Are you struggling with burnout? Are you looking for books on burnout to help you through this phase? I’d encourage you to check out this month’s Book Therapy Pick. I’m reviewing Burn Out by Emily Nagoski, PhD and Amelia Nagoski, DMA. This book is filled with a tools to help you on your burn out recovery journey!
If you’re new around here, my name is Diana Garcia, Licensed Mental Health Counselor in Florida, owner of a Private Practice called Nurturing Minds Counseling. My Book Therapy Series is a monthly book series where I highlight one self-help or mental health book to review, recommend, and explore 3 insights from the book in case you don’t get around to reading it. Watch the video below or scroll down for the blog if you prefer to read the blog instead.
Watch the Video on Burnout Book here:
Read the Blog on Burnout Book here:
This month’s pick is Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski, PhD, and Amelia Nagoski, DMA. If you’re looking for books about burnout, I highly recommend you take a peek at this one because there was so much helpful information, as you can see from all my stickies.
This is one of the most recent books on burnout that became pretty popular through the pandemic for many reasons:
- Burnout became a much more common experience, given the increase in the number of people endorsing it. According to APA’s 2021 Work and Well-being Survey of 1,501 U.S. adult workers, nearly 3 in 5 employees reported negative impacts of work-related stress, including lack of interest, motivation, or energy, and lack of effort at work.
- Many women took on the brunt of childcare and had to figure out how to continue to work or decide to scale back, which further contributed to burnout. So many more women were at heightened risk for burnout and might have gravitated towards books on burnout.
- This book was featured on Brené Brown’s podcast: Unlocking Us and recommended as a top burnout book.
Summary on Burnout Book:
The book is broken down into three parts, as you can see.
- Part One focuses on burnout and its prevalence and explores some internal resources to help you. It is important to note that burnout research was exclusively on assisting professionals, but it expanded to all labor types. The three internal resources they cover are The Stress Cycle Response, The Monitor, and Meaning.
- Part Two talks about how the real enemy is the Patriarchy and how the game is rigged, particularly for women and women of color. Keep in mind that this book is geared towards women and how burnout negatively impacts women. Part two further dives into the role that cultural conditioning has played for women and the negative impact of buying into certain biases and beliefs that further contribute to behaviors that cultivate burnout.
- Part Three focuses on tools that you can use at your disposal to help you with burnout recovery. They further explore how you can tap into the power of connection, rest, and self-compassion.
I love that the book has resources sprinkled in, like worksheets to prompt you to start making some changes. The book also includes pop culture references and tends to be geared towards millennials which I appreciated but might turn some people off. Rather than not learning more, I’d encourage to explore other books on burnout.
Insight 1 on Burnout Book:
One insight that I highlighted was the importance of needing to complete the stress cycle.
As you can see from the diagram, when you’re confronted with a stressor (which can be either internal or external), it triggers the stress response in your body to kick. This stress response is a physiological and neurological shift in your body that gets activated to prepare you to “survive” through the stressor. Also known as the fight-flight-freeze response kicking in.
This response has evolved to keep you ALIVE! Thankfully, most of you aren’t dealing with life-threat stressors daily, yet your body’s stress response still treats stressors this way.
So what’s crucial is needing to complete the Stress Cycle (regardless of how you deal with the stressor) to signal to your body and system that you no longer have to be on alert. It’s not enough to focus on dealing with the stressor; you have to engage in certain behaviors to complete the stress cycle. This will signal to your body that you’re no longer under threat and will activate the parasympathetic system in your body to calm down. Since you deal with stressors daily, it’s essential to build in these behaviors as part of your routine.
Let’s take two examples to help you see this stress cycle. First, let’s take an example that our caveman ancestors dealt with, which is part of the reason why this system has evolved.
Imagine Fred is out and about taking a stroll in the savanna. Suddenly, he hears a low growl in the distance, and he spots none other than a ferocious lioness on the prowl (stressor). Fred instantly gets imbued with the speed of Speedy Gonzales and starts to hightail it out of there (stress response getting activated to keep him alive). He barely makes it to his tribe, who sees him coming and are ready to defend Fred and hand him his club.
After a physical fight, Fred and his tribe battle the lioness and are victorious. They all dance and hug each other in celebration. The entire process from winning the fight, connecting with his tribe, and dancing is Fred completing the stress cycle signaling to his body that he can start to relax now; he has not become Sunday’s lunch.
Now let’s look at a modern-day example. Your boss gives you a big deal assignment requiring you to present to the executives (stressor). You immediately notice yourself tensing, accelerated heartbeat, and feeling flushed (stress response kicking in). Even though you’re not in danger of literally being eaten by the board of executives, your body is still treating this stressor as a threat and activates your stress response. Now, this assignment isn’t due until three weeks, and you’re not about to go running at work and do a tribal dance with your coworkers that you got assigned this project.
So you’re not actively doing any behaviors to complete the stress cycle and signaling to your body that it’s all good. That stress lingers, add the stress you’ll face daily until the project is done, and then all the other stress you’re dealing with. You can see how not consistently completing the stress cycle can lead to health issues and how stress can negatively impact you.
Even if you’re dealing with the stressor (plugging away on the presentation), you must be building in behaviors to deal with the stress response in your body. So it’s essential to add time into your daily schedule to complete the stress cycle from the day’s stress to prevent this stress from negatively impacting your body. That can look like taking a 20-minute walk when you get home—or spending some time connecting with a partner or friend. Here are some other suggested behaviors from the book.
If you’re already doing something fantastic, keep it up! If you’re not, I’d highly encourage you to consider how you can slowly start to add in some of these behaviors to complete the stress cycle. If you feel like you can’t make the time or it’s too selfish. Then you might be buying into this Human Giver Syndrome, which is the following insight from the Burnout book.
Insight 2 on Burnout Book:
The second part of the book looks at the role that the Patriarchy has played. A simple definition they use for Patriarchy is that being raised a boy makes it easier for boys to grow up and assume positions of power and authority. Whereas women tend to be conditioned to buy into certain beliefs that you should focus on being pretty, happy, calm, generous, and attentive to others’ needs. The authors reference that this appears to be shifting, yet some current-day conditioning is still happening that makes it harder for women.
Taking it a step further, they identify the Human Giver Syndrome:
This belief can be especially detrimental in fostering burnout since it feeds into the thought that taking care of your basic needs is selfish or pursuing your ambitions doesn’t fall within the expected norms. Or you can follow them ONLY IF it’s not at the expense of anyone else’s needs.
One way to start combating burnout is to recognize if you’re buying into this Human Giver Syndrome. If so, start challenging whether you need to listen to the rules it’s telling you to obey. Whose voice, rules, or messaging are you falling prey to when you feel like you can’t take care of yourself or prioritize your needs?
I love that they encourage you to consider where your time is going and what’s on your plate. But the authors encourage you to consider allocating your time to taking care of your needs first (sleep, daily time to complete the stress cycle, etc) before you focus on everything else.
Insight 3 on Burnout Book:
The last insight is from Part Three, and it’s all about the different types of attention.
One mode is the task positive mode, when you’re checking things off your to-do list and focused on any task. Most people would endorse this type of attention feels productive, and strive to stay in this mode.
The other mode of attention is the default mode network, that’s when you’re daydreaming, your mind’s wandering, or you’re doing something but not focused or paying attention. For instance, when you’re taking a shower, maybe you’re more in default mode since you can probably do it without much thought. Many people try to stay away from this mode and believe that this is a waste of time.
People struggling with burnout can believe that they constantly have to be in the task positive mode and that it’s neglectful to build in time to be in the default mode. One interesting piece of insight is that research shows that we tend to do better with a shorter focused burst of attention vs. prolonged bursts of attention.
When you’re mind is in default mode, your mind is still working in the background. It’s working in the background to problem solve, think of new ideas, and think of out-of-the-box ideas that you might not have thought of in the task positive mode. You’ll often hear, “I had the best idea in the shower on a problem that I was stuck on for weeks.” It’s almost like your mind needs the downtime to get the creative juices flowing.
The book talks about it’s not only okay to have these moments but that it’s helpful to build in more of these moments of rest and play to recharge your brain. So next time you find yourself daydreaming, identify that your mind is in default mode. Instead of automatically chastising yourself or quickly shifting into being more productive (going back into the task positive mode), remind yourself that you’re helping your mind. It’s still doing its thing in the background.
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