Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

Excellent, Insightful, and Impactful Book
Burnout is always a word that is thrown around, but not one that we spend much time exploring. This book explores burnout, combines stories and research to effectively share insights, and offers reasonable strategies for managing burnout.

Important for EVERYONE, not just women to read!
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.

Mind blown
I have this on Audible (they narrate it wonderfully) and in paperback. I am a therapist and use the workbook as well. I am pleased that it doesn’t just tell what burn out is, but gives directions on how to combat it.

Best book you’ll read as an adult woman
This book is everything. I’ve recommended it to every woman I’ve come across in my daily life that I think might benefit from reading it (translation: every woman I’ve come across in my daily life). I read it in under a week because it was really enjoyable and I made the time to do so (I was disappointed when it ended!!). I’ve reread it a second time and keep it on my desk as a constant reference and reminder of the topics addressed.The writing is approachable, fun, and relatable. They make the science-y bits easily digestible, the philosophy bits graspable, and the patriarchy (ugh) bits smashable. The topics covered are so universal for women in the 21st century that you really feel like they get it; it’s so nice to have your suspicions about some of your interpersonal interactions and society as a whole validated.This was my first experience of “self-help” book, and I loved it so much that I have read everything else Emily Nagoski has written (Come as You Are is a game changer and her fiction under the pen name Emily Foster is really great). Can’t recommend this book enough to anyone and everyone. It should be required reading for all women entering the workforce or any higher education; and honestly they should make it a requisite for girls to read before receiving their high school diploma or GED equivalency. Start ’em young so they can spot this stuff along the way and learn to deal with their stress before addressing their stressors!

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.

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

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 comments1) 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.