Burnout Part III: Connection, Growing Strong and Mighty

In the wake of the recent election, perhaps this final part of the book  (Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski, PhD and Amelia Nagoski, DMA.) is more important than ever. 

Here are my Part III highlights. I recognize this is longer than my norm, but I tried to cut it down as best I could without losing the essentials for you. Short on time? Fast-forward to the end for the TL; DR.

Part III: Wax On, Wax Off

I. Social Connection nourishes us. We need both connection and autonomy.

• We mirror, co-regulate and synchronize
• Sharing space means sharing energy.
• Good Connection is good for you.
• Whether it’s one person or a group of people, trust and connected knowing are essential.

II. We give and receive in relationships: money, time, attention, compassion (especially for our difficult feelings). 

“If we turn toward someone with our difficult feelings—sadness, anger, hurt—and they tune in to our feelings without judgment or defensiveness, it helps us to move through that feeling…”

1. Trust can be boiled down to one question: “Are you there for me?”
   1. “People who don’t trust or are untrustworthy are energy drains.”
   2. Authenticity: “being totally yourself” requires trust. When you strategically suppress your authenticity, having an outlet to share and be met with compassion for is essential.
2. Connected Knowing: “coming to understand an idea by exploring it within its context. You put yourself in the shoes of the other person, to try on their point of view. You suspend (temporarily) your doubts, judgments, criticisms, and personal needs, in favor of exploring their perspective—not because you accept it, but because you want to understand.”
3. “Four signs that you have to disengage from your autonomous efforts and seek connection.”
   1. When you have been gaslit.
   2. When you feel “not enough: “When you experience the empty-handed feeling that you are just one person, unable to meet all the demands the world makes on you, helpless in the face of the endless, yawning need you see around you, recognize that emotion for what it is: a form of loneliness.”
   3. When you’re sad: “the way many of us have taught to treat our sadness: keep it under control, because it makes others uncomfortable… sadness is the beacon; it is the Bat-Signal. Though many of us were taught that we should mask our uncomfortable emotions, the truth about sadness is that we find our way out of the that tunnel most efficiently when we have a friend who calls through the darkness, ‘I’m right here!’” 
   4. When you are boiling with rage. “Many of us have been taught to swallow our rage, hide it even from ourselves.” Bring your rage and channel it. “Rage gives you strength and energy and the urge to fight and sharing that energy… changes it from something potentially dangerous to something safe and potentially transformative.”

III. What Makes You Stronger:

1. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger:” well, not always. Think broken bones, serious illness, etc. But “what makes you stronger is whatever happens to you after you survive the thing that didn’t kill you.” Often, that’s rest.
2. Rest includes sleep, but that’s not all. 
   1. Time for mind-wandering: the default mode network “a collection of linked brain area that function as a kind of low-grade dreaming when your attention is not focused on a task.” “Mental rest is not idleness; it is the time necessary for your brain to process the world.” P.S. This is different from BOREDOM, “the discomfort you experience when your brain is in active-attention mode, but can’t latch on to anything to attend to.”
   2. Active Rest: working one gear while resting the others. 
   3. Sleep: physical activity, learning, emotional process are all improved with sleep! Without enough sleep, your physical and emotional health suffer… so do your long-term memory, attention, decision-making, hand-eye coordination, calculation accuracy, logical reasoning, and creativity.”
   4. “Suppose you deal with all your stressors. You check all the boxes on your To Do List and give yourself permission, an opportunity to rest. If you’ve dealt with the stressors but haven’t dealt with the stress itself, your brain won’t let you rest. It will constantly scan for the lion that’s about to come after you, so when you try to go to sleep, your brain won’t let you fall asleep, or it will wake you up over and over, checking for that lion. Complete the cycle so your brain can transition into rest.”
   5. How much is enough? 42% Is the number science says is the percentage of time y our body and brain need you to spend resting. ~10/24 hrs. Break it down: 8 hrs of sleep, 20-30 mins of “stress-reducing conversation” or connection with a loved one, 30 mins of physical exercise, 30 mins of paying attention to food, and 30 mins wild card, depending on your needs.

IV. The Slow Leak: 

1. Do you feel guilty for sleeping? 
2. “Human Giver Syndrome tells us it’s “self-indulgent” to rest, which makes as much sense as believing it’s weak or self-indulgent to breathe.”
3. “Getting the rest your body requires is an act of resistance against the forces that are trying to rig the game and make you helpless. Reclaim rest and you reclaim sovereignty over your own life.”

V. Grow Mighty: 

1. “The Madwomen in the Attic”: the metaphor from Jane Eyre is used to discuss our inner voice that’s insulting you on the daily.
2. “This uncomfortable, fragile part of ourselves serves a very important function. She grew inside us, to manage the chasm between who we are and who Human Giver Syndrome expects us to be… When the unbridgeable chasm between us and expected-us looms, our madwoman assesses the situation and decides what the problem is. She has only two options: Is the world a lying asshole, with bogus expectations? Or is there something wrong with us?”
3. Get to know your madwoman.
   1. Tune in to the difficult, fragile part of yourself that tries to bridge you and expected -you.
   2. What does she say?
   3. Notice where she’s harshly critical of you, shaming or perfectionistic. 
   4. Get to know her.

VI. Harsh self-criticism and Toxic Perfectionism VS Self-Compassion.

1. “Self-compassion is good for you… The absence of self-compassion is harmful—it results in self-judgment, isolation, and overidentification with our suffering. Self-compassion reduces depression, anxiety, and disordered eating. It improves overall life satisfaction. When you are gentle with yourself, you grow mighty.
2. Self-compassion can be hard because healing hurts and growing stronger can be scary. But it’s worth it because healing helps us grow mighty enough to heal Human Giver Syndrome.
3. If self-compassion seems difficult at first, start with loving-kindness toward others. Metta meditations involve wishing love, compassion, peace and ease on others

VII. Gratitude: (note: being grateful for good things doesn’t erase the difficult things. Don’t weaponize gratitude against yourself.)

1. Gratitude for who you have: remember the people who have helped you, who love you, and who have encouraged you to become who you are. Go big: write them a letter, visit them. 
2. Gratitude for how things happen: at the end of the day, think of an event for which you feel grateful: describe it, how it happened, how you felt then and now and explain how the event came to be.

TL;dr

Make time for sleep, food, friends, and movement. Also, befriend your inner harsh critic; she developed a long time ago thinking something must be wrong with you… otherwise the world must be a “lying asshole, with bogus expectations.” She was too young to know any better. Love her and remind her that nothing is wrong with you.

If you need a friendly coach to remind you of that, I’m here. Remember, this was just my summary, but I hope I captured some of the essentials of this book for you to learn from and use as it fits you and your life. 

Heidi

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