Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

by Emily Nagoski

Positive reappraisal involves recognizing that sitting in traffic is worth it. It means deciding that the effort, the discomfort, the frustration, the unanticipated obstacles, and even the repeated failure have value—not just because they are steps toward a worthwhile goal, but because you reframe difficulties as opportunities for growth and learning.3

Some people naturally notice what’s valuable in difficult situations. These natural optimists expect good things to happen and automatically believe that bad things, if they happen, are temporary, isolated events that will have no lasting impact.

Pessimists, by contrast, don’t always expect good outcomes and may view bad things, if they happen, as symptomatic of larger-scale problems that could have lasting impact.

With positive reappraisal, you can acknowledge when things are difficult, and you recognize that the difficulty is worth it—it is, in fact, an opportunity.

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

there is a distinct downside to effort that is too effortless: When a task feels easy, we feel more confident about our ability to perform that task even though we are actually more likely to fail.

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.

Redefining winning in terms of incremental goals is not the same as giving yourself rewards for making progress—such rewards are counterintuitively ineffective and may even be detrimental.12 When you redefine winning, you set goals that are achievements in themselves—and success is its own reward.

For goals that are abstract, impossible, or otherwise intangible, you can reduce frustration by establishing a nonstandard relationship with winning. But sometimes you’re aiming for a clearly defined, concrete goal that can’t be redefined. For these, you will need a nonstandard relationship with failing. You may do all the things you’re supposed to do, without getting where you’re trying to go, only to end up somewhere else pretty amazing.

Planful problem-solving and positive reappraisal are the adaptive coping strategies, meaning they generally work and they carry minimal risk of unwanted consequences.

maladaptive strategies include things like self-defeating confrontation, suppressing your stress, and avoidance. We often turn to such strategies when we feel out of control in a stressful situation and are desperately trying to regain control.

Denying that you experience the stress prevents you from dealing with the stress—and

Avoidance has a couple different flavors. There’s “I waited for a miracle to happen,” which abdicates personal responsibility for creating change, and there’s “I ate until I couldn’t feel my feelings,” which numbs you out.

Sometimes you need to close the door on the world and allow yourself to feel comfortable and safe—as long as it’s not the only thing you’re doing.

write four lists: What are the benefits of continuing? What are the benefits of stopping? What are the costs of continuing? What are the costs of stopping? And then you look at those four lists and make a decision based on your estimates of maximizing benefit and minimizing cost. Remember to consider both the long-term and the short-term costs and benefits. And if you decide to continue, remember to include completing the cycle in your plan.

DECISION GRID Should I stay or quit: ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ (e.g., my job, my relationship, my diet, my place of worship, my substance use, my habit of overcommitting…)

Life is rarely perfect. Nearly always, there is a gap between how things are and how we wish, hope, expect, or plan for them to be. The quality of our lives is not measured by the amount of time we spend in a state of perfection. On the contrary, people of vision—think of the principal social justice leaders of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—see the largest gap between what is and what ought to be, and they know they will not live to see a world that fully achieves their vision of what’s possible. A gap between reality and perfection is not abnormal or a sign of dysfunction; it’s a normal part of life. In fact, as we’ve seen, the Monitor thrives when things are a little frustrating, when there’s always some fresh challenge, some new skill to develop, some unknown territory to chart. The quality of our lives, day to day, is measured by our freedom to choose to stay or leave. That freedom comes when we have abundance enough and safety enough to let go of what is broken and reach for something new.17

A goal is not a life—but it may be what gives shape and direction to the way we live each day. If our goals are what we want to accomplish, “meaning” is why we want to accomplish them. We

tl;dr: • Frustration happens when our progress toward a goal feels more effortful than we expect it to be. • You can manage frustration by using planful problem-solving for stressors you can control, and positive reappraisal for stressors you can’t control. • When we’re struggling, we may reach a point of oscillating between frustrated rage and helpless despair. Solution: Choose the right time to give up, which might be now or might be never; either way, the choice puts you back in the driver’s seat. • Your brain has a built-in mechanism to assess when it’s time to quit. Listen to its quiet voice. Or do a worksheet; sometimes that’s easier.

REDEFINE WINNING To cope with the frustration of trying to achieve a goal that’s all but impossible—e.g., “perfection”—or else eternally in-progress—e.g., “successfully” parenting a child—start by redefining what it means to “win” at this goal. Frustrating Goal What is it about this goal that frustrates your Monitor? Is it unattainable? Do you feel ambivalent about it? Was it someone else’s dumb idea? Is there part of it that makes you feel helpless? Are there too many frustrating yet unavoidable obstacles between you and “winning”? Brainstorm at least twenty options for definitions of “winning” that will satisfy your Monitor. Make sure you have plenty of silly, impractical ideas, as well as a few that could actually work. Brainstorming works best when you don’t filter! For some people, it also works better when you collaborate; if that’s you, ask a friend to help. Now choose your three favorites and score them based on the criteria for Monitor-pleasing goals: Soon: When will you know you’ve succeeded? Your goal should be achievable without requiring patience. Certain: How confident are you that you can succeed? Your goal should be within your control. Positive: What improvement will you experience when you win? It should be something that feels good, not just something that avoids suffering. Concrete: Measurable. How will you know you’ve succeeded? There is an external indication that you have succeeded. Specific: As opposed to general. You should be able to visua...

Meaning is the feeling that you “matter in some larger sense. Lives may be experienced as meaningful when they are felt to have significance beyond the trivial or momentary, to have purpose, or to have a coherence that transcends chaos.”7

For most of us, meaning is what sustains us on the long, hard journey, no matter what we find at the end. Meaning is not found; it is made.13

To make meaning, the research tells us, engage with something larger than yourself.14

Research has found that meaning is most likely to come from three kinds of sources:15 1. pursuit and achievement of ambitious goals that leave a legacy—as in “finding a cure for HIV” or “making the world a better place for these kids”; 2. service to the divine or other spiritual calling—as in “attaining spiritual liberation and union with Akal” or “glorifying God with my words, thoughts, and deeds”; and 3. loving, emotionally intimate connection with others—as in “raising my kids so they know they’re loved, no matter what” or “loving and supporting my partner with authenticity and kindness.”

there is no right or wrong source of meaning; there’s just whatever gives you the feeling that your life has a positive impact.16

you’re still struggling to recognize your Something Larger, research has found a few strategies that can help: Try writing your own obituary or a “life summary” through the eyes of a grandchild or a student. Ask your closest friends to describe the “real you,” the characteristics of your personality and your life that are at the core of your best self. Imagine that someone you care about is going through a dark moment in their life—they’ve experienced significant loss and feel helpless and isolated (the two things that drain us of meaning fastest). As your best self, write that person a letter to support them through this difficult time. Then reread it. It’s for you.18 Finally, think of a time when you experienced an intense sense of meaning or purpose or “alignment” or whatever it feels like for you. What were you doing? What was it that created that sense of meaning?

philosopher Kate Manne’s language of “human givers” versus “human beings,” a cultural code in which human beings have a moral obligation to be their whole humanity, while human givers have a moral obligation to give their whole humanity, and give it cheerfully. We call the behavior patterns associated with these moral convictions “Human Giver Syndrome.”

you suffer from Human Giver Syndrome? Symptoms include • believing you have a moral obligation—that is, you owe it to your partner, your family, the world, or even to yourself—to be pretty, happy, calm, generous, and attentive to the needs of others; • believing that any failure to be pretty, happy, calm, generous, and attentive makes you a failure as a person; • believing that your “failure” means you deserve punishment—even going so far as to beat yourself up; and • believing these are not symptoms, but normal and true ideas.

tl;dr: • “Meaning in life” is good for you. You make meaning by engaging with something larger than yourself—whether that’s ambitious goals, service to the divine, or loving relationships. • Meaning enhances well-being when you’re doing well, and it can save your life when you’re struggling. • Human Giver Syndrome is a collection of personal and cultural beliefs and behaviors that insist that some people’s only “meaning in life” comes from being pretty, happy, calm, generous, and attentive to the needs of others. • The stress response cycle, the Monitor, and meaning are all resources you carry with you into the battle against the real enemy.

This inability to try is called “learned helplessness.” Animals, including humans, who repeatedly find themselves in bad situations from which they can’t escape may not even try to escape, even when given the opportunity. When an animal has learned helplessness, it goes straight past frustration right to the pit of despair. It’s not a rational choice; their central nervous system has learned that when they are suffering, nothing they can do will make a difference. They have learned they are helpless. Their only available route for self-preservation is not to try.

Just knowing that the game is rigged can help you feel better right away.

If no difference existed in the way boys and girls were treated, a baby’s genitals would be no more important in deciding how the child was raised than any other part of their body. But instead, the baby is treated as if all sorts of other things about them are true—what kind of toys they’ll enjoy, what skills they’ll develop, whom they’ll grow up to fall in love with, what they’ll want to be when they grow up.

The difference between how boys and girls are raised is gradually shrinking; more and more, 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. But our expectations are still widely different for girls and boys; you can see how wide the difference is simply by looking at the toy aisle for girls and the toy aisle for boys. The difference isn’t neutral. Being raised as a boy makes it easier for boys to grow up and take on positions of power and authority, which is all “patriarchy” means.

This takes a lot of forms: Explicit misogyny. One example of this is a reality TV star declaring he can grab women “by the pussy” whenever he wants because he’s famous, and a flood of media coverage suggesting that this sort of thing is perfectly okay—“just locker-room talk.” Imagine if he (or a woman) had said he can “grab men by the dick” whenever he wanted. Or a young man goes on a murderous rampage, killing several people and injuring many more, and justifies it by saying women refuse to have sex with him. In response to one such mass murderer who identified as an “incel” (“involuntarily celibate”), The New York Times ran an op-ed that unjokingly argued that “redistribution of sex”—that is, sex for men, with women—was a reasonable idea.3 You see, women could be preventing these deaths, if only they did their job of meeting the sexual needs of dangerous men. In the time that we were writing this book, there were fifteen public mass shootings in the United States perpetrated by men or boys, several of whom were motivated, at least...

Sex and relationship violence. Sexual assault disproportionately and systematically targets women: women are three times more likely than men to be assaulted, while 95 percent of sex offenders are men; one in five American women college students experiences sexual assault or attempted sexual assault during college.6 Globally, men who rape women report that their primary motivation is the basic belief that they have a right to a woman’s body, regardless of how she feels about it, a belief termed “sexual entitlement” in the research.7 Women are held responsible for being assaulted based on how they “lead men on” with behavior or attire, but perpetrators are disproportionately under...

In addition to the threat of acute physical and sexual violence, women face chronic gendered stressors every day. These experiences of patriarchy are like traffic noise in a big city. If you live there, you get so used to it you hardly notice it...

Body image. We talk about this extensively in chapter 5, so we’ll save a complete discussion for then, but we want to mention now that body dysmorphia and disordered eating disproportionately and systematically impact women more than men, and the dynamic is already in place by elementary school, with half of six-year-old girls worrying they’re “too fat.” And let’s remember that eating disorders have the h...

Getting a word in edgewise. Again, the dynamic is already in place by elementary school: boys speak up and call out answers eight times more than girls.8 Among grown-ups, in meetings where men are the majority, women speak a third less than men; only when there are more women than men do women speak as much as men.9 During President Barack Obama’s first term in office, his women staffers struggled so much to get their voices heard that they coordinated an “amplification” tactic, where when one of them made a key point, the others would rep...

In the twenty-first-century West, “one damn thing after another” is what being a woman often feels like. It’s a constant, low-level stream of stressors that are out of your control. Most individual examples are little more than an annoyance…but they accumulate.

We’re not saying life isn’t difficult for everyone, or that men and boys don’t struggle with these issues, too. They do. The pressure to conform to an ever-shrinking mold is increasing as companies discover how much profit there is to be made from telling men they aren’t valuable unless they have six-pack abs or instantaneous erections. People of every gender die in mass murders, often including the killer, and men are more likely to die by violence, including at their own hand. Misogyny doesn’t just kill women.

Womanhood as a “chronic, low-level stress” is even messier than it sounds, for two reasons: First, it’s very possible that female and male biologies respond differently to that stress.

And second, one of the stressors we experience is being told that we’re not experiencing any more or different stress than men. One aspect of the patriarchy (ugh) in the modern West is that it says it doesn’t exist anymore.

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.

gaslighting is designed to make you question your own credibility and competence.

The message is consistent and persistent—whatever is wrong, it’s your fault. It can’t be true that the whole rest of the world is broken or crazy; you’re the one who’s broken and crazy. You haven’t tried hard enough. You haven’t done the right things. You don’t have what it takes.

Gaslighting creates deeply uncomfortable feelings of being trapped, while making you believe you put yourself in that trap, which just makes you angrier and sadder and less hopeful.

Patriarchy Blindness #1: Human Giver Syndrome

People from affluent families do it to poor people; citizens do it to immigrants; nondisabled people do it to people with disabilities. People in any dominant group find it impossible to believe that the road isn’t as flat for others as it is for them; they only know they’re working really hard.

enveloping, protective love that holds and cherishes every inch of our bodies. In that moment and in that love, we are flawless. Beautiful. And then. And then we are infected with Human Giver Syndrome, which pushes girl babies to grow into human givers—pretty, happy, calm, generous, and attentive to the needs of others—while it pushes boy babies to be ambitious, competitive, strong, and infallible.

Here is the secret Human Giver Syndrome doesn’t want you to know: Nothing has changed. No matter what has happened to that body of yours between the day you were born, beautiful and perfect, and the day you read this, your body is still beautiful and perfect. And it is still full of needs.