Breaking the Stress Cycle
I recently zipped through the book “Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle” by Amelia and Emily Nagoski. I had heard about these smart sisters over the last few months and Emily’s book Come As You Are received massive press and buzz for redefining the science behind women’s sexuality.
It has only been a week since I finished Burnout, but I have to say that I think the learnings around stress cycles were life-changing. I have been a ball of anxiety and busyness since I was younger and am always pushing myself to do more, more, more. I am always thinking if I can just get that one more thing done, THEN I can relax. This constant state of moving and working and proving myself (to who? by the way) makes me feel extra overwhelmed and I am sure that overwhelm is felt by some of my friends, family, and my husband. Haha, sorry.
When I was pregnant with Audrey I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes and one thing that was so eye-opening for me was understanding that when you have sugar in your system that can’t burn off, going for a walk or moving around a lot was necessary to help my body process the sugar.
Well, this is different but a similar lightbulb moment happened with this book. The authors share how over time, we have more and more incomplete stress cycles built up in our bodies. Hundreds of years ago, if we saw a lion, our flight response would kick in and humans would run and run to get away. Once safe, we would feel so relieved and rejoice in the fact that we were safe. In modern times, we aren’t typically running from literal lions, but we do feel similar stress over the basket of laundry that needs to be put away, that meeting you are dreading at work, frustrations with our kids, traffic when you are already late, and many more examples.
Instead of physically outrunning or fighting off the stressor, we just keep pushing forward with our days/weeks/years, and over time our bodies become overloaded with incomplete stress cycles. The stress cycle is a function of our bodies just like digestion, breathing, etc. and we aren’t helping our bodies to complete the stress cycle if we aren’t physically moving and getting out of breath. BAM. That was the thing that clicked for me. For years and years, we have all heard that exercise is great for mental health and moving our bodies reduces stress — but now that I actually understand that this helps close the loop on open stress cycles, I’m taking note. I have been really thinking about this — the days I go to Pure Barre, I love the fact that I can’t think about much else while I am struggling through planks and tough exercises. I always feel more at peace when I am done with a Pure Barre class. On Saturday I wasn’t able to make my class and was feeling antsy and annoyed with my roommates (haha sorry Jim & Audrey)…well we decided to take a long walk downtown to our community farmers market and I was still agitated as we left. As we kept walking and breathing deeply and getting a little out of breath, I started to feel a sense of calm. Wow, they must be on to something here!
From the authors’ research, physical movement is not the only way to help close the stress cycle but it is the most effective. Before a tough meeting or a phone call, take a walk around the block, do some jumping jacks, and breathe deeply. I am going to try to implement this more and more in my life and I am curious to see the results.
I have SO many thoughts about this concept and this book. There is so much more great information included in “Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle” by Amelia and Emily Nagoski — I only touched on one component here. I would love to hear if you have read this book and if it created any “Aha!” moments for you!
Talk more soon!
XO, Kate
Originally published at https://www.katemohan.com on October 20, 2021.
