Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

by Emily Nagoski

Another way that some madwomen wreak havoc is with toxic perfectionism. Perfectionism is a lot of different things—some of them generally benign or even beneficial, and some potentially very toxic.5

The fundamental problem with perfectionism is that it does terrible things to your Monitor. You have the goal of “perfection,” which is an impossible goal, as you start the project or the meal or the outfit or the day, and then as soon as something falls short of “perfect,” the whole thing is ruined. 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.

start with lovingkindness toward others. Metta meditations, as they’re known in Buddhism, involve wishing love, compassion, peace, and ease on everyone from the people we care about most to people we hardly know to total strangers to our worst enemies—and even on ourselves. When self-compassion feels out of reach, try lovingkindness for others.

And she realized “Perfect Julie” was just a defense she had constructed, to protect her real madwoman—who wasn’t a woman at all, but a little girl. This little girl was sensitive and afraid of rejection. She loved books and theater. She put on “Perfect Julie” the way a little girl might put on her mother’s shoes and lipstick, playing pretend. She wore “adulting” as a costume. It had been a game at first, like playing house, back when she was Diana’s age. But as Julie had gotten older, the Perfect Julie costume became necessary to disguise the fact that she was, underneath it all, just a girl who didn’t want to make anyone mad.

Once you stop reopening wounds you’ve been inflicting on yourself for years, they finally begin to heal. And it’s a new kind of pain; it can’t be managed by the same strategies you’ve been using to manage the pain of the whip. You were good at managing that old kind of pain, and now you have to learn a whole new way to deal with this whole new kind of pain.

It’s a healthy kind of pain; it helps the wound to heal cleanly. Reframing it this way (positive reappraisal) helps us tolerate it and helps us find strategies for managing it that aren’t numbing or potentially toxic, but facilitate the healing.

The truth is, a lot of us are scared of how mighty we might grow if we were no longer draining our energy on managing all the self-inflicted pain of self-criticism. We know that with greater personal power would come greater personal responsibility, and we’re afraid when we have the greater power, we won’t be able to deal with those greater responsibilities.

Personifying our self-criticism allows us to apply connected knowing. With connected knowing, you can separate your self from your madwoman and build a relationship with her—maybe even a friendship. This friendship with your own internal experience is powerful.

There is and always will be a chasm between you and expected-you. What matters is not the size of the chasm or the nature of the chasm or anything else. What matters is how you manage it—which is to say, how you relate to your madwoman. Turn toward that self-critical part of you with kindness and compassion. Thank her for the hard work she has done to help you survive.

Sometimes the world is lying. And sometimes you do fall short of your best. But when your madwoman flips out in ragey panic, that’s your cue to “turn and face the strange.” That is, you create observational distance. You calmly and neutrally explore what’s actually creating this apparent chasm between you and expected-you.

Everyone’s life is different, and we are all doing our best. “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. And could draw us down into helplessness and isolation if we don’t stay anchored. And the way we stay anchored is with gratitude.

The madwoman’s reactive panic is unhelpful as a motivation to do anything, but it is great information. First, it tells you you’re being confronted with a difference between you and expected-you. Second, it tells you that that difference matters to you.

Gratitude is not about ignoring problems. If anything, gratitude works by providing tools for the struggle, for further progress. It is positive reappraisal, concentrated and distilled to its purest essence.

There are two techniques that really get the job done, and neither involves gratitude-for-what-you-have. The key is practicing gratitude-for-who-you-have and gratitude-for-how-things-happen.

A Short-Term Quick-Fix Gratitude Boost is gratitude-for-who-you-have. Mr. Rogers, accepting a Lifetime Achievement Award, asked everyone in the audience to take ten seconds to 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.

A Long-Term Gratitude Lifter is gratitude-for-how-things-happen. At the end of each day, think of some event or circumstance for which you feel grateful, and write about it: 1. Give the event or circumstance a title, like “Finished Writing Chapter 8” or “Made It Through That Meeting Without Crying or Yelling.” 2. Write down what happened, including details about what anyone involved, including you, did or said. 3. Describe how it made you feel at the time, and how you feel now, as you think about it. 4. Explain how the event or circumstance came to be. What was the cause? What confluence of circumstances came together to create this moment?

If, as you write, you feel yourself being drawn into negative, critical thoughts and feelings, gently set them to one side and return your attention to the thing you’re being grateful for.

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.

The stepping stone to joy is feeling like you are “enough,” and feeling “not enough” is a form of loneliness. We need other people to tell us that we are enough, not because we don’t know it already, but because the act of hearing it from someone else—and (equally) the act of taking the time to remind someone else they’re enough—is part of what makes us feel we’re enough. We give and we receive, and we are made whole.

It is a normal, healthy condition of humanity, to need other people to remind us that we can trust ourselves, that we can be as tender and compassionate with ourselves as we would be, as our best selves, toward any suffering child. To need help feeling “enough” is not a pathology; it is not “neediness.” It’s as normal as your need to assure the people you love that they can trust themselves, that they can be as tender and compassionate with themselves as you would be with them. And this exchange, this connection, is the springboard from which we launch into a joyful life.

The cure for burnout is not “self-care”; it is all of us caring for one another. So we’ll say it one more time: Trust your body. Be kind to yourself. You are enough, just as you are right now. Your joy matters.