Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

by Emily Nagoski

One example of affection is the “six-second kiss” advice from relationship researcher John Gottman. Every day, he suggests, kiss your partner for six seconds. That’s one six-second kiss, mind you, not six one-second kisses. Six seconds is, if you think about it, a potentially awkwardly long

Completing the cycle isn’t an intellectual decision; it’s a physiological shift.

you’re hiding from your life, you’re past your threshold. You aren’t dealing with either the stress or the stressor. Deal with the stress so you can be well enough to deal with the stressor.

Wellness is not a state of being, but a state of action.

Just because you’ve dealt with a stressor, that doesn’t mean you’ve dealt with the stress itself. And you have to deal with the stress—“complete the cycle”—or it will slowly kill you.

Affection—a six-second kiss, a twenty-second hug, six minutes of snuggling after sex, helpless laughter—are social strategies that complete the cycle, along with creative self-expression—writing,

“Wellness”is the freedom to move fluidly through the cycles of being human. Wellness is thus not a state of being; it is a state of action.

With positive reappraisal, you can acknowledge when things are difficult, and you recognize that the difficulty is worth it—it is, in fact, an opportunity.

strength is the body’s response to doing something effortful.

What are the benefits of continuing? What are the benefits of stopping? What are the costs of continuing? What are the costs of stopping?

When we’re struggling, we may reach a point of oscillating between frustrated rage and helpless despair. Solution: Choose the right time to give up, which might be now or might be never; either way, the choice puts you back in the driver’s seat.

Your brain has a built-in mechanism to assess when it’s time to quit. Listen to its quiet voice. Or do a worksheet; sometimes that’s easier.

Everywhere, there is a beauty ideal, and always, there are those willing to risk their health to attain it.

Far from hearing the distress signals our body is sending, its desperate cries for food, sleep, being held, and, in Julie’s case, bowel movements, we relate to our bodies only in terms of its appearance.

The body mass index (BMI) chart and its labels—underweight, overweight, obese, etc.—were created by a panel of nine individuals, seven of whom were “employed by weight-loss clinics and thus have an economic interest in encouraging use of their facilities.”

A 2016 meta-analysis published in The Lancet examined 189 studies, encompassing nearly four million people who never smoked and had no diagnosed medical issues. It found that people labeled “obese” by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have lower health risk than those the CDC categorized as “underweight.”

the highest predictable mortality rate might be among those labeled “underweight.”

Taking it even further, the newest research is suggesting doctors warn middle-aged and older patients against losing weight, because the increasingly well-established dangers of fluctuations in weight outweigh any risk associated with a high but stable weight.12

And this form of discrimination is not just legal but normalized, rationalized, by the incorrect idea that fat is a disease.

But in the nineteenth century, with the rise of the middle class, it became fashionable for a man to be able to afford a wife who was too weak to work. It was a status symbol, an advertisement of wealth, for a man to have a wife who not only didn’t but couldn’t contribute to the household income. “Delicate” and “fragile” became feminine virtues.

Maybe you don’t look like you used to, or like you used to imagine you should; but how you look today is the new hotness. Even better than the old hotness.

We’re not saying that “beautiful” is what your body should be; we’re saying beautiful is what your body already is.

Connected knowing is why women often find profound satisfaction in understanding themselves and their identity in terms of their relationships—sister, daughter, mother, friend.

Rage gives you strength and energy and the urge to fight, and sharing that energy in the Bubble changes it from something potentially dangerous to something safe and potentially transformative.

This is what we call Über-Bubble, and you make it with rhythmic play, including music-making. It happens to singers in a choir, players on a team, voters on election night amid a group of likeminded supporters, or even moviegoers in a crowd of strangers who share enthusiasm for Black Panther. In these activities, through synchronous rhythmic movement, through song, through play, through intense effort to achieve a shared goal, for a few moments we step onto a neurological bridge, and the barrier between us and other people dissolves—sometimes a lot, sometimes just a little—and we experience our own identity as something that extends

beyond our skin, into the intangible “Us.” Über-Bubble.

Über-Bubble doesn’t just feel good; it actively increases cooperation within a group.

Certain kinds of connection create energy. When you share mutual trust and “connected knowing” with someone, you co-create energy that renews both people. We call this the “Bubble of Love.”

Sadness, rage, and the feeling that you are not “enough” are forms of loneliness. When you experience these emotions, connect.

Rest makes us more persistent and productive.

growing body of research has established that we do our best at any given task for only a limited amount of time, energy, or attention, then our performance drops off, our attention wanders, and our motivation evaporates.2 But resting after a depleting activity eliminates the effects of fatigue.3 When you drop out of task-focused attention and into neutral, your “resting” brain is not doing nothing—far from it.

Exercising one part of you strengthens all of you; exercising the strongest parts of you strengthens the rest of you most efficiently.

Poor sleep is a better predictor of developing type 2 diabetes than lack of physical activity, but when was the last time anyone told you to get enough sleep to prevent diabetes?19

Anything you wouldn’t do drunk—drive, lead a work meeting, raise a child—don’t try it if you’ve been awake for nineteen hours, slept only four hours the previous night, or slept fewer than six hours every night for two weeks.

We’re not saying you should take 42 percent of your time to rest; we’re saying if you don’t take the 42 percent, the 42 percent will take you. It will grab you by the face, shove you to the ground, put its foot on your chest, and declare itself the victor.

BONUS: Mark activities that smash patriarchy. Example: If you work in a job where women are underrepresented, all your work and commute time is patriarchy smashin’. If you parent a child with the goal of transmitting positive and inclusive gender norms,

that’s patriarchy smashin’. If you are a woman of color, a hijabi in the West, not heterosexual or cisgender, or live with a disability, literally every waking moment is patriarchy smashin’.

We think rest matters because you matter. You are not here to be “productive.” You are here to be you, to engage with your Something Larger, to move through the world with confidence and joy. And to do that, you require rest.

Only by making sure we have as much energy coming in as we have going out can we all stay committed to the people, work, and ideas we love.

We will literally die without rest. Literally. Finding time for rest is not a #firstworldproblem; it’s about survival. • We are not built to persist incessantly, but to oscillate from effort to rest and back again. On average we need to spend 42 percent of our time—ten hours a day—on rest. If we don’t take the time to rest, then our bodies will revolt and force us to take the time.

Getting the rest your body requires is an act of resistance against the forces that are trying to rig the game and make you helpless. Reclaim rest and you reclaim sovereignty over your own life.

You deserve respect and love; you deserve to be cherished. You deserve kindness, right now, just as you are. Not when you lose ten pounds, or a hundred. Not when you get a promotion or finish your degree or get married or come out or have a baby. Now.

But if you’re coping well with your feelings (using planful problem-solving and positive reappraisal), then high standards and orderliness aren’t going to do you any harm.

Generally toxic: believing that if things aren’t perfect, they aren’t any good—e.g., if you make one mistake, everything is ruined—and feeling pressure from other people to succeed at everything you do.

And sometimes if your goal is “perfect,” some part of you already knows that it’s an impossible goal, so you think about your project or meal or outfit or day, knowing you’re never going to achieve your goal, and so you feel hopeless before you’ve even begun.

Know what’s true. And, if you can, love what’s true.

“Our best” today may not be “the best there is,” but it’s the best we can do today. Which is strange. And yet true.

It’s really strange, the experience of “That is not what I meant to do, and yet that is what happened, as far as this new information is concerned.”

remember some of the people who have “helped you love the good that grows within you, some of those people who have loved us and wanted what was best for us, […] those who have encouraged us to become who we are.” That’s how to gratitude-for-who-you-have.

The world is changed when we change, because we are, each of us—and that includes you—a part of the world. This is our shared home, and we, Emily and Amelia, are your sisters.