Burnout summary

There’s a very scientific reason for why we tend to get stuck in the emotion of stress, which also reveals just how dangerous it is to our health.

Stress is essentially a neurological and physiological response triggered by a perceived threat. However, all the neurological and hormonal responses that accompany stress are designed to help you do one thing: run.

Working out an effective strategy against stress requires a good understanding of the difference between stress and stressors – the things that get you stressed – as well as which stressors are controllable and which are not.

Let’s say you’re a middle school teacher. In this case, there’s no avoiding the daily stressors of having to complete endless amounts of paperwork and deal with annoying school administrators. These are things you can’t control – they come with the job. What you can do is schedule daily activities that close out the stress cycle, like going to the gym or practicing with your music or theater group.

Let’s say you want to climb a mountain. If you think to yourself, “hey, this will be a piece of cake,” you will surely become frustrated at the first sign of struggle. But if you say, “I’m going to embark on the extremely challenging task of climbing this mountain,” then you’ll consider it normal and not frustrating at all when you find yourself struggling.

This is an example of how your expectations determine your frustrations. By managing your expectations, you can also manage your frustrations.

If you’re familiar with the long line of Disney musicals, then you may have recognized that in each one, from Snow White to Beauty and the Beast, the main character will sing her “I want” song. In fact, you can gauge women’s progress in the United States through these songs. Snow White sings about wanting nothing more than a valiant prince, but Belle sings about wanting “adventure in the great wide somewhere.”

Disney princesses haven’t always been the most woke, but they’ve always shown us one thing: the importance of knowing what you want. One of the most effective ways of persisting through stressful days is to know what you want and to have your life aligned with something bigger than yourself. In other words, you need to find your meaning.

Here’s another popular myth in modern society: that life is a straight-line progression from being a dependent and needy child to being an independent adult. In fact, it’s pretty common to hear people say that a “healthy” adult is someone who can feel whole with or without other people.

But here’s the reality: we aren’t going to function at our best when we’re constantly lonely and isolated or when we’re constantly surrounded by others. We need both. We need to move back and forth between feeling connected to others and feeling autonomous.

There’s an old and troubling saying that goes, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

People who believe this also tend to value our ability to push aside our needs and use sheer grit and determination to go ceaselessly from one task to the next. But this kind of life is downright dangerous. Not only will it lead to bad work but it can also take a toll on your health.

In US actress Amy Poehler’s memoir Yes Please, she describes the nagging inner voice that has often told her she’s ugly and doesn’t deserve love. Those suffering from Human Giver Syndrome likely know this inner “madwoman,” as the authors call it, as it tends to show up whenever they think they’ve failed to live up to the calm, pretty, smiling, devoted-to-others woman they’re expected to be.

Benign self-criticism can help you be more detail-oriented, but it can quickly slip into toxicity when it keeps you from doing anything. The madwoman is often a perfectionist, and she can convince you to give up when the first mistake appears or even not bother starting anything in the first place since perfection is impossible to begin with. But to grow strong and mighty you need to be able to take chances and feel free to learn from your mistakes along the way.