Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

by Emily Nagoski

The problem is not that women don’t try. On the contrary, we’re trying all the time, to do and be all the things everyone demands from us.

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.

that instinct for self-preservation is battling a syndrome that insists that self-preservation is selfish, so your efforts to care for yourself might actually make things worse,

It's so me

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.

Just Because You’ve Dealt with the Stressor Doesn’t Mean You’ve Dealt with the Stress Itself

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

Breathing. Deep, slow breaths downregulate the stress response—especially when the exhalation is long and slow and goes all the way to the end of the breath,

Breathing is most effective when your stress isn’t that high,

Positive Social Interaction. Casual but friendly social interaction is the first external sign that the world is a safe place.

Laughter. Laughing together—and even just reminiscing about the times we’ve laughed together—increases relationship satisfaction.

Affection. When friendly chitchat with colleagues doesn’t cut it, when you’re too stressed out for laughter, deeper connection with a loving presence is called for.

A Big Ol’ Cry. Anyone who says “Crying doesn’t solve anything” doesn’t know the difference between dealing with the stress and dealing with the situation that causes the stress.

Creative Expression. Engaging in creative activities today leads to more energy, excitement, and enthusiasm tomorrow.

Physical activity, affection, laughter, creative expression, and even just breathing have something in common as strategies, though: you have to do something.

dealing with the stressor and dealing with the stress are two different processes, and you have to do both. You have to, or else your stress will gradually erode your well-being until your body and mind break down.

first, acknowledge when things are difficult; then, acknowledge that the difficulty is worth it.

When something feels uncomfortable, you’re probably doing something that creates more and better progress than if it were easy.

If you’re trying to do something where you will inevitably fail and be rejected repeatedly before you achieve your goal—like, if you’re recording music or you’re an actor or you sell insurance or you’re trying to raise a teenager to be a reasonable adult—then you will need a nonstandard relationship with winning, focusing on incremental goals.

Soon: Your goal should be achievable without requiring patience. Certain: Your goal should be within your control. Positive: It should be something that feels good, not just something that avoids suffering. Concrete: Measurable.

Specific: Not general, like “fill people with joy,” but specific: Fill Andrew with joy. Personal: Tailor your goal. If you don’t care about Andrew’s state of mind, forget Andrew. Who is your Andrew? Maybe you’re your own Andrew.

A woman’s need for “meaning in life” is not fundamentally different from a man’s, but the obstacles that stand between women and their sense of meaning are different.

life has meaning when a person contributes something positive to the world by the time they die—whether

I wonder if this rings true for everyone

What am I doing when I feel most powerfully that I’m doing what I’m meant to be doing?

fathers are in favor of their daughters possessing “traditionally masculine” traits like “independence” and “strength”…even if they’re not so enthusiastic about their own wives or girlfriends possessing those same characteristics.

“one damn thing after another” is what being a woman often feels like.

This story resonated so strongly with generations of moviegoers that “gaslighting” has become a term to describe the larger phenomenon of women and other marginalized groups being told over and over that it’s their imagination.

SO THAT'S where it came from

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.

It me

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.

:(

Don’t smash with the goal of “ending the patriarchy.” You are not going to see the end of gender inequality or racial inequality or any other inequality. You are going to see progress, just as you can see that progress has happened over the last hundred years.

if you’re using up decision-making and attention-focusing cognitive resources on choices about food, clothes, exercise, makeup, body hair, “toxins,” and fretting about your body’s failures, what are you too exhausted to care about, that you would otherwise prioritize?

:(

knowing what’s true doesn’t magically cure it. Knowledge may be half the battle, but only half.

loneliness as having “the same impact on mortality as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day.”

Bitch wtf

If you make only one change in your life after reading this book, let it be getting more sleep.

Wish it were that easy

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