The Secret To Unlocking The Stress Cycle

I recently finished reading Burnout by Emily Nagoski.

**POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT**

  Rating: 3/5 stars

"Burnout. Many women in America have experienced it. What’s expected of women and what it’s really like to be a woman in today’s world are two very different things—and women exhaust themselves trying to close the gap between them. How can you “love your body” when every magazine cover has ten diet tips for becoming “your best self”? How do you “lean in” at work when you’re already operating at 110 percent and aren’t recognized for it? How can you live happily and healthily in a sexist world that is constantly telling you you’re too fat, too needy, too noisy, and too selfish?

Sisters Emily Nagoski, PhD, and Amelia Nagoski, DMA, are here to help end the cycle of feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. Instead of asking us to ignore the very real obstacles and societal pressures that stand between women and well-being, they explain with compassion and optimism what we’re up against—and show us how to fight back. In these pages you’ll learn

• what you can do to complete the biological stress cycle—and return your body to a state of relaxation

• how to manage the “monitor” in your brain that regulates the emotion of frustration

• how the Bikini Industrial Complex makes it difficult for women to love their bodies—and how to defend yourself against it

• why rest, human connection, and befriending your inner critic are keys to recovering and preventing burnout

With the help of eye-opening science, prescriptive advice, and helpful worksheets and exercises, all women will find something transformative in these pages—and will be empowered to create positive change. Emily and Amelia aren’t here to preach the broad platitudes of expensive self-care or insist that we strive for the impossible goal of “having it all.” Instead, they tell us that we are enough, just as we are—and that wellness, true wellness, is within our reach."

I’m dealing with some burnout right now, and this book on burnout for women was recommended to me. The individual pieces weren’t new to me, and the kind of cutesy writing style to make it digestible is not my usual thing. But I found it useful, and I appreciated that the authors were trying to combine discussing techniques individuals can use as well as systemic problems.

Some of the topics that had something to offer -

• completing the stress cycle to deal with the actual stress and not just the stressors - via physical activity, social strategies, creative expression - the idea being that if you just march through your day battering through the stressors one by one without ‘completing the stress cycle’, you never come down from the keyed up state of being ready to battle them. This resonated with me, since I can get into stretches of very long, packed days filled with mess in which everything falls away other than dealing with the stressors (but not the stress itself), and then as a result, the stress doesn’t get a chance to dissipate.

• dealing with stressors you can control through ‘planful problem-solving’ (autocorrect tried to call it ‘playful,’ but, um, it doesn’t feel that way), and dealing with stressors you can’t control through ‘positive reappraisal', or changing expectations to redefine winning in terms of specific incremental goals. There was also a decent short discussion on when to give up.

• a good discussion of the importance of rest. Dang, we need a lot. Time is…an issue.

• recognition of the impact of patriarchy, gaslighting, body image stress, and what the authors term ‘Human Giver Syndrome’. As I noted, I like that the authors don’t try to make stress and burnout a solely personal issue.

Check out Burnout, and discover what happens when you are burnt out.

Happy Reading :)