The cure for burnout (hint: it isn't self-care) | Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski
TED Health
TED
4.0 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 28 December 2021
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
With the end of the year fast approaching, you may be experiencing burnout and not even know it. That’s why we’re bringing back this introspective and deeply relatable conversation, where authors (and sisters) Emily and Amelia Nagoski detail three telltale signs that stress is getting the best of you -- and share actionable ways to feel safe in your own body when you're burning out. (This conversation, hosted by TED curator Cloe Shasha Brooks, is part of TED's "How to Deal with Difficult Feelings" series.)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is TED Health. I'm your host, Dr. Shoshana Ungerleiter. We hear the term burnout being thrown |
| 0:08.1 | around a lot. But what exactly is it and how does it manifest in our lives? Hear from sex educator |
| 0:15.3 | Emily Nagoski and her twin sister, Conductor Amelia Nagoski. In their 2021 TED conversation on how to deal with |
| 0:22.9 | difficult feelings, they share the warning signs of burnout and tips on how to prevent it in your |
| 0:27.9 | own life. Spoiler alert, you can't self-care your way out of it. Let's dive right in. You co-authored |
| 0:34.7 | a book called Burnout, The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. And the |
| 0:39.1 | inspiration for this book was actually based on a personal experience that you had with burnout, |
| 0:43.3 | Amelia. Can you tell us more about that experience? Well, it began with me going to school. While I was |
| 0:52.0 | getting my doctor to musical arts in conducting, I ended up in the hospital. |
| 0:56.0 | And I had abdominal pain, which they diagnosed as stress-induced, told me to go home and relax. |
| 1:03.0 | And in fact, I had no idea what to do, but luckily, I have a sister who has a PhD in health behavior. |
| 1:09.0 | So when I'm in the hospital, just in pain, laying there, |
| 1:13.3 | not even really understanding how I got there or why. |
| 1:17.1 | And I honestly didn't even believe that stress could cause physiological symptoms. |
| 1:24.1 | And Emily said, how did you not know that? |
| 1:26.9 | I'm a conductor and a singer. |
| 1:28.8 | I have learned in my musical training to express my feelings with my body, |
| 1:34.7 | to use my body as a vehicle for expressing emotion. |
| 1:38.7 | And it occurred to me that if it was true that I didn't just have those feelings on stage, |
| 1:44.1 | I had them |
| 1:45.3 | all the time my whole life. And if that was true, wow, that was a lot of feelings. So I didn't even |
| 1:55.3 | want to believe this was true. But once Emily brought me a huge stack of peer-reviewed science, |
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