Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

by Emily Nagoski

In short, emotions are tunnels. If you go all the way through them, you get to the light at the end.

Exhaustion happens when we get stuck in an emotion.

In Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, philosopher Kate Manne describes a system in which one class of people,7 the “human givers,” are expected to offer their time, attention, affection, and bodies willingly, placidly, to the other class of people, the “human beings.”8 The implication in these terms is that human beings have a moral obligation to be or express their humanity, while human givers have a moral obligation to give their humanity to the human beings. Guess which one women are.

Givers are expected to abdicate any resource or power they may happen to acquire—their jobs, their love, their bodies. Those belong to the beings.

A third caveat: Science is often expensive, and who pays for it can influence the outcome and whether or not the results are published.

As science fiction author Cassandra Clare writes, “Fiction is truth, even if it is not fact.”

We thrive when we have a positive goal to move toward, not just a negative state we’re trying to move away from.

Physical activity is the single most efficient strategy for completing the stress response cycle.

Physical activity, affection, laughter, creative expression, and even just breathing have something in common as strategies, though: you have to do something. One thing we know for sure doesn’t work: just telling yourself that everything is okay now. Completing the cycle isn’t an intellectual decision; it’s a physiological shift. Just as you don’t tell your heart to continue beating or your digestion to continue churning, the cycle doesn’t complete by deliberate choice. You give your body what it needs, and allow it to do what it does, in the time that it requires.

Positive reappraisal involves recognizing that sitting in traffic is worth it. It means deciding that the effort, the discomfort, the frustration, the unanticipated obstacles, and even the repeated failure have value—not just because they are steps toward a worthwhile goal, but because you reframe difficulties as opportunities for growth and learning.3

Or, as Douglas Adams’s character Dirk Gently puts it, “I rarely end up where I was intending to go, but often I end up somewhere that I needed to be.”

What are the benefits of continuing? What are the benefits of stopping? What are the costs of continuing? What are the costs of stopping? And then you look at those four lists and make a decision based on your estimates of maximizing benefit and minimizing cost. Remember to consider both the long-term and the short-term costs and benefits. And if you decide to continue, remember to include completing the cycle in your plan.

“Meaning,” in short, is the nourishing experience of feeling like we’re connected to something larger than ourselves.

Research has found that meaning is most likely to come from three kinds of sources:15 1. pursuit and achievement of ambitious goals that leave a legacy—as in “finding a cure for HIV” or “making the world a better place for these kids”; 2. service to the divine or other spiritual calling—as in “attaining spiritual liberation and union with Akal” or “glorifying God with my words, thoughts, and deeds”; and 3. loving, emotionally intimate connection with others—as in “raising my kids so they know they’re loved, no matter what” or “loving and supporting my partner with authenticity

It’s because that is what it took to survive in the place where she grew. A tree that’s fought wind and gravity and erosion to grow strong and green on a steep cliff is going to look strange and out of place when moved to the level playing field. The gnarled, wind-blown tree from an oceanside cliff might not conform with our ideas of what a tree should look like, but it works well in the context where it grew. And that tall straight tree wouldn’t stand a chance if it was transplanted to the cliffside.19

People who are afraid of the police grew up in a world where the police are a threat.20

Instead of wondering why they aren’t thriving on the level playing field, imagine how the field can be changed to allow everyone to thrive.

The next steps are to apply the first three chapters of the book: (1) Complete the cycle, to deal with the stress itself. (2) Use planful problem-solving and positive reappraisal, to keep your Monitor satisfied. And (3) engage with your Something Larger, which will heal Human Giver Syndrome.

Rage is a big one. A lot of us are carrying around decades of incomplete stress response cycles because Human Giver Syndrome told us we had to be happy and calm and not make other people uncomfortable with our anger. Move, sing, scream, write, chop wood. Purge the rage. Complete the cycle. Grief is another big one. We mourn for the loss of the life we might have had, the person we might have been, if we had been born into a world that believed women are 100 percent people and that men should be attentive to the needs of others. And it’s complicated, too, because this lying, unfair world made you who you are, and a lot of who you are is pretty amazing, right? Not perfect, no one is perfect, but wow. Wow.

The patriarchy (ugh) is designed like the perfect shuttle-box experiment, frustrating and disappointing us over and over until we give up. But that research also demonstrated how helplessness can be unlearned.

For instance, feeling helpless and hopeless after watching news about the state of international politics? Don’t distract yourself or numb out; do a thing. Do yard work or gardening, to care for your small patch of the world. Take food to somebody who needs a little boost. Take your dog to the park. Show up at a Black Lives Matter march. You might even call your government representative. That’s great. That’s participation. You’re not helpless. Your goal is not to stabilize the government—that’s not your job (unless you happen to be a person whose job that is, in which case you still need to deal with the stress, as well as the stressor!)—your goal is to stabilize you, so that you can maintain a sense of efficacy, so that you can do the important stuff your family and your community need from you.

We unlearn helplessness by doing a thing—a thing that uses our body. Go for a walk. Scream into a pillow. Or, as Carrie Fisher put it, “Take your broken heart, make it into art.” Reverse the effects of helplessness by creating a context where you can do a thing.

Imagine that your body is the body of someone who needs your care, like an infant. It feels weird and wrong to a lot of us at first, but give it a try. Instead of just looking at your body to evaluate her well-being (we know that you can’t tell anything about a person’s health by the shape or size of their body), turn to her and ask her how she feels: “What’s wrong, honey? Are you hungry? Thirsty? Tired? Lonely?” She can definitely tell you, if you listen. You might have to stop what you’re doing, take a slow breath, focus on the sensation of your weight on the floor or the chair, and actually ask out loud, “What do you need?” You

People who don’t trust or are untrustworthy are energy drains.

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.”

When you are cruel to yourself, contemptuous and shaming, you only increase the cruelty in the world; when you are kind and compassionate toward yourself, you increase the kindness and compassion in the world. Being compassionate toward yourself—not self-indulgent or self-pitying, but kind—is both the least you can do and the single most important thing you can do to make the world a better place. Until you are free, we can’t be fully free, which is why all of us together have to collaborate to create that freedom for everyone. Our wellness is tied to yours.

The world does not have to change before we turn toward our internal experience with kindness and compassion. And when we do, that all by itself is a revolution. The world is changed when we change, because we are, each of us—and that includes you—a part of the world.

As Brittney Cooper writes in Eloquent Rage, “Happiness is predicated on ‘happenings,’ on what’s occurring, on whether your life is going right, and whether all is well. Joy arises from an internal clarity about our purpose.”1