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Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

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Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle Kindle Edition

by Emily Nagoski (Author), Amelia Nagoski (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.6 8,219 ratings

Goodreads Choice Award nominee

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “This book is a gift! I’ve been practicing their strategies, and it’s a total game-changer.”—Brené Brown, PhD, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Dare to Lead

This groundbreaking book explains why women experience burnout differently than men—and provides a simple, science-based plan to help women minimize stress, manage emotions, and live a more joyful life.

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.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BOOKRIOT

“Burnout is the gold standard of self-help books, delivering cutting-edge science with energy, empathy, and wit. The authors know exactly what’s going on inside your frazzled brain and body, and exactly what you can do to fix it. . . . Truly life-changing.”—Sarah Knight, New York Times bestselling author of Calm the F*ck Down

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271 pages
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March 26, 2019
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We thrive when we have a positive goal to move toward, not just a negative state we’re trying to move away from.
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What are the benefits of continuing? What are the benefits of stopping? What are the costs of continuing? What are the costs of stopping?
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In short, 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.
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Physical activity is the single most efficient strategy for completing the stress response cycle.
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From the Publisher

burnout;burn out;self help;time management;stress management;gifts for women;mental health

Cup of Jo says, “They make the self-help genre not make you want to poke your eyes out.”burnout

Editorial Reviews

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“Burnout is the gold standard of self-help books, delivering cutting-edge science with energy, empathy, and wit. The authors know exactly what’s going on inside your frazzled brain and body, and exactly what you can do to fix it. . . . Truly life-changing.”—Sarah Knight, New York Times bestselling author of Calm the F*ck Down

“In Burnout, Emily and Amelia Nagoski deconstruct the stress we experience as women, and their compassionate, science-based advice on how to release it made me cry with gratitude and relief. Repeatedly. In public. The book is that revolutionary and its authors that wonderful and wise.”—Peggy Orenstein, New York Times bestselling author of Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape

“Reading Burnout, I knew this was not just another self-help book that keeps us trapped by the idea of female inadequacy. It turns our struggle with stress on its head and paves a meaningful path to what the authors call ‘growing mighty’ by bravely dropping in thoroughly contemporary and refreshing truth bombs, like, yeah, the patriarchal system is the issue, and goddamn it’s time we play by our own rules!”—Sarah Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of First, We Make the Beast Beautiful

“The first sentence of Burnout says, ‘This is a book is for any woman who has felt overwhelmed and exhausted by everything she had to do, and yet still worried she was not doing “enough.”’ (I raised my hand in bed.) Emily Nagoski [and] her twin sister, Amelia, teamed up to write about how to combat stress, and they have a gift for making the self-help genre not make you want to poke your eyes out.”—Cup of Jo

About the Author

Emily Nagoski is the award-winning author of the New York Times bestseller Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life. She has a MS in counseling and a PhD in health behavior, both from Indiana University.

Amelia Nagoski holds a conductor with a DMA in conducting from the University of Connecticut. An assistant professor and coordinator of music at Western New England University, she regularly presents educational sessions discussing the application of communications science and psychological research for audiences of other professional musicians, including “Beyond Burnout Prevention: Embodied Wellness for Conductors.”

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

This is a book for any woman who has felt overwhelmed and exhausted by everything she had to do, and yet still worried she was not doing “enough.” Which is every woman we know—including us.

You’ve heard the usual advice over and over: exercise, green smoothies, self-compassion, coloring books, mindfulness, bubble baths, gratitude. . . . You’ve probably tried a lot of it. So have we. And sometimes it helps, at least for a while. But then the kids are struggling in school or our partner needs support through a difficulty or a new work project lands in our laps, and we think, I’ll do the self-care thing as soon as I finish this.

The problem is not that women don’t try. On the contrary, we’re trying all the time, to do and be all the things everyone demands from us. And we will try anything—any green smoothie, any deep-breathing exercise, any coloring book or bath bomb, any retreat or vacation we can shoehorn into our schedules—to be what our work and our family and our world demand. We try to put on our own oxygen mask before assisting others. And then along comes another struggling kid or terrible boss or difficult semester.

The problem is not that we aren’t trying. The problem isn’t even that we don’t know how. The problem is the world has turned “wellness” into yet another goal everyone “should” strive for, but only people with time and money and nannies and yachts and Oprah’s phone number can actually achieve.

So this book is different from anything else you’ll read about burnout. We’ll figure out what wellness can look like in your actual real life, and we’ll confront the barriers that stand between you and your own well-being. We’ll put those barriers in context, like landmarks on a map, so we can find paths around and over and through them—or sometimes just blow them to smithereens.

With science. 

Who We Are and Why We Wrote Burnout

Emily is a health educator with a PhD and a New York Times bestselling book, Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life. When she was traveling all over talking about that book, readers kept telling her the most life-changing information in the book wasn’t the sex science; it was those sections about stress and emotion processing.

When she told her identical twin sister, Amelia, a choral conductor, Amelia blinked like that was obvious. “Of course. Nobody teaches us how to feel our feelings. Hell, I was taught. Any conservatory-trained musician learns to feel feelings singing on stages or standing on podiums. But that didn’t mean I knew how to do it in the real world. And when I finally learned, it probably saved my life,” she said.

“Twice,” she added.

And Emily, recalling how it felt to watch her sister crying in a hospital gown, said, “We should write a book about that.”

Amelia agreed, saying, “A book about that would’ve made my life a lot better.”

This is that book.

It turned into a lot more than a book about stress. Above all, it became a book about connection. We humans are not built to do big things alone, we are built to work together. That’s what we wrote about, and it’s how we wrote it.

IT’S THE EMOTIONAL EXHAUSTION

When we told women we were writing a book called Burnout, nobody ever asked, “What’s burnout?” (Mostly what they said was, “Is it out yet? Can I read it?”) We all have an intuitive sense of what “burnout” is; we know how it feels in our bodies and how our emotions crumble in the grip of it. But when it was first coined as a technical term by Herbert Freudenberger in 1975, “burnout” was defined by three components:

1. emotional exhaustion—the fatigue that comes from caring too much, for too long;

2. depersonalization—the depletion of empathy, car- ing, and compassion; and

3. decreased sense of accomplishment—an unconquerable sense of futility: feeling that nothing you do makes any difference.

And here’s an understatement: Burnout is highly prevalent. Twenty to thirty percent of teachers in America have moderately high to high levels of burnout. Similar rates are found among university professors and international humanitarian aid workers. Among medical professionals, burnout can be as high as 52 percent. Nearly all the research on burnout is on professional burnout—specifically “people who help people,” like teachers and nurses—but a growing area of research is “parental burnout.”

In the forty years since the original formulation, research has found it’s the first element in burnout, emotional exhaustion, that’s most strongly linked to negative impacts on our health, relationships, and work—especially for women.

So what exactly is an “emotion,” and how do you exhaust it?

Emotions, at their most basic level, involve the release of neurochemicals in the brain, in response to some stimulus. You see the person you have a crush on across the room, your brain releases a bunch of chemicals, and that triggers a cascade of physiological changes—your heart beats faster, your hormones shift, and your stomach utters. You take a deep breath and sigh. Your facial expression changes; maybe you blush; even the timbre of your voice becomes warmer. Your thoughts shift to memories of the crush and fantasies about the future, and you suddenly feel an urge to cross the room and say hi. Just about every system in your body responds to the chemical and electrical cascade activated by the sight of the person.

That’s emotion. It’s automatic and instantaneous. It happens everywhere, and it affects everything. And it’s happening all the time—we feel many different emotions simultaneously, even in response to one stimulus. You may feel an urge to approach your crush, but also, simultaneously, feel an urge to turn away and pretend you didn’t notice them.

Left to their own devices, emotions—these instantaneous, whole-body reactions to some stimulus—will end on their own. Your attention shifts from your crush to some other topic, and the flush of infatuation eases, until that certain special someone crosses your mind or your path once more. The same goes for the jolt of pain you feel when someone is cruel to you or the ash of disgust when you smell something unpleasant. They just end.

In short, 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.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07DT4GW16
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ballantine Books (March 26, 2019)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 26, 2019
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 4796 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 271 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1785042076

Best Sellers Rank: #34,622 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #24 in Stress Management (Kindle Store)
- #106 in Stress Management Self-Help
- #113 in General Women's Health

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4.6 8,219 ratings

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Amelia Nagoski DMA
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Dr. Amelia Nagoski is a conductor and music professor, in which jobs her responsibilities include running around waving her arms and making funny noises, and generally doing whatever it takes to help singers get in touch with their internal experience. Her students have described her as "passionate, positive, and boundlessly enthusiastic."
In her teaching, performing, and writing, she focuses on connections between art and the experience of being alive in the world, with the expectation that understanding music can help us understand ourselves and each other.
She is the identical twin sister of Emily Nagoski, PhD.
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Emily Nagoski
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Emily Nagoski has a Ph.D. in Health Behavior with a minor in Human Sexuality from Indiana University, and a MS in Counseling, also from IU, including a clinical internship at the Kinsey Institute Sexual Health Clinic. She has been a sex educator for twenty-five years. She lives in western Massachusetts with a strange cat, two dogs, and a cartoonist.
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Linda t.

Bought used

Reviewed in the United States on April 12, 2024

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Ordered this book used, was a little worried about the condition it would be in, but it came 5 days early, and in excellent condition aside from a few scratches on the front. If you’ve been reluctant to shop used, be assured that the quality is checked before sale. I only started reading it today, but so far it’s very informational. Skimmed through it a bit and saw there were many diagrams, which helps my brain understand a little better rather than just words on a paper. So far it’s an excellent purchase

One person found this helpful

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Raven Moses

Love the message of this book

Reviewed in the United States on April 21, 2024

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As a young adult I kept saying I’m tired and I’m so glad I order this book because I’m no longer saying I’m tired. The message of this book is so impactful and uplifting for any woman of any age to read.

4 people found this helpful

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Margot MacGill

This book saved my sanity

Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2024

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I recommend this book to nearly everyone I know, especially if they work in a stress-inducing profession.

This was one of those reads that's uncomfortable because it's so relatable -- I mean this in a good way, but self-awareness and the process of recognition can sting.

I revisit this book every time I'm feeling bogged down or unduly stressed, and it serves as an excellent reminder of self-care and self-love.

5 people found this helpful

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Rae

Insightful and Well Documented

Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2024

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The audiobook for this is not great, but the book itself is well researched and written. I will say that it's a little dumbed-down for my taste, but I like more direct communication. The book was written to be accessible to everyone, and it accomplished that.

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Caitlin

Even if you're not burnt out... this is for EVERYONE

Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2023

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HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK to anyone who experiences stress (everyone 😉)
I learned ✨so much✨ about stress, which we all experience on a daily basis and how to deal with it. I have learned a lot about dealing with stressORS (like changing your relationship with your inner critic)… & this book teaches you how to deal with the actual stress in your body. You may even already do that most of the time without knowing the full scoop about it, but I think understanding our bodies is some of the most fascinating and empowering stuff… especially if you want to build some self compassion and self appreciation. ANYWHO once you deal with the stress in your body, you’re so much more empowered to tackle what’s stressing you out in the first place so you have less stress to deal with.
I was feeling burnt out when I read this book for the first time (but I really think this is for anyone, regardless of burnout status), and I made simple lifestyle tweaks to deal with stress on a daily basis. They’re things I wanted to do more of anyways but was putting off until a time where I was ready to commit, and when my reason incorporated NOT feeling burnt out anymore/again… highly motivating. Became ready to commit. So easy to execute on the plan.

8 people found this helpful

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Beguiled By Books

Important for EVERYONE, not just women to read!

Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2023

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The word burnout crept up in my everyday use since 2019 – and then the pandemic hit. No travel. No casual shopping. No conferences. None of the usual ways to break up the days. Burnout, especially at work, snuck up on me. Much like my own burnout, Emily and Amelia Nagoski's book, Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, snuck up on me too.

"First coined as a technical term by Herbert Freudenberger in 1975, "burnout" was defined by three components:

1. emotional exhaustion—the fatigue that comes from caring too much, for too long;

2. depersonalization—the depletion of empathy, caring, and compassion;

3. decreased sense of accomplishment—an unconquerable sense of futility: feeling that nothing you do makes any difference.

Written with women in mind, Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle talks about the big and little stressors we experience daily – from the patriarchy (ugh) to the "second shift" most women have after work at home (house chores, caregiving). Compared to what it's like to be a woman, what's expected of women creates burnout without even realizing it. The authors discuss the Bikini Industrial Complex and the microaggressions women regularly experience for not looking, acting, or speaking in a certain way.

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle goes on to discuss how to complete the stress cycle. When we experience fight, flight, or freeze responses, our bodies react to those chemicals even though we are rarely in actual life-or-death experiences. The problems arise when we experience those reactions and don't get the fulfillment of knowing we are no longer in a life-or-death situation.

Too many women, especially women of color, grow up with unconscious biases about how we should behave, which is only exacerbated by others around us with unconscious biases. Before you know it, we're working ourselves too much, developing physical symptoms from a life of microaggressions and minor stressors, and we reach a breaking point. A part of this book encourages you to be aware of times in your life when you need to move on from whatever is causing you stress.

I appreciate a great deal about this book, but I loved how the authors didn't promise your burnout will magically go away if you take luxurious baths every night or try and "lean in" at work more. The premise of Burnout empowers us to accept ourselves exactly as we are and know that we are enough.

Buy Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle because we all need to work on unconscious biases around women at home, work, and in the world.

27 people found this helpful

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EF

Changed My Life

Reviewed in the United States on January 29, 2024

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I worship at the alter of Nagoski. She’s brilliant. Her style of writing is relatable and the way she explains theories is perfect. I cannot say enough great things about this book. It has changed and bettered my life. I’ve gifted it to others. If you are a woman dealing with overwhelm or burnout… or if you’re just a woman in the US… get this. Please.

5 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Good information, def pushing an agenda.

Reviewed in the United States on August 31, 2023

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I wanted to love this book, I expected it based on reviews to be so helpful for myself and my clients. There is quite a slant to it that turned me off. It just wasn’t necessary and adds nothing meaningful to the topic. I just don’t think a book about stress needs to push any agenda- just keep it scientific and neutral. Everything now is so divided and partisan- a huge cause of stress so I didn’t expect it here. Decent book, skimmed what felt like a talking point, and tried to pull out the useful.

15 people found this helpful

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Alejandra

One of the best books I’ve ever read

Reviewed in Mexico on December 3, 2021

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It helps me a lot to understand my self and my current mood. I can put my feeling in real context and accept my self with compassion and love. Thanks for writing this book.

2 people found this helpful

Skeeterdani

very helpful book!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 27, 2023

Verified Purchase

I started reading this book after a period of sick leave from work due to stress. I found it really useful to re-calibrate and have practical ideas to help me in the future. I also really appreciated the way the authors rooted all
The advice in the realities of (white) patriarchal hegemony and capitalism.

4 people found this helpful

Jackie

Great book

Reviewed in France on June 14, 2022

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This book spoke directly to me. Recommended reading for women especially, at anytime in one's life-- not only when feeling tired and burntout.

Laura

No lo recomiendo

Reviewed in Spain on June 3, 2022

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Debería haber leído las reseñas antes de comprarlo. Este libro no es maravilloso, ni va a cambiarte la vida, por mucho que insistan en ponerlo en las reseñas de la portada y en repetirlo a lo largo del libro. "Le dije a X que hiciera esto y me dijo que le cambió la vida", y solo porque está escrito este testimonio tengo que creérmelo. Y los consejos.....empieza hablando de verte atrapado en un atasco y continúa diciendo que todas las situaciones difíciles son provechosas, entonces pasa a ejemplos cómo "hacer ejercicio es dificil pero te da músculos", nunca jamás te explican cómo volver la situación del atasco provechosa. Más tarde, hablando del "Monitor" básicamente te dice que bajes tus expectativas, si algo no te va bien, baja tus expectativas. ¿en serio? Claro obviamente si bajo mis expectativas para que lo que tengo sea suficiente, pues tendré cero problemas. Es tan sencillo como ir conformándose por la vida... en fin. Y para rematarla intenta demostrarte que esto es eficaz, simplemente diciendo que una cantante que trabajaba con la autora le dijo "Eso del Monitor, eso de controlar las expectativas, ha cambiado mi vida, por completo!"
Y solo llevo 39 páginas...
Había que desconfiar de un libro que tiene las portadas llenas de comentarios de gente que de lo exagerados que son me queda claro que son puro marketing, como que una tal Peggy Orenstein se echó a llorar de agradecimiento al leer el libro... Yo voy a llorar pero de lo poco útil que me resulta...
Decepcionada :(

3 people found this helpful

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FP

Great read

Reviewed in Canada on October 17, 2020

Verified Purchase

Easy reading, evidence based and well presented, humorous even! Looking at burnout through a feminist lens. Lots of practical tips and strategies for preventing and recovering from burnout.

Three comments
1) little info on burnout as a clinical entity. What is the exact definition? What causes it in the professional context (different references have talked about high responsibility, but little control and flexibility, long hours, hostile work environment)? Can antidepressants help? How long does it last?
2) Would have been nice to see a chapter dedicated to motherhood, as I feel this is a definite contributor for many women. Working moms and SAHM can burn out.
3) The chapter on the bikini industrial complex. Yes, healthcare and society have huge issues with fat shaming that need to be resolved. However, obesity is strongly associated with type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome, non alcoholic fatty liver disease, and coronary artery disease. A body that loses weight easily without effort may have cancer, cirrhosis, malabsorption, etc (the differential is literally pages long), so it isn't surprising that low body weight is associated with mortality. A body that gains weight easily is almost always healthy (some exceptions like Cushing's, hypothyroidism, medications, etc exist), especially in our sedentary, food abundant modern developed world. However, staying at a high weight with a high percentage of visceral body fat is associated with the chronic health conditions listed above. In very severe cases when bariatric surgery is used, we see major improvement in diabetes (some patients no longer need any medication afterwards, liver disease improves, etc. I'm sure the authors know this, but the chapter doesn't tell the full story, which hurts its credibility imo.

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