In this episode, I sit down with Elizabeth A. — Anger Management Coach for Christian Moms and podcast host — for part one of a two-part conversation on burnout, breakdown, and what real healing actually looks like.

This January, Elizabeth told her husband something a lot of us have felt but never said out loud: "I feel like I'm 10% away from a mental breakdown." In this episode, she walks us through exactly what that moment felt like, what pushed her there, and the real steps she took afterward — therapy, coaching, and rebuilding her capacity from the ground up.

If any part of Elizabeth's story feels familiar, you don't have to wait until you're 10% away from your own breaking point.

Book your { free } Stress Assessment- click here

In this episode:

Part two drops next — where Elizabeth shares the practice that gave her permission to stop doing and start healing.

Keywords: nurse burnout, chronic stress symptoms, nervous system regulation, nurse identity, compassion fatigue, holistic nurse coach, Christian nurse coach, burnout recovery for nurses, nurse mental health podcast

In this follow-up to our conversation with Jolene, author of Still Standing: One Burnt-Out Nurse's Story, Shan breaks down the two hidden autopilot patterns driving nurse burnout that most self-care advice completely misses: an identity so fused to the caregiver role it can't be set down, and a nervous system so stuck in "shift mode" it never actually clocks out, even during time off.

If you've ever cried in your car after a shift, dreaded the next one before you'd even left the last, or found yourself mentally charting on your day off, this episode explains why, and why breathing exercises and journaling haven't touched it.

In this episode:

Mentioned in this episode:

Keywords: nurse burnout, chronic stress symptoms, nervous system regulation, nurse identity, compassion fatigue, holistic nurse coach, Christian nurse coach, burnout recovery for nurses, nurse mental health podcast

What does burnout actually look like from the inside... when you're still showing up, still performing, still getting it done?

Today's guest, Jolene Smith, knows exactly what that feels like. Jolene is an LPN with nearly two decades of experience across long-term care, corrections, and occupational health. She is still working bedside. And she wrote STILL STANDING: One Burnt-out Nurse's Story — not from the other side of burnout... but from inside it.

Post-it notes covering her bedroom walls. Notebooks full of thoughts that had nowhere else to go. A body sending signals she couldn't ignore anymore.

In this episode, Jolene shares:

If you have ever sat in your car before a shift and already felt like crying... if you have ever started caring less — not about your patients, but about everything — and wondered what that meant about you...

This episode is going to feel like someone finally said it out loud.

Connect with Jolene:

You clocked in exhausted. You made a mistake, or felt like you did. And somewhere in there, you started measuring your worth by your shift instead of remembering who made you.

Psalm 139:14 says it plain: "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made." Not because of what you got done today. Because you exist. That's it. That's the whole qualification.

In this episode we sit with that truth and let it undo the performance-based lie burnout loves to whisper.

Breath Prayer:

Come back to this one on the drive home. In the supply closet. Before you walk back in the room. Let it remind your nervous system what's actually true.

Want to go deeper?

Shalom, shalom ✨

In this episode of Beat Nurse Burnout, Shan sits down with Susan Ro — creator of the Aligned Leadership Method, host of the Leadership for Busy Working Moms podcast, and a woman who knows firsthand what it looks like to rebuild your life around what actually matters.

Susan went from the high-energy world of New York City fashion to teaching, marriage, motherhood of four boys, and eventually to coaching and leading other women — and the thread running through all of it is a simple but radical conviction: that lasting leadership starts with leading yourself, in alignment with Christ, before it ever extends to anyone else.

This episode is for the nurse who is excellent at her job and exhausted in her life. It is for the woman of faith who has confused people pleasing with godliness. It is for the high achiever who has never once thought of herself as a leader — because she has spent her entire career following someone else's agenda.

In this conversation, Shan and Susan talk about:

If you have ever felt like leadership was something you did for other people and never for yourself — this episode is going to reframe everything.

Connect with Susan Ro:

🎙️ Podcast: Leadership for Busy Working Moms

What happens when a nurse gives 14 years to the ICU, survives COVID on the front lines, fractures her spine, and battles PTSD... and still finds her way back to hope?

That's Ashley Chancellor's story. And she is telling all of it.

In this episode of the Beat Nurse Burnout Podcast, we sit down with Ashley Chancellor, RN, bestselling author of Just a Nurse: Memoir on the Heartbeat of Healing, Writing Coach, and Self-Empowerment Coach for nurses. Ashley spent 14 years in critical care, traveled as an ICU nurse for 9 of those years, and watched the healthcare system collapse from the front row. Then COVID broke more than just the system... it broke her physically and emotionally.

At 38, Ashley retired from bedside nursing. But she didn't stop caring. She started writing to heal, found God in the process, and now empowers other nurses to heal themselves first so we can heal the world together.

In this episode we talk about:

Keywords: nurse burnout, ICU nurse burnout, travel nurse burnout, nurse PTSD, nursing and mental health, healing from burnout, nurses leaving bedside, nurse memoir, just a nurse book, writing to heal, faith and nursing, holistic nurse wellness, nurse self-care, burned out nurse recovery, nurse leader burnout, Christian nurse, nurse empowerment, nursing trauma, leaving bedside nursing, nurse coach podcast

Connect with Ashley:

Can we talk about your feet for a second?

Friend, you are on them ALL shift long. And that fatigue you feel in your legs, your back, your whole body by the end of the day? It starts at the ground.

AIRfeet Therapeutic Insoles actually massage your foot WITH every step... improving circulation, reducing fatigue, and supporting healing from the inside out. Nurses are telling me they feel the difference in DAYS.

The body was made to heal. Let's give it the support it needs.

Go to myairfeet.com and use code SHAN20 for 20% off. You deserve that.

You can assess a whole unit in thirty seconds... but when's the last time you assessed yourself?

In this episode, I'm breaking down the five signs of nurse burnout that don't look like burnout at all. They look like being reliable. Being the strong one. Being a good nurse. And that's exactly why so many of us miss them, or catch them years too late.

If you've ever wondered whether you're actually burned out, or if you're the nurse who's so deep in autopilot you haven't even stopped to ask... friend, this one's for you.

In this episode, we cover:

Loved this episode? Comment or DM me on Instagram @theshanwright  or email me [email protected]

In this episode, Lisa Ackland Carriere — founder of The Writing Well and writer at The Daily Calling on Substack — joins us to talk about the side of caregiving no one signs up for. When caregiving is forced on you by circumstance rather than chosen as a profession, compassion fatigue can quietly take root, leaving you emotionally shut down and disconnected from your own identity. Lisa shares her personal journey through years of layered crisis — parenting a son with ADD, developmental delays, and learning disabilities; a move that strained her marriage; the sudden loss of her mother; her brother's brain cancer diagnosis and death; and her husband's subsequent pancreatic cancer diagnosis. We talk about what compassion fatigue really looks like for caregivers — nurses and everyday women alike — how God reframes identity and purpose through the caregiving journey, and practical ways to support a caregiver both in the thick of crisis and in the aftermath, whatever the outcome.

In This Episode:

About Lisa Ackland Carriere:

Connect with Lisa:

For years, achievement was the plan. Corporate success, leadership, recognition... it was supposed to add up to a fulfilled life. Instead it added up to exhaustion.

In this episode, I sit down with Anna Girgan, Founder of EPIPHANIES™ and host of the EPIPHANIES podcast, to talk about the belief her entire movement is built on... identity shapes reality. We get into what happens when high-achieving women (nurses, this is you too) spend years performing instead of living in alignment with who they were actually created to be, and what it took for Anna to walk away from a two-decade career to find out who she was without the title.

In this episode, we cover:

Connect with Anna Girgan:

Join Anna in Podcast in 72 hours Workshop August 25-27 - where I will be leading expert Q&A! Email or message on instagram PODCAST for details on how to register! 

Shalom, shalom ✨

This episode is for the nurse who is her own harshest critic — replaying the shift on the drive home, fixating on the one thing that went wrong instead of everything that went right.

In this episode, we talk about how the precision this job demands (because a small mistake really can mean someone gets hurt) can quietly turn into a critical inner voice that never clocks out. It follows you home. It shows up in how you parent, how you rest, how you talk to yourself about the small human moments — the late clock-in, the snoozed alarm, the donut from the breakroom.

We sit with Romans 8:1 and the truth that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus — not "no condemnation if," just no condemnation. And we talk about the order that grace actually works in: we don't clean ourselves up to earn it, we receive it because of who He is — and once we know our worth, we can finally stop condemning ourselves.

Then we breathe it in, one truth at a time:

Inhale: I'm in Christ Jesus

Scripture featured: Romans 8:1

If this episode met you somewhere tender today, share it with a nurse who needs to hear it too.