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[BONUS EPISODE] Mom On Purpose Book Club: Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski

• Lara Johnson

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After a tough experience with a traumatic childbirth, I started shaking uncontrollably. I didn't understand it at the time, but there's this one book that helped me go through this.

In this episode of the Mom on Purpose book club, we're going to dive deep into the book "Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle" by Emily and Amelia Nagoski. 

We'll talk about what burnout really is and how "Human Giver Syndrome" is slowly killing us. Today, we'll understand the body's natural process of completing the stress cycle to actively manage stress.

My hope is you realize that your joy matters, you matter. You can really heal your burnout with all of the steps that the book provides. I invite you to take them.

What you'll learn:

  • The role of "human giver syndrome" in perpetuating selflessness
  • The role of societal expectations and the patriarchy in contributing to burnout
  • Techniques to complete the stress cycle
  • Insights about burnout based on the book "Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle" by Emily Nagoski PhD
  • Methods to identify when stress is not fully released and signs that stress needs attention

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Welcome to the Mom On Purpose podcast. I'm Lara Johnson and I'm here to teach you how to get out of your funk, be in a better mood, play more with your kids, manage your home better, get your to-do list done and live your life on purpose. With my proven method, this is possible for you, and I'll show you how. You're not alone anymore. We're in this together.

All right, welcome to another Mom On Purpose book club. Today we are doing the book called Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. So I was laughing, but I was on the book club right now. I had this book on the schedule for book club about a year ago and I couldn't even get through the book. I had gone. As I went back and read it this time, I had some things underlined and I have no recollection of any of it because I was burnout. So, I think that month we just ended up skipping all of it. There was a lot going on in my personal life, so now, being able to be, you know, still stressed, but on the very, you know, on the opposite end of this, and being able to sit down and read the book. It really is an exceptional book and I think it should be a required reading that any therapist coach out there gives to every one of their clients, because it was that informational, I feel like for me. So, Emily Nagoski, I think, is how you pronounce it and Amelia they are twin sisters, and they wrote the book together. 

Emily is a PhD; she is what she self-calls like self-acclaims as like a science nerd. She's the one that does a lot of the research. She has written another book, come as you Are, which is, I think, about, like the sexual wellbeing of women. So, she said when she was writing the book it was such a good book and she met all these amazing women in the process and what she found was the section in that book that has to do with, like our sexual pleasure. You know, working with our stress in order to achieve that sexual pleasure was the section of the book and said was the most informational and useful. And what she realized was that we really need to talk about stress as women and learn how to unlock the stress cycle, learn how to deal with our stress. So, then she has her sister, amelia, who is a professional conductor of large choirs, who is a professional conductor of large choirs who was dealing with very high levels of stress, to the point where I think she was hospitalized twice because of it. 

So, you know, they came together to talk about burnout, and she said what was so interesting is, when they were writing this book and she told people that we're writing a book on burnout, nobody actually questioned what burnout was. All women know what burnout is Like. There is like you don't need a definition to it. So, she said that, right, there is indicative of how much we need to be having conversations about this, because it's something we are all dealing with to some extent. So, she does give a little bit of background as to where burnout came from. 

It was coined in 1975 by Herbert Freudenberger and he defined it by three components the first is emotional exhaustion, the second is depersonalization, like the depletion of empathy and compassion, and the third is a decreased sense of accomplishment, feeling like nothing you do makes a difference. Now, doesn't that sound like what so many of us experience on a regular basis? So it goes on to talk about like when we experience this emotional exhaustion. It typically comes when we're stuck in an emotion and then when we get stuck in it and we're being constantly exposed to situations that activate this high level of stress. That's where, you know, over a prolonged time, that's where burnout starts to happen. 

She said, on top of that, many women deal with the human giver syndrome and we're going to talk more about this. She has a whole section of it in one of the chapters about what the human giver syndrome is. But you know, overall, like the definition of it is when human givers are expected to offer their time, attention and affection and bodies willingly to the other class of people, the human beings, willingly to the other class of people, the human beings. So, what she talks about here is that women, we are to be the human givers. We are to be pretty happy, calm, generous and attentive to the needs of others and we are never to demand anything for ourselves, because we are the role of the giver, because we are the role of the giver. Otherwise, we may be punished by society or even ourselves by the level of guilt that we feel if we stop giving to everyone around us. So, she says you know, the giver isn't allowed to inconvenience anyone, especially with something as messy as their emotions. They need to, you know, be dealing with that on their own. And then she goes on to say human giver syndrome is slowly killing us. And I do want to say you know, when I say she, I'm talking about the two sisters together, the twins, okay. 

So, then she goes on to say you know, this is what we're working with when we are talking about burnout is we have to take all these pieces into account? On top of that she brings in the third piece and she mentions very early on in the book that although so much of the self-help industry wants to help women, without bringing this third piece the patriarchy into the conversation, then we really lose out on a lot of really beneficial help for women. And she says she knows it's a very hot topic. Some people love it, some people hate it. I do like the way she talks about it. It is kind of a tongue in cheek. So, if you don't resonate with patriarchy, you can still find a lot of valuable information in the way that she presents the information. 

Because of the world that women live in and the different standards that we are sometimes asked to uphold, that may not be the same across the board for all genders. For genders I say all genders, which makes it sound like there's 50 different of them. So that's where I kind of want to start. As we talked about this, she again the sisters. They break the book down into three sections. This first section is the section she talks about as what you take with you. So I really like, right in the beginning, if you don't read anything else about the book, she gives you from the beginning the secret to unlocking the stress cycle so you can get a lot out of just the first like actual chapter of the book, even if you don't read the whole rest of it. 

As we're talking about burnout, it's important to recognize there are two aspects of stress. There is the actual stress and then there is the stressor. It's important to differentiate the two. The stressors are the things that activates the stress response in your body. The stress is the actual neurological and physiological shifts that happen in your body. Now, if we are looking at this in terms of like the model that we coach in, this may be more of like the circumstances and this will be your thoughts and physical reactions that are happening in your body. Let's be clear that oftentimes thoughts don't come first. A lot of times feelings are these physiological neurological shifts can happen first and then we start having thoughts about it. 

So, she said, when we're talking about, like the stress response, what we're typically talking about is the cascade of neurological and hormonal activity that initiates the physiological changes to help you survive. That initiates the physiological changes to help you survive. Okay, so essentially, it's like the fight or flight, like that's very high-level response that happens in your body. So, I'm going to read this section to you because I think it's really important to recognize what happens when our body feels stress. 

She says epinephrine acts instantly to push blood into your muscles. The endorphins help you ignore how uncomfortable that is. Your heart beats faster, your blood pumps harder and your blood pressure increases, and you breathe more quickly. Your muscles start to tense, your sensitivity to pain diminishes. Your attention is alert and vigilant, focusing on short-term, here and now thinking. Your senses are heightened, your memory shifts to channel this functioning to the narrow band of experience and knowledge most immediately relevant to this. Stressor Now, this is what was really fascinating as I was reading it. 

Suppressor Now, this is what was really fascinating as I was reading it. Plus, to maximize your body's efficiency in the state, your other organ systems are deprioritized. That means your digestive system slows down and your immune function shifts. This is also why sometimes, after very stressful times, your body will get sick. It goes on to say ditto growth and tissue repair, as well as reproductive functioning. Your entire body and mind change in response to the perceived threat. 

So, at this point, this is where your entire body has a very physical shift that happens. So much of your body is deprioritized in order to trigger this fight or flight response so that you can escape whatever that stressor is. Now this is very effective if there's a lion that is going to chase you. This may not be as effective if you're showing up every day and that stressor is your boss and you're wanting to run away from your job. So, you can see how our body, in a very primitive state, is created in order to keep us alive. But if we don't understand it, then we can't really work with it. 

So, then she goes on to say that let's say you know, for example, you are being chased by a lion. You immediately start running, all of these shifts start to happen in your body, and you get to a spot where you're running back to the village, the example she uses in the book and at the village everybody comes out to save you. They take the lion; they kill the line. They have a big feast that evening. Everybody goes back to a very natural state of being. What happened is your stress cycle was complete and you could go on and move every single day like throughout the rest of your life day, like throughout the rest of your life. 

Okay, but what happens when you feel this stress and that the stressor is still present or you don't feel that completion of the stress cycle? That means your body is staying in this heightened state where this stress is over and over and over. All of your other organs are deprioritized, and, over time, this is where you reach burnout. It's hard to read, okay, because I think so much of us feel this on a very personal level, especially when so much of the stressors are our home, or our family, or the job that's providing food for our family, or you know, like there's so many things that can be stressors that in other scenarios can be very good, but it can be very hard when that stressor lives within our own home, as women and as mothers. So, it goes on to say, like why do we actually get stuck when we're in this stress cycle? 

So, she said the first one is the chronic stressor leads to chronic stress. Ok, so this is again the example of like, where you're showing up every single day where the lion is actually your boss at work and suddenly, you're activated every single day. Or by the time your children wake up and they come and jump on you in bed, suddenly that stress is already like kicked in. She said the other time is sometimes there's like a social appropriateness means like you want to run away, and your brain is like you can't run away. You're in the middle of an exam right now, or you have a client that you don't like or like. Sometimes you have to just be and sometimes the world tells you that it's wrong to feel this amount of stress for whatever that stressor is. So, you have to kind of bury your emotions and you kind of stay in them. You smile, you ignore your feelings, that kind of thing. And then the third one is sometimes it's just safer to just turn the other cheek. 

So, she talks about. You know, if you're walking on the street and there's some kind of harassment from somebody and you go up, let's say you just punch that person and then you turn around and like it might not be safe to complete that stress cycle because if you punch the person, then what happens after that? Then it becomes very unsafe. So, part of the stress cycle is very survival instincts Okay, because this is your body's way of keeping you alive, so it's a very good thing. But over so many years there's this compilation, all of this like cumulative effect, where over time it's stacking on top, where you have all these uncompleted stress cycles that are completely under the surface going on. 

Now I feel this a lot. This is where you know, when I've done a lot of research on fibromyalgia, which is chronic pain type effect within the body, you know something I've been diagnosed with an autoimmune thing. A lot of it comes from trauma or some kind of stress that your body is holding on to and that's become its natural state, which is then why your body feels like it's in pain all the time. So, then you know we talked about the fight or flight, but there is a third response and, depending on the community you run with, there's even a fourth, maybe fifth. So, when we talk about fight or flight, there's also freeze and there's fawn. They don't talk about fawn or anything else in this book, but they do talk about freeze. 

So, she said at this point sometimes the best way for your body to keep you alive is to essentially quote unquote play dead. So, she says you know, imagine for a second that you've just been through a really you know traumatic time and you can't get out of it. So, essentially, you like clam up and you can't move. This is very common when you're working with trauma responses. There was at one point, you know, a conversation I had where someone was very upset that they froze in the moment and in the middle of a trauma experience and they didn't get out of it and then shamed themselves and thought it was their fault because they didn't push away out of that scenario. But what was happening was the physiological, neurological shift in their body was trying to protect them and cause their body to freeze in the middle of that situation. This is very common. 

So, then she goes on to say you know, once this threat is gone, your body will naturally start going through to complete that stress cycle. She said in nature, like if a gazelle were to. You know, after, like they play dead, the lion leaves. You know, whatever happens, the predator, the stressor, is gone, then their body will start to shake. What it's doing is releasing all of this adrenaline, all of this energy that caused their body to shut down and then, once that's purged out of their system, then they get back to their normal state of being in their body. So, as I was thinking about this, I thought how fascinating it was. The birth of my second child was very traumatic and I remember at the time, like after I gave birth, my body started shaking involuntarily, and I couldn't control it. I couldn't even hold my baby because my body had the shake so bad. So, it was interesting, as I was reading this, that was the first time I'm like understanding what was happening. It was a very traumatic experience. My body was purging that stress by shaking uncontrollably at that time, which I thought was super fascinating to actually have an understanding as to why that happened, actually have an understanding as to why that happened. 

Now, when we get to this and again, this is what all within like you know, we're 14, 15 pages she gives us the exact things that we need to do to complete the stress cycle, which is fabulous. You don't have to read very far in the book to actually get the information. There is a lot more we will cover, but I wanted to spend a lot of time here. At the beginning, she says the most important thing to do is to complete the cycle. Okay, this is how we help our body get back to this typical state of being, the healthy state of being, where you're not under this heightened stress all the time. 

She said the number one way is to literally do anything to move your body. She even suggests like this can be jumping up and down in one spot, like allowing your body to physically move to allow the stress to come out of it instead of staying stored within your muscles. She said this is the best thing that you can do. 

So, when people talk about how exercise can be very good for you, what they're saying is that physical activity is a way for your body to get back to a safe place to live. It's releasing the stress. That's why you feel so good after exercise. So, she said that's the best thing. If you can't get to that spot where you get up and move your body, she said you can also tense your muscles up for 20 seconds and then release them, and that's an excellent place to start to complete the cycle. She said there's lots of other things that you can do. Here are six other evidence-based strategies. She said breathing is one Okay, that's an important one. She said this is the best way to siphon off some of the worst stress when you're in a difficult situation where you can't necessarily get up and leave again like an exam. 

Positive social interaction is another one. She said that it's the best way that an external sign that you're able to teach your body that the world is a safe place to be. This can be with loved ones. This can even be going out and saying hello to your coffee barista or talking politely to someone in line at the grocery store. She said what you're doing is reassuring your brain that it's safe to just be. She said laughter is another amazing one. I found that when I was in a very heightened burnout state, sometimes the most important thing I could do was watch cat videos during the day, because it allowed me to laugh. It allowed me to look outside of the stress I had and allow my body to feel good. 

Affection is another one. She'll talk about this later in the book, where she talks about a six second kiss or a 20 second hug. She said what this does. This physical connection requires you to stop and deliberately notice that you like a person and that you trust them and that your body feels safe with them. Actually, she talks about it right here the six second kiss or the 20 second hug, she said what's interesting is it doesn't have to just be with people, as I said, that I'm like I'm not telling you to go out and kiss a goat for six seconds Sounded funny as I started saying it, but what she said was like even petting a cat. Having affection for an animal allows you to feel that attachment and can lower your blood pressure, which is why something like an emotionally supported animal can be very effective for a lot of people. 

She said the next one is having a big old cry. Most of us grew up, I feel like, in a time where crying wasn't okay. It was a sign of weakness. Don't cry. Go to your room if you're going to cry. You know I'll give you something to cry about. You know all of those phrases that were pretty common, I think, when a lot of us were growing up. But what actually happens is when we cry, we allow the stress cycle. I think we've all had those times where we have had a cry and you kind of had that crying headache after, but then you feel really good at the same time, what you're doing is allowing it to come out. Now, this is one that I really love, and I don't think we talk about it enough. 

She says it's a creative expression when we are allowing ourselves to have to move through the stress cycle through creativity. You see this a lot in the arts, performers, musicians, artists, this is one of the ways that they can complete the stress cycle. Now, I am not an artist by any means, but I was noticing that my stress levels were higher, and I was wanting to do something outside of what was currently happening. So, I signed up for an art class. It was like journaling for beginning artists or something like that, and it was. They would give you some kind of prompt and say, okay, today we're going to be doing circles, or today we're going to play with different colors and fold the page in half, and that then becomes your art, and then you get to decorate it. So simple I'm, like I can do that. I was amazed at how amazing I felt every single time I had a class. I will probably do it again, because it was a very incredible experience that allowed me to complete my stress cycle in a way that I typically never do because I, my kids, do crafts. I don't ever sit down long enough to do it with them, but it taught me that, like that's a way for me to complete my stress cycle. 

So, she says how do you know when you've completed the cycle? She says your body will tell you. She said if you've ever ridden a bike and you go to shift gears and suddenly when you're in a smaller gear and the wheels start spinning more freely, Nothing tells you that you've shifted gears, but you feel the gear shift Like all of a sudden, you know, based on the way your body is moving on the bike, it's very similar. That's when you know you've completed the stress cycle. Oh, the important thing I think to remember, and she calls this out in the book is that if you don't feel that full release chances are, you have a very large backlog of stress cycle that you need to work through. And being able to continually move through that, continually releasing that backlog, feels very good. 

Feels very good and something she says you have to recognize when you feel incrementally better, even if you don't feel all the way better at the very beginning. She said the most important thing you can do is start scheduling this into your day, make it a priority, like your life depends on it, because it does. So even if we were to stop book club right now, I think that would be an entire lesson right for all of us to just go and do that. She does have so much more, and so I am going to dive into it. But if you're listening to this on the podcast, you're like good, I've got what I need. You can stop the recording right here and know that you have everything you need in order to unlock the stress cycle now. One of the things you know, as she need in order to unlock the stress cycle Now. One of the things you know as she continues on in the book. 

The next section she talks about are signs you need to deal with stress, even if it means ignoring the stressor, and this, I think, is really important because for so many of us, the stressors aren't something that we can automatically get off of our plate and sometimes we feel like we need to address that first. What she's saying is sometimes you have to ignore that in order to deal with your stress. So, Miranda says yes, so helpful to give our body and mind permission to go through the stress cycle completely. And I think the key word there is that permission right, because we'll get going. And this is where the human giver syndrome comes in, where we think we have to keep going all the time, give, give, give to everybody else, when we have to stop and give ourselves permission. So going back to like ignoring the stressor. These are the signs that you need to deal with stress and go through the stress cycles. 

The first is you notice yourself doing the same apparently pointless thing over and over again or engaging in self-destructive behaviors. So, this might be some kind of fiddling in some like obsessive way. This might be this she says, like it's kind of like a breathless eight-year-old trying to get the mother's attention, like guess what, guess what, guess what? Like look at me, look at me. That's kind of essentially what our brain and body are doing. Okay, if you're doing pointless things, you might need to stop. Or self-destructive behavior like overeating or over-shopping. 

The second is chandlering. This is a Brene Brown's term, from when the pain of something is so intense you jump as high as the chandelier and it's so outside of like the appropriate response for whatever that thing is, where this eruption is like the sign that you need to deal with stress. She says you turn into a bunny hiding under a hedge. This is my favorite one that I'd like to do. If I slowly, like, notice myself inching towards my bedroom earlier and earlier during the day, I know that I need to deal with the stress cycle because I want to start hiding in my room and stay there all weekend, or literally all day. She says if you're hiding from your life, you're past your threshold. That's a pretty good call, okay. 

And then the fourth one. She says your body feels out of whack. Again, this feels very personal. I feel like she's calling me out. She says maybe you're sick all the time. You have chronic pain, injuries that won't heal or infections that keep coming back. Because stress is not quote unquote just stress, but a biological event that really happens inside your body. Okay, it can cause biological problems. And then you know this is where the stress response continues to stay so activated. Continues to stay so activated. 

She said at this point it's important to remember that to be well is not to just always live in a state of safety and calm, but to move fluidly from adversity and risk to back to calm and then back and forth. She said stress isn't necessarily bad for you. It's being stuck in that stress inside of your body that is unhealthy for you. And then she goes on to say wellness is not a state of being but a state of action. So, again, it's not always living in this place of calm, it's going and being activated and moving out of it. Again, that was a very good lesson for me to learn. 

So, she goes on to say that when we are working through these stress cycles, we have a really important part of our brain that she calls the monitor, part of our brain that she calls the monitor. The monitor is like a person, you can say, that determines when you should keep going on something and when you should give up. And the monitor will always keep in mind what the goal is, how much effort you're investing towards that goal and how much progress you're making. So, if at any point, you have increased effort but the result or the progress you're making is low enough, your monitor or your brain will tell you to give up. This is very hard. 

When we feel this, we know we have to keep working through something and our brain is actively telling us to give up. So, this is often where people give up. And then your brain starts projecting that it will always be unattainable. We will always have to give up because there's so much effort for so little progress. This is where we enter into the pit of despair. If you've ever seen Princess Bride, that's my family favorite. You know that I grew up with the pit of despair. You know the creepy guy down there. So then, at this point in this pit of despair, she gives us a couple strategies to help work through this. 

The first one is what she calls planful problem solving. She says it's analyzing the problem and making a plan, then executing the plan. She says the part here is that the least intuitive part of planful problem solving is managing the stress caused by the problem and solving it. This is where you're always completing the cycle while you're doing the plan. Now, I'm very good at problem solving. I can you know, if something goes wrong, my brain immediately goes to like, okay, analyze, analyze, analyze. Like what else could we do? But my husband always laughs, like at any given time, my brain is like finding the next, not the detour, but like re-navigating through something. It's expert, it's like a GPS. Okay, that's the skill that I have. But I will do that while still staying under a very heightened stress. Okay, where then? I'm not completing the stress cycle. So being able to plan, full problem solve is the kind like we're going through, and problem solving while completing the stress cycle. 

She says the next one is positive reappraisal. Now, I think this is a really important thing, because so often we will reframe things and say it's okay, it's still worth it, we'll get there. But the first part, or the most important part of this is that when we are doing positive reappraisal, we're looking at the difficult things and recognizing that the difficulty is what makes it worth it. It becomes an opportunity in some way for us. She says now, pessimists are fabulous at this because they will recognize everything will be hard, everything's very challenging, but then being able to see how, okay, something that is hard actually makes it worth it and then provide some kind of opportunity of growth of something for us, okay. 

So, an example of this is my husband. He's been at a new job right now for nine months. Prior to this he was at a different job. It didn't go well. We had high hopes for it, we knew it was riskier, but we're still optimistic. We had high hopes for it, we knew it was riskier, but we're still optimistic. And very quickly we realized all the things we thought were going to happen with this job was not the case and it became a very stressful environment for a solid 18 months. So, we were talking about this not long ago. You know he's been in this job now and I said you know how do you view this now? And he says as much as I hated it, it created such an opportunity for growth that prepared me for the position I am in now and the skills I have now are a direct result of the challenges that I kept being placed in in that last job. So, I thought that was very insightful. You know, for every single one of us we can usually look back on that in our lives for something you know that was so hard and how much it prepared us for the next thing that was going to come. 

She said that the other strategy is really looking at redefining winning. She said most of the time when your monitors expectations for how something will go or how much effort you have to put in and you don't meet those expectations for the amount of progress that you think you should make expectancies are the plan Okay. So when you get frustrated by the slow progress and the other things don't work. You have to redefine what winning is, and I really liked that. As she was talking about this, it made me think of what are the small things that we can do to redefine winning. 

And you know, sometimes in my life I think I've shared this on the podcast where winning for me was getting up, cleaning the whole house, getting the kids out of the house, making dinner, you know whatever that thing is. And there have been times in my life where I needed to redefine it, where my only goal was to put pants on for the day. Okay, so that was winning. That was me doing the very best I could, given what my best was at that time. So, being very clear on what winning is and redefining that is so important for every single one of us. 

Then she goes on and I really like what she says about her section on when to give up, because I find that most of us don't ever have this conversation because we live in a society that says we should keep pushing, pushing, pushing and there's some kind of well, I'm going to read what she says Many of us are taught to see a shift in goals as weakness and failure, where another culture would see courage, strength and openness to new possibilities. We have been taught that letting go of a goal is the same as failing. I cannot tell you how much that has happened as I've been growing my business where, if I don't quote unquote achieve a goal, therefore I have failed in my own mind, when in reality it is my monitor actually working for me and teaching me. No, it actually is time to give up on this. So, she gives some really good. 

If you have the book, it's on page 46. She has a whole section on like how to break down a cost benefit. Analysis essentially is what it is, where you're looking at staying the same versus quitting. You know what are the benefits immediately, what are the benefits long-term of each of those things? What are the costs of it? So, then you're looking at it not from an emotional, like I have failed, but from a very strategic plan where you're using your monitor to help you in that moment. Again, working with your brain, not against. It is what we're all about here. Okay. So, from there she goes on to the next section, which I love, and then we'll move through the rest of the book rather quickly here she talks about. 

The next way to dealing with unlocking the stress cycle is learning to find meaning. Now in the book she defines meaning as the something or larger that's outside of you, that connects you to something bigger. In my coaching we call this purpose, we call this your calling. So, I was pleasantly surprised to see that this is something effective when you are working on burnout and how to work through it. So, she says you know what is meaning. 

Meaning is one of those main elements that promote happiness in people who are otherwise healthy. Meaning is a coping strategy for people who are recovering from illness or trauma. There are different views of what meaning is, but there are four things they all have in common. The first is meaning isn't always fun. There are hard things that you are doing when you are working towards your meaning. Growing my business, having my life coaching practice have not always been fun. I do feel like it is my purpose, it's my something larger, but that doesn't mean every day I'm having the time of my life. There are some challenging things that I am working through, challenging things that I am working through and things that I am learning and growing on, she said. The second is that meaning offers a positive final value in an individual's life. It's something that contributes to something positive in the world around them and, again, it connects you to something larger. 

The third is meaning is not constant. This means we might go a long time without feeling great all the time. So, I like what she says here. She says others feel you're just running errands or doing chores and it doesn't matter whether you feel a connection to something larger. Others know that when you're seeking meaning, which gives you a better connection, a better insight into the world around you and allows you to move through some of the day-to-day things easier. And, finally, it supports thriving and supports coping strategies that are good for you. So, this is really just connecting to something larger. 

Now you know how much I love the movie Moana and she has a whole section on Moana in the book about talking about connecting to something larger. The biggest thing that you have to know with all of this is that the meaning is already inside of you. Your something larger is already inside of you and it's you being able to choose yourself and being able to choose what that meaning is, which is really funny because she talks about how Moana actually means. Ocean talks about how Moana actually means ocean. Like Moana chose the ocean, just as much the ocean chose her right. 

So then at this point, this is where she introduces the large section on the human giver syndrome. This is the human giver syndrome, where we are to give of ourselves at all times. This is like the biggest villain in every one of a woman's stories, because this is what takes away from us continually connecting to something larger. So, one of the examples that she uses here is Betty Friedman. Back in the 1950s and 60s, she wrote a book at that time where she talks about how giving was weaponized to manipulate housewives, forcing them out of the workplace and back into homemaking. It was thought to believe that if a homemaker was feeling unfulfilled and dissatisfied, they were broken as a woman. So then, you know, there's this huge, like first wave in the 1970s of the feminist movement where they were trying to get out of this human giver syndrome. Okay, you can believe whatever you want about the 1970s. I'm talking about the book here and how they describe it. Okay, there was this rebellion against that human giver syndrome. They describe it. Okay, there was this rebellion against that human giver syndrome. So then at this point you have to like. One of the biggest things that you can do in order to heal the human giver syndrome, one of the most quote unquote feminist things that you can do is to live your purpose to continually connect to your something larger, because that is how you heal. Now, yes, part of that may be to give to other people. There is that give and receive that connection. But if you are giving out of guilt or if you stop giving and you feel guilty giving and you feel guilty, that's one of those symptoms that human giver syndrome is at play. 

So, then she goes on to the whole section about the real enemy, which is patriarchy that lives out there. She said the most important reason to talk about this is that when we look at the human giver syndrome and women connecting to their something larger, if you feel like you're constantly hitting up against something, that's because the game is rigged. That's because the human beings, the ones that expect the givers to always give to them, they expect women to fulfill a lot of these unpaid roles. Okay, so that's where she really dives into the patriarchy. And she says the patriarchy. So, every time she says it, she puts that in quotations. That's that like tongue in cheek like oh, here we go again, we have to talk about this thing. 

She said, although we're making a lot of headway, there's a couple things that are important to remember when it comes to patriarchy. Some of that is the way we talk about body image. There's this beauty standard that's very unattainable. Some of that is baked into the patriarchy and commercialized weight loss programs and people making money off of this particular body image that they're selling us. Another one is the sex and relationship violence and how there is a common thread. Well, that's very high number of sex offenders are men. One in five American women college students experience sexual assault or attempted sexual assault during college, and there's a lot of research that shows that women are often held responsible for leading a man on in those behaviors or doing something that would put the blame back on the woman. So, there's some of these things that are all tied into patriarchy that she dives into in the book. 

She then says you know, when we're constantly being exposed to these stressors, this is what makes it feel like we can't get ahead and we can't connect to our something larger, because we're always experiencing these stressors in our outside environment, and I really like that as she's going into this. She gives us ways to kind of heal this. She said the first one is to really recognize that it's okay to have some feelings about the patriarchy. She said. Gloria Steinem wrote the truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off. I think that's so true. 

She said sometimes it's okay for us to mourn the loss of life that we might've had If we could have been the person that we might've been. Had patriarchy, this society, culture, whatever we were raised in, had gone away. And I've really felt that, as far as like the Christian culture that I was raised in, where being a homemaker was the ideal and that's how you are a good mom. That was very virtuous and although I would never regret staying home with my children, I very much enjoyed that. I've often wondered what my life would have been had I had that societal encouragement to have some kind of career, further education. It really wasn't encouraged and so as I've gotten older and I've started pursuing that education on my own, there have been times where I've mourned that I could have done that when I was younger, before I started having children. So, she said you know, it's okay to mourn that and to have those feelings. 

She said the other thing is starting to unlearn helplessness, and she talks about a study with rats where they start learning to become helpless because of the current stressors. Over and over, eventually, they start to give up and over time sometimes that can happen with women connecting with that something larger because there's so many obstacles in their way. She said in order to overcome this helplessness, you have to go and do the thing. Now I was laughing with her said we unlearn helplessness by doing a thing, the thing that uses our body. It might be going for a walk, screaming into the pillow. 

So, I was talking with our nanny actually about how the first time I changed the batteries and a fire alarm while the fire alarm was going off was like so big for me because I was doing a thing. I was very helpless in that moment and, instead of shutting down from that stress cycle that I was in, I really worked through that stress cycle and I changed the batteries while that horrible beeping alarm which is very painful to my body to hear, with sensory issues, and I changed the batteries while that horrible beeping alarm which is very painful to my body to hear, with sensory issues, and I changed it and it was like one of the proudest moments of my life. It was like right up there with like graduating with my degree, which sounds so silly, but it was me working through that learned helplessness, that I can actually do some of these things.

 And then the other thing she says is to like smash the patriarchy. So, when we are connecting with our something larger, when we are moving towards, you know, something concrete, every single day we're like smashing it down that we are strong, capable women and that we have this larger purpose. And every time we connect with that, the patriarchy dies a little bit more. 

So, from there she moves into the final section of the book, which is her part three of the book. This is where we start talking about being able to connect with our something larger. Heal that human giver syndrome, work through our stress cycles. Here are a couple additional strategies that she gives us in order to take care of our body on a very cellular level. She said the first one that she wanted to touch on is a social connection. She said the first one that she wanted to touch on is social connection. She said social connection is a form of nourishment, like food. She says our early experiences of connection shape our present-day relationships with other people. As a culture, we live in constraints, and we live in constraints. The food choices are available to us. Same goes for connection. And then she goes on to say loneliness based on the research, loneliness is having the same impact on mortality as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, which I thought was very interesting. So, she says that when we are looking at connection, no one is complete without having other people, that humans are made to oscillate between connection and autonomy and back again. So, as we go back and forth, that's something that can really help nourish our body. Just like food is a nourishment to our body, our body, just like food, is a nourishment to our body. That's what allows us to stay strong. 

Which leads to the next section where she talks about needing to be stronger, our section on what makes you stronger. I think oftentimes, when we think about being stronger, we're thinking about a lot of persistence and resistance, like building your muscle. That's very masculine. But one of the most important things that she talks about that makes you stronger is rest, which feels very counterintuitive, right, she said rest is quite simply when you stop using a part of you that's used up, worn out. When you stop using a part of you that's used up, worn out, damaged or inflamed so that it has a chance to renew itself. She said the idea that you can use grit or self-control to stay focused and productive every minute of every day is not merely incorrect, it's gaslighting and it's potentially damaging your brain, she says. But according to the human giver syndrome, you definitely should keep giving. We live with the expectation that we give every part of our humanity, including our bodies, our health and our very lives. Our time, energy and attention should go towards someone else's well-being, not squandered on our own. 

And she goes on to talk about how rest doesn't always have to mean sleep, although she has a section about sleep. She talks about how rest can even be like mental rest or active rest, she said when we're looking at mental rest, it's not necessarily idleness. It's time necessary for your brain to process the world. It's time necessary for your brain to process the world and again, going back to completing the stress cycle, there's so many things within that that provide you rest, like mental rest when you're doing art of some kind. Sometimes for me, it's very restful to organize a drawer, not because I should or I have to, but because it helps me process and my brain goes into, like this different mode that is very different than the typical day-to-day stress that I'm working through. 

So that's what she talks about is active rest is working in one gear while the others are resting. It's exercising one part of you to strengthen the rest of you. She said it's important to remember that active rest makes us better to do all the things we need to do, which she then goes on to a whole section about sleep and how you can literally die from sleep deprivation and how your emotions cannot be complete without sleep. It is literally how your body repairs itself and grow stronger. Now, that's very hard when sometimes you feel like you can't sleep, and she will talk about that in just a second. She said remember that there's also an invisible workplace for women, which is when they feel like, even while they're sleeping, they're remaining on duty throughout the night, able to provide the physical and emotional support needed to ensure the wellbeing of their family. 

I can very much attest to that. So, she says like, how much rest is adequate? Here is the science on it 42%. 42% of your 24-hour period is to be dedicated to rest. When we think about that that feels like a lot and most of us will say there is no way that can happen. So, she has a whole section on breaking down. This is what I call. You know, when I've done it with my clients, a time audit like where is your time actually going so that you can see rest, is more applicable. Again, it's not all sleep, it's being able to do things like connecting with your something larger, it's completing stress cycles. You know there are so many different ways that you can rest, but being able to have 42% of your day, you know that feeling when you're in college and you're like procrastinating and you can't actually rest because you're thinking about the deadline, the paper that's due, the project that's due, so it doesn't actually feel restful. 

Well, oftentimes that same feeling follows us into parenthood and to just being a woman, where we're always thinking we need to be doing something else and so then you're not actually relaxing. Okay, so this is exactly what she's talking about in the book how being able to turn those things off One of the things that I do. Like that she says. Towards the end of the book, she says most of us will say, well, we can get by on less sleep. And she said would you ever send your 10-year-old child to a summer camp where they don't feed them adequate amounts of food? Because they can quote unquote get by on less? She's like you'd be legit mad. Or if you hired somebody to take care of your beloved animal, like your dog, and they made them sleep outside in the snow? Because they can quote unquote get by no, you'd be legit mad. So, we should be legit mad when we're allowing ourselves to treat ourselves that same way. So, she talks about living joyfully ever after. She says at some point, just because rest makes you more productive doesn't mean that's the reason why you should rest. 

She said you should rest because you become a happy, fulfilled, very calm, gentle state of yourself and because you matter is the reason why you should put rest as a priority, not to become more productive, which then she talks about. You know the masculine culture of productivity and always being productive, every moment of every day. So, in the end she wraps it all up with being joyful ever after. She says happiness is very fleeting. Joyfully ever after. She says happiness is very fleeting, whereas joy arises from an internal clarity about our purpose. 

When we are feeling that joy, when we're connecting, we're able to give and receive, we're able to feel like we're enough, our joy matters and suddenly we feel very fulfilled and rich in our lives. This is when we heal the human giver syndrome. This is when we heal burnout, this is when we're completing our stress cycles and I love that she says that that we, through these steps, can live joyfully ever after. So that is my hope, that is my prayer for each of you listening to this book today. Your joy matters, you matter. You can really heal your burnout with all of the steps that she take, that she provides for us in this book. I invite you to take them. So have a wonderful rest of your week and I'll see you next month for the book club. 

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