Soul Joy: Burnout Truths for Brilliant Women
You did everything right—earned the master’s, the doctorate, the letters after your name—yet you wake up tired, anxious, and secretly wondering if all that achievement was worth it. Welcome to Soul Joy, the podcast where Dr. Julie Merriman, PhD counselor educator and burnout researcher, says the quiet parts out loud. Here we tackle the truths no one warned you about: ⚡ “Your PhD Is Making Your Burnout Worse” – why the traits that earned your degree now fuel exhaustion ⚡ “Self-Care Is Gaslighting for Smart Women” – how bubble-bath advice ignores real science ⚡ The Perimenopause Career Crisis – hormones, leadership, and the hidden storm of midlife ⚡ The Achievement Paradox – when success leaves you empty inside Each episode blends hard research, behind-the-scenes vulnerability, and practical, science-backed solutions to help advanced-degree helpers—therapists, physicians, professors, clergy, and other brilliant women—ditch burnout and fall in love with life again. If you’re ready to question the wellness clichés, rewrite the rules of professional success, and discover that your best chapter is still ahead, hit follow. Your education prepared you to help others. Now it’s time to help yourself. 🙏 Be part of my FREE Community: Soul Joy Circle! ✨https://www.facebook.com/groups/souljoycircle ❤️ Visit my website: www.juliemerrimanphd.com ✉️ Email me: info@juliemerrimanphd.com
Episodes
Helpers—counselors, teachers, nurses, caregivers, pastors—we are often the ones people turn to in their most vulnerable moments. We hold space for them. But here’s the problem: if we aren’t intentional, we end up carrying the weight of their pain, draining ourselves dry in the process.
In this week’s episode of Soul Joy: Ditch Burnout and Fall in Love with Life, Dr. Julie Merriman shares a 5-step framework to ...
Wellness for helping professionals
Meditation has moved from ancient wisdom traditions to the forefront of modern neuroscience, becoming a necessary component of holistic self-care for professional helpers. Scientific research confirms that regular meditation practice rewires the brain for greater resilience, sharper focus, and enhanced compassion—all critical elements for sustaining professional effectivenes...
Dr. Julie Merriman explores the concept of decluttering your energy as a vital component of sustainable, holistic self-care for helping professionals. She examines how professional helpers constantly absorb, process, and navigate various forms of energy that can become cluttered and lead to burnout.
• Energy clutter manifests as mental noise, emotional residue, unclear boundaries, environmental chaos,...
Feeling scattered in your helping role? You're not alone. The Crown Chakra episode of SoulJoy tackles mindful presence—that deceptively simple yet transformative quality that can revolutionize your work as a helping professional.
Mindful presence isn't about emptying your mind or becoming passive. Rather, it's a multi-dimensional awareness that encompasses truly attending to your client...
Perfectionism can be both a blessing and a curse for those in helping professions. While striving for excellence drives us to learn and grow, perfectionism—that rigid, unforgiving demand for flawlessness—can lead to burnout, paralysis, and diminished effectiveness with clients.
What's the difference? As I explain in this episode, "A healthy striver wants to do well. A perfectionist needs to ...
Feeling exhausted by the constant focus on problems and challenges in your helping work? You're not alone. As professional helpers, we spend our days analyzing crises, addressing suffering, and navigating complex systems. This essential work keeps our focus on difficulties—often overshadowing the good that exists, the progress our clients make, and our own inherent capacity for resilience.
Gratit...
Professional helpers pour their energy outward daily, leaving many depleted, disconnected, and at risk for burnout. But what if the key to sustainable practice lies in tapping into your deepest wisdom?
Your higher self—that wisest, most authentic, compassionate part of you—serves as an essential internal compass in our challenging field. This isn't about mysticism; it's about practical resil...
Ever found yourself trapped in a cycle of endless analysis with no forward movement? You're not alone. The space between knowing what to do and actually doing it is where many helpers get stuck—and it's costing us our effectiveness and wellbeing.
The connection between clarity and action represents the essential bridge in our work as helping professionals. While we excel at seeking understan...
Feeling like you're constantly battling self-doubt in your professional life? The roots might be deeper than you realize. This transformative episode dives into the powerful connection between inner child work and developing unshakable self-trust—especially for those of us in helping professions.
As professional helpers, we're experts at guiding clients through their wounds and struggles, ye...
What if the most profound gift you could give your clients is something you struggle to give yourself? For those of us dedicated to helping others, there's a strange paradox at play: we excel at building trust with clients, yet often fail to extend that same unwavering trust to ourselves.
Unconditional self-trust isn't about blind confidence or ignoring feedback. Instead, it represents an un...
Your primary instrument is you. Just as no one wants a surgeon with a dull scalpel, no client deserves a helping professional who hasn't maintained their most essential tool—their own clarity of mind and intuitive capacity.
Dr. Julie Merriman unpacks the profound connection between intentional self-care practices and our ability to maintain clarity and access our professional intuition. Rather t...
Your inner voice shapes your outer boundaries—but what happens when they're out of alignment? This essential exploration of boundaries delves beyond the surface level of simply saying "no" to others and into the profound connection between your throat chakra, self-communication, and external expression.
For helping professionals and anyone struggling with burnout, these three interconne...
Setting boundaries isn't just a skill—it's a vital energy practice connected to your throat chakra that prevents burnout and sustains your capacity to help others.
When your throat chakra—the energy center of communication and self-expression located in your throat—is balanced and flowing, you speak your truth confidently, express needs clearly, and establish limits that honor your wellbeing...
Your voice matters—but are you using it in a way that truly reflects your authentic self?
The throat chakra governs how we communicate, express ourselves, and share our truth with the world. When balanced, we speak clearly, feel heard, and honor our inner truth without shame. When blocked, we might swallow our words, speak excessively without listening, or let our truth emerge sideways through passiv...
Ever wonder why some days you can't find the right words—or courage—to express how you really feel? The answer might lie in your throat chakra.
Dr. Julie Merriman takes us on a deeply personal journey through her decades-long struggle with authentic communication. Beginning with her childhood abandonment when her mother left with a rock band in the 1970s, she reveals how early rejection created p...
Struggling to express yourself authentically? Constantly apologizing for having needs? Your throat chakra might be blocked, and the consequences could be more serious than you realize.
Dr. Julie Merriman dives deep into the throat chakra – the energy center that governs communication and self-expression. She reveals how our evolutionary history as "herd humans" created deep-seated fears of j...
Ever wondered what truly lies at the heart of sustainable wellness? It all begins with how you treat yourself.
Welcome to a soul-nourishing exploration of the heart chakra and its profound connection to self-relationship. This week, we're diving deep into what it means to cultivate genuine, unconditional love for yourself—not as an act of selfishness, but as the foundation for all other relations...
The crushing weight of perfectionism affects so many of us, subtly draining our energy while convincing us that we're never quite good enough. Perfectionism doesn't just rob us of joy—it's a direct pathway to burnout, compassion fatigue, and a disconnection from our authentic selves.
Drawing from both clinical expertise and personal experience, Dr. Julie Merriman explores how perfection...
Your heart chakra holds the key to experiencing true soul joy. This week, we're continuing our exploration of the heart chakra by diving into the transformative practices of self-compassion and gratitude – two essential components of sustainable wellness care.
Did you know your amygdala – that little almond-shaped structure in your brain – is constantly listening to how you speak to yourself? Whe...
The most foundational relationship in your life isn't with your partner, friends, or family—it's with yourself. In this deeply personal exploration, I reveal how the relentless self-judgment that once dominated my thoughts became the catalyst for understanding the profound importance of "holding space" for ourselves.
Many of us live in a state of perpetual self-criticism, mentally ...
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