Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

by Emily Nagoski

Dealing with your stress is a separate process from dealing with the things that cause your stress. To deal with your stress, you have to complete the cycle

To be “well” is not to live in a state of perpetual safety and calm, but to move fluidly from a state of adversity, risk, adventure, or excitement, back to safety and calm, and out again.

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. • Physical activity is the single most efficient strategy for completing the cycle—even if it’s just jumping up and down or a good old cry. • 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, drawing, singing, whatever gives you a safe place to move through the emotional cycle of stress. • “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.