Burnout Part 2: How to Deal with the Stressors
Lessons learned by a Maryland Marriage and Family Therapist from Emily Nagoski, Ph.D, and Amelia Nagoski, DMA’s book on Burnout.
We’ve learned how to deal with the stress, now what about the actual stressor? Read on to find out when to persist and when to call it quits.
First thing is dealing with our “Monitor” or in the scientific community what’s known as the “discrepancy-reducing/-increasing feedback loop” and “criterion velocity”, but Monitor is easier. This Monitor knows:
What your goal is
How much effort your putting into that goal
how much progress you’re making
It’s running the numbers on your ratio of effort vs. progress and has big ideas about what that ratio should be. For example trying to get to the market takes 10 minutes, and if you don’t hit any traffic or a ton of red lights, you’re moving quickly and making progress quicker than expected by your Monitor. Less effort, quicker progress= happy, satisfied, Monitor.
But say you do get stuck in traffic or you hit every red light, you get frustrated and annoyed. If you’re 10 minutes in and you’re only halfway there you can move into “pissed off” territory. Say then you get stopped by police and ambulance for an accident ahead, you might get to fuming and swearing off this grocery store. High investment, little progress= Ragey Monitor.
To add insult to injury if you sit there long enough, your Monitor switches its assessment of the goal of getting to the grocery store to “unattainable” and emotionally you get pushed into a pit of despair. You’re in that helpless state where your brain abandons hope, all you want is to go home and curl up on the couch, maybe you even cry, because you can only sit and wait.
Counselors are seeing this reaction to burnout a lot right now with the pandemic.
So now that we know how the Monitor works, we can affect our brain in both controllable and uncontrollable stressors.
What do I do when I can control the stressor?
When a lot of effort fails to produce a satisfying amount of progress we can change what kind of effort we’re putting in.
Planful problem solving is what you think it is: analyzing the problem, making a plan based on that analysis, and executing the plan. E.g. using a GPS to avoid traffic.
Some things such as making sure everyone gets fed, and getting where they need to go each day have pragmatic steps to help manage the controllable factors, such as keeping calendars and writing lists. Controlling what you can makes the rest of the journey more bearable. This is where completing the cycle and managing the stress that I talked about last month is so important- build in completing the cycle into your plan.
What happens when you can’t control the Stressor?
If you’re in traffic and your GPS or phone is dead for example, turning to “positive reappraisal” can help. Positive reappraisal means recognizing that sitting in this traffic is “worth it”. The discomfort, frustration, obstacles, and even repeated failure have value. Yes, they’re steps toward a worthwhile goal but also because we reframe these challenges as opportunities for growth and learning.
Optimists do this more naturally, so high five to you! For the pessimists, not to worry. This isn’t just about finding the rainbows in the rain or the “silver lining," and this is not denying what’s going on and saying, “oh everything’s fine”.
It’s acknowledging things are hard, and recognizing the difficulty is worth it—it actually can be an opportunity.
This opportunity piece is where a lot of us get tripped up. Hang with me here for a moment. As they say in the book “When something is uncomfortable, you're probably doing something that creates more and better progress than if it were easy”. For example we know people who challenge their bodies with regular exercise develop stronger muscles, bones, and cardiovascular systems.
“Strength is the body’s response to doing something effortful.”
Um wow, take that in for a moment.
Emily and Amelia Nagoski also wisely said. “Struggle can increase creativity and learning, strengthen your capacity to cope with greater difficulties in the future, and empower you to continue working toward goals that matter to you.”
Ok ok, but what if you problem solve and do the positive reappraisal and it helps, but it’s much more difficult or slower than you expected? You’re growing frustrated since your progress isn’t meeting your Monitor’s expectation about how much effort this task should take.
Here’s where we have to change our Monitor’s expectancies about how difficult it will be or how long it will take.
Expectancies= the plan, e.g. it only takes twenty minutes to get there, or i’m going to be married and have kids by the time I’m 30. In this case we redefine what winning or failing is.
This is where our pandemic lives come in.
What’s winning during this time?
It can be as simple as keeping your family healthy and alive. Incremental goals are often the most helpful here. These goals should be “soon, certain, positive, concrete, specific, and personal”.
What if your goal can’t be redefined?
Here changing your relationship to failing helps keep your Monitor happy. Even if you do all the things you’re suppose to and not get where you want to go, you might end up somewhere else that’s great. Expanding your view to see the inadvertent perks that come up.
When we reframe things this way, it makes it nearly impossible to fail. It’s acknowledging that there’s more to success than winning. E.g. The chemist who created post-its was trying to create a strong glue and failed, but who can imagine a world without post-its now!?
I do want to note that this doesn’t make the failure or loss any less painful, it still means being compassionate and kind to yourself.
When To Give Up.
When our Monitor switches from attainable to unattainable, we often flip-flop between trying to keep going and giving up in frustration. I found the authors naming of this phenomenon hilarious—“foop”. Or my personal favorite “oo in Fooptown”. When in Fooptown we come to a place where we need to decide do we explore something new or do I exploit where I’m at? Emily and Amy ask four helpful questions here:
What are the benefits of continuing?
What are the benefits of stopping?
What are the costs of continuing ?
What are the costs of stopping?
What decision maximizes benefits/minimizes costs while keeping both the long term and short term in mind. Either way choosing puts you back as the leading characters in your story.
Sometimes a worksheet really doesn’t help and that’s when we listen to the quiet voice inside of us.
If you’d like help finding your inner voice or dealing with burnout, schedule a free consultation here.