My favorite feminist self-care book authors were on Brené Brown’s podcast this week — a beautiful blending of my interests. Emily and Amelia Nagoski wrote Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle and I’ve written about it here last year.
The podcast is a great cheat sheet and introduction to the book and covers my biggest takeaways that I’ve tried to apply to my own life including:
- dealing with the stress and dealing with the stressor are two different things
- Emotions have a beginning, middle, and end
- We get stuck — exhausted, burnt out — when we get caught in the middle of the emotion
- We can complete the stress cycle in a lot of different ways, but the best one is movement
I highly recommend the book. It was revolutionary to me. And the conversation I listened to during my run this evening validated all that with new wisdom thrown in relevant to this year where we’re collectively feeling burnt out.
Here’s one piece of gold I transcribed:
“The cure for burnout isn’t and can’t be ‘self-care’. It has to be all of us caring for each other. What we realized is that self-care is the fallout shelter you build in your basement because, apparently, it’s your job to protect yourself from nuclear war? So, we talk about sleep, we talk about stress, we talk about physical activity . . . well that’s not going to work if you live in a household where you’re the only person who prioritizes your well being. It requires everybody in the household agreeing that your eight hours of sleep is a priority and we are going to quarter off that time and space and protect it so that you can have that time. Self-care requires a bubble of protection of other people who value your wellbeing at least as highly as you do. So the cure for burnout must ultimately be all of us caring for each other.“
Self-care not as an act of individualism, but collectivism. A contract with one another to prioritize each other’s well-being. That’s what a revolution looks like.
With Love,
Natalie