Burnout

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle came out from Ballantine Books in 2019. The publisher's page gives March 26, 2019 as the date for the ebook and audiobook, and January 7, 2020 for the paperback. The paperback is 304 pages.

I could not find a verified Turkish edition; I am writing it under its original title.

This article relies on the book's table of contents (as it appears in library catalog records), the publisher's description, quotes readers have taken from the book and published reviews. I do not claim to have read the book from cover to cover. I describe the content of the chapters only as far as I could verify it in these sources, and I will say where I could not.

A book by two sisters

Emily Nagoski is an educator with a doctorate in health behavior. She completed both her master's in counseling and her doctorate at Indiana University, and received her clinical and research training at the Kinsey Institute. Before this she wrote the bestselling Come as You Are, a book about sexual function. Amelia Nagoski is her twin. She is a choral conductor, holds a DMA in music and teaches at Western New England University.

The story of how the book came about is told through this pair. In an interview with the Boston Globe, Emily describes how Amelia went through two periods of burnout that ended in hospitalization. In her own words, she went to her sister with a stack of peer-reviewed papers on the physiology of stress. The book reads like a blend of these two perspectives, the scientist's and the person on stage.

In the same interview, Emily also says that the chapter on stress in Come as You Are was the part readers found most useful.

The starting idea: the stressor and stress are not the same thing

The book's one-sentence idea is this: the thing that creates the stress (the stressor) and the stress response circulating in your body are two separate events. You met the deadline, ended the fight, the problem is solved. Your body may still not know that.

The authors call this "completing the cycle." When the threat has passed, the body needs to finish its preparation to fight, flee or freeze. This is not a mental operation, it is a physiological transition. As far as I can tell from reader quotes, the book says this plainly: telling yourself "everything is fine now" does not work, you have to give the body what it needs.

A sentence quoted from Amelia's talk at MIT carries the whole idea: "Stress is not your enemy, being stuck is your enemy."

The book's second big idea is aimed at women. The authors say that trying to close the gap between what is expected of women and real life wears people out. The publisher's description also puts this framing up front.

How the table of contents looks

Library catalog records give the contents in three clusters. The first cluster: "What you take with you," followed by "Complete the cycle," "#persist" and "Meaning." The second cluster: "The real enemy," "The game is rigged" and "The bikini industrial complex." The third cluster: "Wax on, wax off," "Connect," "What makes you stronger" and "Grow mighty." At the end there is a conclusion titled "Joyfully ever after."

I could not tell for certain from the catalog record which headings are part titles and which are chapter titles. One review says the book consists of three parts and names the theme of the second part as "the game is rigged." The authors themselves also refer to the first three topics (completing the cycle, planful problem solving and positive reappraisal, connecting to something larger) as the book's first three chapters.

Completing the cycle

The first chapter is the foundation of the book. At the very start, the book uses the image of a tunnel for emotions: if you go all the way through, you reach the light. Burnout happens when you get stuck in the emotion.

The suggested ways look familiar, but the reasoning behind them is interesting. Published summaries and reader notes mention these: physical activity (according to the book, the most efficient way to close the cycle), breathing, sleep, crying, laughing, creative expression and affection. The concrete suggestion given for affection is a twenty-second hug. As far as the quotes from the book go, the common denominator is this: all of them require doing something.

The book's definition of burnout rests on three components: emotional exhaustion, detachment from people and a diminished sense of accomplishment.

In the ADHD burnout article on the site, I wrote about the relationship between load and rest. The Nagoskis' distinction adds a layer to it: rest is sometimes not enough, because the body may not have closed the cycle.

Persisting, and something larger

The second heading, "#persist," is about keeping going. According to reader quotes, two tools stand out here: planful problem solving and positive reappraisal. Both serve to satisfy the monitor in the brain that the book calls the "Monitor." According to the publisher's description, this monitor is a mechanism that regulates frustration.

There is also a four-list method for deciding whether to keep going or quit. The benefits of continuing, the benefits of stopping, the costs of continuing and the costs of stopping. Then you decide. Completing the cycle is part of the decision too.

The third heading is "Meaning." The book defines meaning as the feeling of being connected to something bigger than ourselves and, according to reader quotes, says that research points to three sources: ambitious goals that leave a mark, service to a spiritual calling and close connection built through love. The book calls this "Something Larger."

This part reminded me of two philosophy books on the shelf. Frankl's book on meaning and Camus's Sisyphus look for meaning in completely different places. The Nagoskis stand somewhere more practical: meaning does not stop you, it becomes the fuel that keeps you going. I think putting the three books side by side is interesting, but this is not a comparison. The Nagoskis' work is not philosophy, it is a recipe for burnout.

The game is rigged: the real enemy

The second cluster is where the book gets harsher. It uses a distinction taken from Kate Manne's book Down Girl: "human givers" and "human beings." The duty of the first class is to give their time, attention, love and bodies. The second class is there to receive these. The book names this expectation "Human Giver Syndrome" and brings it on stage as the first villain of burnout.

One metaphor from this part gets passed around a lot. A crooked tree that grows against the wind on a cliff, and a straight tree that grows on flat ground. Moved to flat ground, the crooked tree looks strange, but that crookedness is the price of surviving where it grew. The book says this: instead of asking why they cannot thrive on that flat ground, we need to ask how the ground can change so that everyone can thrive.

The same chapter also has a section on learned helplessness. According to the book, helplessness can be undone by doing something that uses the body: walking, screaming into a pillow, pouring it into art. There is a similar approach to anger and grief; anger suppressed for years is seen as an incomplete cycle.

The section titled "the bikini industrial complex" describes the relationship beauty culture has with women's bodies. The description says this section offers ways of defending yourself. One of the exercises in the book is to approach the body like a caregiver: instead of looking at its appearance and judging it, ask it how it is doing. Are you hungry, are you thirsty, are you tired, are you lonely. This exercise is a neighbor to the subject of the body signal blindness article on the site.

Connection, compassion and the end of the book

The heading of the third cluster is "Wax on, wax off." I could not see the content of the last two headings, "What makes you stronger" and "Grow mighty," in any detail in the sources, so I am not interpreting them. Two things come out of the "Connect" section: the idea that mutual trust produces an energy that nourishes both sides ("Bubble of Love"), and the observation that untrustworthy people drain energy.

One idea told toward the end of the book is self-compassion: being cruel to yourself increases the cruelty in the world, while being kind to yourself adds kindness to the world. There is also a distinction between happiness and joy (quoted from Brittney Cooper): happiness depends on what happens, while joy is an inner clarity that comes from purpose.

And at the close stands the book's most quoted idea: the cure for burnout is not "self-care," it is all of us caring for one another.

Its strongest points

The first strength is that it brings the idea down into the body. Most burnout books say organize your calendar, set boundaries, say no. This book looks at the body first. I think this is a more honest starting point, both scientifically and practically.

Second, it states the limits of the science itself. Reader quotes mention that the authors make three caveats, one of which is that science is expensive and who pays for the research can affect the results. That is a humility you rarely come across in self-help books.

Third, the tone. One reader review says there are short summary boxes ("tl;dr") at the ends of chapters and that the chapters flow into one another. These make the book easy to read.

Weak points and criticism

First, the target audience. One review notes that the suggestions might work for men too, but that the book is talking to women. This is a deliberate choice and that is where its strength comes from, but for a reader who is not a woman, half the narrative may stay foreign.

Second, the level of evidence. There are findings that exercise reduces the stress response, and the book's emphasis on movement is consistent with them. But "completing the cycle" is the book's popular framing. I have not seen a study that tests each of the book's suggestions one by one, but I cannot say I have searched the whole literature either. I think it is safer to read this as a reasonable framework rather than a proven protocol.

Third, the medical framing. In the World Health Organization's classification (ICD-11), burnout appears as an occupational phenomenon, not as a medical diagnosis. I know this from the classification, not from the book. The book, for its part, carries the subject beyond work, into caregiving and everyday life. In conditions like depression or anxiety, a book like this does not replace medication or therapy.

Fourth, the individual solution. The authors take structural problems seriously. Still, the concrete suggestions in the book are mostly things the individual can do. I think this is the nature of the genre.

Who it is for, and who it is not for

For people who rest and still do not feel renewed, whose tension does not go away even after the problem is solved. For women who have worn themselves out all their lives trying to "be a good person." For those who find books about stress too cold.

Not for someone looking for a ready-made program. The book is not a program; it gives you a way of seeing. It should not be the first stop for someone going through severe depression or anxiety either.

ADHD does not appear in the description or the table of contents. For someone with ADHD, this is not an ADHD book; it is a general book about stress. Still, if you ask me, it has an interesting side for the reader with ADHD: what I described in the emotional regulation and anger outbursts articles is emotion left unfinished in the body. The Nagoskis' framework gives that unfinished state a name. I do not know whether the book has been tested separately with readers who have ADHD.

Its place on the shelf

Most of the books on this shelf describe what to do. This book describes what the body leaves unfinished. It looks in the same direction as The Body Keeps the Score but is much lighter; it does not carry the language of trauma.

On the exercise side, it is useful to look at the does exercise really work for ADHD article: you can read there why movement stands out so much.

My take

I think the book's best sentence is an indirect one: stress is not the enemy. Instead of fighting stress, I find it more sensible to learn to finish it. But if you turn the sentence "complete the cycle" into a to-do list, you have just added one more item. If you are going to take a method from the book, you should take it in a way that does not become a second burden.