Hey everyone, I'm Meg Teets and this is sort of Awesome. Hi. Hi, Hello, and welcome back Awesome. You are listening to the show that is all about helping you be smart, strong, and social. We are in your ear beds every single week with all the awesome that you need to know. And you can also find us on Instagram that sort of Awesome show, or over on Facebook and are sort of Awesome hang out group. This is episode one ninety three of the show and this is our last Friday episode for April. This is the month we've been celebrating our four year anniversary of creating sort of Awesome just for you Awesome. You know that we really truly do believe in the work that we are doing here. I'm sort of Awesome to bring that message of being awesome to the world, to yourself, into the world around you. We believe in that so much. We know that you believe in it too. One of the best ways that you can spread the mission and the message of sort of Awesome, it's just tell people about it. Of course, we love when you tell your friends, your sisters, your mom's, your mother's in law. We have so many people in our hangout community that have invited in their closest friends and family members to be part of the awesome experience. But another way you can do it that's so fast and easy if you're on an Apple device is to leave us a review in Apple Podcasts. Just open up Apple Podcasts and whatever Apple device you're on, search for sort of Awesome, scroll to the review section, and leave us a brief review. It does not have to be a long essay. It can literally be one sentence that just tells the world about what you love about sort of Awesome. So here's a recent review for m R M Bel who wrote, I refer to these co hosts as my friends, and they are the best kind of friends. I have endless awesome things in my life thanks to their recommendations, and I'm just so deeply encouraged with ways to be awesome. Thank you for that, R. M. Bell. That's so kind of you to say, And it's a great example that an awesome review really only needs a few words. So we only need seventy more reviews to get to our goal of five reviews in Apple podcast in April. So once again, search sort of awesome, leave a brief review. Help us to have a happy birthday by shouting your love of sort of awesome in Apple podcasts. Okay, this is episode one of sort of Awesome. I am so very happy to be joined today by your friend in mind, someone who has been bringing the awesome to my life for years, public radio producer by day and sort of Awesome co host also by day. Also that all happens during the day, what happens at night? I sleep? Kelly, you have so many jobs? Oh my gosh, Well, yes and no, But isn't this the way of women. We're all like wearing all these different hats and you just put them on here, then you take that one off here exactly and actually like segways perfectly into our show today. You know, that's exactly what it's gonna say. Speaking of having a lot of jobs and a lot of responsibilities, which all of us do, we have so much to get to today, Kelly really encouraged me with the strongest of loving encouragement to pick up a brand new book that's out that's called Burnout. It's all about the stress cycle. Is written by Emily Nagaski, who we have talked about before on the show. An author, a writer, a sex educator. She actually co wrote this book with her twin sister, Amelia, and Kelly has been basically like, listen, this book is everything it is. I've been so excited about it, you guys, I just feel like this is the book that we want all the awesomes. If we could have a book club, this is the book we would put at the top of the list, and we would love to have every single awesome read this year. I really think it's transformative. Seriously, I want to put this book into the hands of my sister, of my closest friends, of people I've never even met, because all of us, this is the premise of the book, all of us are suffering from burnout and various ways and degrees and for various reasons. And this book doesn't just say, oh, you know what you should do is take a spa day. They're like, no, here's what the science says about stress and about how it affects us and why we are in this constant state of burnout, And here is what a path to wellness looks like. So Kelly and I have read it. We are so excited to give you some of the highlights, some of the big takeaways, but we really do encourage all of you to grab a copy, request a copy at the library, make sure this is on the shelves of your local library. It's such an important book. So we have so much to get to, and we are going to get to all of that in just a few minutes. But first, let's do go ahead and start this show the way we always do with our Awesome's of the Week. This is the moment in the show where we talk about the books, movies, TV shows, podcast products, all of the things that are making life just a little bit more awesome for us. Right now, Kelly, what do you have for us this week? Okay, I have I'm so excited about today's Awesome of the Week. It is the podcast that I've been recommending to everybody in my real life. It is called The Big One. It's made actually by our sisters station KPCC, which is the public radio station in Los Angeles. You guys, if you live in Los Angeles, anywhere in California really to some degree, anywhere on the West Coast, you know, in the Ring of Fire, somebody that's going to be impacted by an earthquake at some point, specifically something California, because you know what you guys, a big one is statistically likely to happen at any second. Okay, what, yes, really, I think that they said that I'm not going to get the exact statistics right, but that the San Andreas Fault, if they go back and look at records, every hundred and so years, they have a big earthquake. Big meaning like over seven it's been a hundred and sixty five years since the San Andreas Fault has had a big earthquake. So literally, what they do in this podcast is they set it up with the reality. The reality is scary if you live in southern California. But the reason that I want to recommend this podcast is the podcast is not scary. It is super super great at giving you the tips and the resources to set yourself up for success. You know, they're saying, this is not a matter of if, it is a matter of when your lifetime, your children's lifetime, this will happen. It is just geologically inevitable. So what can you do? What would it be like? So they have nine episodes, they're all out now the whole thing. You could go and binge it if you wanted to. They're about, you know, forty minutes each They start with the first two episodes kind of being a story, like let's walk through what this my look like? And they do such great storytelling. It's such great podcasting, Like this is different than just a radio report or talking to somebody who is an expert on geology or on earthquake survival, which you will hear in a podcast, but they're gonna tell this in the form of a story. So it's gonna walk you through, like what if you were in downtown l A and there's an earthquake that hits, Like they play music saying this is how long a minute is? Yeah, it's still going, it's still going. It's still going, and it's gonna seem like an eternity even though it's not. And so how would you get home? And this is might be what it is. So then all the other episodes they kind of backfill and talk about buildings like building code. They let you hear from an expert who survived the christ Church earthquake in New Zealand from a few years ago. So what was it like for her when she was on a bus and the earthquake hit, Like, really, what happened to her? What would she have wanted to know. And maybe my favorite part is that they end every episode with ten more or less really really practical tips, like if you live in an earthquake prone area, do you literally survive this? Like what do you need? So I remember one of the first episodes they say, here's some things to consider. One is maybe keep some slippers or some sort of shoe right next to your bed because if in earth quick kids at night, there will be glass. And one of the first things that happens is that people, you know, you want to get out of the house and then they get injured, and then you know, the emergency rooms are really full, so you're gonna have that injury. Maybe don't sleep naked people do. So they were like, you know, just consider that that's going to happen. Don't try to call your loved ones right after an earthquake. The phone lines are down, the text lines will be open, send texts, have some places that you can meet up, know where people are. How are you going to walk home if you have to walk home because public transportation isn't working. So uber uber practical. So even as they set up that kind of scary scenario, they are equipping you. We feel like we are empowered now to deal with this as much as you can. Right. Yeah, there's even one whole show about like kind of emergency preparedness kits and that sort of idea, like how much water do I really need to have? And at what point have I flipped over into just being he annoid about life? Like you know, what's the word, like a prepper? Prepper? A prepper? Right, so they talked to kind of a prepper, and so like, at what point, like how can I be kind of like rational but yet also feel like I've done something for myself for my family? Anyway, fantastic storytelling. I obviously don't live in southern California more Minnesota is not at high risk for earthquakes, but I found this super compelling, very fun to listen to because the way they tell the story sobering but empowering. I highly recommend it for everybody, but especially if you live in California or somewhere on the West coast in Alaska something like that. This literally could change your life. Okay, so I've wax eloquent. What do you have for us this week? Okay? I also have a podcast recommendation, but it is not a life changer, So everyone just switched gears with me a little bit here. Okay. I am so so so happy about this new to me podcast. I'm so excited to share it with you guys. But I'm also so mad about this because this podcast, you guys, is not new. It launched in February, and I have to believe that somewhere out there, some of you awesome have been holding out on me, not telling me about this, because I cannot believe a podcast that's this good has been around for two years and no one has told me to go check it out. So the podcast is called I Hate It But I Love It. It's hosted by Cat Angus and Jocelyn Getty. Those names may ring a bell for a few of you who are listening, Not just a few of you, some of you, maybe a lot of you. I don't know. Kat is a writer for BuzzFeed and she also writes on other places in the Internet. Jocelyn is a writer and an actress. They're both Canadian. The whole premise of the show is to dissect pieces of pop culture, talk about all the ways they are fantastic, all the things they love about them, but also that they're deeply problematic. Okay, there's the tension, it's the nuance, right, we all have to live with that. Totally, totally. I couldnt stop listening to this show. That's the nice thing about finding a show late or like, you know, when it's been out for a few years, you're like, oh my gosh, there's so much to choose from here. So most of us know. I mean, it's like one of the most true Internet memes ever that all our phase are problematic some level or an other. So I hate it, but I love it. They really just dig right into that. Every week they feature either TV show or a movie. They kind of recap it, but it's mostly critique that looks at things like how women are portrayed. It's a very feminist oriented show. Power dynamics and relationships, representation for people of color or LGBTQ people, all kinds of things that probably most of us did not have in mind the first time we were consuming, you know, like pieces of pop culture that we love, our favorite movie, our favorite TV show. The best part is that Kat and Jocelyn are larious. You gotta be when you got to talk about something like this, right, this is not snooty pedantic look down your nose at people for what they like kind of stuff. They are fully like, I love this thing, but it's got some problems. So actually their discussion of the matrix is so funny. I literally choked on my yogurt I was eating while I was listening to it. Oh my gosh, I love the matrix. I can't wait to listen to that one. You should start there. There's a few running jokes, but not anything that you can't pick up on automatically. I started with some of the most recent ones and then went back and hit them from a few years ago. But I literally choked on my yogurt, like food chokes on yogurt. I don't know even babies kitty yogurt without choking. No, no, you can choke out anything if it's truly that funny. If it goes up your nose, yok urt us your nose, it's gonna thank you joke. So yeah, it's just that thing where the first time you're watching something, you suspend your disbelief, you just go with the story. But then maybe later you're like, you know, one thing I never thought of is why this thing happened? Or it might be something you've watched again and again, and the more you watch it, you're like, why did this where what happened to this character? Or like where did this whole plot arn't go? Why are they doing this? Like plot holes, questions, stuff like that. So two caveats about this podcast. I hate it by lad but first of all, grown up ladies using grown up language, So if you're sensitive to that, be prepared for that. Secondly, you have to go into it knowing they are going to take down whatever they're discussing. So if you tend to get a little defensive or get your feelings hurt when someone applies critique to something you love, just don't listen to that episode. Because they are no holds barred for sure. They covered the whole TV series Lost, and they did that actually pretty early in the show. You guys know, I love Love, Love Loss, So I was like, this is what I'm going to be a good one for me to listen to. I did listen to it. I super loved it because everything they pointed out, I was like, yeah, that was a big problem. So I'll leave some links to like a little starter pack for you. Awesome's In the show notes, I will say I did. I super loved the episode on the Matrix. I really liked the one they did on Titanic. They did an episode on thirteen going on thirty, that Jennifer Garner movie. It is fantastic. That one is so good because they are very funny, but they we've in a lot of actually really important pop culture critique. So in thirteen going on thirty, they talk a lot about the experience of being a teenage girl and having people correct what you're into, and you're just like the whole experience of not having a voice as a teenage girl. It was really a great episode. I super loved the episode on Supernatural. That's one of my favorite TV shows. I have literally, you know, in my life to talk about it with because it's so dumb, right, that's that dumb. It's really pretty dumb. But when you're listening to this, like they're acknowledging all the goofy us of it, and they're like, but we love it anyway, exactly, I hate it, but I love it, but I love it. Yeah, right, you guys, I'm telling you this is a run, do not walk situation. If you are into pop culture critique, it is perfect to keep in your back pocket. We've got summer coming up, some mer travel, some are free time around the corner. Like I said, I'll leave a little starter pack for you in the show notes. But that's my awesome of the week this week, Kelly. So I'm so glad that we both have good things going on in our your beds all the time. The awesome are like, oh no, I have so much to listen to and you really do. I think these are both run do not walk situations. Yes, okay, so those are are awesome. So that the week you know that we would want to hear what is awesome in your life? Every single week. You can do that over on Instagram. It's sort of Awesome show. Every Friday morning, we're asking what is awesome in your life? And of course we do this in our sort of awesome hangout group on Facebook. So if you have not joined our community, we would love to have you over there. You can find us at Facebook dot com, slash groups slash sort of Awesome Hangout. Hey, awesome. There is something about the spring weather that makes us want to get up and get out of the house, and that means you're probably looking for active where that's cute and feels great, and that means you're looking for Sabletics. Sabletics is a fashion focused activeware brand with admission to empower women by making a healthy, active lifestyle accessible to everyone with its exceptional price point. No matter how you are moving your body this spring, you can move in style with Babletics leggings and right now you awesome can get two leggings for only twenty four dollars. That's a nine value. When you sign up as a v I P. Just go to fabletics dot com slash awesome to take advantage of this deal. Now again, it's two leggings for twenty four dollars. As a v I P you get free shipping on orders over forty nine dollars. I can't stop bragging on these. They feel so good, they are not sheer, and believe it or not, I can still wear them in my third trimester of pregnancy. I've loved everything I've gotten from Fabiletics. So if you're ready to get up and get moving this spring, I highly recommend checking out Fabletics. Remember that when you sign up as a v I P, you do get to Fabletics leggings for twenty four dollars. There's also up to off a regular pricing and instant access to their latest collections. There is no commitment to order on a regular basis. All you have to do is go to fabletics dot com slash awesome to take advantage of this deal. Now that's fabletics dot com slash awesome, two leggings, twenty four dollars. Fabletics dot com slash awesome. Terms and conditions do apply, okay awesome. This spring, maybe lots of us are doing all kinds of reorganizing around the house, kind of getting things picked up and put back where they belong. It absolutely broke my heart when I was doing some cleaning up when I found a box of old VHS tapes and stacks and stacks of pictures from our college days. However, it did feel great to know that Legacy Box could take all of those memories off of the shelf where their collecting dust and turn them into digitalized memories. If you are so sad that these family memories are just sitting around collecting dust, then you've got to check out Legacy Box. With Legacy Box, you're going to become the family hero, because you're going to bring back loss memories to watch and see again and again. Legacy Box helps you get organized. You're going to clean out your closet full of old camcorder tapes remember those and even aging film reels. All you do is send your Legacy Box filled with all your old home movies and pictures into them. They will do the rest. They professionally digitize your moments onto a thumb drive, a digital download, or a DVD. It all comes with easy to follow instructions and there are safety bar codes included for every item. When Legacy Box is finished with your projects, you receive all of your original recorded moments back, along with perfectly preserved digital copies. There has never been a better time to digitally preserve your memories. So visit legacy box dot com today to get started. For a limited time, you awesomes are going to get an exclusive discount. Go to legacy box dot com slash awesome to get forty percent off of your first order. That's right, when you go to legacy box dot com slash awesome and say today get started preserving your past. All right, Kelly, before we dive in to talking about burnout and we have so much to say, let's go back in time a little bit, because my awesome of the week way back actually three years ago this month in episode, my Awesome of the Week was the book Come As You Are by Emily Nagaski. And I loved that book so much. It's about women and sexuality and health, why women struggle with sex and intimacy. She introduces the idea of the gas pedal and the brake pedal when it comes to desire. It is seriously one of the most important books on women and sex I've ever read. I still recommend it all the time. But you and I read that along with a group of friends of ours, and the one chapter that all of us really wanted to talk about in that book about sex and desire and having a healthy sex life was actually not so much about sex, right. It impacts our sexuality in our sex life, but it was like this tan gentile thing and come as you Are. Yet for most of us, we had not heard it discussed this way, much less heard the science behind it, right. And that's Emile Nagaski's big thing. She is a scientist, and so so much of what she puts together in her books is really science base. This is not conjecture. This is not feel good. This is not self help psychology. You know, it's not like, hey, this is what I think. It's really really backed up by numbers and hard studies that have looked at the brain, for example, to like in this chapter Income As You Are in Leaoski's previous book, she talks about the stress cycle and what the stress cycle is, why it's so important to understanding why we as women. In the context of Come as you Are, she's talking about why stress and sex have such a tense relationship in our lives. Of course, well, not only did Kelly and I in our group of friends go like, oh my gosh, the stress cycle stuff is like an epiphany over here. Apparently, you know, like universally women who are reading this book were like, um, that's great about the sex stuff, but can we talk more about the stress cycle. She partnered with her sister Amelia or twin sister, and both of them kind of come at it from a place of like, hey, we have a lot of stress in our lives too, like what's going on with this? And they kind of start to dig in from there was talking about the stress cycle, right, I think that what is interesting about this book and the fact that they wrote it together is that Emily said that for some reason, she kind of intuitively understood the stress cycle and that it needed to have a completion, and Amelia, while being identical sister d n a raised in the same household, did not at all and actually had to go through several collapses of dealing with stress and kind of coming to terms with it. So that was where they decided, we need to get this out there. We need to quantify it so that it's not just Emily saying, well, you know, you just feel it and Amelia is saying, I have no idea what you're even talking about, So like, we have to explain what it is, why it's important, what it does to your body, and why you need to complete it. In fact, I thought this was interesting. So, you guys, the book is called Burnout, and they said that when they told women that they were writing a book called burnout, nobody ever said what's burnout? They said that the number one thing they heard was is it out yet? Can I read it right? Because we do have an intuitive sense about what burnout is. So they gave a definition for it that it's recomponents, And I thought This was really helpful for me as I set it up, Okay, because you know, to the same degree we kind of instinctively like we know what it is when we see it, we know how it feels in our body. But it was helpful for me. I probably do have a little bit more of a scientific brain like Emily to like say, okay, but what is it like really? So see if you awesome resonate with any of this. First of all, it's emotional exhaustion, the fatigue that comes from caring too much for too long. Yes to deep personalization, the depletion of empathy, caring, and compassion, and three a decreased sense of accomplishment, an unconquerable sense of futility, feeling that nothing you do makes any difference. Yeah, those three things. I mean, like who among us cannot look at our life and go like, well, I'm totally emotionally exhausted in this part of my life, right, I definitely feel just that deep personalization, like I am so exhausted it actually had to become unattached, unempathetic, uncaring in this realm because I have enough being left to give towards caring in this area of my life. And definitely, oh my gosh, the decreased sense of accomplishment, feeling like nothing you do makes any difference. Like just you know, we talk about home and home life so much on the show, the actual just physical showing up day after day after day to run your home, not to mention our careers. Yeah, there's a huge sense of futility in that sometimes, right. I mean, they mentioned some statistics on people who work in sort of giving professions like teachers, nurses, people in the medical field, like burnout according to that definition, is the highest in some of them. And they said there's not even a whole lot of research done yet on parental burnout. You know, something that this is a day and day out, decades long sort of investment that requires a lot of you. And something else that I thought was really helpful to setting up the discussion was them kind of defining what they call the human giver syndrome, right right, right, Yeah, this is where it's really important for women because we all have stress. In fact, can I just say as a site here and I was telling Meg before we started taking that, we here at Minnesota Public Radio, we actually had the Sisters on I think it was last week or two weeks ago, so to talk to them about this book. We were talking. We set it up. We are a call in shows that people can call in with questions, and we were like, we want to talk about women in stress. So women call in like how does your stress feel? That sort of thing, and you know who called in? Men? Oh really? Oh yeah? The men want to say, but I have stressed too. And I had to be like, um, we're not going to talk about your stress today, and they were like. I literally had one man go oh well, yes exactly. Yes, men have stressed. Everyone has stress, but this book in particular is looking at it through a lens of what women deal with in Western cultures. Well, here's the thing. The people most likely to suffer from burnout are people who help people, and that can definitely be professionally a and you mentioned the medical profession, any kind of caregiving profession, even firefighters and police officers. Yes, exactly, first responders, ministers, people who are acting in a pastoral capacity have a huge percentage that burnout affects that profession, that life choice in a multitude of ways. But here's the thing that differentiates between men and women. Men, for the most part, yes, they do experience stress, but they are not also expected by themselves or others to do things like the hands on work of parenting, or even beyond that, to look after their elderly parents, to run and manage the household, run and manage whatever their career is, and themselves while remaining a vivacious, fabulous looking person. You know, they also aren't dealing with intangible stress that comes into life. For the most part, we're painting with broad strokes in a lot of ways today. You guys, absolutely yes, bear with us and have grace for the conversation. But for the most part, men are not constantly pledged by like is my body ready for the beach this summer? Am I still attractive to my partner? You know, changed since we've had children? All of these things. Yes, it may be a concern, but it's not the continual stream of stress and messaging that's coming into their lives and how they experience the world. It's different from what women experience. It is in fact. Okay, so I'm just gonna read like a paragraph here from the book when they explained as human giver syndrome is the words that Amelia and Emily give to it. They say that there's a separate book called Down Girl, The Logic of Misogyny. They describe a system in which one class of people, the human givers, are expected to offer their time, attention, affection, and bodies willingly, placidly to the other classes of people, the human beings. The implication in those terms is that the human beings have a moral obligation to be or to express the humanity. Well, human givers have a moral obligation to give their human vanity to everyone else. And they say, guess which one women usually are, you know. They go on to say that like part of it is that human givers must at all times be pretty happy, calm, generous, and attentive to the needs of others. So that's where a lot of women's stress comes from. You guys, we don't even have time to get into whole sections of their book where they say, part of why we're stressed is just because we live in the world that we live in that has so many demands of us and has so many implicit expectations that are almost impossible to meet. And so sometimes people maybe you can't put a finger on one situation, but they're like the whole system is rigged, so we can't even get into that today. So that's why we're gonna encourage you to go read the book. But I think it's helpful to point out that there is this whole thing that we're dealing with, even if you are in a stage of life where you're like, well, I'm I don't know that I have tons of stress. Our world is stressful, but we also have specific stresses in our lives. So that's more where we're gonna try to focus on day because that's the whole first section of the book is about the stress cycle that we get in that are more specific things, not necessarily the whole system that can work against us, but specific things that we deal with and how we can make sure that it's not affecting us negatively. Yeah, exactly, that's a perfect way to sum it up. We really are really honing in and focusing on the first part of the book that talks about the stress cycle, but truly, the rest of the book really looks at holistically the way the cards are kind of stacked against us. But it's not just that, it's not like sort of just like laying it all out on the table and being like, well, good luck with that exactly. It could sound like what we're talking about is really depressing or you know, defeating, almost like we're talking about how do you feel more burnt out? Because and it's so not that they're really say, it's just helpful to recognize, yes, that the environment that you swim in is exacerbating their stress. And so when you recognize it, then you can at least either fright back against it, you know, it's not nizing it and feeling crazy. Yeah, that is part of the problem. So yeah, okay, let's talk about the stress cycle. Obviously, we know that we have stressors in our life, and then separate from that, we often kind of intertwine these two ideas. But when they were talking about the stress cycle, they're really looking at the two aspects of it. There's the stressors. This is anything that your brain perceives as being harmful. Sometimes these are gonna be like really tangible things like having a really terrible boss or maybe just like a really stressful season at work. Maybe it's not always stressful, but you know, like for example, my sister's a middle school teacher. She always helps her friend who's the drama teacher, do the spring musical. Well it's not spring musical stress time all the time. But what it is, it's really stressful, you know, things like having a newborn, or moving, or going through a divorce, or like I said, your parents are aging and sick. These are like tangible things that we can experience. But as I kind of alluded to earlier, some other stressors are more intangible. Having a strong sense of self criticism where you're constantly feeling negatively about yourself, for about your body, just being worried about the future, or just like being worried about the state of the world that worries. These are all stressors that trigger a stress response, and so stresses. They define it as a cascade of neurological and hormonal activity which floods our bodies in these stressful situations. So it's happening on a physiological level. Nobody has a stressful situation happened where they're like, I must turn on my stress response now in order to response right. And I don't know. For some reason, that's really freeing to me to think that this is just how our bodies work. It's not just in your head, which I think sometimes people are like, oh, why are you so stressed, just relaxed, and you're like, I don't know why. Here's why. It's because it's literally changing the way your body functions. Like you just said that cascading wave of hormones, neurological chemical, it's literally your body responding, which of course they lay out in the book and we can all think about this has evolved this way amongst humans to respond to danger exactly, So that's why we have it. It's not a bad thing. We're designed to say something is happening. I'm going to need to run, so my heart's gonna start to be faster, my brain is going to feel more attuned, I'm not going to feel pain as much, I'm going to get shaky. These are all things because I'm either going to have to usually, you know, either fight or flight. Right, So it's literally changing in our bodies. And they do such a good job too. I think of saying, hey, this is not just changing in your brain or for those five seconds, like living under stress changes your digestive system, it changes the way that your heart rate beats, I mean it changes your whole body. And so I don't think that we give enough attention to how we live under this all the time and what it's doing to us exactly. And so then they go on to talk about how we can get stuck in our stress. One thing I really love, admire and appreciate about Elagaski and her approach to women and health is really making it very clear, like what you're experiencing is normal. She does that so well income as you are when she's talking about different aspects of sexuality, and here when we're talking about stress, she and her sister Amelia both make it very clear it is very normal to be stressed. Right, You're not a weak person, you are not overly sensitive, you're not any kind of negative thing. It is just normal. But what we don't want to do is get stuck in our stress. So, like you were talking about, humans have evolved over time when this stress response happens to either run away as fast as we can, to have to gear up to fight, or even sometimes to freeze. But there's some kind of physical thing that needed to happen along the way as humans have grown and change and evolveden developed over the years. The brain has this amazing capacity for signaling to the body. You're going to have to do something about dealing with this stressor right where we get stuck though, is so we were kind of meant to run it off, right, Like if it was a lion that was chasing us and we outrun the lion, were like, we have outrun the lion. But when it's your kid throwing a tantrum, you know, at the grocery store and everybody looking at you, how do you get away from the lion? What to your brains like run, run, get out of here, just leave the kid, just go. And that's not socially appropriate. So right where we are today as a culture does not give us as many opportunities to complete the cycle. Stress is different, it's less tangible. Often we're not able to physically yeah exactly, And they talk about this really specifically. Our bodies can't differentiate the stress between a stress caused by a lion or the stress caused by worry or unhappiness or a bad work situations. So in order to close the stress response cycles so that we do not get stuck in our stress, we have to signal to our bodies that everything is okay. And Kelly, I'm sure you picked up on this because you and I really were deeply both impacted by the Mind Body series that we did over on the Smartest Person in the Room in the Realm, I would you say to things to telling you? I was like, nope, that's a different different podcasts, there's all so many good things. No, The Mind and Body series constantly came to mind as I've read this book because it is recognizing which so many of us are bad at this connection between what is happening in our brain our emotions, which I think for a lot of us we were told like, oh, well, that's just like a female thing. It's just this add on thing that you have that's really yeah, not helpful. Yeah, So we've tried to compartmentalize and be like, well I'm feeling this, but why am I having this? So to reconnect the two and say, hey, this is stressful. Is changing my body, It's changing how I act and how I feel, and it's this cycle and if we don't reconnect them, we are never going to be healthy. And that's why we get stuck. That's one of the reasons I guess I should say, is why we get stuck is that we have disconnected them, and so we don't resolve the stress, and then we wonder why our bodies or our emotions are freaking out. Yeah. The other thing that they point out that I thought was really helpful is it sometimes we get stuck because it isn't socially appropriate to do what we want to do. Like our body would say that jerk in the meeting is stealing my idea. I want to punch him in the nose, like that would resolve your stress cycle. But also it's not socially appropriate to when you reach across the table and take a swing and your co worker, or to leave the toddler who's you know, tantamine in target. So there's times that like physically we're just like aware, like we cannot do what our bodies telling us to do. And then they also say like there are times it's just not even safe to do. You know. They mentioned getting cat called, and you may feel like turning around and be like, hey, jerk, that probably not the safest thing. So we're also aware that there are times that we cannot deal with our stress cycle because we have greater goals. We want to exit this situation ye safely. So these are all reasons why we can kind of get stuck or we just stifle the stress and we don't deal with it, and it is still living there literally in our DNA, in ourselves. That's the thing. So to go back to what the actual thing that stresses again, using their definition, it's a cascade of neurological and hormonal activity that floods our bodies. So our brains, as evolved as they are and as you know, aware of our surroundings as they are, our brains may be saying to us, oh good, okay, well, well got the toddler in the car where I'm never going back to that target again. But we survived. So our brains have moved on, but our bodies cannot move on. Those hormones that neurological change. Those things don't just evaporate out of our systems. And this is why our disconnect between our bodies and our minds, this is where it really harms us, because our bodies are still pumped up and juiced up to do something in response to this stressor and going home and lighting your favorite candle. I'm sorry, it is not going to close that stress response cycle. You have to actually do something with your body to signal to your body We're safe. We did it, We made it out exactly and I think that for a lot of my life, I was you know, explicitly or subliminally taught like just don't think about it anymore, like you're safe, moved on, Just move on, Just move on. And while it's well intended advice, it doesn't really help us to purge all of those emotions and the chemicals that are in our body. And so maybe some of us, like Emily, have kind of, like without thinking about it, done some things to get them out, and so it's not bad, but there's a lot of us in certain situations where we're not as attentive to that, to getting them out. And so that's why they wrote this chapter to say, here's what you can do. Okay, So Meg, what's the number one thing you can do to complete the stress cycle? I mean, the number one thing is move your body in some way. Body movement, whether it is actually running for some people that may work, having a kitchen dance party, anything that is going to get your body engaged in some kind of something that's going to raise your heart beat, that's going to reassure your very stressed out body that it's okay, we did it. So the number one way truly is moving your body. If you are in a physical situation where for whatever reason, either you just can't make yourself do it or your maybe physically limited to what you can do. We're going to cover that. They're like, just do some jumping jack something to literally run it off in since get those things to process through your body. Your brain has processed it, now let your body process it. Right. I love when they said, you know, speak the language of your body, and the way you speak the language if your body is to move it to communicate to it. So what we're doing here is a lot of just purging. Some of us might have done this naturally. Maybe you are a runner and so you're like, well, I run every day and all I know is that that's really good for my sanity. Well, this is why is because you're able to literally get that stuff out of your body. But as they said, it doesn't have to be running. It could be swimming, it could be having a dance party, it could be doing jumping checks. There's so many ways that so many of us don't like get hung up on the word exercise. You know, do something they're saying to physically respond and you will feel a difference. This is one of the reasons why if you do make some sort of movement a regular part of your life, it will make you happier and healthier. It's going to purge this stuff out besides the good things that does for you. They even recommend, truly, because we do live in this sort of pressure cooker of stress, regardless of our age and stage of life. They recommend kind of building this in twenty to even sixty minutes a day. Definitely, if you're in your cognitive of the facts, like I'm in a big stress situation, definitely it should be there. But even if you're not, even if you're kind of like you know, things are kind of good right now because of all the external systems in place, it's still good for you, like twenty minutes a day do something to shake it off, to rent it off, to get it out. But I love that they include some other things like physical affection. And again this is where it really tied and pretty seamlessly, as Emily was writing about in her first book, Come as You Are, because sex is certainly an expression of physical affection. But they even talk about things like a six second kiss. I don't know kinda have been ready for twenty years. You've been ready for a long time. How often outside of an intimate moment do we take time for a six second kiss? This a lot of kissing. It's a lot of seconds, you guys. When we did the interview with them, I came home and told my husband their tips for completing the stress cycle and I said a six second kiss, and he's like, Okay, let's try it. And I was like, we're gonna make it to five. Like I lived so pressed together, you know, because I just got home from work and I was like, I got a dinner. I can't do this. It is a long time. But that's kind of what they're saying, is that it has to be long enough for your body to get the message that you're safe. Because that's why signs of affection work, is that it is communicating to your body the danger has passed. You are safe. Yes. Again, your mind might know it. Your mind is like, hey, I left that uncomfortable meeting I had at work three hours ago. But here now you are saying, using your body's language, I'm telling you stand down. Yeah. So another way to do this, they call it the twenty second hug. This is with somebody that you feel safe being in an embrace. They talk really a lot about like holding your own weight, like you're standing on your own weight. You're not leaning into someone, you're holding your own center of gravity, but hugging someone for twenty seconds. That's how long a hug takes to signal to your brain and release the good hormones of saying I am safe here right. So again, if you're limited in your physical movement, this can be something you can do. They also recommend a technique of tensing your muscles really tight in different parts of your body, concentrating different parts of your body for ten seconds and then working on relaxing them for ten seconds and kind of doing that over and over again. If you're limited in what you can do physically, that you still have muscle control where you can focus on like your shoulders or you know, you're lower back or you know whatever, different parts of your body and really tensing up and then releasing even that signals to the muscles the parts of your body that are remembering the stress you've been under. It signals like, Okay, we're gonna work this out right. They even said breathing, which probably comes to a lot of people's minds if you have deal with anxiety at all, or you do any meditation, that's something they talk about. But that breathing in and then breathing out in a calm and controlled way, deep breathing. It also gets rid of some of the bad stuff and it communicates to your body that you're safe. And I also mentioned and I just loved this one because this is maybe where Foxer comes in for me. But it says positive social interaction. And they also list laughter as the second one, which kind of go together for me. Having like casual but friendly interactions with people can help you to release the stress cycle. So it's an extrovert that's easier for me. And I'm like, maybe that's where I've been doing some of this all along. I know that I'm happier when I get to Trader Joe's and I get to talk to the clerk as I'm checking out you. Just like they said, it doesn't even have to be super deeply meaningful, but just something that tells your body, oh, the danger is past. Just polite, general happy conversation or true true laughter like that belly laughter. Yes, a couple of weeks ago, it's rare anymore for all of my family to be home in the evening because somebody's usually working. At least one person, everyone was home, and we decided to play a card game that our youngest two had recently learned, and in our family, when we play card games, it's mostly just an excuse to smack talk each other yes, back and forth. And there was so much smack talk and so much laughter, and people just genuinely fell on the floor laughing, and I thought, this was the best night, you know, like you can just feel all of that relax watch a sitcom. I think this is why I'm drawn to sitcoms and not dramas, because in the evening I just need to laugh and I know I'll feel better. So, you know, that would be a genuine way of laughter and it's going to signal to your body that you're safe. I can think of situations in my own life in the last couple of weeks where I would have something happened and would be very stressed and fretting about it, you know, that sort of a thing, and I thought, I just need to talk to somebody about it, and almost like talking to them in that positive, friendly way, having them mirror back to me like yes, I can understand why you're frustrated. Here's some things you can think about it like released the stress for me. So it really is having people in your life. And a lot of what they talk about in the book is we're built for connection. You know. None of this is like just you do it on your own. We need each other, so to do this, I think that's such another good way to complete the stress cycle totally, and the opposite of that to you sometimes just having a good cry. Yes, Dacy, my oldest who is on the show recently, is under a lot of end of semester stress right now, and it's just seems to be really feeling it this time. And she told me she started crying in class the other day. But then after she said something like, I know you've told me this is true, but really, after I just cried for a little while, I really felt better. And I think sometimes we really try to train ourselves because again we connect crying with being overly sensitive or being weak. But there's a physiological thing that's happening when you have a really good cry that is so good and so good for completing the stress cycle as well. 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Awesome's you know here At sort of Awesome. We are always all about celebrating all the awesome that women bring to the world, and that's why I'm so excited that we have partnered again with Lola. Lola was founded by women for Women because founders Jordana and Alexandra realized that the FDA does not require feminine care brands to disclose a comprehensive list of ingredients in their products, so most of them don't. Lola, however, offers complete transparency about the ingredients found in their tampons, pads, liners, and whites. It's a little icky to think about, but truly, most major brands use a mix of synthetic ingredients in their products, including rayon and polyester. Their products might be treated with harsh chemical cleansing agents, fragrances, and dies. Lola products are one organic cotton with no added chemicals, fragrances, synthetics, or dies, and they are all about making your money a little bit easier. Their subscription service is fully customizable so that you choose your mix of products, your mix of absorbancy, the number of foxes you want and when you want them delivered. And Lolo subscription is super flexible. You can change it, skip it, cancel it in any time. So if you are ready to join the lower movement and get forty percent off of all subscriptions, go visit my Lower dot com and enter promo code awesome forty when you subscribe again, that's off. When you go to milela dot com, enter promo code awesome the number forty four zero when you subscribe. Thank you, Lola. You know's something else I feel like we have to mention because I can maybe hear some of the awesomes in their heads saying, yeah, but the stress is still there and that's true. So one of the things that was hugely helpful for me was when they differentiated between stress and stressors. Yes, so they're saying, we can't always resolve the stressors in our life, but you can resolve the day to day stress. Yes. So I think that that's really important. And everything that we've been talking about so far is how to deal with the stress, even if it means that you're not dealing with the stress or right now. And they do give some ways to maybe deal with that, but I just wanted to make that differentiation that what we're talking about here is like what happens in you when you're in these stressful situations. You may not be able to handle, you know, that difficult family member or the coworker or a season like you mentioned that Emily is in with dealing with the school play. These things happen. We're just talking about how do you deal with the stress that comes out of those stressors exactly. I actually want to read one passage. If you guys will bear with me, because I thought this was so important, They say. The good news is that stress is not the problem. The problem is that the strategies that deal with stressors have almost no relationship to the strategies that deal with the physiological reactions our bodies have to those stressors. To be well is not to live in a state of perpetual safety and calm, but to move fluidly from a state of adversity, risk, adventure, excitement, back to safety and calm and out again. Stress is not bad for you. Being stuck is bad for you. Wellness happens when your body is a place of safety for you. Even when your body is not necessarily in a safe place, you can be well even during the times when you don't feel good. I just thought, oh my gosh, that's what we all need to hear, because truly, because of all the reasons, we're not going to rid our lives of stress. And that's not even the goal. The goal is to realize that life is a series of these cycles of being in really adverse situations and then moving into a place of safety in our bodies. Then that prepares us to go back out into the world. And again, so much of what we're being told as women right now, it's like, oh, you just need to practice better self care. We've talked about self care. We are big believers and caring for and nourishing yourself, but we have to kind of go to the next level and understand that this is a new level of self care. It's really understanding how to connect our bodies again to our brains and work through these cycles so that we're not stuck in our stress cycles. Absolutely, you guys, all of this that we said so far, it was like chapter one. Yeah. Literally, So if you're like this is so good, I mean this is just the first chapter. You've got to read the whole book. Yeah, But they talk about how to deal with some of the stress ors and not just the stress And I thought that this was really helpful too, because for many of us were like, yeah, okay, so I can complete the cycle, but then I'm back in it the next day, and so some of their techniques for dealing with that. And I'm not going to get into their whole system, but these are my big takeaways is that there are stressors that you can control, and then there are stressors you can't control, right, So they said it's important to take a look at what is stressing you and name it for what it is. Right, So, if it is a season, okay, maybe it will resolve. And so if you just kind of take good care of yourself and can complete the stress cycle through tax season if you're an accountant, or through the end of the school year, if you're a teacher, or through summer, if you're a state at home fair, you know, like the stress or will resolve itself, or you can do things because you're like, I can control some of this. We've talked before on the show that one of my long time life habits was being late and feeling like I could do more in twenty minutes than it's physically possible to do, and then that would create stress. So getting to a point where I'm like, I need to have a realistic view of time and my ability to move through it, that is something that I could do to control the stress. You can ask for help, You can share a calendar with your husband. You know, there are ways that when we look at a situation and say, Okay, maybe I do need to take a higher view instead of just completing the stress cycle, which is helpful and good and necessary. Is there something I can do to help eliminate the stress or that is throwing me into the stress cycle every day? But then maybe those are like I don't want to say they're easy, because they're not. It's like when someone says, we'll just ask for help, Easier said than done. Right, even though to some degree intellectually we can get there, we don't always take the steps that we need to. I think the harder situation is the stress ors that you can't control. So there's somebody in your family who stretches you out, but yet they're going to be in your family. You know, it's not a toxic sort of thing where you're gonna have to cut them out of your life. Now what m so? I think? For that, they said that the biggest takeaway key is positive reappraisal, meaning that you're going to reframe the situation and decide that this discomfort, the effort that it takes, the frustration, all of it is going to be worth it because you're reframing the difficulties as opportunities for growth and learning. And again, I'm optimistic. They're saying, this isn't just optimism although optimism is great, Like, if you're naturally optimistic, you're like, hey, I do that anyway. Yeah good. But a lot of people don't do that, and there are seasons of our lives that we don't do that. We feel like this situation is going to be the death of me. I'll never get out of it, I'll never grow. You know, it's easy to get into this negative self talk, and so they're saying it's more than that. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the biggest things that positive reappraisal is so so important. I can look at times of my life that were so difficult for me. Again, you and I are both natural optimists. But I remember when the twins were babies and toddlers, I just like could not get out of the cycle of braiding myself for how bad I was at being a mom of twins. I would look at other people and be like, how do people do this? I'd see people on social media or even people I know in real life, and like, they seem like they're totally fine. It was the actual stress of having twins and that was hard, But more than that, it was the constant self criticism, the constant brating myself And one of the biggest takeaways for me about when they're talking about these stressors you can't control is the practice of turning towards yourself with compassion and kindness. Oh my gosh, I wish somebody could have come into my life. I wish I could go back at a time machine and tell myself, you know, like four years ago, turned towards these feelings of grief and frustration and practice compassion and kindness, because truly, you are building muscles right now that will serve you the rest of your life. It's hard right now, it's not going to stop being hard for a while, and you can't control it. But just being able to have that compassion, that kindness and really turning into it against so many times again based on personality, I have a personality that just wanted to avoid and shut down and not deal. But if I could have had an encouragement to turn towards myself practice kindness and compassion, I think it would have made a huge difference in how I worked through the stress of that time right and to deal with the stressors. I think that the thing that probably meant the most to me is they talk about in expectations are just my thing right now, I think so many of her problems, maybe my problems in life, or because I have some sort of an expectation of the world, of others, of relationships of myself, that this is exactly where I need to reframe it. They said, you need to maybe redefine winning and redefine failure when you're looking at stressors that you can't control. If there's somebody in your family that frustrates you, maybe what you actually need to do is redefine what you think that relationship needs to look like. You know, like maybe you had this kind of view that your grandparents would be or your parents would be this kind of grandparent to your children. This is not a stressor that you can get rid of, so you can say, well, what is it look like? Maybe winning in this situation needs to change the way I think about it. Maybe for you, when you were parenting twins and you were saying, I'm not being these things that you are comparing yourself maybe to an unrealistic expectation of how other people are. But here's what you were doing. You were surviving every day. That's winning. You are winning. So redefining that and redefining what failure looks like taking a look at your expectations and saying, well, I can't control that, but I can control what I expect out of the situation and what I expect out of me. It's so glad to you guys. Okay, before we wrap up, I do want to say that they're very realistic about the fact that sometimes stressors we can't escape from, but sometimes we actually have to decide, like this is causing so much long term stress that it's really time for me to walk away from this thing, whatever it is. So again, I love this about the Nagaski sisters. They're totally realistic about what real life looks like. They actually create a worksheet for you in the book of helping you decide when to give up something that's stressing you out, or when to stick it out and keep working through the stress of it. And so, Kelly, if you just talk about how this is connecting not just to our bodies, but connecting to something larger is what they call it, this search for meaning, how that can be a big motivator for figuring out like should I just walk away right now for real? Like is this mirror over? Is this job a dead end? Is this whatever or you know what, I think I'm gonna have connected to a bigger thing here, and I think that this is actually going to add meaning to my line. Yeah, I think that what they talk about, and it was so helpful, especially when you are at that pivot point you're saying, am I going to stick it out and grow character here? Or am I beating my head against the wall. One of the ways to find your way through that path is to find what they call your something larger, and you're something larger is really meaning. It is like what is giving you meaning in your life. I think for a lot of the awesomes that are listening to us, it's something like a spiritual meaning. You're like being connected to something bigger, a God, a love. There's meaning to this trial, there's meaning to it. So trying to find your something larger and let that be the beacon that pulls you through things when you're especially trying to say maybe I should stay in this even though it's difficult, or there is going to be more meaning on the other side if I give up that we need that otherwise it's just like too like rational. I think that that's the other thing they do really well is. Even though Emily is a science nerd, she's never far from acknowledging the mystery and all of this that there aren't clear cut. If you do A and then be, you're going to get C every time, you know. So they just want to give people the freedom to find that something larger and let that pull them through right when they are in those tough decisions, when they are in the stressful circumstances that they can't control. How are you going to make that decision? Should you stay or should you go? Looking for that something larger is often going to be the path. Yeah, you guys, this book get it. It is a real game changer in terms of understanding yourself, your life, and finding a way out of burnout. I think that that is such a consistent condition for so many of us, and this book again, like literally we're barely out of chapter one in our discussion. Here's right. You know, sometimes you go to the movies and you see a trailer for a new movie and you're like, well, I basically should have just watched the whole movie. You when I watched the trailer, like you watch the best part the trailer. You're like, actually, the trailer was better. Right, This is not that we are giving you just like a little taste of all of the goodness is in this book. There's so much hope for healing, there is so much inspiration, and it's so practical and so realistic. So we just can't say enough good things about it. Yep. I cannot wait to whether people go get the book and we maybe organize some sort of like later they hang out this summer or something like let people discuss it, or for sure just this week we will put some articles totally, some stuff that the Nagaski sisters have written themselves that you guys can get more of a taste of it. Hopefully we will entice you and we'll just be a great discussion maker absolutely all right. Well, Kelly, if people want to find you to talk about this and all kinds of things in life, where can we find you? All around the web. You can find me on Twitter, Instagram at Kelly Gordon m N for Minnesota, or on Facebook. I'm always in the hang out of the Superstars group, but I'm also at Facebook, dot com, slash level blog. Okay, you can find me on social media sort of us and Meg. The podcast is over on Twitter as sort of Awesome Pod, and you can find us any time on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash sort of Awesome. You guys, thanks so much for listening, and we'll see y'all next time. Sort of Awesome was created and is hosted by me, Meg Teets. Sarah Robertson is our assistant producer, and production collaboration comes from Kelly Gordon and Rebecca Hoffer. Kelly Gordon is our digital media producer and we are so thankful for the ongoing support from our listener supporters. Music is provided by the band Proger. You can find more of Proger's music at Proger music dot com. To find show notes on this and every episode of sort of Awesome, and also to spread the sort of awesome love to all of your friends, you can head on over to sort of Awesome show dot com