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December 7 - December 28, 2022
when it was first coined as a technical term by Herbert Freudenberger in 1975, “burnout” was defined by three components: 1. emotional exhaustion—the fatigue that comes from caring too much, for too long; 2. depersonalization—the depletion of empathy, caring, and compassion; and 3. decreased sense of accomplishment—an unconquerable sense of futility: feeling that nothing you do makes any difference.1
In the forty years since the original formulation, research has found it’s the first element in burnout, emotional exhaustion, that’s most strongly linked to negative impacts on our health, relationships, and work—especially for women.6
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.
No wonder parenting is so exhausting—once you’re a parent, you’re never not a parent. You’re always going through the tunnel.
Your body, with its instinct for self-preservation, knows, on some level, that Human Giver Syndrome is slowly killing you. That’s why you keep trying mindfulness and green smoothies and self-care trend after self-care trend. But 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, activating even more punishment from the world or from yourself, because how dare you? Human Giver Syndrome is our disease.
We thrive when we have a positive goal to move toward, not just a negative state we’re trying to move away from.
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.
Stressors are what activate the stress response in your body. They can be anything you see, hear, smell, touch, taste, or imagine could do you harm. There are external stressors: work, money, family, time, cultural norms and expectations, experiences of discrimination, and so on. And there are less tangible, internal stressors: self-criticism, body image, identity, memories, and The Future. In different ways and to different degrees, all of these things may be interpreted by your body as potential threats.
Stress is the neurological and physiological shift that happens in your body when you encounter one of these threats. It’s an evolutionarily adaptive response that helps us cope with things like, say, being chased by a lion or charged by a hippo.1 When your brain notices the lion (or hippo), it activates a generic “stress response,” a cascade of neurological and hormonal activity that initiates physiological changes to help you survive: epinephrine acts instantly to push blood into your muscles, glucocorticoids keep you going, and endorphins help you ignore how uncomfortable all of this is.
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this complex, multisystem response has one primary goal: to move oxygen and fuel into your muscles, in anticipation of the need to escape. Any process not relevant to that task is postponed.
do literally anything that moves your body enough to get you breathing deeply.
Between twenty and sixty minutes a day does it for most folks. And it should be most days—after all, you experience stress most days, so you should complete the stress response cycle most days, too. But even just standing up from your chair, taking a deep breath, and tensing all your muscles for twenty seconds, then shaking it out with a big exhale, is an excellent start.
Physical activity is the single most efficient strategy for completing the stress response cycle.
Here are six other evidence-based strategies:
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, so that your belly contracts. Breathing is most effective when your stress isn’t that high, or when you just need to siphon off the very worst of the stress so that you can get through a difficult situation, after which you’ll do something more hardcore. Also,
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.9
When we laugh, says neuroscientist Sophie Scott, we use an “ancient evolutionary system that mammals have evolved to make and maintain social bonds and regulate emotions.”10
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. Most often, this comes from some loving and beloved person who likes, respects, and trusts you, whom you like, respect, and trust. It doesn’t have to be physical affection, though physical affection is great; a warm hug, in a safe and trusting context, can do as much to help your body feel like it has escaped a threat as jogging a couple of miles, and it’s a heck of a lot less sweaty.
“six-secon...
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Kissing for six seconds requires that you stop and deliberately notice that you like this person, that you trust them, and that you feel affection for them. By noticing those things, the kiss tells your body that you are safe with your tribe.
Hug someone you love and trust for twenty full seconds, while both of you are standing over your own centers of balance.
The research suggests a twenty-second hug can change your hormones, lower your blood pressure and heart rate, and improve mood, all of which are reflected in the post-hug increase in the social-bonding hormone oxytocin.11
“hugging until relaxed.”
Just petting a cat for a few minutes can lower your blood pressure, and pet owners often describe their attachment to their pets as more supportive than their human relationships.12 No wonder people who walk their dogs get more exercise and feel better than people who don’t—they’re getting exercise and affection at the same time.13
a spiritual connection is also about feeling safe, loved, and supported by a higher power. In short, it’s about feeling connected to an invisible yet intensely tangible tribe.14
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.
a favorite tearjerker movie
Going through that emotion with the characters allows your body to go through it, too. The story guides you through the complete emotional cycle.
Creative Expression. Engaging in creative activities today leads to more energy, excitement, and enthusiasm tomorrow.15
the arts—including painting, sculpture, music, theater, and storytelling in all forms—create a context that tolerate...
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literary, visual, and performing arts of all kinds give us the chance to celebrate and move through big emotions.
Sophie is an engineer and a Star Trek geek and a lot of other things, but she is not an athlete. In high school, people saw a six-foot-one black girl and told her she should play basketball, and she told them where they could put their basketball. She hates exercise. She will not exercise. In fact, if she ever tries to exercise, after a few days she inevitably comes down with something or is injured, or a project comes up that means she doesn’t have time anymore. She can’t exercise. Can’t. Hates it, can’t do it, won’t do it. So when Emily visited her office to lead a lunchtime seminar about
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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.
How Do You Know You’ve Completed the Cycle? It’s like knowing when you’re full after a meal, or like knowing when you’ve had an orgasm. Your body tells you, and it’s easier for some people to recognize than others. You might experience it as a shift in mood or mental state or physical tension, as you breathe more deeply and your thoughts relax.
It’s a gear shift—a slip of the chain to a smaller gear, and all of a sudden the wheels are spinning more freely. It’s a relaxation in her muscles and a deepening of her breath.
For a lot of people, the most difficult thing about “completing the cycle” is that it almost always requires that they stop dealing with whatever caused the stress, step away from that situation, and turn instead toward their own body and emotions.
Signs You Need to Deal with the Stress, Even If It Means Ignoring the Stressor
1. You notice yourself doing the same, apparently pointless thing over and over again, or engaging in self-destructive behaviors.
2. “Chandeliering.”
3. You turn into a bunny hiding under a hedge.
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.
4. Your body feels out of whack.
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. 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.
Wellness is not a state of being, but a state of action.
the Monitor. It is the brain mechanism that decides whether to keep trying…or to give up.
The Monitor knows (1) what your goal is; (2) how much effort you’re investing in that goal; and (3) how much progress you’re making. It keeps a running tally of your effort-to-progress ratio, and it has a strong opinion about what that ratio should be.
The Monitor keeps track of your effort and your progress. When a lot of effort fails to produce a satisfying amount of progress, we can change the kind of effort we’re investing.
remember to build completing the cycle into your plan.
