Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
The term burnout is common in research administration. Whether you are at a conference or catching up with others at your institution, emotional exhaustion is present in so many of our conversations. As I enter another year in this field, my conversations with mentors have shifted to a common message, “You’re too young to burn out.” So I did what anyone these days does, I went to the internet for help. I searched through numerous books and found Burnout: the secret to unlocking the stress cycle, by Emily Nagoski, PhD and Amelia Nagoski, DMA.
The book’s three parts work to explain the stress cycle through scientific research, following three women as they apply the methods to their lives. Written by and for women, this resource heavily addresses the expectation that women have a moral obligation to give everything they have to the world around them. One of the items I found incredibly eye opening was the explanation of human givers and their classification of Human Giver Syndrome. This completely changed the way I interpreted my daily interactions and the internalization of other’s expectations leading to higher levels of stress. That eureka moment is what led me to start recommending this book to every woman I encountered personally and professionally.
Key Takeaways:
- There is a difference between stressors and stress cycles. In research administration, there is no shortfall of deadlines, and it can often be frustrating that after the proposal is submitted or the financial report has been sent off the stress still persists. Based on my interpretation of the science shared in this book, we still need to close out the stress cycle once we have dealt with our stressor. Did it push us into fight, flight, or freeze? The authors offer numerous methods based on the chemical reactions caused by your stress response. One of the wonderful items addressed was that there are times where we cannot do anything about a stressor but we can still take care of the stress cycle it sends our body into to help us feel better.
- Sometimes the game is rigged. - This is a key theme of part II of the book and was extremely helpful in adjusting the perspective of what should be held on your own shoulders and the things that are simply out of your control. The writers do not tell you to simply accept that this is life but provide strategies for dealing with perspectives/culture/etc. This is something we all face daily in research administration, whether it is the culture of higher education, pre-award vs. post-award prioritization, etc. There are times where it is our responsibility to act and work towards change, but there are other times where we need to let it move off our conscience. (This is a point that my own boss is trying so hard to get me to understand.)
- Rest is necessary for survival. - There is an almost constant message in society that if you just work harder then life will get better later. Sometimes we are rewarded, but at what cost to our health? Throughout this book the detrimental effect stress can have on our bodies is discussed. The final segment of the book focuses on implementation of completing your stress cycle and finding time for rest. This can be hard when we are working towards a deadline, when the expectation is that we will be back on later, when our families need us, when we are giving and giving and giving. A helpful activity in the book focuses awareness on visualizing your time blocks to see how you can work towards integrating rest and self-care daily.
At the end of this book there is a beautiful message about the difference between happiness and joy. The persistent communication in this self-help book is that joy can be found from your own purpose and the joy gained from supporting those around you. This book ends with the following message, “The cure for burnout is not ‘self-care’; it is all of us caring for one another. So we’ll say it one more time: Trust your body. Be kind to yourself. You are enough, just as you are right now. Your joy matters. Please tell everyone you know.”1
1. Nagoski, E. and Nagoski, A. (2019). Burnout: the secret to unlocking the stress cycle. Ballantine Books.
Authored by Shannon Corrigan, Grants Program Manager
University of Maryland
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#October2024