burnout the secret to solving the stress cycle

The book is written in a science-lite format (with appropriate caveats, of course) and was read in a breezy yet engaging style by the authors who happen to be twin sisters! With lots of references to contemporary life and with the help of two made-up but believable composite characters, they manage to explain difficult concepts through stories. Once the stress response cycle is completed we can get back to a comfortable baseline instead of accumulating mountains of stress on top of previous ones where the stressor has been eliminated but the response remains incomplete. These include – physical activity, breathing (yes), positive social interaction, laughter, affection, crying and creative expression. However, there are several ways to complete the stress response cycle.

Fight or flight or freeze are the three common stress responses.

We believe that once the stressor (the exam, the deadline) is removed, the stress is relieved. There is a difference between ‘stress’ – the neurological and physiological shift that happens in your body when you encounter a threat and ‘stressor’ – the thing that activates the stress response in your body. It’s no surprise that women happen to fall in this ‘giver’ and are therefore more likely to suffer from emotional exhaustionĤ. The latter have a moral obligation to just ‘be’ while the former have a moral obligation to give their humanity to the ‘beings’. Human Giver Syndrome: Women typically fall into the class of people known as “Human Givers” as opposed to “Human Beings”. While we all experience emotions all day, the exhaustion happens when we get stuck in an emotion.ģ.

Emotions are tunnels: Emotions are not just cascades of neurochemicals in the brain following a stimulus but they are ‘tunnels’. The definition of ‘burnout’ was first coined by Herbert Freudenbergerger in 1975 and has three components:Ģ. If you are too tired to read the whole thing, here are five things that you should know and remember:ġ. Whether or not you have encountered burnout in your life, I would highly recommend this book. I first listened to the audiobook before seeking out the print version to delve deep into this topic that held the secret to explaining not just the excruciating pain that had immobilised me for weeks in the last quarter of 2021 but was also of direct relevance to the restructuring of my life in 2022. Of stress, stressors and the vicious stress cycle One book that came up repeatedly was “ Burnout: The Secret to Solving the Stress Cycle” by Emily and Amelia Nagoski Having suffered from what I suspect was extreme burnout at the end of 2021, I sought recommendations for books on the subject. What that meant in real life was not to laze around all year but to deliberately choose the things I wanted to do instead of getting sucked into a competitive marketplace of self-development like I normally do. I began the new year with a goal very different from what I had done in previous years – to do less.

Burnout the secret to solving the stress cycle