scan this week. Get that paper. List your time commitment. Stand up. Put your hands on your silver plexus. Let your body tell the truth about what's depleting your power center. You don't have to fix everything. You don't have to quit your job tomorrow. You just have to listen to what your body already knows. We rise together. You're not bad at time management. You are not lazy, you're not undisciplined. You're being systematically depleted, and you get to make choices. 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.