Therapy for Women: Stress and Burnout
How many things are you juggling right now? How many tasks are you the “go-to” parent for? How many times have you moved or canceled your own self-care to take care of: friends, your partner, your boss, your parents, or your children?
One of the best definitions I’ve heard for women’s experience of stress is “human giver syndrome.” If you grew up as a female, you have learned that your needs are always a little less. Your role is to nurture. Your self-care is a luxury. Your needs come last.
In Emily Nagoski’s book, Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, she shares that there are two types of people. Human givers… and human beings. Human givers are those people who are expected to endlessly pour themselves out for others, while human beings are those who are free to live their lives without the moral expectation that they put themselves last.
“Human Giver Syndrome - the contagious belief that you have a moral obligation to give every drop of your humanity in support of others, no matter the cost to you - thrives in the patriarchy, the way mold thrives in damp basements.” - Emily Nagoski
The trouble is, not everyone is socialized to have a moral expectation that they matter less than other people. Men traditionally are socialized to function as human beings. While they experience similar life stressors, men are not impacted in the same ways as women. The difference is not biological, but created by our society, in that men are told that they are allowed to take care of themselves.
The Stress Cycle
In an ideal situation, the stress response is a cycle in which:
1) our brain notices a stressor,
2) it sends a message to the rest of our body to react,
3) we reach safety, and
4) our brain sends the message to our body to create calm.
This stress response cycle is geared towards the stressors our ancestors faced, like getting chased by a lion, war, having to escape your village. Our bodies are supposed to flood with a heightened level of stress to help get us to safety. After the stressor is no longer present, our bodies more easily detect that we don’t need to be protected anymore.
The trouble is, our bodies don’t know how to respond when there wasn’t an immediate and removable stressor and we can experienced this heightened level of distress when thinking about a future event, driving through traffic on the way to work, or while waiting for the results of a medical test.
In other words, the hardware works, but it no longer fits the situation. In today’s world, we’re not outrunning lions, but we are experiencing daily stressors over and over - which keeps us stuck in that stress cycle. When we deal with the cycle over and over again, we eventually burn out.
Jumpstarting Stress Cycle Completion
The most effective way to prevent burnout is to break the stress cycle by giving your body the cue that it can downregulate. From there, from a space of calm and safety, you can start to address the actual underlying stressors.
So often in life, we try to address the stress before our bodies feel safe. We act from a space of reaction, without first giving ourselves the time to take a break, through:
1). Deep, slow breaths
2). Physical activity
3). Casual, but friendly social interactions
4). Laughter
5). Affection
6). Crying
7). Creative expression
8). Rest
The biggest burnout breaker? Notice that you’re in “do-everything” mode, pause, and tune into your needs.
Stress can cause us to withdraw, shut down, or numb out. All are very insulated and prevent us from receiving care both from others as well as ourselves. Take a look at this list next time you’re feeling like you “have to” or “should” be onto the next task, and give yourself space to step outside the stress cycle. And don’t be afraid to seek more support, through therapy for women.
