Recommendation: 'Burnout and how to complete the stress cycle. Emily and Amelia Nagoski'

Dr Brené Brown's Unlocking Us Podcast

I highly recommend this podcast to anyone who is stuck, discombobulated or wondering how you can rest enough to start another year. Are you burnt and exhausted?

At the end of 2023, friends and clients expressed exhaustion beyond their 'usual’ tiredness. It seems like more of us are burning out, and 2023 was a particularly fraught year.

Reflection and review can help us gain perspective on past events and the year, but sometimes, they can leave us stuck about what to do next. If you’re in a challenging work situation or project, returning to work in 2024 could already feel draining and not particularly appealing.

Before planning new goals for 2024, consider exploring how you’ve been working, your routine and your daily habits. After listening to the podcast, you may be sparked into rethinking ‘how’ you navigate stress moving forward.

Brené Brown website link: Burnout and how to complete the stress cycle. (Duration: 1 hour 3 minutes)

Key takeaway messages from the episode:

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; and

3. decreased sense of accomplishment—an unconquerable sense of futility: feeling that nothing you do makes any difference.(Freudenberger HJ. Staff burn-out. J Soc Issues. (1974) 30:159–65).

• Stressors are the things that activate the stress response. Stress is the chemical response in the body.

• Just because you’ve dealt with the stressor doesn’t mean you’ve dealt with the stress itself. The stress cycle is incomplete, the emotions can linger in your body.

• Stress and Emotional Wellbeing, is a learned skill to process emotions.

• We need to help our body release the stress. We can't cognitively think our body out of stress, it needs a physiological change.

Dealing with your stress is a separate process from dealing with the things that cause your stress. To deal with your stress, you have to complete the cycle.

The Most Efficient Way to Complete the Cycle:

When you’re being chased by a lion, what do you do? You run. When you’re stressed out by the bureaucracy and hassle of living in the twenty-first century, what do you do? You run. Or swim. Or dance around your living room, singing along to Beyoncé, or sweat it out in a Zumba class, or do literally anything that moves your body enough to get you breathing deeply.

For how long?

Between twenty and sixty minutes a day does it for most folks. And it should be most days—after all, you experience stress most days, so you should complete the stress response cycle most days, too. But even just standing up from your chair, taking a deep breath, and tensing all your muscles for twenty seconds, then shaking it out with a big exhale, is an excellent start. Remember, your body has no idea what “filing your taxes” or “resolving an interpersonal conflict through rational problem-solving” means. It knows, though, what jumping up and down means. Speak its language—and its language is body language. You know how everyone says exercise is good for you? That it helps with stress and improves your health and mood and intelligence and basically you should definitely get some? This is why. Physical activity is what tells your brain you have successfully survived the threat and now your body is a safe place to live. Physical activity is the single most efficient strategy for completing the stress response cycle.

Nagoski, Emily; Nagoski, Amelia. Burnout: The secret to solving the stress cycle (pp. 14-15). Ebury Publishing. Kindle Edition.

There are six other evidence-based strategies described in their book.

Clicking on the images will direct you to ‘Carer Mentor’ affiliate-linked, Bookshop.