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.

[Cue ominous music] The Patriarchy. Ugh.

lol

“Wax on, wax off” is what makes you stronger: connection, rest, and self-compassion.

Still, science doesn’t offer perfect truth, only the best available truth. Science, in a sense, is not an exact science.

The “cheese” of Burnout isn’t just feeling less overwhelmed and exhausted, or no longer worrying whether you’re doing “enough.” The cheese is growing mighty, feeling strong enough to cope with all the owls and mazes and anything else the world throws at you.

“Chandeliering.” This is Brené Brown’s term for the sudden, overwhelming burst of pain so intense you can no longer contain it, and you jump as high as the chandelier. It’s out of proportion to what’s happening in the here and now, but it’s not out of proportion to the suffering you’re holding inside. And it has to go somewhere. So it erupts. That eruption is a sign you’re past your threshold and need to deal with the stress before you can deal with the stressor.

If 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.

Stress is not bad for you; being stuck is bad for you.

Wellness happens when your body is a place of safety for you, even when your body is not necessarily in a safe place. You can be well, even during the times when you don’t feel good.

A noticeable, annoying buzz of background noise can increase a person’s creativity.

Novices who are thoroughly incompetent rate themselves as very confident in their ability to do a thing they’ve just learned to do. By contrast, genuine experts know how difficult their work is, so they are realistic about their competence and thus rate their confidence in their own abilities as moderate, even as their performance is, of course, expert-level.

You may find yourself oscillating between pushing onward and giving up, between frustrated rage—“This goal is attainable, and screw these jerks in my way!”—and helpless despair—“I can’t do it, I give up, everything is terrible!”

The quality of our lives is not measured by the amount of time we spend in a state of perfection.

People who participate in meaning-centered psychotherapy develop greater overall well-being, relationships, and hope, as well as reduced psychological stress and improved physical health.

Uhura’s first name is Nyota, the Swahili word for “star.” As in, what we reach for.

But not everyone who gaslights is a jerk. Some of them suffer from what we might call “patriarchy blindness.”

Accusers get death threats, and the accused is put on the Supreme Court.

White men grow on an open, level field. White women grow on far steeper and rougher terrain because the field wasn’t made for them. Women of color grow not just on a hill, but on a cliffside over the ocean, battered by wind and waves.

Just because the road looks flat doesn’t mean it is. Just because you can’t see the ocean doesn’t mean it’s not there. You can infer the landscape by looking at the shapes of the people who grew in those environments. 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.

Beautifully said

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.

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

A lot of body-positive talk emphasizes loving your body for “what it does” rather than how it looks, which is great as far as it goes. But it’s not so helpful for Julie or anyone living with chronic pain or illness. Even though her body looked a lot like she thought healthy bodies were supposed to look, it had failed pretty catastrophically to do what bodies were supposed to do.

It is normal—nearly universal—to feel ambivalent about your body, wanting to accept and love your body as it is and, at the same time, wanting to change it to conform to the culturally constructed aspirational ideal.

A loved one doesn’t have to be your literal twin for it to happen to you. We hope you have at least one person in your life so attuned to you that they quite literally feel your pain, and stand with you inside it.

And your best friend receives the cupcakes of your difficult emotions and returns them to you by saying, “But I know how hard you worked, and I am proud of you. And what is your plan to purge all that rage your body is still holding?” When the people in our Bubble can turn with kindness and compassion toward our difficult emotions, and we can do the same for them, it strengthens the Bubble like nothing else.

Mental energy, like stress, has a cycle it runs through, an oscillation from task focus to processing and back to task focus. The idea that you can use “grit” or “self-control” to stay focused and productive every minute of every day is not merely incorrect, it is gaslighting, and it is potentially damaging your brain.

Thirty minutes of physical activity. Whether with people or alone, you do it with the explicit mindset of gear-switching, Feels-purging, rest-getting freedom. Physical activity counts as “rest” partly because it improves the quality of your sleep and partly because it completes the stress response cycle, transitioning your body out of a stressed state and into a resting state.

“Hey there, resentment,” you say. “I get it. It’s frustrating to be working hard toward a deadline and have the need for sleep slow down your progress. Being a hominid is a drag sometimes, but it’s the only family we’ve got.” (Get it? Hominid? Family?) Or “Hello, worry. You’re here because the things I do really matter to me, and you want to make sure I don’t fall short. But you and I both know that if I don’t get the rest, I’ll do a crappy job at all these things that matter.” And even, “Hi, rage. I know our family raised us to believe we didn’t matter unless we were perfect, and perfect means we never stop working, and it’s right to be angry that we didn’t get the warm, unconditional acceptance every child is born deserving. Let’s treat ourselves as we wanted to be treated, granting ourselves permission to be human.”

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.

Sophie told us, “When I’m doing that progressive-muscle-tension-and-relaxation thing, what I’m imagining is Janice Lester beating the shit out of Kirk. She runs back after that ‘if only’ comment and is like, ‘IF ONLY WHAT, BITCH?! If only I hadn’t “hated my own womanhood,” you misogynist asshat? I don’t hate being a woman, I hate that I only wanted the same thing you wanted, but because of my body, I couldn’t have it! And yeah, it made me crazy, and then you said I couldn’t have it because I was crazy!’ And she beats him to a bloody pulp and everybody’s like, ‘Yeah, he had that coming a long time.’

Each person’s madwoman is different.

The difficulty of imagining ourselves with the knowledge, expertise, and strengths we will gain in the future can stop us entirely from moving toward that future.