Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - The Secret To Unlocking The Stress Cycle – With Amelia Nagoski

Episode Date: May 24, 2021

// R E A D Y • S E T • R E S E T This episode is all about burnout from a neuroscience angle and completing the stress cycle.  Amelia Nagoski, D.M.A. (it stands for Doctorate of Musical Arts), is Associate Professor and Coordinator of Music at Western New England University. Her job is to run around waving her arms and making funny noises, and generally doing whatever it takes to help singers get in touch with their internal experience. Amelia is also co-author, with her twin sister Emily, of Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. She lives in New England with her husband, one cat, and two rescue dogs. In this podcast, we cover: Signs that you have burnout The ways that social media contributes to a warped perception of our lives How burnout works from a neuroscience angle Why emotional interactions do not need to be face to face How you can complete the stress cycle // R E S O U R C E S  M E N T I O N E D Book: Burnout Book: Jane Eyre Book: Rushing Women's Sydrome Feel the impact of Organifi - use code PELZ for a discount on all products!  Join the Reset Academy // M O R E  O N  A M E L I A   N A G O S K I Kara on Twitter Kara on Instagram Nutrisense on Instagram   // F O L L O W Instagram | @dr.mindypelz & @theresetterpodcast Facebook | /drmindypelz & /theresetterpodcast Youtube | /drmindypelz   Please note the following medical disclaimer: By listening to this podcast you understand that this video is for educational purposes only. It is not intended to substitute for professional medical advice and should not be relied on as health or personal advice. Always seek the guidance of your doctor with any questions you may have regarding your health or medical condition. 

Stress is physiological. It has a beginning, a middle and end, just like all emotions. So if you're really, really angry and you listen not to music that's soothing to shut your anger down, but to really angry music, it has a way of moving you all the way through the anger to the end, to let your body reach the conclusion of the anger. You've allowed it to complete its cycle. I am a woman on a mission that is dedicated to teaching you just how powerful your body was built to be. I like to do that by bringing you the latest science, the greatest thought leaders, and applicable steps that help you tap into your own internal healing power. The purpose of this podcast is to give you the power back and help you believe in yourself

again. My name is Dr. Mindy Pels, and I want to thank you for spending part of your day with me. On this episode of the Resetter podcast, we're going to talk about burnout. out. So this is a really cool conversation that I think a lot of you guys are going to resonate with. My next guest, her name is Amelia Nagowski. And that name might sound familiar because I interviewed her sister who wrote a book called Come As You Are on the Neuroscience of Sex. And if you haven't heard that interview, please go listen to that one because that was fascinating as well. Well, Amelia has teamed up with her sister to write a book called burnout, and they really go at burnout from a

neuroscience angle. And like me, you know, many of you love the science behind why our body does certain things. Well, when it comes to burnout, turns out, and what you're going to hear in this interview, it turns out that it is not a function of doing too much. It's not a function of not giving yourself enough self-care. Burnout happens for very specific scenarios that get set up in our lives. And we walk through those scenarios. So she has a couple of key points that I can't wait to share with you guys. She talks about human giver syndrome and how we are set up for failure based off of the demands that society has placed mostly on women. We also talk about when you have a stressful event, that if you don't complete the cycle of that event, your nervous system, your brain will still

be locked in a state of fight or flight. So she goes through a list of different things that we should be doing or that we could do to unlock and stop that cycle of stress. That was fascinating. She also dove into, how do you know if you have burnout? And I'll tell you when I picked up her book, I was like, oh my gosh, wow, I didn't even realize that I had burnout. And this could be potentially why. And we all dive completely into the science behind connection. And I love this part about how powerful it is for us as humans to connect and to support each other and what that does to our nervous system and what science is saying behind the importance of connection.

So if you are looking at you. for a new strategy to handle stress, this is the episode for you. This is Amelia Nogowski, and as always, I hope you would love it as much as I loved interviewing her. I have a lot of questions because I did read it and go, oh my gosh, I think I have burnout. So now this is probably more like going to be more of like a personal consultation for me. So anyways, but let's start with this idea. One of the first things that like grabbed me in the book was your description of the three things that give you an indication that you have burnout. And I was when I started to look at those three things, not only did I apply it to myself, but I started thinking everybody in my life has

burnout. So can we start the conversation with what these three things are and how do we know we have burnout. Sure. These three, I don't know if they count as symptoms because it's not a disease, but there's three things that tends to be really common in people who have burnout. One is emotional exhaustion. Another is depersonalization. So you keep doing the work, but you no longer feel connected to it. It doesn't feel meaningful. And three is a decreased sense of accomplishment. So like you're still doing the same job you usually did, but it no longer feels gratifying or like you're, you know, making a success of something. And yeah, These feelings are, I mean, the world is extremely stressful right now, right?

Like for all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons. So, yeah, it is, we describe it as the experience of feeling overwhelmed and exhausted and yet still feeling like you're not doing enough. Yeah. And it's mostly been studied. This original study was with air traffic controllers. And a lot of the early research was specifically about work-related burnout. But the thing is people don't work in a vacuum. They work in a society. They work while they're raising families.

So anything job-related cannot be separated from what their family life is like. So if you've got a really supportive, loving home environment where you can go home and do what you need to do to take care of yourself, you are not as likely to get burned out from a work-related stressor. Does that make sense? Right. Right. Yeah. And here's one of the challenges that I've thought about with just overworking and burnout. and per se is if you love what you do is can you still get burnout like what it's yeah like that's because

that's one of the things that I feel is I love what I do the big lie the biggest lie because I'm a musician primarily by training the biggest lie I hated my whole life was do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life yeah that's just not true I you have to love what you do very deeply to pursue a career in music. It is so stressful and so hard. And especially as a music educator, educators in America are undervalued, underpaid, underappreciated in real tangible ways. And burnout is hugely prevalent in education. I think the average, last time I checked, the average time it took for a teacher to burn out was seven years. I made it five. And that was it. women aren't yet the majority of doctors, but they're the majority of nurses. They're the majority of

home care workers. So these are the populations. So it's not just about the work you do, which people who, again, go into these jobs love this work. They are committed to helping people. They get a sense of meaning from what they do. But that is not enough if you live in a society that really just fundamentally believes that women owe the world, their time, their lives, their bodies, that women do not deserve the resources and the time to care for themselves and trying to convince yourself that it's okay to do the self-care fighting a constant tide of what's the word it starts with a pee it starts with a pee it starts with a pee sorry i'm a covid long hauler so i have brain fog it's all good and sometimes i've been panned oh god it'll come to you

it's when you don't think about it, it'll come to you. So here's something that I thought was really interesting that you point out is, are there, you can be burnt out at different parts of your life. Like you talk about parental burnout. And I was like, when I read that, I thought, holy moly, nobody's ever called that out because as a parent, you are, you would appear callous. you would appear, you know, like you didn't love your children if you're like, I'm flipping burnt out. But that's a job that never ends.

Exactly. And it is the unceasing demands and unmeatable goals. I mean, the unceasing demands are just kind of inherent in parenthood, except you're supposed to have a village to share these responsibilities with so that you can have a time when you're not meeting unceasing demands. And the unmeadable goals, those are socially constructed. Like, my kid has to get into the best school. My kid has to, play this many sports. My kid has to eat this amount of that. Like a lot of this is socially constructed and trying to convince yourself that doing your best is good enough. Social media posts and advertisements and, you know, interviews and magazines that all suggest that there is a way to parent and you must do it this way. Otherwise, you're causing damage to your child.

Like how do you fight that constant onslaught of advice, supposed advice, and remind yourself that that you are enough, that you are a loving, attentive parent. And if you sometimes fail to give your kid vegetables, like, they'll be fine. It's fine. Kids are goats. They'll make nutrients out of anything. You feed them. And they're goats. And do you think our kids growing up right now? I mean, I have a 21-year-old and an 18-year-old. And I sometimes look at the world they're growing up in. And if you just take something as simple as they have to declare their major before they get into college, we just went off to college and figured it out once we were there. Yeah.

Society has a lot of new have-toes for this generation. Yeah. And I think the best thing for them and for us is to recognize that these are arbitrary social standards that were invented by people and we can just decide not to conform to them. Yeah. People were all worried during the pandemic that kids who weren't going to school were going to be damaged in the long term. Now, will their education be different? Yes, that's absolutely true. But I mean, public mandatory education is brand new to human society, right? Kids live with their families and worked at home. That was the standard operating procedure for millennia. So like, your kids are fine. They're made a rubber. They're going to need different kinds of support and different kinds of attention. And it is going to be hard to change, not because of the nature of having your kids at home with you and being, you know, doing a thing that's different. That's not the hard part. The hard part is adjusting your behaviors in a way that means that you don't feel like, I'm not doing the thing I was supposed to do,

therefore I'm failing. No, no, no, you're just doing a thing that's different and you're succeeding in a new way. That's a way that's different. And we need to detach. Well, I'm not going to say we need to do anything, but it does benefit us sometimes when we can detach from these socially constructed ideals and decide for ourselves what the ideal is. Yeah. Do you think social media continues to cause a warped perception of what we're supposed to be doing in our life? Yes. Yeah. I mean, it's just that simple. Yes. Of course it is because we're bombarded with images of people's perfect houses and perfect bodies and like it's all posed and staged and fake. No, here's a secret. No one looks like that.

No one lives like that. It's all a lie, but it's being held out to you, held before you over and over and over. And the purpose of this is to tell your subconscious to kind of brainwash you, to condition you to believe that this is the expectation and you must meet it. It is a lie. You do not have to meet that expectation. You can set your own goals and your own level of, you know, style and cleanliness. As long as it's safe for you, you get to decide. inside you, there is literally no pressure from any force that matters that you have to conform.

Now, it is appealing to a very deep part of our psyche that comes from, you know, our evolutionary heritage, because where is the safest place in the herd? The middle. If you are on the outskirts of the herd, you are much more likely to be attacked and killed by the lion or whatever predator is out there. So we'd feel a deep biological drive to blend in, to fit in. Our bodies believe that it's life or death because it used to be millions of years ago. It was life or death if we didn't fit with the herd. But these days, these days our bodies haven't unlearned that need. So the things that make us feel like we have to fit in are no longer life or death. Like you don't have to have all white cabinets in your kitchen in order to survive. But can I tell you how many

people I've met who are like, I really need to renovate my kitchen. It makes me so uncomfortable I hate it in there. Like, and if you, if it's because it's a style that just makes you uncomfortable, okay, but so many times it's because you've been indoctrinated by HGT to leave that you have to have white cabinets because everyone else has white cabinets and your inner zebra's like, oh my God, get the cabinets, get the cabinets or I'm going to die. Oh my God. That's so, that's so funny that you actually bring that up because we remodeled our kitchen years ago. And I really love it, but it's got dark cabinets and like, God forbid. I know, like a green countertop. And I've noticed recently everybody's got these white pristine kitchens. And the thought crossed my mind like, is my kitchen outdated now? Like, I just did it.

How could it be? And that drive to feel like you need to change. You need to have the same thing. Everybody else. It's so, it's so deep in your, you know, amygdala. Yeah. Right. And this is what I love about science. And this is what I love about your book is that science helps us understand. these bizarre behaviors that we have. And it helps us realize that we're normal in some sense and that we're all thinking the same thing because if we're all biologically designed to fit with the pack, then okay, so when you are feeling left out, there's a primitive reason for that. So the next question becomes, what do we do about it? Because you're going to override this primitive desire to fit in. Yeah. How you actually go about doing it is to surround yourself with

what we call the bubble of love. The bubble of love is a group of people around you who care about your well-being as much as you care about their well-being. And now they create this kind of barrier, this buffer between you and Instagram and HGTV. And they remind you that you are worthy of love, that you are worthy of resources to take care of yourself, and that conforming to the superficial appearance of blending into humanity is not actually necessary for you to be worthy of their care, to be worthy of their time and resources in paying attention to you and making sure that you don't slip through the cracks or fall into burnout,

just like you wouldn't allow them to do that. That's amazing. How do you find this bubble of love? Do you have like a questionnaire? Do you like, okay, hey, you want to be my friend? I have 10 questions for you. Could you come up with something like that? I doubt it because it's not intellectual. So people ask us this question all the time. It's like, well, what if I don't have people like that in my life? And we at first, when people started asking us this, we didn't

anticipate this question, but we realized that we did know the answer because how it worked for Emily and me is that we're identical twins, grew up in the same household. We were never close. Our family of origin was one where our feelings were not allowed. And we by far are not the, I mean, this wouldn't have sunk into us if we weren't also living in a society where feelings are dismissed. Vulnerability is a weakness and expressing emotion is, makes you hysterical. So we had a lot of reinforcement that like emotions were bad and connection and intimacy were like gross and don't. But when we started writing the book together, actually, we were reading the science that said, that really the way to wellness is connection, is love and support from a community of caring for

each other that we say all the time in the book and elsewhere that the cure for burnout is not self-care. It's all of us caring for each other. And this is not the information we wanted. Like we're both strong introverts. We're both kind of awkward about feelings. But we like read the science and that's what it said that we were supposed to do. And we found ourselves as we worked on the book, seeing the bricks of the walls dividing us are to crumble and discover that on the other side of that wall was someone who was longing and needed, no matter if it was actually conscious or below the level of consciousness, there was someone already there who wanted the same connection, who was starving for it, really, but society was telling us that we

weren't supposed to. And so we never made that leap over the wall. We never broke down the barrier because we thought we weren't supposed to. Right. We weren't allowed to, but we were already there. We just had to make that step and decide that it was okay. Do you think that we put so much emphasis on achievement that what I'm hearing in that statement is that we don't put enough emphasis on the magic of having incredible friendships or having connection with others. Part of it is we're not searching for it. We're searching for the rays. We're searching for the accolades.

We're searching for something outside of us and minimizing human connection. Do you think that's, yeah, you think that's what's going on? Yeah, and I think there's a two-pronged attack coming toward that goal. one is that achievement financial success being able to appear as though we belong with everyone else there's that of the information from the outside world telling us that that is a worthy and reasonable goal that everyone should strive for and at the same time there is the fundamental misogyny of our society which deems connection and emotions to be womanlish to be weak that if you need help and if you're reliant in anyone else, you're a failure. The only way you can

demonstrate success is if you pull yourself up by your bootstraps and do it alone. And we only respect people who, you know, who do it without any help from anybody else. But that's just a lie. That's literally the opposite of what humans are designed to do in the world. There's a social psychologist named Jonathan Haidt, H.A.D.T. who's written some books about this. And he He describes human beings as 90% chimp, 10% B. We are a hive species. If we're going to use what comes naturally to us in order to achieve what we want to achieve, it's going to be way more efficient if we use the resources we have within us. And one of those resources is the drive to connect. It is a biological need. If you raise a baby feeding in all the food it needs, keeping it the

temperate needs to be, but you never pick it up and hold it, that baby will die. eye of loneliness. It is a drive as important as food and shelter and water is connection with other human beings. And I am one of the strongest introverts I have ever met. I was, I had COVID and I was isolated for eight days before I even thought, you know what, I'd like to like hang out with a person right now rather than just like texting people. I'm a very strong introvert. So I was like, that can't be true. Turns out, yeah, turns out it's true. No matter how to be. Even for introverts. everyone needs some connection with human beings. And more overwhelming than the degree of introversion or extroversion is the degree to which society has praised people who can be

independent and made those who really are like, God, I need to spend time with other people. We have made them feel like that's a weakness and they're a failure. And that's just wrong. So well said. So well said. Do you think that connection has to be face to face? Are we connecting when we're texting on the phone or, you know, through Zoom? Are those, is it just you're having an emotional interaction with a human and that's what matters? It doesn't matter the medium. Certainly, because it doesn't even have to be a person necessarily. For people who've been through trauma, a lot of times other people don't feel safe.

So a connection with an animal or going out for a walk in the woods and feeling a connection with nature. For people of faith, the connection to the sense of divine of being held by a loving creator can be a sense of connection. It absolutely can be, because here's the thing, your brain doesn't know the difference between a thing you're experiencing in your imagination versus in the real world. When you read a book and your heart races and you're like so excited about what's going on in the story, that's your body responding to actual stimulus. Your imagine has received a stressful story and your body responds to it. That's not vicarious or made up. That is your body actually having that feeling. There is

is a bodily and kinesthetic benefit to actual co-presence. This is a new science, person-to-person neuroscience or two-person neuroscience. The idea that when people come together and work together, there is an exchange of energy that is greater than the sum of its parts. I'm a musician, and my area of specialty is choral conducting. So what I do for a job is bringing people into a room to move and breathe in time together. And there is something mystical about that. There's something so powerful. It draws people who have worked all day and they want to go home, eat dinner, put on their

pajamas and go to bed. But instead, they eat dinner and then they keep their pants on and they leave the house to come sing. Not because they feel a responsibility, not because it's, you know, hugely exciting, but because there's something that relates to our deep primal need to connect in a room together, not even just like bodily contact, but co-presence. So there is something special about being in a room together, about this. It sounds so dumb when I say things like synergy, but, I mean, there's a real thing that actually happens.

It's measurable that when we move in time together, it changes who we are. I love that. special. But if we recognize that that's not possible or safe for a variety of reasons, we can absolutely still benefit from connection through texting or Zoom. You can intensify the value of those interactions if you're interacting not just through visual or oral, but you add other sensory experiences. So if you both go to the restaurant and pick up the same meal and you're eating the same food together or drinking the same drink together and you share that sensory experience, you add to the ability of your imagination to tap into that connection.

So cool. I love this. I was also thinking with the choir example, you know, if that person goes and starts singing, they're also stimulating their vagus nerve. And so you're getting the human connection plus you're strengthening your parasympathetics through the vagus nerve. That's actually, I'm not a singer, but I can see. that that would be quite powerful. Singing is great for your health. I mean, there's just the deep breathing,

there's the paying attention to what you're doing while you're doing it. Practice that is mindfulness meditation. Singing is a meditation. It is breathing. It is being in tune with your physical experience. Yeah, singing is, I mean, yeah. You're a little biased on it. Not to advertise my own thing, but like, for real though, playing an instrument is almost as good, but singing, it's so, it's it's all human it's all of your you know monkey suit engaged in this special thing and also not just connection to your body right here right now not just connection to the music you're singing right here right now but connection to the audience uh connection to the imaginary audience that you're pretending you're going to connect with when you finally perform this and it's also connection to

the person who wrote that music maybe hundreds of years ago and halfway around the world and you see oh my god bach really gets me how did he know what it was what you're would feel like. Well, it's because we're all human and we get this sense of being one with the world, one with humanity, one with the universe. And that sense of, we call this the Uber bubble, Uber bubble, not just the bubble of love, the Uber bubble. And that means that you feel connected not just to who's in front of you, but to the larger sense of connectedness to creation. So cool. Yeah. We're so primal. You know, we do. My audience and following, we do a lot of fasting together.

And there's a couple of things I've learned from teaching fasting techniques to all these people. One is that food is a state changer. And what I'm learning now in many discussions I've had, but I'm also hearing this in this discussion is that there are primal needs that we have that will move our state. Like I always tell people, turn on music. If you're feeling bummed, like turn on music. And now I'm thinking, okay, turn.

on music and start singing, start dancing, whatever you need to do, because you're now tapping back into who you're meant to be and a physiological need that you have. So yeah, or even if you're not moving your body and engaging physically, if as you listen, you turn toward the feelings that come up, like people think, why do people sing the blues? If they're so sad, they should just not, they should listen to happy music instead. But there's something about singing music that is the way you feel. right now that actually helps move you through the cycle because nothing is permanent, right? Everything's a cycle that happens in your body. Stress is physiological. It has a beginning,

a middle and then, just like all emotions. So if you're really, really angry and you listen not to music that's soothing to shut your anger down, but to really angry music, it has a way of moving you all the way through the anger to the end to let your body reach the conclusion of the anger. And whatever cause the anger is still there, but you are in a place where you can better face it because you've not let the anger go, but you've allowed it to complete its cycle. Yeah. So let's talk about that because that was another aha in the book. I learned something about myself in the pandemic was that when I get anxious,

if I get out and I walk, that it calms my nervous system down. And then I saw some science saying, yes, because when you're in a state of anxiety, the body wants to run from the tiger. so you need to go walk so that you can calm. And so it wasn't just like, oh, I like to walk to help my stress. Oh, my body actually wants me to walk. Yeah. And I thought what you said was so powerful in the book about how we have a stressor.

We're dealing with that stressor. The stress goes away, but we haven't physiologically completed the cycle in our body. So we still think the stressor's there and we're still damaging our body. Talk about that because that is another phenomenal. take away from the book. Yeah, this is great news. Our fighter flight system evolved in our environment of evolutionary adaptiveness to protect us from life or death situations like being chased by a tiger. And the way that we complete the stress response cycle, the fight or flight cycle, is to actually run or hide or use our body in some way. And then there's two possible outcomes.

Either you do not escape the tiger, in which case, none of the rest of this matters, or you do escape the tiger and how you feel at the end of that, you're shaking, you're excited, you're, you just want to hug somebody and jump up and down and declare this a monumental holiday. You love your friends and family. The sun shines a little brighter. That's how you've gotten to the complete end of the stress response cycle. That's back in the evolutionary days when dealing with the thing that caused your stress, escaping the tiger, is also the same behavior that deals with the stress in your body. These days, this is not the case. We are rarely chased by tigers. Instead, we're stressed about our commutes. Well, we used to be and our taxes and our children, but we can't

deal with those things through fight or flight. You know, you cannot run away from your children. Please don't. We need you to stay with your children. So we need to deal with our children by being patient and kind. So we very appropriately stuff the frustration down and ignore it. And that's great because then we don't feel like we have to let the rage out in places where it's not appropriate, where it's not safe. But instead we can like tuck it away on a shelf for a minute and then go do something that tells our bodies that we have escaped the tiger. It thinks that there's a threat, which is more likely an existential threat now than it is to be like a physical threat. And we need to allow it to escape from the tiger, from the mental tiger. That involves moving your body physically, although honestly, that doesn't work for everyone.

My identical twin sister is a natural exerciser. Her whole life she has known that if she goes for a walk or a bike ride or dancing, she's going to come out of that feeling better. I have never once ever had that experience. And lots of people don't. And now, because I'm a COVID long hauler and I have chronic fatigue, any physical activity is dangerous for me. I can end up back in bed for three days if I exert too much. And other people, for lots of reasons, don't have access to physical activity.

So the good news is we have like a dozen things in our book that tell your body that has completed the stress upon cycle. Some of them are not physical at all. They're purely in your imagination. And some of them are really easy to access, like having a big old cry and, you know, a big old belly laugh. Some of them are more challenging because of contextual issues, like getting a good night's sleep. They used to, you know, there's this saying, sleep on it.

You'll feel better in the morning. And I always thought that was honky because I thought, well, the problem's still going to be there in the morning. How is that going to make me feel better? And the thing is that your brain actually changes while you're sleeping through the process of REM sleep. And you do wake up and you're more able to face whatever the situation is with more clarity. And you actually do feel better in the morning. But how can you do that when the world is playing Stress Olympics and telling you that unless you're like a contender for gold, by working 80 hours a week and trying to raise a family and trying to do a side hustle on Etsy,

then you are a failure. Like, how can you then getting sleep is a stressor? We have lost track of the number of women who have told us they feel guilty for sleeping. What? Guilty. Yes. It's so common. I mean, Emily taught at Smith College and the first time she taught this kind of stuff,

her 18-year-old students, 18 years old, we're like, But if I sleep, I'm not doing any good for anyone else. It's only good for me. But the truth is that, of course, when you are well rested, you are less cranky. You are less likely to be at fault in a driving accident. So it actually is for the good of the world that you get a full night sleep. Coincidentally, it's also important and necessary for well-being and you deserve to be well. to sleep. Well, and people need you to be well, too. If you really, if you put it in the way that people are thinking about their families or the people around them, like you're of no use to your family if you're not sleeping and you're locked in your amygdala all the time. Do you think that if we have a stressor and then the stressor goes away and we're like, oh, okay, well, that event was done. I'm going to sit on the couch and binge watch Netflix and drink a bottle of wine.

And then you go to sleep. The next morning you wake up and you're like, okay, I feel better. And then two days later, another stressor comes. And then we do the same thing. Do you feel like does stress, is it like compounding on us? Oh, yes. And do we literally, I think of it like you get locked in that midbrain. Is that what it is?

Like your amygdala is now running you more than any other part of the brain? I think that like sleep deprivation can definitely make you less takes away all your frontal lobe activity for sure. If binging something on Netflix takes you on an emotional journey that leaves you feeling elated and powerful, all of that are experiences that can help you complete the start response cycle in the right context with the right intention. There's no wrong way. As long as you perceive it as being helpful, so there's no, like, there's one way to do this that's better than others, although society will tell you that, like, getting physical activity is a superior way to complete your stress upon cycle because you'll also lose weight, which is literally, A, not true, and B, just gaslighting so that people start to believe that the reason they should get physical activity is so that they will be pretty to conform to the culturally constructed beauty ideal. So that actually makes physical activity a stressor for. for a lot of women. They're like, I hate going to the gym because I have to put on makeup and wear the right clothes. Like, oh, no, girl, no, just go punch a bag and, like, take your rage. So anyway, sleep is not considered one of those morally superior ways to complete the stress response cycle. Sleep is considered selfish. It's actually part of the Puritan history of the United States. The, you know, Puritans believe that too much sleep, which is like more than six hours sleep, was sloth. And it was a, a sin and this is the nation we we created for each other is this you know this grind culture anyway so

there are some means of completing the stress response cycle that are given moral superiority and that's just not true like if you're if it helps your body do it but if what you're doing is only temporarily relieving you it's like helping you ignore the stress then that is not helpful you're just like stuffing the stress deeper into your body. And what happens is that all those hormones and neurotransmitters they get released in the stress response cycle have to go somewhere. They're going to get stuck someplace in your digestive system, in your reproductive system, in your circulatory system, in your respiratory system, in your muscles, in your joints. You're going to have inflammation in your body as a result of not having allowed these chemicals to go where they need to go.

I mean, that's how I ended up in the hospital because of burnout is I had stress-induced illness. The inflammation in my digestive system was so intense that I did not. I didn't even know that I was under this much stress until I was in the emergency room. Because, again, we're all taught, like, not to attend to our own internal sensations. So how would you know you've completed the cycle? That's one thing. So I like I love that the way that you open it up for variety and people can choose what's their best way to complete the cycle. I really like that idea. But how will I know if I've completed the cycle? That's a great question. We also get to ask this all the time because a lot of people have never reached that state. They don't remember what it feels like. Emily always knew what it felt like because again, as a natural exerciser, she would ride her bike to the top of the hill.

and feel the mountains and the pastures and the sun shining down and have that sense of overall well-being and oneness with the universe. That is what it feels like to get to the end of the cycle. And people think that if they go running, they're going to get that runners high and they're going to feel the thing. Not necessarily. You've got to find what works for you. And most of us are walking around with such a backlog of uncompleted stretch response cycles that is not going to happen the first time we try a thing. My advice is, the thing that you really love to do, that when you were a kid, you were just obsessed with. You just really wanted to do it and it felt great. Because maybe that was a thing that was completing

stress response cycles for you and you can recognize that happening in your body. Try that thing first or those things first. And before you start, kind of take assessment of, first of all, this leads to the conclusion of or the question of how can I notice what my body is feeling, which is a whole other skill. But once you know how to do that, you can turn to toward your body and say, okay, what level of stress do I feel right now in my body? And then you go do the thing and you turn again and assess what level of stress do I feel in my body now. And if it's gone down from like an eight to a six, then you might be on the right track. Because eventually in a few months maybe of doing this thing regularly, you'll get down from a four to a one. And then

you'll start to be like, oh yeah, this really feels different. So it's getting to know yourself is what I here. Unfortunately. So some of us have had to learn explicitly. And the good news is that it is a learnable skill. Excellent. It takes practice and it takes time. But, but yeah, absolutely. The number one thing is to learn to listen to your body and what it's telling you and then to believe it and to trust it over the advice of outsiders or so-called experts or what social media is telling you. Like a lot of us judge our health by the size and shape of our body rather than by listening to our body and what it needs. And, uh, amen. Yeah, that's, I, I didn't believe that for a long time, uh, which is why I ended up in the hospital with stress and due stillness because I was not listening to what my body was

telling me. I was like, I'm in pretty good shape. I must be fine. No, no. Yeah, being in health care for so many years, I am shocked at how many people are disconnected from what's going on in their body. And I think to your point, it's because we have put so much emphasis on the outside activities that we're doing that we've trained ourselves to be disconnected. So I love that you said you can train yourself to be connected again. And I hope everybody's like that's listening to this is grabbing that message. And I love that you also are saying everybody has a different way. I'm like your sister. Exercise is more my way. But I also honor the fact that that doesn't work for everybody. So we all have to find our individual way. I love that. The most difficult part of

that struggle is not just getting to listen to your body when that's hard for you, but also then unlearning and learning to disbelieve outside expectations, like all those billboards are those, you know, curvy women and whatever. You have to dig down into your subconscious where those messages have rooted themselves to say this is the expectation. You need to conform to this. You need to find that and you need to excavate it. You need to dig it out and teach yourself to believe a brand new message. And at the same time while you're doing that, you're going to be bombarded with more images. And you have to keep, it's a cycle.

It has a beginning, a middle and an end. And then it starts all over. So it's this constant re-evaluation, this constant re-examination. And this is where the bubble of love is so important. Because then it's not just you being like, I believe that I am healthy. I believe that I am healthy. I believe that I am healthy. you have someone else telling you, yes, it doesn't matter what this chaper size is your color of your body

or how much body hair is on it. What matters is that you feel healthy. And when you have others to surround you and help you convince yourself that you deserve to believe your body that your body is worthy of trust, that's how you don't get burned out from having to struggle against social external pressures. I love that. I love that. So, okay, so we have to recognize burnout. I love the way that those three things that you mentioned. We have to prioritize connection. I love that. I hope everybody's hearing that. And then we've got to have a toolbox for completing the cycle. And I would assume that it's not just one thing. Usually people have many, because sometimes you've got to pull for a different tool if the one tool is not working. Absolutely. We talk in the book about an interview

that Rachel Maddo did at Smith College when Emily was still there. And Emily asked a question. from the audience, how do you manage stress and prevent burnout? And Rachel Maddo talked about how when she's in New York and she's working, it's like one kind of stress and she really loves her job, but what really helps her is to go back to Massachusetts with her family, with her pets, going into the woods and just changing gears. Because while one gear is all worn down, it can build itself back up while you go work another gear. And so that shift, we say on the book, that 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. So from physical activity to rest, from effort to relaxation, from autonomy to connection and back

again, just like your body runs on the cycle of, you know, diastolic and systolic blood pressure and inhalation and exhalation up and down, you know, you are made of cycles and allowing your body to have the freedom to go through all of them, to have permission, that's going to be a fundamental change for a lot of people. Yeah. And hopefully in the pandemic taught us all to be really flexible. I think definitely that was what I see in my inner circle. My what did you call it my love bubble, like, you know, everybody, bubble of love. Like everybody is learning to be a little more flexible because adversity kept coming. So I think that is powerful. The other thing, that you said that in the book that I thought was profound was this idea that burnout can happen

because we are either operating being pulled towards a big vision or something that is delightful and exciting to do or we are running from something we don't want to do. And I think in career, we do this a lot. Like, I'm going to go to work so I'm not poor so that I can, you know, live in a house and have food on my table, that's going to burn you out a lot quicker than, oh, my gosh, I have a vision. I want to change the world and do this. And by the way, I'll get paid for it. That was pivotal as well.

And I don't think enough people realize that. Yeah, this actually comes from a study of that's called the owl and the cheese is how we refer to it to the book. And the study was this. They present a participant with a maze on a piece of paper, just a, you know, normal maze. And you need to either take a little mouse on the paper. through the maze and imagine the mouse reaching a piece of cheese, which is the kind of goal-oriented, I'm going to get to that cheese. Or there's this owl looming up in the corner, like the owl's

going to attack the mouse unless it escapes to the other side. So there's either, you know, directing towards something positive or running away from something negative. And the result of that experiment is that participants who were running away from the owl were slower at competing the mazes or didn't complete them more often, as opposed to people with the going towards a positive goal tended to stay more relaxed and to get through more mazes more successfully, which shows like an underlying physical response of when you shut down out of even just the smallest amount of threat, like an imaginary owl and an imaginary mouse, just that small amount of stress is enough to lock us down and make us less flexible, to make us less able to think critically and to be imaginative

and to really fulfill our potential. Yeah. And I've noticed that in my own life, is why I think I resonated with it, is that when I have a vision, when I have a target, when I'm excited about something, it's just everything feels effortless. It kind of just flows really nicely. But when I'm doing something because I don't want the opposite of it, I don't want the negative, it's like it feels so laborious and just exhausting to go through the process. Exactly. Yeah. And it's not just even like your conscious feeling. The fact that you're aware of it consciously means that you're probably pretty attuned to how your body feels. but lots of us are not.

Right. So it all happens below the level of conscious awareness for us. So we may not even notice the difference, but it's still happening. Just because you don't notice it doesn't mean it's not happening. Yeah, yeah. Well, I don't even know if I noticed it until I read the book. And then I was like, I like took a picture of the page. I sent it to my love bubble.

And I was like, oh, my God, this is exactly true. What do you guys think? So I didn't even know I had a love bubble either until you. So there's so many things I, like you connect. dots for me in this book. It was so good. Before we close down, I want to, the one other really profound thing you say in the book is this human giver syndrome. And we got to talk about that because I am surrounded by a lot of givers and I watch them and I watch how they get burnt out. So talk a little bit about what that is and how do we avoid it? Yeah, this is so fundamental that like we

talk about the stress cycle in chapter one, and we get into the human giver syndrome in chapter two, because it's one of those things you need to know in order to understand what comes in the other six chapters. Human giver syndrome is language that we adopted from a book called Downgirl, the logic of misogyny by a philosopher called Kate Mann. And in her book, it's a book of moral philosophy. So she posits a world in which there are two kinds of people. There's human beings who have a moral obligation to be their humanity, to express it, and to acquire. And to acquire whatever resources are necessary in order to accomplish that. And then there are the human givers who have a moral obligation to give their time, their lives, their bodies to the human beings. And you can

probably tell even from this like cartoonish black and white sketch, which one the women are, remembering that's from a book called The Logic of Misogyny. And this dynamic of people who are entitled and people who are morally obliged to give until they have nothing left is a, is a, is a, the perfect dynamic for burning out half the population. The solution to this, as she points out on the book, is not for all of us to become human beings, not for none of us to feel entitled to the time and lives and bodies of the givers, but for us all to be givers and surround each other with care and to remind each other that we all deserve resources and love just as we are. And it only becomes toxic to be a giver when you are stuck in the system with human beings.

And we have a list of how you might know if you might be suffering, not just like I'm a giver and it's great to give to society, but you might be suffering because of it. And that is human giver syndrome makes you feel like you have a moral obligation to be at all times pretty, happy, calm, generous, and attentive to the needs of others. And if you at any time fail in your moral obligation to be at all times pretty happy, calm, generous, and attentive to needs of others, then you deserve to be punished. And if there's no one around to punish you, you will go ahead and punish yourself. So if any of that rings true, you might be suffering from a dynamic where other people feel entitled to your energy. Yeah. And how do you break that? All of love. Well, recognizing, like, we are sometimes in relationships with people who

feel entitled to our time and our lives and our bodies. If we can change those relationships, eliminate those relationships, great. A lot of times we can't. This is a member of our family. This is our boss at work. And there just isn't a way to change that relationship permanently. We, Emily and I both found that it was really helpful just to recognize, oh, that person's a human giver and they feel entitled to my time, my life, and my body. And I actually don't owe them that. And this is where the bubble of love comes in to help remind you and reinforce this truth because that human being is going to come back into your life and be like, hey, you owe me, your time, your life and your body. And it takes such skill and ability and comfort from other people

to maintain that sense of, no, no, no, that's a lie. That's made up by society and it's not true. The truth is that I deserve resources for myself. I deserve not to have to give until there's nothing left. What if I get, what if I get pleasure in giving? Oh, of course people get pleasure and giving. It's one of the main pleasures of life. That's fantastic. People do not get pleasure from giving in a human being, human giver dynamic. Human giver syndrome makes giving feel terrible because you're giving in an involuntary way, in a way that you're not comfortable with, in a way that depletes you of resources that you need to stay alive. Giving in a bubble of other givers is like it's almost as good as singing, which is saying a lot for me. Like it is,

it is one of the, it's one of the things that connects us. People love giving presents, you know, at Christmas time or at Hanukkah or other birthdays. Like people love giving each other, swooping in at the last minute and like bringing the dessert. Like if somebody needed it. You know, that feels amazing. It's one of the prime joys of being human in the world. But in a dynamic where someone feels entitled, that is terrible. That's not going to feel good. And you're going to know once you, this is what Emily and I discovered is that when you have this frame in your mind and you can recognize, aha, this is why this relationship feels terrible is because that person feels entitled. and you can, you know, go back to your bubble and minimize your emotional investment in the relationship with the human being. Yeah, I love that. I had a friend when my kids were little.

You learn really quickly how important your friendships are and the people that are there supporting you. And it was one of those dynamics where, like, I would take care of her kids, she would take care of mine. Like, we were just constantly, like, supporting each other. And we came up with a term called positive energy exchange. We decided when we were in each other's presence, there was this energy exchange that lifted us both up. And I think people need, everybody needs more friends like that. Yeah.

And it turns out that energy is not metaphysical or imaginary or just your like touchy-feely woo-woo interpretation. That energy physically happens. When two people share trust together, they actually increase the amount of energy that both of them are feeling, you actually increase. It's not to care for each other is not to drain each other. To care for each other is literally to create more energy together,

to allow you to be able to give more energy to your families. And then they create more energy in the world to go care for other people. This is why the cure for burnout is not self-care. This is the cure for burnout. All of us caring for each other. I love that. I love that. That's like, I get told all the time, like, by,

my love bubble like Mindy you got to take better care you know more self-care more down time you put me now I'm an extrovert so you put me in a silo by myself and I'm not feeling like that's good self-care I need to be around people that like lift me up and give me more energy and then I'm good I can go so just like you might do well as an introvert being more in isolated when you said that silo I was like sounds like heaven. And this is where it turns out that it's really necessary for each person to know what works for them. Because yo, put me in that silo and I'm going to be like, ah, whereas you would be like banging on the door. Give me some people, please. Yeah. I love the memes that went around in the pandemic where they're like, you know, the introverts are like sitting on the couch so joyful. And the

extroverts are like at the window. Like, let me out of that. That was just tip. As an introvert, what I felt like when lockdown started was now the extroverts know how I feel all the time. They can't get what they need. I mean, that's just terrible. It's literally a trauma for them. But I had this little moment of like, okay, introverts, can I just remind you that I feel like that all the time? Because the world is made for like interacting with people and people are more valuable if they're charming and if they can be around people and they love it. Like the world is more friendly and accepting those people.

And if you're an introvert and you just can't like it's life is. a little harder for you. So, I mean, I don't wish the trauma of not being able to have your needs meant on anybody. Yeah. But if you can help, you know, share it open people's minds to what other people's experiences like and that those experiences are equally valid. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So well said. Okay. So I have five questions for you. This is, again, your book has really helped me, like, take what individual thoughts I had about life and stress and you just connected the dots. I'm also a science geek. So I just loved all the science in there. And I love the human body. I love the human brain. I think that there's so much we don't understand about it. So I just got to thank you for that.

First one, if you could go back to your 20-year-old self and have a conversation with her about avoiding burnout, what would you tell her? Well, I have done that. I wrote burnout. We literally wrote burnout for 20-year-old me. If we ever had a question of, should we include this? How should we explain this? The question was, what would 20-year-old Amelia need to know? How would she need it explain to her? That was the guiding principle of the book. Yeah, I love that. I wrote a book on menopause, and I always say that this was the book I needed. So, and I think as authors, we often do write what we wish we had had. So I love that. Okay. Second question, which ties into books, if there was one book that changed your life and you were like, oh, everybody needs to read this book, what book would that be? Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Yeah, it's fiction, but it's also so true in so many ways. I mean, what Jane goes through, I mean, so like your adverse childhood experiences score, how many certain adverse experiences you have as a child tend to affect your health in adulthood. But like the ways to prevent any negative health outcomes from childhood adverse experiences is to do things like you want to develop resilience by learning to express yourself in.

art, by having good friendships, by acting upon autonomy. Jane does that. 150 years before there was any science on this, Jane does it. And there's so much like that where the truth of human experience is described through story and through character. Our last chapter of the book is called The Mad Woman in the Attic, which is a metaphor that comes from Jane Eyre because, I mean, Mr. Rochester's got a Mad Woman in his attic, and don't we all? Yeah. I love that. And I love that it's fiction. I love that. We've gotten a lot of different comments when I asked this question, but that was, that was awesome. And I plan on reading it now. Thank you. Okay. What's your personal favorite strategy for completing the stress cycle? Horseback riding. Interesting. Okay. How come?

Yeah, because it combines connection with an animal and physical activity. It's very physically demanding. and it also at the same time is very, it requires mindfulness of paying attention to what you're doing every moment that you're on the horse or every moment that you're even with the horse. So it just, it's this combination of lots of different things that complete the stress response cycle all at once. So it just, I go riding for half an hour and I feel like a new person. I love it. You know, my daughter did gymnastics on the back of a moving horse. It's called vaulting.

And yeah, and she, now that. that she's not doing the horse being with the horses as much. She often talks about the loss of that. So I love that. I love that. Okay, what are some of your personal strategies to avoid burnout? Like, do you look down the road at your calendar and go, oh, gosh, this is looking like life's going to be really full? I better do X, Y, and Z. Do you have a system for that? Can I swear? Of course. Yeah. I should have said that in the beginning. My primary strategy for preventing burnout in myself is giving no fucks. Love it.

Like I just, I don't cultivate fuchs. My fuck field is barren. So when outside world gives me information about who I should be and what I should be like, I'm just like, ha ha ha, ha, that's funny that you think that because none of that is true. And God, it's so much easier to go through the world not fearing that I have to like be exactly who someone wants me to be. I can just be myself. And if there is, if I'm not there, a cup of tea, that is fine. I love that. You know, I interviewed. So a book I'll tell you to read that you might love is called Rushing Woman Syndrome. And it's written by Dr. Libby Weaver. I interviewed her a couple

weeks ago on this podcast. And one of the things that she said is if you look at what causes us so much stress is that we're afraid of letting somebody down. We have a fear that if we don't do X, Y, and Z, then the people around us will either lose our job or we'll end friendships. I think not giving a fuck is probably an incredible strategy. So, congrats. And that probably is a learned behavior. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And you, so if you're, I was not always this way. Yeah, thank you. I burned out twice. I mean, like, hospitalized with stress and due illness.

I was just, I was made of fucks to give, you know, because I thought that's how society worked and that's how it had to be. Turns out, no, you can learn to just like let that shit go. And to the idea of the rushing woman being afraid that she's going to let somebody down, we get talked about, we talk about this all the time with journalists and stuff too. And the fact is you are 100% guaranteed going to let people down. Yes. Like, so why are you going to like rush around and give yourself stress-induced illness trying to prevent a thing that is literally inevitable? I love it. I mean, if you're doing your best, that's enough.

You don't have to be like, you know. I love it. I love it. Okay. Last question. If you had one message that you could get implanted in every person's mind on this planet, what would that message be? You are worthy of love just as you are. I love that.

I love that. Do you know how many times when I asked that question people bring up the concept of love? They all have a different way of saying it, but at the root of what everybody wants and what everybody should feel is love. And the thing that shocked me, shocked me is that that's what the science says. There's piles of research that all points in the same direction, that what makes people well in the world is care, is being. being loved and loving others. I mean, I was shocked by this because I'm not like, I wasn't into the woo-woo, you know, the touchy-feely, hippie-dupy.

Like, that was not me. But when we read the research, it said, it said love. Amazing. So it turns out people know exactly what they should be doing. We already know it's good for us. We just need to contradict the external message that telling us that love doesn't matter as much as money. Right. You just need to unlearn that and let it get away from us and slide off of us and remember that loving each other is the thing that's going to be the best thing for our health because the cure for burnout is not self-care.

The cure for burnout is all of us caring for each other. Hey, resetters. I just want to start off by saying thank you so much for all your wonderful reviews. And those of you that have left me comments on iTunes, I just greatly appreciate your thought. and how much you guys are enjoying these episodes. And it seems like you're enjoying them as much as I am enjoying doing them. One of the things that I've learned in just interacting with so many people is that we've really lost the art of deep conversations.

And for me, the Resetter podcast stands for having meaningful conversations with people who are thinking about health, about life, about mindset in a way that we may not be on social media or in mainstream media. And so I just want to say, give you guys a shout out and just say thank you for participating in this process with me. Because as much as I absolutely love delivering the information to you, I love even more knowing that it's impacting your life. So please let us know if there's anything we can do to make this podcast more customized

to you, to make it better. We are now officially in season two. and we are working to bring you the best conversations that health influencers have, that mindset changers can give, and to really deliver you something that you're not able to get anywhere else. So from the bottom of my heart, as I always say my YouTube, from the bottom of my heart, I am deeply appreciative of you. I am deeply grateful to be on this journey with you, and let's get healthy together.