Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cyclre (Emily Nagoski, Amelia Nagoski)

 

Man, I was feeling this one. It's been a tough year. This book was a light in the darkness. I listened to it while I was walking to school each day and it seriously brought light into my life while we've being thrust into at home learning. That, along with new budgets for next year, staffing and covid stressors made this a great and enlightening listen. I think it is full of great information whether one is feeling like they're burnt out or not. It's great anti-burnout information!

At the end of each chapter, the authors have a TLDR list. Really, they're just summaries with a trendy title. Somehow, the trendy title made them even better. 

Chapter 1 Complete the Cycle

• Just because you've dealt with a stressor, that doesn't mean you've dealt with the stress itself. You have to deal with the stress - complete the cycle - or it will slowly kill you. 
• Physical activity is the single most efficient strategy for completing the cycle, even if it's jumping up and down or a good old cry. Affection (a six second kiss, a twenty second hug, six minutes of snuggling after sex, helpless laughter) are social strategies that complete the cycle along with creative self-expression, writing, drawing, singing...whatever gives you a safe place to move through the emotional cycle of stress. 
• Wellness is the freedom to move fluidly through the cycles of being human. Wellness is thus, not a state of being, it is a state of action.

Chapter 2 Persist

• Frustration happens when our progress towards a goal feels more effortful than we expect it to be.
• You can manage frustration by using planful problem solving for stressors you can control and positive reappraisal for stressors you can't control. 
• When we're struggling, we may reach a point of oscillating between frustrated rage and helpless despair. Solution: choose the right time to give up, which might be now or might be never. Either way, the choice puts you back in the driver's seat. 
• Your brain has a built in mechanism to assess when it's time to quit. Listen to it's quiet voice. Or do a worksheet! Sometimes that's easier. 

Chapter 3 Meaning

• Meaning in life is good for you. You make meaning by engaging with something larger than yourself - whether that's ambitious goals, service to the divine, or loving relationships. Meaning enhances well-being when you're doing well and can save your life when you're struggling.
• Human giver syndrome is a collection of personal and cultural beliefs and behavior that insist that some people's only meaning in life comes from being pretty, happy, calm, generous and attentive to the needs of others. 
• The stress response cycle, the monitor and meaning are all resources you carry with you into the battle against the real enemy. 

Chapter 4 The Game is Rigged

• Women and girls, especially women and girls of color are systematically excluded from government and other systems of power. It's called the patriarchy. The patriarchy says it doesn't exist. It says that if we struggle it's our own fault for not being good enough, which is gaslighting.
• 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. The solution? Smash! See worksheet.

Chapter 5 The Bikini Industrial Complex

• The bikini industrial complex is a 100 billion dollar industry that tries to convince us that our bodies are the enemy, when in fact, the bikini industrial completes is itself the enemy.
• Bias against people of size can be more dangerous to our health than the actual size of our bodies and many of the things we do to try to change our bodies make our health worse.
• It is normal, nearly universal, to feel ambivalent about your body, wanting to accept and love your body as it is and at the same time wanting to change it to confirm with the culturally accepted aspirational idea. 
• Solutions? Embrace the mess. See yourself as the new hotness. Practice seeing everyone as the new hotness and tune into your bodies' needs.

Chapter 6 Connect 

• Connection with friends, family, pets, The Divine, etc. is as necessary as food and water. Humans are not built to function autonomously. We are built to oscillate between connection and autonomy and back again. We are all constantly co-regulating one another without even being aware it is happening: synchronizing heartbeats, changing moods and helping one another feel seen and heard.
• Certain kinds of connection create energy. When you share mutual trust and connected knowing with someone you co-create energy that renews both people. We call this the bubble of love.
• Sadness, rage and the feeling that you are not enough are forms of loneliness. When you experience these emotions, connect.

Chapter 7 What Makes You Stronger

• We will literally die without rest. Literally! Finding time for rest is not a #firstworldproblem. It's about survival. We are not built to persist incessantly, but to oscillate from effort to rest and back again. On average, we need to spend 42% of our time (10 hours a day) on rest. If we don't take the time to rest, then our bodies will revolt and force us to take the time. 
• Human giver syndrome tells us it is self-indulgent to rest, which makes about as sense as believing it is weak or self-indulgent to breathe. 
• Getting the rest your body requires is an act of resistance against the forces that are trying to rig the game and make you helpless. Reclaim rest, and you reclaim sovereignty over your own life.  

Chapter 8 Grow Mighty

• We each have a mad-woman in our psychological attic. She has the impossible job of managing the chasm of what we are and what human-giver syndrome has told us to be. 
• Self-compassion and gratitude empower us to recognize the difference between who we are and who the world expects us to be without beating ourselves up or shutting ourselves off from the world. 
• Self-compassion is hard because healing hurts and growing stronger can be scary - but it's worth it because healing helps us grow mighty enough to heal human-giver syndrome. 
• We don't have to wait for the world to change before we begin to heal ourselves and one another.

Conclusion: Joyfully Ever After

Notes:

• Joy doesn't come from within. It comes from connection with fellow givers.
• The stepping stone to joy is feeling like you are enough and feeling not enough is a form of loneliness. We need other people to tell us that we are enough. Not because we don't know it already, but the act of hearing it from someone else and equally the act of taking the time to remind someone else they're enough, is part of what makes us feel we're enough. We give and we receive and we are made whole.
• It is a normal healthy condition of humanity to need other people to remind us that we can trust ourselves. That we can be as tender and compassionate with ourselves as we would be as our best selves toward any suffering child. To need help feeling enough is not a pathology. It is not neediness. It's as normal as your need to assure the people you love that they can trust themselves, that they can be as tender and compassionate with themselves as you would be with them. This exchange, this connection, is the springboard from which we launch into a joyful life. 
  
• Wellness is not a state of mind but a state of action. It is the freedom to move through the cycles of being human and this on-going mutual exchange of support is the essential action of wellness. It is the flow of givers giving and accepting support in all its many forms.
• The cure for burnout is not self-care. It is all of us caring for one another so we'll say it one more time: trust your body. Be kind to yourself. You are enough just as you are right now. Your joy matters. Please tell everyone you know.

TLDR:

• Just because you've dealt with a stressor doesn't mean you've dealt with the stress. You don't have to wait until all the stressors are dealt with before you deal with your stress. Which is to say that you don't have to wait for the world to be better before you make your life better and by making your life better, you make the world better. 
• Wellness is not a state of being, but a state of action. It is the freedom to move fluidly through  the cyclical oscillating experiences of being human.
• Human-giver syndrome is the contagious false belief that you have a moral obligation to give every drop of your humanity, your time, attention, energy, love, even your body, in support of others, no matter the cost to you. 
• Pay attention to how different it feels to interact with people who treat you with care and generosity versus people who treat you as if they are entitled to whatever they want from you. 
• Humans are not built to function autonomously. We are built to oscillate from connection to autonomy and back again. Connection with friends, family, pets, The Divine, etc is as necessary as food and water. 

-Reread November 2024

-Reread December 2025 - This book hits home every time

Goodreads says:

This groundbreaking book explains why women experience burnout differently than men—and provides a simple, science-based plan to help women minimize stress, manage emotions, and live a more joyful life.

Burnout. Many women in America have experienced it. What’s expected of women and what it’s really like to be a woman in today’s world are two very different things—and women exhaust themselves trying to close the gap between them. How can you “love your body” when every magazine cover has ten diet tips for becoming “your best self”? How do you “lean in” at work when you’re already operating at 110 percent and aren’t recognized for it? How can you live happily and healthily in a sexist world that is constantly telling you you’re too fat, too needy, too noisy, and too selfish?

Sisters Emily Nagoski, PhD, and Amelia Nagoski, DMA, are here to help end the cycle of feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. Instead of asking us to ignore the very real obstacles and societal pressures that stand between women and well-being, they explain with compassion and optimism what we’re up against—and show us how to fight back. In these pages you’ll learn

• what you can do to complete the biological stress cycle—and return your body to a state of relaxation
• how to manage the “monitor” in your brain that regulates the emotion of frustration
• how the Bikini Industrial Complex makes it difficult for women to love their bodies—and how to defend yourself against it
• why rest, human connection, and befriending your inner critic are keys to recovering and preventing burnout

With the help of eye-opening science, prescriptive advice, and helpful worksheets and exercises, all women will find something transformative in these pages—and will be empowered to create positive change. Emily and Amelia aren’t here to preach the broad platitudes of expensive self-care or insist that we strive for the impossible goal of “having it all.” Instead, they tell us that we are enough, just as we are—and that wellness, true wellness, is within our reach. 

They also have a Ted video that explains their ideas well:

Live Oak With Moss (Walt Whitman, illustrated by Brian Selznick)

 

I picked this up because I love everything Brian Selznick does. I really don't know much about Walt Whitman and I'm really not good at poetry...but this book is beautiful. The story of his poem is fascinating. I can't imagine what drives someone to play with words to that extent until they get it to exactly what they want. It's a special kind of brilliance. Apparently, he wrote this, then cut it up and hid it amongst other poetry....and then someone who studies Walt Whitman uncovered it! Amazing!

Brian Selznick tells the story of how he got to know Maurice Sendak (imagine?!) The book is dedicated to Maurice Sendak. He was originally asked to illustrate the poem but felt like poems didn't need illustrations. I hope Brian Selznick will illustrate more famous poems. It helped me  increase my understanding, that's for sure! I'm sure there are more people like me out there who need a little help with their poetry comprehension. 

Goodreads says:

As he was turning forty, Walt Whitman wrote twelve poems in a small handmade book he entitled “Live Oak, With Moss.” The poems were intensely private reflections on his attraction to and affection for other men. They were also Whitman’s most adventurous explorations of the theme of same-sex love, composed decades before the word “homosexual” came into use. This revolutionary, extraordinarily beautiful and passionate cluster of poems was never published by Whitman and has remained unknown to the general public—until now. New York Times bestselling and Caldecott Award–winning illustrator Brian Selznick offers a provocative visual narrative of “Live Oak, With Moss,” and Whitman scholar Karen Karbiener reconstructs the story of the poetic cluster’s creation and destruction. Walt Whitman’s reassembled, reinterpreted Live Oak, With Moss serves as a source of inspiration and a cause for celebration. 
 

Who Is Kamala Harris (Kirsten Anderson)

 

This is a quick read and seems like a good summary of Kamala Harris' life so far. It ends with her becoming vice-president, of course. There will be some who won't like their kids to read it because of partison politics - but it can't be denied, this is a lady who has accomplished some great things. 

Goodreads says:

The inspiring story of Vice President Kamala Harris told in the new Who HQ Now format for trending topics.

On November 7, 2020, Kamala Harris, a senator from California, became the first woman and the first African-American and South Asian-American person to be elected to the vice presidency. While her nomination for this position was not unexpected, her rise to national prominence was one filled with unexpected turns and obstacles. After failing her first bar exam to become a lawyer, she tried again and passed. From there, she quickly rose through the legal ranks, serving as district attorney of San Francisco, then California's attorney general, and soon, senator. As a politician, Kamala Harris has been a vocal champion of progressive reforms and women's rights. This exciting story details the defining moments of what led to her nomination and all the monumental ones since that have shaped her career and the future of America.

When Breath Becomes Air (Paul Kalanithi)

 

I was nervous about reading this book for my book club. Perhaps it would be too close to home. My husband has had health issues for the past four years, starting with a stroke and most recently with heart issues. He has not felt well since his stroke four years ago and is under constant supervision of doctors. I continue to hold on to hope for many more years with him despite the daily troubles. 

I found Paul Kalanithi's writing to be beautiful and comforting. He approached his cancer, his life and his death with courage, carefully calculating what was the most important things to check of as time went by. He said: You can't ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving (p. 115)  And isn't that the key? 

I have started to follow his wife on twitter. It must be something to publish a book that tells your story so openly. She currently works as an internist at Stanford and is raising their daughter.

Goodreads says:

For readers of Atul Gawande, Andrew Solomon, and Anne Lamott, a profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir by a young neurosurgeon faced with a terminal cancer diagnosis who attempts to answer the question 'What makes a life worth living?'

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a naïve medical student "possessed," as he wrote, "by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life" into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.

Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. "I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything," he wrote. "Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: 'I can't go on. I'll go on.'" When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.

Hank Zipzer: Niagara Falls, Or Does It? (Henry Winkler)

 

Henry Winkler is an old friend of mine. Well, not really, but it feels like he is! I love his approach in this book. We were reading it as a read aloud amidst the time we do our structure projects so my students really got a kick out of Hanks. I also felt like it really reaches out and grabs kids because so many kids feel like school isn't easy for them, like it isn't easy for Hank. There were lots of laughs when we read this aloud. We actually ended up moving to at home learning part way through and one of the concerns my students had was how we would finish the book. Of course, we did. There's always time for a great read-aloud like this! As we were reading it, the Hank Zipzer books started being taken off the shelf by quite a few kids. Although I think it's good to read the first one first, you don't have to read the books in order and they're all hilarious. We found lots of interesting connections to Third Grade Angels and Frindle while reading this one.

Goodreads says:

Inspired by the true life experiences of Henry Winkler, whose undiagnosed dyslexia made him a classic childhood underachiever, the Hank Zipzer series is about the high-spirited and funny adventures of a boy with learning differences.

It's science project time in Ms. Adolf's class. This is good news and bad news for Hank-he loves science, but he hates the report part. So Hank turns to TV to take his mind off things. But when the program directory scrolls by too quickly for Hank to know what's on, he decides to take apart the cable box to try to slow down the crawl. Great! Now Hank has found the perfect science project! But what he wasn't counting on was his sister's pet iguana laying eighteen eggs in the disassembled cable box. How is Hank going to get out of this one?

The Little Book of Hygge: The Danish Way To Live Well (Meik Wiking)

 

I love Denmark...and I love the pursuit of happiness! This book is full of great reminders of how to simply be happy.

Happiness consists more in small conveniences or pleasure than occur every day than in great pieces of good fortunate that happen but seldom.

-Benjamin Franklin

Goodreads says:

Denmark is often said to be the happiest country in the world. That's down to one thing: hygge.

'Hygge has been translated as everything from the art of creating intimacy to cosiness of the soul to taking pleasure from the presence of soothing things. My personal favourite is cocoa by candlelight...'

You know hygge when you feel it. It is when you are cuddled up on a sofa with a loved one, or sharing comfort food with your closest friends. It is those crisp blue mornings when the light through your window is just right.

Who better than Meik Wiking to be your guide to all things hygge? Meik is CEO of the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen and has spent years studying the magic of Danish life. In this beautiful, inspiring book he will help you be more hygge: from picking the right lighting and planning a dinner party through to creating an emergency hygge kit and even how to dress.

Meik Wiking is the CEO of the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen. He is committed to finding out what makes people happy and has concluded that hygge is the magic ingredient that makes Danes the happiest nation in the world.

You Can't Teach Through a Rat (Marvin W Berkowitz)

 

This book reminded me (again!) about why it's so important to always be reading something about teaching. It was inspiring and there were many days where I was able to use something from what I was reading. Reading is powerful!


Some things I've never thought of: p. ix  why would a school that teaches caring, student-centered, value and purpose-driven education have a caricature of a feral beast (wildcat) as a mascot? 
Re: Pirates as mascots: interesting choice for an elementary school. Pirates rape, pillage and murder

p. 11 To educate a person in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society (Theodore Roosevelt)

He talks about Golden Children and Tarnished Children....which seemed a little offensive at first to me. It does, however, make a lot of sense.

p. 23 Golden Children: the children that are a joy to have in class. They're ready to learn. They have supportive families. They grow up to be smart ang good. They look you in the eye, smile at you, greet you sincerely and enthusiastically because they like school and learning and are self-confident and socially and emotionally competent. They're the ones we love to spend our time with as teachers. But they don't need you. They will continue to sparkle, unblemished by your mediocrity and even ineptitude as a teacher. You are therefore, in a sense, wasting your time (sadly a disproportionate amount of time at that) on such children. 

p. 25 The Tarnished Children: .....need you desperately....you can be the single factor that changes the entire trajectory of that child's life. 

p. 29 Even though most teachers care about their students, it can be a challenge to form caring relationships with students who are difficult...these children often find it hard to believe that their teachers really care about them, despite the evidence that they do. 
When teachers have a framework that allows them to believe that even their most disruptive and disrespectful students want, deep down in their hearts, to be liked and respected, it will be possible to engage all students as partners who need assurances that they are worthy of care, as well as guidance and support, in their struggle to come competent members of the classroom community. It's important to be patient. Creating a classroom in which students and teacher alike feel trusted and cared for takes time. But it is that atmosphere of mutual trust and care that will lead to a naturally well-managed and disciplined classroom.   

p. 59 I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It si my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess a tremendous power to make a life miserable to joyous. I can be a tool of torture, or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated, and a person humanized or dehumanized. 

p. 32 ...every adult in a school who comes into contact with children impacts their character development, for better or for worse. You cannot NOT (double negative intended) be a character educator. Character education is an enterprise from which you cannot abstain. It is not a personal choice, just as being a role model is not a personal choice. There is no off switch to character education, and there is no Harry Potter clock of invisibility for educators. Every day, for good or ill, students are seeing you, and that includes all of your blemishes and missteps, and you are always impacting their character development

Chapter 10: Hearing Voices: A Pedagogy of Empowerment Character lesson idea: Let the older kids teach the younger kids or let them teach their peers

Characteristics of our best teachers:

• build personal relationships with students
• make learning (and classrooms) fun
• set high standards (expect high performance)
• model a passion for learning and knowledge
• see the potential in students that others don't see
• they go above and beyond the standard boundaries of the normal school day

Characteristics of our worst teachers:

• they are mean to students, often for categorical reasons (eg race, ethnicity, gender, religion and appearance)
• they are insensitive to student pain, crisis, etc.
• they are rigid, inflexible and unfair
• they simply don't seem to care about students and/or teaching

Goodreads says: Whatever is on the mind of a child can be more important to the child than a lesson at school. This book is a collection of insights, designed and tested from decades of teaching, workshops and lessons learned, to help educators stimulate their epiphanies about how best to serve the academic and developmental needs of students. It is user-friendly, provocative, and humorous and intended for all who work with and love working with children. PERFECT for a total staff reading!

Most People (Michael Leannah)

 

This is a great book! My students were really struck by the photo of the LONG line of good people in the world and the room of bad people. Great analogy. I agree. Most people are good. 

Since we can't snuggle up together at the carpet this year, I was please that this book is available as an e-book from my public library. 

Goodreads says:

Michael Leannah wrote Most People as an antidote to the scary words and images kids hear and see every day. Jennifer Morris’s emotive, diverting characters provide the perfect complement to Leannah’s words, leading us through the crowded streets of an urban day in the company of two pairs of siblings (one of color). We see what they see: the hulking dude with tattoos and chains assisting an elderly lady onto the bus; the Goth teenager with piercings and purple Mohawk returning a lost wallet to its owner; and the myriad interactions of daily existence, most of them well intended. Most People is a courageous, constructive response to the dystopian world of the news media.

Making Bombs For Hitler (Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch)

 

This is another aspect of the second world war and the terrible treatment of Jews that I was not aware of. This story talks about how Ukrainian children were taken away from their families to work in camps. After the war, Ukraine was part of Russia and the Russians would take these children back, promising them they'd be reunited with their family, but instead they were treated as the enemy since they had worked with/for the Nazis. 

The main character in this book has an amazing way of seeing beauty no matter what is happening - even though sometimes everything is so terrible. The story is a great reminder that we don't have anything even close to what they suffered. 

I finished this book while standing in line for TWO HOURS for my first covid vaccine. I felt frustrated that the line was so long. They tell you not to show up more than 10 minutes before your appointment...not sure why because the line takes FOREVER. However, as I stood in the line and read Lida's story I couldn't help realize that I have nothing to complain about.

This book was in my classroom library and I decided I should read it to make sure it was okay for grade 3 students. I decided it would be better to pass it on to a middle school teacher.

Goodreads says:

Lida thought she was safe. Her neighbors wearing the yellow star were all taken away, but Lida is not Jewish. She will be fine, won't she?

But she cannot escape the horrors of World War II.

Lida's parents are ripped away from her and she is separated from her beloved sister, Larissa. The Nazis take Lida to a brutal work camp, where she and other Ukrainian children are forced into backbreaking labor. Starving and terrified, Lida bonds with her fellow prisoners, but none of them know if they'll live to see tomorrow.

When Lida and her friends are assigned to make bombs for the German army, Lida cannot stand the thought of helping the enemy. Then she has an idea. What if she sabotaged the bombs... and the Nazis? Can she do so without getting caught?

And if she's freed, will she ever find her sister again?

This pulse-pounding novel of survival, courage, and hope shows us a lesser-known piece of history -- and is sure to keep readers captivated until the last page.