Emily Nagoski - Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

When we told women we were writing a book called Burnout, nobody ever asked, Whats burnout? (Mostly what they said was, Is it out yet? Can I read it?) We all have an intuitive sense of what burnout is; we know how it feels in our bodies and how our emotions crumble in the grip of it. But when it was first coined as a technical term by Herbert Freudenberger in 1975, burnout was defined by three components:

emotional exhaustionthe fatigue that comes from caring too much, for too long;

depersonalizationthe depletion of empathy, caring, and compassion; and

decreased sense of accomplishmentan unconquerable sense of futility: feeling that nothing you do makes any difference.

And heres an understatement: Burnout is highly prevalent. Twenty to thirty percent of teachers in America have moderately high to high levels of burnout.

In the forty years since the original formulation, research has found its the first element in burnout, emotional exhaustion, thats most strongly linked to negative impacts on our health, relationships, and workespecially for women.

So what exactly is an emotion, and how do you exhaust it?

Emotions, at their most basic level, involve the release of neurochemicals in the brain, in response to some stimulus. You see the person you have a crush on across the room, your brain releases a bunch of chemicals, and that triggers a cascade of physiological changesyour heart beats faster, your hormones shift, and your stomach flutters. You take a deep breath and sigh. Your facial expression changes; maybe you blush; even the timbre of your voice becomes warmer. Your thoughts shift to memories of the crush and fantasies about the future, and you suddenly feel an urge to cross the room and say hi. Just about every system in your body responds to the chemical and electrical cascade activated by the sight of the person.

Thats emotion. Its automatic and instantaneous. It happens everywhere, and it affects everything. And its happening all the timewe feel many different emotions simultaneously, even in response to one stimulus. You may feel an urge to approach your crush, but also, simultaneously, feel an urge to turn away and pretend you didnt notice them.

Left to their own devices, emotionsthese instantaneous, whole-body reactions to some stimuluswill end on their own. Your attention shifts from your crush to some other topic, and the flush of infatuation eases, until that certain special someone crosses your mind or your path once more. The same goes for the jolt of pain you feel when someone is cruel to you or the flash of disgust when you smell something unpleasant. They just end.