Burnout has been such a hot topic (especially in the medical world)!
In some ways, the term reminds me of the old adage, “You’ll know it when you see it.” It’s more of a feel it, not see it– but there are some nuances I think could be helpful to a lot of people “feeling the burn.”
So I re-read Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski, PhD and Amelia Nagoski, DMA because I wanted to share my recaps with you.
What is burnout? Defined by Freudenberger in 1975
- Emotional exhaustion—the fatigue that comes from caring too much, for too long
- Depersonalization—the depletion of empathy, caring, and compassion
- Decreased sense of accomplishments—an unconquerable sense of futility: feeling that nothing you do makes any difference.
A lot of the burnout data has come from “people who help people”—teachers, medical professionals, and more data is coming about parents…
I really like their description of emotional exhaustion.
“So what exactly is an ‘emotion,’ and how do you exhaust it? Emotions, at their most basic level, involved release of neurochemicals in the brain, in response to some stimulus… 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.
We may get stuck simply because we’re constantly being exposed to situations that activate emotion…sometimes we get stuck because we can’t find our way though… And sometimes we get stuck because we’re trapped in a place where we are not free to move through the tunnel.”
They use a term “Human Giver Syndrome”—it reminded me of the term “The Sacrificial Mother” used by Carin Rubenstein PhD… see this blog from many months ago.
Bottom line: they describe human givers, based on a description in Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny by Kate Manne as “those who are expected to offer their time, attention, affection, and bodies willingly, placidly, to the other class of people, the ‘human beings.’ The implication in these terms is that human beings have a moral obligation to give their humanity to the human beings. Guess which one women are? …. Givers are not supposed to need anything… or God forbid, demand anything…”
They designed the book in three parts:
- What You Take with You: the three internal resources: the stress response cycle, “the Monitor,” and meaning in life.
- “The Real Enemy”
- The Science of winning the war against the enemy: concrete, specific things we can do
To mix things up a bit, I’m actually going to give you their last page:
“The cure for burnout is not “self-care”; it is all of us caring for one another.
So we’ll say it one more time:
Trust your body.
Be kind to yourself.
You are enough, just as you are right now.
Your joy matters.
Please tell everyone you know.
tl;dr:
• Just because you’ve dealt with a stressor doesn’t mean you’ve dealt with the stress. And you don’t have to wait until all your stressors are dealt with before you deal with your stress. Which is to say, you don’t have to wait for the world to be better before you make your life better—and by making your life better, you make the world better.
• Wellness is not a state of being but a state of action.It is the freedom to move fluidly through the cyclical, oscillating experiences of being human.
• “Human Giver Syndrome” is the contagious false belief that you have a moral obligation to give every drop of your humanity-your time, attention, energy, love, even your body—in support of others, no matter the cost to you. Pay attention to how different it feels to interact with people who treat you with care and generosity, versus people who treat you as if they are entitled to whatever they want from you.
• Humans are not built to function autonomously; we are built to oscillate from connection to autonomy and back again. Connection-with friends, family, pets, the divine, etc.—is as necessary as food and water.”
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing more of their work and the book, because it’s rooted in science-based evidence and totally aligns with my coaching.
Many of their suggestions I have used and love. Some I haven’t incorporated regularly yet, but hoping you’ll find what works for you and use it!
Heidi
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