Call Her Daddy - How to Manage Your Stress and Prevent Burnout

Episode Date: July 24, 2022

Do you feel overwhelmed and exhausted and still worry that you aren’t doing enough? Do you ever find yourself thinking, “the worst that could happen is they’ll fire me and honestly… that would be a relief?” This is Burnout. And there is science that proves, Burnout is real. Burnout goes beyond your job and can also be experienced in relation to your relationship, family life or generally the state of the world. This week, Father Cooper is joined by Dr. Emily Nagoski, Ph.D. who explains the secret to unlocking the stress cycle and breaks down how to prevent Burnout.

What is up, Daddy Gang? It is your founding father, Alex Cooper, with Call Her Daddy. Hello, Daddy Gang. Welcome back to another mini episode of Call Her Daddy. I am very excited for you guys to listen to this mini episode today because I've been with a few people that were not connected throughout the past few months. And the word burnout has been used a lot recently to me. A friend said it to me, a colleague said it to me, and I started to think the way that they were describing it they felt like ashamed they're like I don't know what's wrong with me I feel so burnt out from my job like I feel like I'm so overwhelmed I keep wanting to pause but I'm like am I being dramatic or why do I literally feel like my

body is shutting down am I really doing that much work or is it mental? Like what the fuck is going on with me? I feel so burnt out and I cannot get out of this spiral. And so I was like, this word burnout and then the shame that comes with feeling it. Let's talk about it because is there actually a scientific explanation as to what burnout is? And should you feel shame for it? Is it you just being fucking lazy, not wanting to work? Or is there more to it? I will give you the fucking quick answer.

There is way more fucking to it. I have Emily Nagoski on today and she's an expert on burnout. And I cannot wait for you guys to hear how she explains what the actual fuck is going on when you enter that phase and that feeling and it's a really scary feeling of burnout. Emily Nagoski, welcome to Call Her Daddy. I am thrilled to be here. You have a PhD in health psychology with a concentration in human sexuality and a master's degree in counseling. When I came across your TED Talk and your book, Burnout, The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, I knew we needed

you on Call Her Daddy. Today, you are our expert on burnout. I'm assuming there are some people that probably are not sure what even burnout technically is. So let's start with, can you define burnout? Yeah, it has like a technical definition that's been pretty standard since the 1970s, where it's got these three components of emotional exhaustion. And that's really like the number one thing, especially for women. There's also a decreased sense of accomplishment where you're working harder and harder and achieving less and less. And there's also a decreased sense of accomplishment where you're working harder and harder and achieving less and less. And there's also a sort of emotional detachment from what you're doing. The way this played out for me in my life was when I start thinking, what are they going to do? Fire me?

That's a sign that I'm burnt out. Oh, I don't actually have to put my all into this project. Oh, I don't actually have to try here because it doesn't matter. Nothing good is going to happen anyway. The worst that can happen is they'll fire me. And frankly, it would be a relief. It's funny when it's just a regular day job, but if your doctor or your kid's teacher feels this way, it's a really big deal when someone gets in that place. Yeah. So a spiral that is a dark place I'm sure to be in. Hopefully today we're going to kind of help people know how to get out of that. And there's a shorthand, like keeping those three things in mind as a project. So Amelia and I,

Amelia is my twin sister and we wrote the book together and we define burnout really simply as feeling overwhelmed and exhausted by everything you have to do and still worrying that you are not doing enough, whatever enough is. Yeah. That's such like a paradox of like, you feel so stressed by it all. And then on the other hand, you're like, I'm not doing enough in my life. And it's still not enough. Yeah. So is burnout. Cause if we just have to ask this so that we can really punch it home. Is burnout a concept that is supported by science or just something we all say when we get tired of our job? So it is a formal diagnosis in the ICD-11, the International Classification of Diseases. The definition though, formally,

is limited to workplace burnout. And if the pandemic has taught us anything, it has taught us that we can burn out from parenting. We can burn out from a relationship. Pretty much any context can cause us to be overwhelmed and exhausted to have that feeling of like, I have nothing left. My tank is empty. So when we talk about this concept of this feeling of exhaustion, how does emotional exhaustion occur? Yeah, right. So one, what's an emotion? And two, how do you exhaust it?

So emotions are phenomena that physically happen in your physical body. Let's say like something that causes you stress, something that makes you feel anxious or angry. Your body responds. It gives you all this adrenaline and cortisol. It increases your heart rate. It increases your blood pressure. It reduces your digestion. It reduces your immune functioning. It reduces your hormones, your sex hormones. And all of that is an aid of one thing, which is to let you run. And this is an emotion, all this stuff happening in your body. Emotions aren't just sort of like things floating around your head. They're

actually happening in your body and emotions. Like most of our physiological processes have a beginning, a middle and an end, right? So the beginning is that like you're exposed to something that enrages you and you go, right, flush of all this stuff. The middle is the part where you process all those chemicals. And the end is where your body completes what we call the stress response cycle and returns you to a place of calm and peace. Alas, we live in a world where the strategies that actually complete the stress response cycle have almost nothing to do with the strategies that deal with the thing that caused the stress in the first place. That's fascinating because it's always like, oh, I'm so stressed and no one ever knows what the

heck to do. Right. Because we think it's about dealing with the thing that caused the stress. Well, you just need to fix your problems and then you'll be happy and fine. And it turns out, no, very frustratingly. You got to like sit in meetings with that jerk Paul and you got to nod and smile and be like, that's a really interesting idea that this other person just had that I'm giving them credit for and smiling and being really nice about it because that is my job. And inside your body is like, crawl across the table and strangle him. Right? Yes. Human brains are amazing because they will let us like, wait, they will let us, they will hold on. Our prefrontal cortex will initiate a bunch of executive functioning that makes us behave appropriately for the meeting. And that's great. It is when you get out of the meeting that you have to do something that your body recognizes as completing the stress response cycle. It's

probably going to involve physical activity. And that could be like going for a straight up run. It could just be like jumping up and down and making gurgle noises in your throat while you do that. It could be lying down and just tensing every muscle in your body for a slow count of 10 until your muscles are uncomfortable and they want you to stop, but just a little bit longer. And then you let it all flap and that's enough to drain off the worst of the stress. That's really helpful to hear. And I go back to something you had said in the beginning, which is interesting, where you said women experience this more. Why do more women, because there's a lot of women listening to this podcast, why do more women suffer from emotional exhaustion than men? Yeah. So Amelia and I call it human giver syndrome.

It is the message we are taught literally from the day we're born that because we were born with a particular package of genitals, it's a girl. We have a moral obligation to be pretty, happy, yet calm, generous, and unfailingly attentive to the needs of others. And when your job is to be a human giver, then you never inconvenience anyone with something as demanding as your own uncomfortable feelings. It makes them uncomfortable. Even as little girls, we get taught, oh, I hate to see that sad face on your face. Put a smile on your face. I love it when you're happy. It makes me so happy when you're happy. Can't you be happy? And in order to make people around us happy, we will just be like, I'm fine. Everything is fine. This is fine. And inside we're like, and so like a stress response is activated in this little girl's body. And she's told she's not allowed to have that emotion. And it will just like park

itself somewhere in your body for decades. And just obviously the patriarchal society that we live in, it's been so convoluted. And it's always like, we just hope one day men can show their emotions because they've been told from such a young age, like rub the dirt off. But there's never been a conversation about the effect of what it's like for a young girl to be like, smile and be a good girl. And so you talking about this, like human giver syndrome that a lot of women feel, there's so many things that come with that. And then dealing with this like emotional exhaustion, because we're constantly giving, giving, giving, and we're never being given back. That makes a lot of sense. How can burnout affect our physical health? Oh man. So the,

our motivation for writing this book is actually that Amelia was hospitalized when she was in grad school. Her doctorate is in choral conducting, and many people don't know that classical music is as misogynist as any STEM field. Women's bodies are not welcome in those spaces. That might be something you're a little familiar with, where you walk into a room and just the physical fact of your body means that people treat you with mistrust. And she experienced that for years, driving two hours each way to grad school while also working three part-time jobs and parenting three teenage stepchildren. So she was a little stressed and she ended up on the bathroom floor in so much pain, she thought she was going to die. She was hospitalized twice. And I'm a health educator. I'm working as a, as a health educator at a college at the time. And I show up

with like peer reviewed science about the relationship between stress and your body, which like, that's how we show love in my family. But so like this stuff helped her as she puts it, it saved her life twice. And the conversation about burnout is very often about like, I can't get stuff done instead of about my body is slowly degrading. So I am so glad we were talking about the health consequences. The concept of like, oh, you're just stressed, like sleep it off. Like it is such a concept that sometimes people, I feel like don't have any type of empathy or leniency for it. And it's very helpful to hear you, especially talking about your sister and what she went through. And especially

as a woman, the effects that this can have on you. So what do you think the biggest misconception people have about burnout? I think it really is that it's like just burnout, that you just sort of like give up on your job or you just are tired. And what's actually happening is that your body is stuck because stress is not inherently dangerous. Stress is a natural part of living in a human body in any world, what's dangerous is getting stuck in that middle place where your chemistry is in this place where it's ready to help you fight off whatever the danger is or escape whatever the danger is. If you stay in that place of danger all the time, your body is not able to tolerate it. It's so nice that you're correlating all of it because again, it's like, it shouldn't be just thrown away as like, oh, it'll, you'll get over it in 24 hours. Yeah. And like, let's not diminish sleep and rest. They

are so important. They're one of the evidence-based strategies, like so much important stuff happens in sleep, but I can't even tell you how many people I've talked to women in particular who feel guilty about sleep. Okay. Well, lucky for us, you have unlocked the secret to preventing burnout. So can you explain what is the stress response cycle and how do you explain it? So the stress response cycle is this beginning, middle and end. Well, if you're being chased by a lion, what do you do? Run. You run, right? So you start running. Lions are very fast, but you're very persistent.

So you run as fast as you can back to your village. Somebody sees you coming and they open their door and they let you in and you both slam your shoulder against the door and you hold it there really tight and you see the lion charging. It's an extremely persistent lion, but eventually it gives up and it wanders away across the horizon. People can't see, but I am doing my line. This is the lion who's disgruntled. She's got to find somebody else to eat, to feed her kids. And when you see the lion's tail disappear over the horizon, how do you feel?

Relieved. Yes, you're relieved. You're glad to be alive. You love your friends and family. The sun seems to shine brighter. That is the end. That is the complete stress response cycle. It is easy to believe it is the running or the disappearance of the lion.

So which is it that causes the completion of the stress response cycle? Is it the lion going away or the fact that you ran and somebody helped you? It is the running and the fact that someone helped you. Wow. Cause if, I mean, we live in a world where we now have all kinds of technology, the lion's coming right for you. You've got a gun. Sorry to be like dark about this but like you got to save your life right if you have a gun you shoot the lion do you after you shoot the lion and it collapses do you now suddenly feel like grateful to be alive and relieved and you love your friends and family and the sun shines brighter or do you still feel like on

the alert waiting for the next lion because your body didn't do anything to tell it that it is now safe so even though your circumstances change your body is still vigilant waiting for you to do something that tells it it is now safe oh wow so it was the physical act of the running that that completes physiology. Yes. See, cause I would have been like, I guess because the lion walked away that I can now calm down. And now that's so interesting. Okay. So hearing you talk about that is helpful because so the goal here is to let our minds know that we feel safe as you just called it completing the stress cycle right exactly you described we just talked about the running in that analogy what are some ways that we can

let our minds know that we are safe and we've completed the cycle? Such an important question because people often talk about physical activity. And because of this whole running away from a lion thing, physical activity can be a very efficient way, but it is not equally accessible to everyone. I talked to my sister about like, well, when you engage in physical activity at a certain point, your body clicks and you're like, oh, eat no matter how reluctant you were to put on your shoes. At some point you're like, I'm so glad I did this. I feel so much better now. And Amelia was like, I have never had that experience. I'm pretty sure you're making it up. Like people just vary in how responsive their bodies are. So, and for some people, like you've got chronic pain,

chronic illness, injury, uh, for some, like if you're a trans, if you want to go to the gym, you could literally be increasing your danger in order to get physical activity. That's going to help your body feel safer. That doesn't make sense. Fortunately, we have like a dozen other evidence-based strategies for dealing with the stress response. Sleep is absolutely one of them. We're looking for seven to nine hours. People vary in the amount of sleep they need. I'm a seven and a half hour sleeper. Amelia, we're identical twins raised in the same household. She needs nine hours. If she only gets eight, she really feels it. And there's privilege that comes with my only needing seven and a half hours, partly that, oh, I have more time in a day. And also people don't judge me and I don't judge myself. Whereas

for a long time, Amelia felt bad about the fact that she just needs nine hours of sleep. So sleep, number two, number three connection. This can be with loving other people. One of my favorite little tips is the 30 second hug. Now, this 30 seconds in a row of putting your arms around someone and having them put their arms around you, you've got to really like that person in order for that not to be potentially very awkward. But that's exactly the point. And it's not about the 30 seconds.

It's about holding someone close until, uh, Suzanne, I a sense of the sex therapist calls it hugging until relaxed where your body recognizes, ah, I have this person in my life. And when I come home to this person, I have come to a place of safety. I can trust my body in the presence of this other person. That's the 30 second hug. There's also John Gottman's recommendation of a six second kiss. It's a long enough to be a significant moment, but not so long. You put the, make the kids late for school. That's a really interesting one. Cause I had someone on my team. She was like, I was doing research and I tried it. And all of us women were on the call getting ready

for this interview. And she was like, guys, you all have to go. And if you have a partner, just like kiss them for six seconds and hold it. And she was like, because I'm not kidding you. I tried it. And I felt my whole body just kind of relax after the six seconds. And like the hug, it's not about the 30 seconds. It's not about the six seconds.

It's about having a moment where you're tuned in enough to the reality that you have someone in your life that you care about and trust enough that you will put your face against their face for that long. Yes. I love it. So we have a rest. We have physical activity. We have connection.

There's also creative self-expression, which is, so when therapists tell you to journal, they're not telling you that the constructions of sentences is good for you. They're not telling you that the physical act of writing is good for you. They're telling you to have a place to put all those uncomfortable emotions so that they're not going to do harm to your body. And so that they're not going to do harm to anyone else. So while you're journaling, the idea is you're not simply writing sentences. You're having an emotional experience. I write fiction as my strategy. And what that looks like on the outside is me like typing and sobbing.

That is so good. I remember my therapist told me because I was like, journaling is just not working for me. I don't know why. And she was like, why don't you podcast, but you don't upload it. And it's just for you. And so I have now a folder of episodes that just for me, when I need to express how I'm feeling and I can't write it on a piece of paper. And so I just talk into a microphone for an hour and I'm like, Whoa, I feel better. That is a smart therapist. I know. She really knows what she's doing, but these are really helpful. So we went over physical activity.

I know you had also mentioned in your book, breathing, pretty underrated. Yeah. And yet it's the foundation of wellness. And not only is it literally true that when you take a deep breath in, and in particular, when you have a long, slow exhale, that's the activation of the parasympathetic nervous system. And it just calms and soothes everything that's happening in your body. You get to the end of that breath. You keep doing it until you can have a long, slow breath that doesn't like shake or tremble or get stuck. Do you know

what I mean about your breath? Like getting stuck? Absolutely. When it's smooth coming in and smooth going out on that long, slow exhale, your body will be making a transition literally, but it's also a metaphor because again, it's not the stress itself. It's getting stuck. Wellness is not a state of mind or a state of being. It is a state of action. It is the freedom to oscillate into and all the way through the cycles of living in a mammalian body. And the breath is the foundational

oscillation of being alive. And I feel like it's so underrated because I think in the world we live in and how fast we're all moving, especially with social media, you know, the concept of breathing, I think to people is just like, that's how I stay alive rather than like, you should be in tune with your breathing. And if you are so stressed, that's actually a way that you can decrease your stress and help yourself reconnect with your body and bring those emotions back to center. Because I feel like, let's say someone was like, okay, Emily, I am so busy though. Like I don't possibly have time to stop and do any of these activities. Can I just tell myself the stressor is gone

and everything's gonna be okay. Yeah, that's literally like the one thing we know for sure doesn't work is telling yourself to relax. Everything is fine. The stressor is gone. You actually, like you live in a body. That is the reality. It's inconvenient.

It can be uncomfortable. Bodies are not really made for the world that you live in a body. That is the reality. It's inconvenient. It can be uncomfortable. Bodies are not really made for the world that we live in. I don't know why we did this to ourselves, but here we are. Yes. But like 10 seconds, 30 seconds, if you can transition your attention away from all the stuff that's activating your stress towards your body. And even if you're not doing breathing, like a simple self-compassion exercise where you fold your hands over your heart and you slow down your thoughts and you

turn towards yourself and you say, it's going to be okay. This is really hard. This is really hard right now. I know. And it's going to be okay. Just that like few seconds. It's, it's so helpful too, because I, and everyone listening, like read like your book and your Ted talk, everything you talk about, it helps when you are explaining that completing this cycle is not an intellectual decision to end stress. It is a physiological shift. And I don't think a lot of people, it's like telling yourself to poop, go ahead and poop, do it, do it. And you're like- Amelia does not love it when I use digestive analogies, but-

Tell Amelia we're fine with it over here at college. So, and to confirm, does binging Netflix and eating a pint of ice cream count as completing the stress response cycle? Alas, no. There is a way that consuming stories can complete the stress response cycle alas no uh there is a way the consuming stories can complete the stress response cycle like if you're really engaged in reading a book or watching a movie or listening to a story uh and like your body reacts as if you are in that like adventurous moment and you feel

the joyous victory at the end then that's your body being carried through the stress response cycle on the back of the story. That can be, but the kind of binging where we're like disengaged from the story and just allowing it to wash over us and feeding ourselves ice cream, that is rather than completing the stress response cycle, you are numbing, which I am not anti-numbing. There are times when life is just too hard. This is too uncomfortable. You have to numb the pain so that you can tolerate the process of being alive long enough to be well enough actually to complete the stress response cycle. Life is really hard. Very. And I appreciate all this because I think everyone listening now, like when you are so stressed, we can leave this episode knowing you need to physically do something to allow your body to know we are coming out of the stress zone, whether it's running, whether it's journaling, reading a book,

breathing, hugging, having positive social interaction. So, and if you feel like you're not allowed to do those things, that's the patriarchy. Yep. And when you defy the patriarchy and you're like, no, actually my physical, basic bodily needs are important and worth attending to. You are helping to create a world that is dismantling a world where you believe other people's opinions about your body rather than believing what your body itself is trying to tell you. Absolutely. There is no shame in taking care of yourself. Right. So how will someone know once they have completed the stress response cycle? So this comes differently to different people. Again, even though we're identical twins raised in the same household, I can feel it. Like when I was in college, I was a long distance cyclist and I

would, we were born and raised in Delaware. I went to the university of Delaware and I would cycle across state lines into the Hills of Pennsylvania. And there was this one Hill with like a cow pasture at the top of it. And when I would get to the top of that Hill, I could feel something shifting me just like the shifting of the gears on my bicycle where just my body went. And literally the sun reflecting off the pavement felt like it was shining for me. Like I could feel the shift in my body. Amelia has never had that experience. So instead, she assesses at the beginning of whatever she's going to do.

Where am I in the stress? I'm at like nine. And if at the end of what she does gets her down, like, where am I now? Seven, six, that's actually really significant. Especially if you've got decades of accumulated stress response cycles, it's not going to happen all in one go. It's going to take a practice. Okay. That's really helpful. So everyone's going to have it different, but if you're able to prior to engaging in whatever physical activity you're going to partake in gauging, at least like, where am I at in my stress? So that you have something to be like, I called it a nine and now I actually feel at a five that's progress. And let me just add, because physical

Amelia was a good girl. She did what she was told. She would exercise on the elliptical machine four times a week and never had that feeling of like, oh, but when I told her about the power of imagination as part of creative self-expression, she began imagining herself as Godzilla on that elliptical machines. She wasn't just sweaty and tired. She felt elated. So when you combine using your imagination to destroy a thing, you cannot actually physically destroy. There's actually very little difference between really vividly imagining doing something and actually doing it. When basketball players vividly imagine shooting hoops, they get just as much better as the basketball players who actually practice shooting hoops, they get just as much better as the basketball players who

actually practice shooting hoops. Your imagination is so powerful. That's incredible. I'm going to use that next time I'm struggling to go work out. Why is it that the longer we stay inside a stressful situation, the less likely we are to change it or get out of it. Yeah. So there's a lot of excellent affective neuroscience about this. And the nerd in me wants to be like, let's talk about the discrepancy reducing increasing feedback loop and everyone falls asleep. So let me cut to the end and say that we have been taught that quitting is a bad thing.

We have been taught that giving up is inherently a failure. And it's just not true. Okay. So let's take the example of a squirrel who is foraging for nuts in a little patch of the forest. The longer the squirrel forages in that little patch of forest, the fewer nuts there are to find because she's already finding all of the nuts. And there's a certain threshold. Her body is tuned to the environment so that she recognizes that there's diminishing returns and she should move on to a different patch. Now there's all kinds of factors that can influence when that switch gets thrown, right? So if she hears like the rustle of a potential predator over in a different patch, she's going to realize there's a greater potential risk to moving. She's going to

stay right where she is for a while. Anybody ever had a job like this where like I'm gotten like almost everything that I can from this experience, but there's this rustle of a potential predator over in another place. And so should I leave or should I just stay where I am? Right. But the squirrel's body is attuned to the environment and so are ours. We have a wise voice that can tell us, you're done. And when we dare to be as wise as the little squirrel, we can hear the part of our body that's like, you've gotten everything you can from this particular patch of the forest and it is time to move on and if we don't listen to the cultural voices that say no you're just giving up and are like I'm doing what's right for me and my body again if we believe what our body is saying over what other people are telling us we should believe is it possible to feel burnout about society as a whole, the school shootings and Roe versus Wade. And it's like, I feel like- World on literal fire.

Yes. What do we do? That's real. And so this is where it becomes really good news that there's a difference between dealing with the stressor and dealing with the stress itself. It means that while your stressor still exists, you can be dealing with the stress that's happening in with the looming tyranny and authoritarianism and the erosion of our reproductive rights. It's really easy to look at the big picture and just collapse in a helpless heap. There was actually an Onion article back in January of 2017 about how women are lying on their apartment floors and increasing numbers, just getting home and lying on the floor. And I related hard to that.

But again, you don't have to wait for the world to be a better place before we begin to feel better. In fact, we have to take care of ourselves so that we stay well enough to continue in the fight to make the world a better place because there are children being born and they don't deserve the world that we are giving them. They didn't ask for this. It's disgusting what's happening. And so I feel that at times you can get wrapped up in watching the news and reading the articles and feeling so overwhelmed of just sadness and depression and almost like

grief because of what's happening. And I think that literal, Hey guys, let's not let this shit break us. If anything, knowing now this stress relief cycle, taking care of ourselves, being physically active, breathing, kissing, hugging, creative, whatever it is. It's like, if we can holster that within ourselves and we can be able to manage our stress levels, then can I tell you about the magic trick? Yes, please. The cure for burnout can't be self-care. It has to be all of us caring for each other, caring for each other's wellbeing as much as we care about our own. I think that is so beautiful and such a good way to wrap this up because taking on this stress that you're feeling, especially in the wild time of the world that we're living in currently, like you are not alone and it is a step away from you feeling

a little bit of relief. And hopefully this episode can help you begin that journey. If you were feeling so lost and so helpless, like not today. Thank you so much. Thank you.