Why You Lost Your Purpose: The 3 Great Disconnections of Burnout and Compassion Fatigue
It’s Not Just Stress: Why Women Over 50 Are Facing a Crisis of Disconnection
Let me paint a picture that might feel uncomfortably familiar.
You finish a 12-hour shift. You have held the hands of the dying, navigated complex family dynamics, or absorbed the trauma of your patients all day. You get into your car, shut the door, and the silence hits you. You drive home, pull into your driveway, and you put the car in park.
And then… you just sit there.
You stare at the garage door. You know your family is inside. You know there is dinner to be made, or laundry to be moved, or a partner who wants to tell you about their day. But your body physically refuses to move. You cannot bear the thought of one more person needing one more piece of you.
If you are nodding your head, I need you to hear this: You are not crazy. You are not "just tired." And you are certainly not broken.
You are in the middle of a biological and spiritual awakening.
For women healers over 50—doctors, nurses, therapists, social workers—what we often label as "burnout" is actually something much deeper. It is Compassion Fatigue combined with a profound Disconnection.
Society tells us that the cure for burnout is a bubble bath, a glass of wine, or a week at the beach. But you and I both know that doesn’t work. You come back from the beach, and by 10:00 AM on Monday, the dread is back.
That is because you cannot cure a systemic injury with a topical treatment. To heal, we must look at the root cause. We must look at the three ways you have disconnected from yourself to survive, and how we can use the science of the nervous system and the wisdom of the chakras to reconnect you to your purpose.
Disconnection #1: The Body and The Root Chakra
The first casualty of high-functioning burnout is always the body.
As healers, we are trained in the art of self-neglect. We wear it like a badge of honor. How many times have you skipped lunch to finish charts? How many times have you held your bladder for four hours because a patient was in crisis? How many times have you pushed through a migraine because there was no one to cover your shift?
We tell ourselves this is "dedication." But if we look at the neuroscience, it is actually trauma.
H3: The Science of Functional Freeze According to Polyvagal Theory, when you habitually ignore your biological urges, you train your nervous system to enter a state of "Functional Freeze." Your body learns that it is not safe to have needs. In a war zone, you don’t stop to eat or pee. You keep moving.
By suppressing these signals for 20 or 30 years, you have wired your nervous system to believe that your survival depends on self-erasure. This is why you don’t feel hungry until you are starving. This is why you don’t feel the exhaustion until you collapse.
H3: The Root Chakra Blockage Energetically, this disconnect happens in the Root Chakra (Muladhara). Located at the base of the spine, this energy center governs our right to exist, our safety, and our physical survival.
When a healer has a blocked Root Chakra, she feels ungrounded. You might feel a constant, low-level anxiety, a sense that you are floating above your body because it is too painful to be in your body. You are a house built on sand. You might be saving lives at work, but your own foundation is crumbling.
The Fix: We must stop calling self-neglect "resilience." We must return to the body. Safety is not a concept; it is a physical sensation.
Disconnection #2: Relationships and The Heart Chakra
Now, let’s talk about the "ugly" emotion. The one no one wants to admit to at the dinner party.
Resentment.
You spend your entire day being the most empathetic person in the room. You hold space for everyone’s pain. You are the "Strong One." But when you come home and your husband asks where the ketchup is, or your friend calls to vent about something trivial, you feel a flash of white-hot rage.
“Why does everyone need me? Why can’t anyone do anything for themselves?”
And immediately after the rage comes the shame. “I’m a horrible person. I’m supposed to be a healer. I’m supposed to be kind.”
H3: The Wall Around the Heart You are not a horrible person. You are an empty person.
This is the hallmark of Compassion Fatigue. When you give from an empty cup, the only thing left in the dregs is resentment. Resentment is not a character flaw; it is a boundary alarm.
This relates to the Heart Chakra (Anahata). When we are burned out, we don’t just close the heart; we build a fortress around it. We build walls of stone to keep the demands out. But the paradox of the wall is that while it keeps the drain out, it also keeps the nourishment out.
This is why you can be surrounded by a loving family and feel completely, utterly alone. You are trapped behind your own walls.
The Fix: We must move from walls to gates. A wall is a blockage; a gate has a latch. You can open it, and you can close it. That is what a boundary is. A boundary is not mean. A boundary is the only way to sustain love over the long term.
Disconnection #3: The Sacred Why and The Crown Chakra
This is the deepest pain for the midlife woman. The loss of Purpose.
You didn't go into medicine, nursing, or therapy for the money. You went into it because you had a calling. You had a "Spark." You wanted to heal.
But after decades of navigating broken systems, insurance paperwork, office politics, and the sheer volume of human suffering, that spark feels like it has been extinguished. You look at your career and think, “Is this it? Is this what I sacrificed my health for?”
H3: Moral Injury and the Crown In clinical terms, we call this "Moral Injury." It happens when we are forced to work within systems that violate our core values. It leads to cynicism, apathy, and a profound loss of joy.
This blockage sits in the Crown Chakra (Sahasrara), your connection to wisdom, the Divine, and the "Big Picture." When this is blocked, you feel trapped. You feel like a cog in a machine rather than a healer of souls.
But here is the truth about your Purpose: It did not leave you. It is simply buried under the debris of survival mode. You are entering your "Second Act"—the wisdom years. You are meant to transition from the Warrior who fights death to the Sage who teaches life.
How to Reconnect: A Somatic Solution
You cannot "mindset" your way out of a fried nervous system. You cannot think your way back to connection. You must feel your way back.
Research into the Vagus Nerve shows us that to turn off the "fight or flight" response, we must send safety signals from the body up to the brain. We need to anchor ourselves.
Try this simple activity today:
Ground the Root: Stand up. Squeeze your glutes and push your feet hard into the floor. Feel the resistance. Tell your body, "I am here. I am safe."
Open the Heart: Place your hand on your chest. Inhale for 4 counts, hold for 1, and exhale with a loud, audible sigh. HAAAAA.
Release the Resentment: Visualize a cord connecting your heart to the earth. With every exhale, send the resentment down the cord. The earth can compost it. You do not have to hold it.
We Rise Together
If you recognized yourself in these descriptions—if you felt that pang of "Oh god, that’s me" when I talked about the driveway or the resentment—then it is time to take action.
You are not alone. There is a generation of women healers over 50 who are waking up and saying, "No more."
We are rewriting the rules. We are choosing Radiance over exhaustion. We are choosing Freedom over obligation.
But the first step is knowing exactly what you are dealing with. Burnout looks different for everyone. Are you the Martyr who can't say no? Are you the Warrior who attacks the work until you crash? Are you the Ghost who has checked out emotionally?
I have created a specific tool to help you identify your unique Burnout Archetype. It combines the science of the nervous system with the wisdom of the soul to give you a personalized roadmap back to joy.
The world needs you. But it needs you Whole, not Hollow. Let's find your spark again.
