DO SOMETHING COMPLETELY POINTLESS TO HEAL YOUR BURNOUT

Burnout doesn't damage your ability to function first. It damages your ability to feel pleasure. And the one thing that heals it isn't more rest, more intention, or more self-care. It's something completely, embarrassingly pointless — and the neuroscience behind that prescription is genuinely wild.

In this episode you will learn:

— What Dr. Kent Berridge's research at the University of Michigan reveals about the difference between wanting and liking in the brain — and why burnout takes out the liking system long before it touches your ability to function

— Why the nucleus accumbens — your brain's pure pleasure center — specifically requires purposeless, non-goal-directed activity to recover, and why intentional self-care doesn't reach it

— Why the Sacral Chakra (Svadhisthana) is the most throttled energy center in healers — and why uselessness is the active ingredient in its restoration

— The one-sentence Sacral activation practice you do before your pointless weekend activity that signals to your nervous system that your pleasure belongs to you

— Exactly what to do this weekend — and why the sillier it is, the better the medicine

You have been functional for so long that you forgot functional isn't the same as alive. You get things done. You show up. You hold it together. But when was the last time something delighted you — not satisfied you, not relieved you — actually delighted you?

That capacity is not gone. It's just been waiting for permission to be completely, gloriously useless for an afternoon.

Share this with a woman you care about.

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.

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. 

Transcript

Audio Only - All Participants 0:02

Okay, so I need y'all to do something this weekend that serves absolutely no purpose, and I need to tell you why that is the most serious thing I'm gonna say all week. 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. Okay, y'all, it is Friday, yay day. Oh, that was silly. Okay, sorry. A little corny there. Okay, but, but the week is done, and I want to talk to you about something that is going to sound completely ridiculous, 'cause I need you to stay with me anyway, because the science behind what I'm about to say is genuinely, genuinely wild. I wanna talk to you about doing something completely and utterly, embarrassingly pointless this weekend. Not productive rest, not intentional recovery, not journaling your feelings, or doing your somatic homework, or reading the next chapter of something improving. I mean something with zero redeeming professional value. I'm saying zero professional value. Something you cannot put on a resume, something that if a colleague asked what you did this weekend, you would hesitate slightly before answering. So growing up, my grandmother used to do this thing on Saturday afternoons where she would sit in the yard and watch birds. Now, not birdwatching per se. She had no binoculars, no list of the birds, no purpose. She was just watching the birds, and if you asked her what she was doing, she would say, "Nothing, baby. Just nothing." I thought about her a lot when I learned about Dr. Ken Berridge's research, because he figured out what my wonderful grandmother, I called her Boomby, I'm a Boomby too, but, um, Boomby already knew. She was very wise. Berridge is a neuroscientist at the University of Michigan, and he's spent years studying the brain's reward system, specifically the difference between what he calls wanting and liking. Wanting is the dopamine drive, the pursuit, the striving, the achieving. Most of us, especially us overachieving gals, healers and helpers, are very good at wanting. We want to help, we want to fix, we want to be enough, we want to do more. The wanting circuit runs hot in us helpers and healers. Liking, oh girl, liking is a separate neural system. What? I know, right? It's centered in the nucleus accumbens, the brain's pure pleasure center, and it is the one that registers joy in the present moment, not the satisfaction of completing something. Pure, purposeless pleasu- pleasure. The kind that my Boomby, my grandma, got from a bird landing on a fence. Here's what Berridge found that I need you to hear on this particular Friday. Chronic stress and burnout, compassion fatigue, damage the liking system first. Get that, first. The wanting keeps running, and that is why you can still perform, still function, still get the things done. From the outside, you look fine. But the capacity to actually feel pleasure in the moment quietly goes offline Which is why you can plan a vacation and feel nothing when you get there. How, how many? Oh, mylanta. Why you can accomplish something significant and feel flat. Read my book, Soul Joy. Mm. Why rest does not actually feel restful. It just feels like not working, which is really different. The liking system does not recover through productivity. It does not recover through more intentional self-care. That industry is getting rich off of us. It recovers through contact with purposeless pleasure. The sillier, the better. The more useless to everyone else, the more potent the medicine. This is also sacral chakra territory Y'all remember that's the water element, the home of creative life force and pleasure. In chakra psychology, the sacral chakra is where your capacity for delight lives, and it is the chakra most throttled by healer conditioning because we're trained formally or informally that our pleasure matters less than other people's pain. The sacral and the nucleus accumbens are running the same program from different operating systems. I'm allowed to want things for me for no reason that serve no one So here's what I need you to do this weekend. It's short and sweet and simple, and I need you to take this as seriously as a clinical intervention because Berridge's research says it is one. Pick something completely pointless, something that makes you feel slightly ridiculous. My list, just to give you ideas, reorganizing a single drawer by color for no reason whatsoever, watching three consecutive episodes of a show so bad it is almost art. That's kind of how I feel about Jack In The Box tacos. They're so horrible, I absolutely love them. So that's on my absolute ridiculous list, too. It's, I mean, it's random, right? It's gonna be person to person. Um, making a very elaborate sandwich, learning exactly one fact about a topic that will never be professionally relevant, sitting in a yard watching birds with no binoculars and no list. I keep my bird feeders full. I've got this gorgeous big oak in the backyard, and I keep the bird feeders full because I love to watch the birds. God, there's some beautiful birds, blues and reds and just all Uh, woodpeckers that actually I don't know if y'all remember Woody Woodpecker, but my, the woodpeckers actually have that red head like Woody did. But my cat loves to watch them, too. So I enjoy watching the birds, and I enjoy watching her watch the birds. So anyway, make yourself a list that is absolutely ridiculously purposeless. The only rule, y'all, is it cannot be useful. The moment it becomes useful, it stops being medicine. And Berridge's liking system is specifically activated by pleasure that the brain does not associate with reward-seeking behavior. Purposelessness is the active ingredient. So before you do your pointless thing, put one hand on your lower belly, down below your belly button. That's your sacral center. And say out loud, "This is mine. It doesn't have to be for anyone." Feel it. Mean it. Let your nucleus accumbens hear it. That is your whole assignment. Three things to carry out today, tomorrow, Sunday, every day, but here they are. One, burnout- These are three things to carry from this episode today, tomorrow, every day. One, burnout damages your capacity for pleasure before it damages your capacity to function. You can still do your job while your liking system has been offline for years. That is not resilience, it is a symptom. Two, purposelessness pleasure is not a reward for good behavior. Ugh, weren't we trained in that? It is a neurological requirement for liking system recovery, and Dr. Kent Berridge at the University of M- Michigan has the research to prove it. Look him up if you're doubting me. Three, the sacral chakra and the nucleus accumbens, which I'm sure I'm slaughtering. If you've listened to my podcast for a hot minute, you know that, and if you've been a student of mine, Dr. Merriman slaughters words, uh, but she means well. But the nucleus accumbens are both waiting for the same permission. What your joy does not have to justify yourself. Let me say that again. Your joy does not have to justify itself. It doesn't. Okay, girl, so I need you to go do something pointless, something utterly and completely pointless My Boomby was right, and I want you to have the most pointless, silliest, fabulous weekend ever. I will see you next week Sweet soul, give yourself what you actually need. Tap the show notes right now to discover your somatic signature because if bubble baths and breathing exercises could fix this, you'd already be back to your radiant self. You need the right map. Let's find out which of the four somatic signatures your body is using. Girl, this isn't homework. This is a homecoming