Earlier this year I read a book that I knew could be life-changing for the women of this community. It contained research backed information on how to handle burnout that surprised me, and may surprise you, too. In this interview with co-author Amelia Nagoski, we dive into what burnout really is, what it’s stemming from, and how to actually unlock the accompanying stress cycle that we sometimes can’t seem to escape.
Amelia and her twin sister Emily researched and wrote this book, and even they learned some things they weren’t expecting. Amelia explains the primary characteristic of burnout for women, and where true healing can come from. She also breaks down the physiological response that our bodies have to stress, and why burnout even occurs. Lastly, we touch on practical ways to treat burn out (spoiler alert it is NOT through self-care!) and how you can find your own “bubble.”
About a few other things…
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TRANSCRIPT
Monica: Amelia Nagoski, welcome to About Progress.
Amelia: Thank you. I’m so glad to be here.
Monica: I’ve already been enjoying talking to you so much that I’m really eager to dig into the meat of this conversation, which is all about burnout. And you and I were already talking about this a little bit because there’s a little bit of some misunderstanding about what burnout even is, and we’re gonna spend most of our time talking about the women who like to just blame themselves instead of recognizing it as burnout.
But I’d like to start this with you just defining burnout and letting us know what are some of the signs women should be looking for, and both themselves and others for burnout.
Amelia: Yeah, that’s a great place to start. Burnout was first defined by a research psychologist named Herbert Fordin Berger in the 1970s. He was commissioned to study air traffic controllers, which at the time was a very big deal that they were burning out cuz it was, you know, a public safety issue.
And he identified three characteristics of burnout, which were decreased sense of accomplishment. Detachment, like feeling emotionally detached and also emotional exhaustion. It turns out in the past, like 40 years since that research was done, that emotional exhaustion is the primary characteristic for women, whereas men tend to experience more of the decreased sense of accomplishment.
An important thing to note is that it is not a clinical diagnosis of any kind. It’s not a mental illness and is not like, it’s not a health condition. It is not, you know, you don’t have to meet any kind of clinical definition. If you’re like, I feel burned out, you’re definitely burned out. But definition Emily and I use in the book, because these definitions are so kind of vague and.
Monica: Hmm.
Amelia: They’re meaningful only in their contexts and that’s the only context for which those meetings were developed.
We define burnout is the feeling of being overwhelmed and exhausted by everything you have to do, and yet somehow still worried that you’re not doing enough. And this can be caused in the workplace, by parenting, both of which have been heavily studied. Burnout in the workplace and parental burnout have been studied a lot. Anytime that there’s a, an unrelenting unforgiving difference between what is being expected of you, what’s being demanded of you, and what you are capable of being or doing, that is a situation that causes burnout.
Monica: I love the definition you two came up with, because I can see it in myself more easily than feeling I have to meet these big, or even clinically worded guidelines. It helps me say like, Okay, yeah, I can acknowledge the way I’m feeling is not me just making this up. And that’s also not my fault, which I think most women tend to do, and I’d like to spend some time on that.
You know, we, we tend to just blame ourselves. Instead of saying, I, this is burnout. Instead we say, I’m weak. I’m lazy. I must not have good energy. I’m not motivated. I don’t have good discipline. We go down that rabbit hole. Can you share a little bit more about what is actually happening behind burnout so women can stop blaming and actually learn how to do something about it instead?
Amelia: Yeah. That experience of blaming yourself doesn’t happen because you’re dumb or lack self-compassion. You’re blaming yourself because the world has told you that it’s your fault, and how can you, not believe them when they say it so many times over and over again, it gets in your head and you’re like, Oh, this must be true.
It must be my fault. Maybe I’m not trying hard enough. I have to put myself first and make time for me. And that is what, That is the instructions you’ve been given. So of course you believe that’s true. But I’m here to tell you that, that that is wrong. And that’s, that’s gas lighting is what they’re doing to you.
And the reason they’re doing that is because it’s, it’s good for the economy basically. You know, like it’s good for capitalism, it’s good for white supremacy, it’s good for patriarchy. It’s good for ableism, when people are made to feel that wellbeing is their own individual responsibility. But all of human history and piles and piles of science that we cite in the book all say, all agree that it’s not an individual who can make themselves well.
There’s a another psychologist and philosopher named Jonathan Haidt, h a i d t, who’s written a couple of books, and he says that humans are 90% chimp. 10% bee, we’re a hive species. We’re meant to thrive in communities. We’re not built to do big things, accomplish great things alone. We’re meant to do them together, and the only way we were maintain wellbeing is by having a community that supports everyone’s wellbeing by turning toward each other with kindness and compassion, and a sense of moral obligation to care for everyone else.
Because when you’re surrounded by people who all feel that obligation to care for everyone else, no one slips through the cracks, no one gets burnt out because there’s always someone there to say, you’ve done too much. You have too hard a day. You need to take time. I will take up the slack from here. You go rest. And we don’t have a community like that right now. We have a community that says you’re tired, it’s because you’re wimpy, you’re tired. It’s because, you know, you just don’t care enough.
What you need is more grit. What you need is more persistence, and it’s, it’s just not true. When you think you need persistence, what you actually need is kindness. And when you think you just need more grit, like what you actually need, Is help.
Monica: And that’s when I’m like, my jaw hits the floor. Cuz it’s so simple. But it’s so mind boggling too. It’s like almost earth shattering,
Amelia: Yeah, I know Emily and I, when we read this science, we thought we were gonna write a self-help book, right? And then we started reading more and more science. And the science got deeper and deeper and more and more complicated. And I have a doctorate of musical arts and I’m capable of doing research, right.
I can understand the scientific, what to call it, and you know all the approaches. And I can analyze this study. And my sister has a PhD in public health. She’s more canny to the lingo and the jargon of, of health and wellness verbiage. And we were even getting to the point where the science was almost too complicated for her.
It was like at the, at the point of her capacity for understanding, like we’re both very smart and highly educated, but even this science, it was like, you know, Affective neuroscience and reading it was really complicated. But you know what? You know what all that science said in the biology and the neurology and the sociology and the psychology and behavioral psychology and neurological, all of it said the answer is love.
All of it said it’s, the answer is love. The answer is community. And we were like, Oh, that’s not what we thought we were gonna write about. But but. That’s what all of it says. Like it turns out the answer that we’ve known all along, that loving each other and caring for each other, the stuff that, like Jesus said, you know, basically like it turns out that that’s true.
It turns out that’s it. Turns out that’s the answer. Science says so
Monica: Wow. I love that connection. So I was thinking about this interview I did a couple months ago with a woman named Mia Hemstad. She’s amazing, but she went through really awful like things physically and it was all related to her also processing trauma. She didn’t know, but she kept, there’s a point to this.
She kept going back to the hospital and she kept getting all these big tests and all the tests kept coming back saying the same thing, and it was you need to rest. And the thing for her is she was a young mother of two kids and the caregiver of her special needs brother, and she said, I’m gonna get more rest in the hospital than I am at home.
And she didn’t have the access for that community, love for that support to enable that rest. I think a lot of women are in that same position, whether or not they have children or they’re in the caregiving role. Is, is that what you’ve experienced and not just for yourself, but you know,
Amelia: Literally identically my experience. I was in the third year of my doctoral program commuting 65 miles each way to the campus. I was a stepmother of three teenagers and working three part-time jobs. And I ended up in the hospital and they said, It’s just stress and I need to go home and relax.
And I was like, Let me repeat to you my list of all the things that I am doing. Know? My doctoral program in conducting, I was immersed in this world. Was being asked to conform to this socially constructed ideal. I was being denied access to things because I was not male, because I was not conforming to the ideals of what, you know, white classical music is. I was programming more diverse repertoire and I got a lot of resistance, a lot of resistance,
Monica: Mm.
And a lot of stress with that. I’m sure a lot of
Amelia: yeah, and it turns out, The burnout comes from the world demanding of me something that I am not, something that I cannot do. And this also happens not just to people who exist in a white supremacist, hetero-normative, exploitatively capitalisitic, patriarchy. I’ve started singing it. It’s bad for everyone.
Monica: We could talk for hours about the systemic ways that we can better create the support within a community, and that’s gonna take a long time. It’s necessary. We need to do the work, but it’s gonna take a super long time. Let’s speak to the women who need help now and they can’t go hang out in the hospital. You know, they’re told to go. That’s a pretty extreme example, but there’s also women who, you know, maybe they’re not
Amelia: Emily and I also thought that it was an extreme example for women to be hospitalized for stress induced illness. We have, we’ve lost track of the number of women who’ve told us they’ve been hospitalized, and the doctors tell them, There’s nothing wrong with you physically. There’s nothing wrong with you.
You just need to, you just need to relax. It’s just stress. It’s, it’s actually astonishingly common,
Monica: Well, I’m glad you would say that to me just because that that’s what we do, right? We, again, go to the extremes and saying, I’m not meeting those extremes, so I guess I don’t need help. Let’s just say across the spectrum of burnout, needing help. Can’t really get it within the structure of their community so well, although hopefully they can more so within the walls of their own home or within their relationships closest to them.
How about we talk about what they can do to, to begin to combat this burnout right here, right now?
Amelia: Yeah. The thing to understand first, the very first thing, if you’re feeling like you’re overwhelmed and exhausted, still worried about what you have to do, is that’s taking a toll on your body. Because the stress response developed in the environment of evolutionary adaptiveness. So if we’re going through our day as a proto human and here comes a big scary animal, our bodies flood with neurotransmitters like cortisol and adrenaline and glucocorticoids, and they change every system in our body, right? You can know in that moment of big scary animal, like you can feel your heart race. You can feel your breathing, get deeper. That’s your respiratory system and your circulatory system, both responding immediately.
To the stress response. But those aren’t the only things. A lot of other stuff happens that we’re not consciously aware of. Like our immune system gets out of the way because who cares about malaria when, you know, big scary animal. The reproductive system gets out of the way, shuts down, stops working at maximum efficiency when, who cares about babies?
Because big scaring. Yeah. Another more obvious thing that people might notice is there’s a very specific hormone, whose name I can’t remember, but there is a hormone that contributes to your skin’s reaction. Like you might feel the, the follicles of your hair stand up on the back of your arm or on the back of your neck, right?
That is doing stuff to your sweat glands and your oil glands and your hair follicles and, hey, does anybody ever get breakouts when they’re stressed? This is why it’s a very immediate manifestation of the stress response having happened in your body. Now back in the environment of evolutionary adaptiveness, this was an appropriate response that was very useful because it was preparing you to save all of your energy for just fight or flight or freeze or fawn.
It’s more complicated than this. Right. Let’s keep it simple like just for illustrative purposes. So your body’s preparing you for fight or flight, and in the environment of evolution, adaptiveness big, scary animal. And you run, right, You leap, you jump, you climb, you hide. And you know, after you’re, you’re out of breath and you’re exhausted and you look out and oh, big scary animal has turned and is walking away and you are safe and you have burned up all of those neurotransmitters. You have used them for the purpose of eliminating the thing that’s putting you at risk. That was a danger to you. You have used fight or flight, and these days, fight or flight are not how we solve our problems. The things that cause our stress, our stressors are not big, scary animals.
So in order to deal with the stress in your body, you have to deal with it in a separate process from dealing with the thing that causes your stress, which is really good news.
Because you don’t have to wait for the thing that causes your stress to go away before you actually start to feel better. So for me, I thought in year three of my doctorate, I’ll just plow through. I’ll just soldier on through my doctorate. When I graduate, I’ll be fine. Nope.
Monica: Hm.
Amelia: It turns out, even if I had finished my doctorate that wouldn’t deal with the stress in my body, that would just deal with the thing that caused my stress, and then I’d just be a broken mess, not having dealt with the stress in my body. But because I learned this in year three, I was able to start applying this information and I could start to feel better so that my doctorate did not end up being a thing that literally killed me.
It, it only wounded me
Monica: Only, only a flesh wound.
Amelia: yeah. only flesh wound.
Monica: So Amelia, you’re saying it’s complete, the stress response, is that what you’re saying?
Amelia: Exactly, go all the way through this stretch response cycle. Yeah, so the stress response is a cycle that happens in your body. All emotions are cycles that happen in your body. They’re a result of neurotransmitters being released and then like doing their job and burning up and going away. And when you have incomplete stress responses, like all of us do, cuz we’re not fighting our flighting our way out of every stressful situation those.
Neurotransmitters, electrical signals don’t go anywhere. You don’t use ’em up. So they’re just like floating around and they get stuck in your body
Monica: you get burnt out.
Amelia: and you get burnt out. It all adds up. Like the, the breaking outs are kind of a very short term, literal, observable thing you can see. But I mean here’s a slightly longer term literal, observable thing which is that when you. Circulatory system is typical, average, normal. Your blood vessels are intended to handle and designed to handle a gently flowing stream, right? B boom, B boom, boom, boom of your blood ping through. Veins and arteries and stuff. And when you have a stress response, your heart rate increases, your blood pressure increases in order to get maximum oxygen to all your muscles so you can run.
And that means that your blood vessels are being treated to a fire hose temporarily when the stress cycle ends and you burn it all out and it runs out of extra energy then you go back to your normal life and the blood vessels. The blood vessels have a chance to recover from that fire hose. But if you’re having stress all the time and especially if it’s like a chronic existential kind of threat that you can’t do anything about, that’s the kind of stress that’s gonna leave your heart rate elevated, your blood pressure elevated and what’s happening to your blood vessels, they are always in a state of handling a fire hose, and they were not designed for that. So what happens is they never get a chance to heal. So you get little wounds in the blood vessels, and that’s places where plaques develop and that’s how stress leads to heart attacks.
Monica: Wow.
Amelia: Yeah,
Monica: Yeah, I mean, in the eighties and nineties
we were told differently. Yeah, We were told differently.
Amelia: Yeah, I mean there’s, there’s a lot of research that shows a lot of research that makes it completely clear that heart attacks are not caused by cheeseburgers and Coca-Cola, right? That, that, like obesity not caused by cheeseburgers and Coca-Cola. It’s your body’s reaction to a chronic inflammatory state.
It’s more about your childhood trauma and the way you’ve handled stress through your life is what’s gonna lead to the shape and function of your body in adulthood and then through adulthood. You know the foundation that you’ve built of what you’re gonna do next and how your body can handle what comes after.
Does that make some sense?
Monica: Oh, it absolutely makes sense. And it, it’s also, you know, like we said, it’s so simple. Just like we were talking about burnout, but it’s also so earth shattering, even just that fact alone. And so when we’re going back to completing the stress cycle, what are some go to ways that you would suggest women do that?
Amelia: The most efficient way to complete the stress response cycle is physical activity. Cause when you’re being chased by a big, scary animal, you run. It is more complicated than exercise is good for you, or exercise minimizes stress cuz like, I bet everybody listening already knew.
Yeah, I, I
Monica: know that, right?
Amelia: I know that, of course, I know that. Why are we not doing it? There are a lot of really valid reasons. First of all, my identical twin sister who was raised in the same house as me is a natural exerciser or like probably about half people sitting here going, Oh yeah, man. When I go for a bike ride, I like just, I get to the top of the hill and I can feel myself overlooking the valley and the cows, sky and I’m just one with all of it, and I, and I get home and I just feel like my whole burden has eased. Like there are people who actually feel that way. I am not one of those people, but my identical twin is. So there’s no predicting who is gonna be a natural exerciser and for whom this will work for me.
This never worked. I’ve always been. Behavioral exercise, or you tell me it’s good for me, I’ll go do it. Okay. But it just never helped me the way that it ever helped Emily. So it’s more complicated than that just based on people’s identity and who they are and how they’re born. But it’s also complicated because access to physical activity is limited by environmental factors.
If you’re a woman and you go for a walk, that’s gonna help you, you know, complete your stress response cycle. Then if you get cat called now, your source of stress, minimizing and relief has become a source of more stress, right?
So it’s, it’s just far more complicated than exercise is good for you or exercise minimizes stress.
Monica: Down to just the time it takes and like the clothes need to put on and
Location wise and all that.
Amelia: that you feel pressure to wear the right clothes and to look appropriate at the gym, like just that is a, is a barrier. And that barrier is artificially constructed by the patriarch, by the white supremacist, exploitatively capitalistic patriarchy. But it is. It is a real barrier that stops people from accessing exercise.
Okay. But so that is the most efficient overall at a population level, but not individually necessarily for you. But the good news is there are so many other ways to complete…
Monica: even with moving your body, it doesn’t have to be going for a run. It could be just literally like flapping your arms, right? Like it can be something?
Amelia: Could be laying in bed, clenching
Monica: Yeah.
Amelia: muscle from your head down to your shoulders and your torso and your thighs and your shins and your toes, and you’re clenching everything really tight and you’re imagin like squeezing and crunching to death, all of the bad things in the world. And you want let go cuz you’re kind of exhausted, but then you’re like, No, I Hold on one, we’re breathing and you like, Oh, laying in your bed.
Monica: there. Okay. Thank
Amelia: but if that, even that’s not accessible to you. There, there are other ways. So the next
Monica: the other ways.
Amelia: the, the next one is sleep. We all know that sleep’s good for us, right? We all know, well, we were, a lot of us were taught you need eight hours of sleep. The truth is that a real normal window is seven to nine hours.
Most people need seven to nine hours of sleep. If you are sleeping nine hours and you wake up and you feel good, that means that that’s how much sleep you need. If you thought look, I’m just gonna say this the way it’s true. I thought I needed eight hours of sleep. Turns out I’m a nine hour sleeper.
And when I was getting eight hours of sleep, I was set an alarm and wake up after eight hours and I still felt terrible. It was not enough sleep for me. I thought I was broken or sick or lazy. Nope. Most of the time when people feel ti I’m so tired, how do I fix how tired I feel? Almost always the answer is you need more sleep.
if, if anyone is gonna change anything about their life, if they wanna feel better, Day to day, let that one thing that you change, be getting more sleep. It is fundamental to our existence, but more specifically, it is important for completing the stress response cycle because one of the things that happens while we sleep is during REM sleep we dream and all of the activity in our brain is for learning and processing stuff We experienced in the past, that day, that week in our whole lifetimes, like if you’ve ever had a dream about your eighth grade bully outta nowhere, then you know that your brain can process stuff from the past outta the blue for seemingly no reason. But that is a way that your brain can complete old, unfinished stress response cycles from, you know, all of your life that you have just left there spinning, and it can move you all the way through.
It completes a stress response cycle, but it also is stigmatized, right? We feel like, well, if, if I’m getting sleep, I’m, I’m only helping myself, it’s only good for me. I could be spending that time, you know, making sure I meet my deadline at work or, or baking those cupcakes for my kid’s birthday party, or I, I should be, And indeed, the world literally physically tells us that women are supposed to sacrifice their sleep for other people’s wellbeing.
We know that we need sleep, but we also know what society has told us that it’s selfish and lazy and slothful to sleep.
Monica: And someone has to get that stuff done. Like someone’s gotta do it. And we make it be ourselves, not just make it, you know, we’re, we’re told to make it. Now. Now you in the book, this ties into this, you, you reference a book, not a, No, not a book, sorry, A phrase. Human giver
Amelia: Human giver syndrome. Yeah. This is the thing that drives that feeling that we have a moral obligation to sacrifice ourselves and everything that we are for others. So this comes from a. By a moral philosopher named Kate Man. And in the book, sh it’s the book is called Down Girl, The Logic of Misogyny she pauses a world where there are two kinds of people. There’s human beings who have a moral obligation to be their humanity, to live it, express it and acquire whatever resources are necessary in order to do that, to be their humanity.
And on the other side, there are human givers who have a moral obligation to give their humanity to the human beings, to give their time, their lives, their bodies, their very selves to the human beings. Being a human giver would not be dangerous on its own if you were surrounded by other human givers.
People who care about your wellbeing as much as you care about theirs. Those people would always be there to see you. Have done too much today. Go have a rest. We will take up the slack. That’s how community thrives.
But if you are in relationships, either at work or at home or wherever, where someone feels entitled to your time, your life, your body, especially if they feel that there should be, no boundaries between you and them, and the limits that you put on what you give them, that is a human giver relationship that is built, designed perfectly to cause burnout.
Because when being a human giver becomes toxic or dangerous is when we believe that this is just a normal and true thing, that we have a moral obligation to be at all times, pretty and happy and calm, and generous.
And attentive the needs of others, and that if we ever fail, In that more obligation to be at all times, pretty happy, calm, generous, and attendance needs of others, then we are failures as people and that we deserve to be punished. And that’s just, just normal and true in the way the world is. And guess what benefits, when women believe that they deserve to be punished, if they ever fail to be pretty happy, calm, generous, tend needs of others.
That’s right. The beneficiary is the white supremacist, heteronormative, exploitatively capitalistic, patriarchy. It’s also ableist.
You start with completing the stress response cycle in your own body because if you are overwhelmed by the pain, overwhelmed by fatigue, the first thing you need to do is get your body in a place where it is no longer just suffering. So if you can find a way to complete the stretch upon cycle, either physical activity or sleep.
And another one is connection with other people. That includes simple, easy interactions. Like you know, you go into the coffee shop and you say, Hi, I would like a vanilla chai latte and, Oh, I really like your earring. And the barista sits back to you. Here’s your vanilla chi latte. Thank you very much.
Just that light interaction. There’s research that shows that little interactions like that help remind your body that Oh, yeah. The world is a safe place. I don’t have to be on guard every minute. And it can reduce your experience of stress for the rest of the day. If you wanna go bigger or deeper there’s the 20 second hug, which is not about 20 seconds exactly, but if you imagine hugging for 20 seconds, that would be super awkward to do with someone you don’t really love and trust.
But if you have someone who you love and trust enough to hug for 20 seconds, how you do it is you both support your own center and gravity. And you put your arms around each other and you wait there physically connected and close, and your body senses the other person’s body and remembers, Oh, I’m part of a community.
I’m part of humanity. I am safe. Here I am. I’m a member of the herd and I’m in the middle, and I belong, and I am safe. And if you wanna go even bigger, there’s the six second kiss. This is the research of John and Julie Gottman who are clear that it’s not about the six seconds, like you don’t just count to six.
It’s about making it a, a special moment, long enough to feel special, but not long enough to make the kids late for school, is how they describe it. And six seconds is way too long to kiss somebody you just met, but it’s a very nice kiss with somebody you love and trust. Enough to feel like, Oh, this is normal, uncomfortable.
It’s not about the six seconds. It’s about being that close, that intimate, physically, that your body will shift into another state and you’ll feel it go, Oh, I’m home. I’m safe. There’s this person here, and our energy. This sounds, this is starting to sound kind of hippy, but there’s actually, this is where the like interpersonal neurobiology comes into play where there is physically energy between two people that is shared so that we become part of the people who are around us and our individuality is proven to be kind of not real
Monica: Wow.
Amelia: I mean, you, you come from the band geek world, so you know what happens when you play together. There’s this sense. Being part of a hive, of being sort of like a little piece of a larger single organism.
Monica: Mm-hmm.
Amelia: That is literally true. That’s, that’s part of physiologically what happens to us and how our bodies experience large group efforts.
And this is, okay. So ways to complete the search response cycle, ways to feel better right now. That’s what we’re talking about. And this is the magic trick. This is the number one thing is stuff like playing in a band. Singing in a choir. And the magic trick is combining connection with movement with a third thing, which is a purpose.
So if you are moving in time with others toward a shared goal, that’s the magic trick. That’s the time when humans access the quickest, easiest, shortest, shortcut. Too, like the, the highest, most elevated experience of what humanity feels like. Experiences like going to Burning Man. There was just research released recently that stuff like those kind of like large festival rituals.
Give us that experience. There’s also been research about worship, about dancing, about singing together marching, going on a protest. The combination is moving in time together with other people toward a shared goal. So,
Monica: Sounds like I need to join marching band again.
Amelia: Like there’s a reason, there’s a reason that kids in marching band feel like the band is their family. Why they feel bonded in that way. Military training, sports teams playing together, or even just attending a game with a big crowd of other intensely passionate fans where you’re cheering along with your team. You are part of one large organism, right? All those things. Physical activity is a thing. Sleep is a thing, connection with other people. And if we start to combine the things together into moving in time with others toward a shared goal, it’s this shortcut to the, to the best feeling humanity has to offer.
Monica: That last piece of the puzzle, the connection piece, it’s really helping things come full circle with why, especially after. I mean, for some people it was just a couple months of isolation for other peoples as it was a couple years. While we are, especially in that place of burnout right now because we have, we lost that.
And even if we were able to have it back sooner than others, there’s still a recovering of that. There’s getting used to it Again, there’s trying to carve out time and make space for it. And I mean, I, I really could talk to you for so long about what women can actually do, but to me, if we’re gonna keep it simple, like to make this stuff possible, You need to pay attention to what’s going on with your body so you know when you are burnout or stress, and you need to get good at letting things go, Carving out space for yourself, which again, that’s a whole other topic,
Amelia: Yeah. I think when it comes to carving out space, it’s impossible for an individual to do that because you’re constantly being bombarded by messages that you should be doing for others, giving to others that you have moral obligation to be pretty and calm and generous, and that if you fail that obligation, you deserve to be punished, right?
That’s why you need, Well, we call ’em the book, The Bubble of Love.
It’s the people who care about your wellbeing as much as you care about theirs and they protect you from those outside messages. You all protect each other by reminding each other those outside messages aren’t true. That thing you’ve started to internalize it’s not true. You can let it go. You can, You deserve to ,take time for yourself.
You can, and you deserve to have care and resources and sleep and exercise and, and to go do fun things and to go to a march or to have dancing or to attend, you know, a worship service with the people who really matter to you. And that connection can also be with like, you know, internal things, but like you.
90% chimp 10% Bee, we’re meant to connect to each other. That’s how you overcome the stressors that are external, is by having your bubble to protect you from those forces. And there’s just no other way to resist those forces. You can’t do it alone. You can’t do it alone. The cure for burnout is not self-care.
The cure for burnout is all of us caring for each other.
Monica: And for women who feel like they don’t have that within the walls of their own home, I think that can be really despairing to hear. But it also. It is the science back truth, and there are ways for you to build that bubble of, of love, of care outside of the people right there if they’re not ready, if they, if they can’t.
Amelia: Yes there is. Which Emily and I were surprised because we thought that like, When we started talking to the, about the book to people, we started getting into the question, What if I don’t have people in my bubble? What if I don’t have anybody like that to remind me that I deserve loving care just as I am?
And at first we were surprised, but. Then we actually thought about the process of writing the book. Like people assume that cuz we’re twins, that oh, we must have that like twin relationship. We must have like been able read each other’s minds or whatever. But that’s not true. We were raised in a household with mental illness and addiction and we were raised in a society that, that denigrates connection, that views needing other people as a kind of weakness that independence and autonomy are superior to connectedness and group action, which is not true. So we did not grow up connected to each other. We did not grow up with sisterhood.
It was literally when we started writing the book. And reading the research that said the answer is love and connection. And then we were like, Oh. Oh, that’s, it. Sounds so simple, but it actually is so hard because of how it’s denigrated by outside society, but also because of our individual relationship where we came from, of like, you never talk about the stories, you just don’t talk about the things.
So we. Started telling the stories like I was there that night when the bad thing happened, and I, we didn’t speak to each other that night, but I, I heard you when I was there and it was so awkward and hard and it felt so raw and vulnerable and exposed and, are we really doing this thing that was completely forbidden in childhood?
And it, it worked. That that’s how you do it. But like in Frozen, where? Elsa is in her room with the door shut, with her leaning back against the door, like surrounded by frozen snow and ice, and Anna’s on the other side knocking on the door saying, Do you wanna build a snow man?
And yes, Elsa wants to build a fricking snow, man. Yes she does. She really, really does. But she feels like she’s not supposed to. She feels like she’s not allowed that it would endanger other people if she reached out and opened her door to. Love and the bravery of Anna to knock and say, Do you wanna build a snowman?
Like that’s what it takes. If you feel like you don’t have anybody in your life, just you’re gonna discover that the other person was on the other side of that door all along and they wanted it just as much as you, but they felt forbidden. And they needed the bravery of someone else to come say, Wanna, wanna build a snowman?
Doesn’t have to be a snowman.
Monica: And there’s gonna be someone, it might not be the first couple people that you knock on their proverbial door. There is going to be someone.
Amelia: And there are a lot of people who are, who really believe that they’re not allowed to open that door, and they might not be ready yet, but all of us want to open the door. All of us want someone in our lives who we can share all that stuff with. And if you feel like, no, you don’t. I’m just gonna tell you, we, Emily and I have taken all the standardized tests.
I am the most introverted person. Anyone in our family knows I measure the highest on intro introversion. And I’m autistic. So I find being around other people extremely stressful and exhausting. I am the most, please leave me alone person there ever was. If there was ever anybody who didn’t need connection, it’s me.
But even I it turns out benefit need. Connection and love. So if you’re thinking, Nah, I’m fine the way I am, you, you, you don’t know what you’re missing out on because let’s talk about the definition of wellness real quick. What it actually means to be well people think I wanna be well and that they can reach some state of being that will be well or a state of mind that is wellness.
But wellness is not a state of being or a state of mind. Wellness is the freedom. To oscillate through all the cycles of being human. Wellness is a state of action, and yes, you will sometimes oscillate into autonomy, but we also need the freedom to oscillate into connection, from autonomy, to connection, from independence, to dependent, from individual action to group cooperation.
It is a necessity for human existence or 90% chimp, 10% be a hive species. We require other people to thrive and that is both literally factually evident in the way that we need someone to be there to tell us we deserve love and care just the way we are, that we deserve sleep and we deserve.
Protection even before we get divorced or get married or have kids or graduate school or come out or, like, like before you do anything. It doesn’t matter what choices you have made so far, you still are worthy of love and care. Because there are so many messages that tell us the opposite of that.
We just need somebody physically to stand between us and that message. But we also biologically, psychologically, need other people in our lives. We are not complete without other humans. I forget where I was going with
Monica: Well, you said that all for me cuz I, I, if I were to take all those tests too, I, I’m like you and would be like the most introverted you know, which, it’s a good reminder cuz I like to just pretend I can do it on my own and you know, so often we, you know, we do teach and we are taught and we do have to practice taking care of our.
First because nobody else will. But at this in the same breath, we have to do that by also reaching out to people. That’s how we can care for ourselves, is reaching out to connect with people who can give us that space, that bubble, that support,
that’s making
Amelia: as a shortcut, Yeah. Yeah. And as a shortcut, if you feel like I really, I feel too vulnerable asking for help, I feel selfish asking for help. The good news is that when you offer help to others, you might feel like, Oh, I don’t have time to, I don’t wanna be a bother and ask somebody else, or, I don’t have time to give somebody else, or, I don’t have the energy to care for others who, you know, aren’t my immediate responsibility.
The good news is that when we do do that, It actually gives us more energy when we have someone in our lives and we allow them to open up to us with their difficult feelings, and we offer them kindness and compassion. In response to their difficult feelings that actually creates more energy. It is not a drain or a, you know, soul stucking experience.
When we can share with each other our difficult feelings and turn toward them with kindness and compassion, it not only helps open that door, but it also gives us more energy and gives us the experience of connectedness, which recharges us and refuels us. I need. 22 hours of alone time every day. Like really literally 22 hours of alone time.
But that time that I do spend connect with other people is absolutely mandatory. And even if I’m like, No, I’m stuck in my aloneness and I just wanna stay here cuz it’s easier, it does feel easier. But but being stuck in one thing is not what wellness is. It’s not what human’s meant to do, and I don’t really discover that until I allow myself to oscillate into that state of connectedness and, and interaction.
Monica: That’s beautiful. You just made it so I can’t cancel on my plans to go to Downton Abby with friends tonight, so I will now move forward with those plans even. I already planned on canceling them, so thank you for that. Amelia, I, I have enjoyed this so much. I’m, I’m gonna make our, do, I always do a little, do something challenge based of our, our discussion.
And to me it’s, it’s, it’s connecting, it’s reaching out to someone. It’s that simple. That’s where we’re going to start today. It’s reaching out to someone. I do wanna point people towards the book burnout, written with your, your sister and co-author, Emily Nagoski. It’s the best book I’ve ever read on this topic I, I’ve read and on self care in general.
It’s, it’s brilliant. And is there any other place you would like them to go that they wanna connect with you or your work?
Amelia: I also have started a YouTube channel last year shortly after I was diagnosed with autism. I started a YouTube channel called Autistic Burnout about the fact that autistic burnout is a thing that people experience. And a lot of autistic people were saying there are no resources to help autistic burnout.
They’re all directed towards neurotypical people. But we wrote burnout for me. And even if I didn’t know at the time that I was autistic, a lot of the evidence in the book definitely works for autistic people cuz it, it worked for me. There are some things we say in the book that I was like, really, that works for people?
Cuz it turns out that that research was only true for neurotypical people or at least not true for me. And autism seems to be a reason. So autistic burnout is it’s very small niche thing for the 2% of people who are autistic and experiencing burnout. So,
Monica: Well that personally means a lot to me, so yes. We’ll, we’ll make sure we link to that as well. Was there anything else you were gonna say about where they should go?
Amelia: Emily has also written a new addition of her first book come As You Are the Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life. That book was 10 years old last year, so they’ve released a new audition with updated Science. So
Monica: I did not know that so thank you for pointing to that. This was again, so wonderful. Thank you, Amelia.
Amelia: Thank you.
You are Red Sox Nation at that moment.
I’m in Massachusetts, so I have to say that , when you move here, you have to like join Red Sox Nation too. No, it’s not true. But yeah,
