Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

by Emily Nagoski

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 stress and said, “Exercise is good for you,” Sophie approached her afterward. “You don’t understand, Emily. It’s boring and painful and every time I do it, something goes wrong. I can’t, I won’t, I don’t want to, just no. No. I’m not going to exercise. I don’t care how good it is for my stress.” Not everyone is a natural exerciser. But the research is so unambiguous that exercise is good for you that, as a health educator, Emily has searched for ways to support people who can’t exercise or hate exercise or just don’t exercise, for whatever reason. When she looked at the research, to her astonishment, most of the conclusions said things like “Join a team sport” or “Make it a hobby, not just exercise!” In other words, the advice said, “Find a way to enjoy exercise!” Which is good advice, but not for someone with chronic pain or illness, injury or disability, or someone like Sophie who wil...