The word burnout crept up in my everyday use since 2019 – and then the pandemic hit. No travel. No casual shopping. No conferences. None of the usual ways to break up the days. Burnout, especially at work, snuck up on me. Much like my own burnout, Emily and Amelia Nagoski's book, Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, snuck up on me too.

"First coined as a technical term by Herbert Freudenberger in 1975, "burnout" was defined by three components:

1. emotional exhaustion—the fatigue that comes from caring too much, for too long;

2. depersonalization—the depletion of empathy, caring, and compassion;

3. decreased sense of accomplishment—an unconquerable sense of futility: feeling that nothing you do makes any difference.

Written with women in mind, Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle talks about the big and little stressors we experience daily – from the patriarchy (ugh) to the "second shift" most women have after work at home (house chores, caregiving). Compared to what it's like to be a woman, what's expected of women creates burnout without even realizing it. The authors discuss the Bikini Industrial Complex and the microaggressions women regularly experience for not looking, acting, or speaking in a certain way.

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle goes on to discuss how to complete the stress cycle. When we experience fight, flight, or freeze responses, our bodies react to those chemicals even though we are rarely in actual life-or-death experiences. The problems arise when we experience those reactions and don't get the fulfillment of knowing we are no longer in a life-or-death situation.

Too many women, especially women of color, grow up with unconscious biases about how we should behave, which is only exacerbated by others around us with unconscious biases. Before you know it, we're working ourselves too much, developing physical symptoms from a life of microaggressions and minor stressors, and we reach a breaking point. A part of this book encourages you to be aware of times in your life when you need to move on from whatever is causing you stress.

I appreciate a great deal about this book, but I loved how the authors didn't promise your burnout will magically go away if you take luxurious baths every night or try and "lean in" at work more. The premise of Burnout empowers us to accept ourselves exactly as we are and know that we are enough.

Buy Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle because we all need to work on unconscious biases around women at home, work, and in the world.

Book Club Reading Guide: Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Amelia Nagoski and Emily Nagoski