Overthinking About Burnout

Added: 2026-05-28

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[00:00:45]>> [music] >> Welcome to the Magical Overthinkers podcast, a show for thought spiralers exploring the subjects [music] we can't stop overthinking about, from impostor syndrome to nostalgia. If you can relate to the feeling that, despite living in the information [music] age, the world only seems to be making less sense. If you can connect to the idea that, for some mysterious reason, it just feels especially [music] hard to exist as a human in the world right now, then you're in the right place. This podcast is here to take [music] down the temperature on this especially mentally overwhelming time in history [music] to help us think less about the things that don't matter and more about the things that do.

[00:01:25]>> [music] >> I'm your host, Amanda Montell. Today, we're overthinking about burnout.

[00:01:34]I don't know about you, but until a couple of years ago, I had the impression that feeling burnt out just meant being really, really tired. I pictured the image of the flicker of a candle being snuffed out. Burnout just meant you needed a really long nap.

[00:01:50]I thought the meaning of the word was how it sounded. [music] You were just spent, like a fire in the fireplace that nobody tended to. And I thought, well, if being burnt out is just feeling tired, [music] then I must not be burnt out because I don't feel tired. I feel wired. Turns out when I'm exhausted, I feel that sort of [music] empty buzzing energy. Like when you turn off an old TV, but there's still static playing. [music] I never recognized that as a symptom of burnout and thus I never felt the need to address it. Then around 2019, I came across a study [music] that mentioned a symptom of burnout so unexpected and that resonated with me so much that I started to rethink this concept altogether. A study titled Burnout, Depression, and Paranoid Ideation, a Cluster Analytic Study published in 2019 in the British Journal Occupational Medicine. The study's conclusion said, "Burnout is substantially [music] associated with paranoid ideation.

[00:02:45]Interestingly, emotional exhaustion correlated as strongly with paranoid ideation as it correlated with depression." Unquote. And I really saw myself in this >> [music] >> because during times when I feel overworked, overextended, I do start to feel like someone out in the universe is out to get me and that nobody cares and that I'm totally alone, which is objectively not the case. [music] When I'm burnt out, I even start to feel paranoid that I've brought it on myself and that this is some kind of individual personality flaw of mine and that nobody else is experiencing this, [music] which sounds absurd, but when I'm especially burnt out, that's how I tend to think.

[00:03:24]Then I started reading a little bit more about burnout, particularly the work of Amelia and Emily Nagoski, who have an incredible, dare [music] I say revolutionary book titled Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle.

[00:03:36][music] In this book, Amelia and Emily talk about this concept of the stress response cycle. They talk about how we can't always eliminate or solve our stressors, aka complete [music] the stress cycle. And this excess of unexpelled stress manifests as burnout.

[00:03:52]According to an Atlantic piece [music] by Caroline Mim's Nice, in which Caroline interviewed Amelia Nagoski, quote, "If we don't abandon the cultural demands that require us to conform in ways that aren't natural to us, [music] burnout progresses as we worry about the gap between who we are and who we are expected to be."

[00:04:10]Admittedly, I have not gotten there yet.

[00:04:14]I have truly internalized so much toxic capitalistic messaging [music] such that sometimes I feel doomed to a life of burnout because even if I get these spare moments of clarity where I'm like, "Oh my god, I am not this person whose entire worth is [music] based on my goal setting and productivity and ability to be this person [music] I think I should be." At some point, that messaging starts to take over again. It is so deeply entangled in my body. And I think [music] because a lot of modern-day stressors are so sort of abstract and cerebral and disembodied, [music] it makes completing that stress cycle more challenging because, >> [music] >> and it's so hard to articulate, but I feel like more than ever our labor has so much to do with our minds. This messaging and these stressors manifest in a lot of [music] ways. According to a piece in Fortune by Lindsey Leek titled, "It's Not a Contest: Bragging About Your Work Stress May Make You Seem Less Likable and Incompetent, Says New Study." [music] So many of us think that bragging makes us look hard working and admirable to co-workers, aka stress bragging. Oh my gosh, I remember at my old office job there were a select few co-workers who were constantly stress bragging. And I think they wanted to make it look like their stress meant that they were superior in some way. And and I will say those people did get promoted before me.

[00:05:38]I'm not hanging on to that or anything, but it just felt so individualist and misguided. And some part of me must have been impressed by all [music] that stress bragging because according to this Fortune piece, we sometimes think that because those around us are stress bragging, [music] especially if those people are being rewarded by promotions and such, stress must be a good and admirable thing that [music] we should strive for. But according to a study by the University of Georgia Terry College of Business, [music] bragging about the work you do can actually burn out your co-workers and make them not only like you less, but less willing to help you. Stick around because I'm going to be interviewing one of the authors of that burnout [music] book that I mentioned, Amelia Nagoski, and she's going to provide a ton of clarity on this subject. In preparation for that interview, I asked the Magical Overthinkers Club on Instagram to submit their most irrational or even shameful anonymous thought spirals and questions about burnout to present to Amelia. If you want to submit a thought spiral for a future episode of Magical Overthinkers, be sure to follow us on Instagram at Magical Overthinkers. I thought I would receive, I don't know, [music] maybe a dozen responses to that inquiry. Instead, I received hundreds and so many of them repeated similar sentiments. Anxiety is about thinking you'll never get anywhere in life, that you feel [music] guilty for resting, fears about the inability to control your future, thought spirals about experiencing inevitable burnout forever and ever and ever and then you die.

[00:07:10]And a lot [music] of expressions of shame that I could really relate to. As for myself, I sometimes [music] fear that I'm burnt out because I have no boundaries, that there's something very, very wrong deep down inside me that tells me I could go outside and touch grass, but instead [music] I'm going to update the spreadsheet and get a jump on tomorrow's tasks. I was mildly horrified, but also rather validated [music] to see that there are literally hundreds of other people who feel the same way.

[00:07:37]>> [music] >> It turns out that burnout is incredibly far-reaching. Its tentacles have slithered into basically every corner of our lives. And in a [music] CBC piece by Jonathan Ore titled Stressed at Work, Anxious About the Wider World, You Might Be Part of the Great Exhaustion, there is actually [music] a type of burnout that is not just related to work, but all kinds of broader anxieties [music] about, I don't know, gestures broadly, everything, climate change, politics, living costs, you name it. Jennifer De Mof, an organizational psychologist, said that burnout is further fueled by a perpetual feed of negative information outside [music] of work, especially social media, that can inflame the polarization of political discourse.

[00:08:19]This chronic burnout has [music] a whole slew of health detriments from heart disease to insomnia. According to a Research and Markets analysis quoted in that CBC piece, by 2025, the market for global workplace stress management is expected to reach 11.3 billion [music] dollars. Stress, surprise, surprise, turns out to be pretty profitable.

[00:08:42]And now that I am officially [music] burnt out on listening to myself talk about this subject matter, I [music] am thrilled to present my interview with Amelia Nagoski, one of the authors of Burnout, The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, which she co-wrote [music] with her twin, Emily Nagoski.

[00:08:59]Here's Amelia.

[00:09:06]Amelia, welcome to the Magical Overthinkers podcast. I'm so glad you're here. Thank you so much. Could you please introduce yourself and your work to our listeners? Hi. My name is Amelia Nagoski. I am the co-author of The New York Times best-selling Burnout, The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle with my identical twin sister, Emily Nagoski, who is author of The New York Times best-selling Come As You Are, The Surprising New Science That Will Change Your Sex Life, and the newly released Come Together, whose subtitle I do not know.

[00:09:36]>> [laughter] >> I about to say like your memorization of that subtitle, that is overachieving sibling behavior.

[00:09:43]>> Yeah, yeah, [laughter] yeah, yeah. I know the whole subtitle to her first book, but I did not bother to learn it for her second one.

[00:09:50]That's okay. By training though, I'm a musician. I have a doctorate of musical arts in conducting. I've been musical my whole life and all I ever wanted to be was a conductor. So, I got a doctorate in conducting and and the doctoral program itself that I was in was so stressful, that environment was so difficult that I ended up in the hospital with stress-induced illness and doctors telling me, "Just relax. Just learn how to relax." Which by the way, not an evidence-based intervention. So, I ended up doing, you know, a lot of research with my sister cuz she was like, "You know how to relax You know how to do those things." And I was like, "No, I don't."

[00:10:24]And she was like, "You know all this information." I was like, "Yeah, but here's all the reasons why it doesn't make sense to apply it in real life."

[00:10:30]And that was news to her and so we wrote a book about it together. Thank you for sharing that origin story. Also, I don't think anybody who has ever profoundly struggling decided to then just magically not struggle because someone told them to relax.

[00:10:43]>> Right.

[00:10:44]Oh, relax. Okay, I'm a I'm a full-time doctoral student with also three part-time jobs and I'm a stepmother to three teenagers and I'm commuting 65 miles each way to my graduate position.

[00:10:56]Yeah, I'll just relax.

[00:11:03]Well, this is a show for thought spiralers and so I wanted to open with the very first question that I always pose to my magical overthinkers guests, which is simply what is an irrational thought spiral that is currently living rent-free in your head? I have long COVID. I've had it for 4 years now and I've been working very hard to recover, trying all the things. And the research that we did for the book burnout led me to heal like just long-term my whole life. I was like a sickly child, right?

[00:11:35]I was sick all the time. And then everything I learned in burnout, I was in my peak health. I was aerobically fit. I rarely got sick. I was like healthy when I got COVID. And now I'm like just I'm disabled is what I am. And I keep going back and forth between this like how much of this is my nervous system programming, how much of this is released childhood trauma keeping me trapped, how much of this is just like a structural flaw in my body that needs to be healed, how much of it is me eating sugar sometimes, like how much it is stuff that I can control versus how much is the stuff that I have to like forgive my how much of it is neurological pain and how much of it is structural pain, you know? And I It's been about a year and a half. I've been very specifically in this spiral of like I'm in a clinic that's helping with like the medical part. And oh my god, I've gotten so much better. Anyway, yeah, that's what it's like to live in my head these days. I didn't know that. So I appreciate you sharing that. I'm so grateful that you are here, and I can relate to those thought spirals in different contexts, of course, but we're always looking for a freaking reason, you know? Like cuz that helps the world feel more manageable.

[00:12:49]100%.

[00:12:50]>> [laughter] >> And you're a musician, so you can probably appreciate and/or perhaps maybe judge even more harshly the fact that when I'm when I'm transitioning or uncomfortable or in a good mood, there's never not an occasion to sing what you want to say. Oh, oh, 100%. Yes.

[00:13:09]When I was a child, like a teenager, especially when I got my first couple of jobs and I was surrounded by like actual grown-ups, and I would sing all the things, and they always thought I was in a great mood. Emily is always so happy cuz I sang all the time. And I was like, no, I I sing to cope. I have learned since since burnout came out, Emily and I have both independently been diagnosed with autism and it turns out singing for me is stimming. I do it to like cope in high stress situations, but it makes other people think, you know, I sing because I'm happy.

[00:13:41]>> That you're like Snow White, yeah.

[00:13:42]>> Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, [laughter] no, no.

[00:13:43]That's this is the opposite of true. If I'm singing, it's because something terrible is happening and I'm just trying to stay on top of myself.

[00:13:51]>> [laughter] >> Oh my god, I really I I see you. I do.

[00:13:56]So, for the longest time, I think I really got the wrong idea about burnout.

[00:14:02]I really just thought it was like fatigue, sleepiness, you know, like I I would see memes like, if you don't give your body a break, it will take a break for you and probably not at a convenient time, which is like a pithy, cool message. When I think of a body taking a break, I think of like like powering down, you know, and I've not experienced that quite. My vibe, I've discovered, is much more like a toddler who's like, I'm not tired and then stays up till 2:00 a.m. and starts acting really strange cuz they don't know that they're tired. Yeah.

[00:14:34]>> And all of that said, first off, I was wondering if you could sort of identify some less than expected symptoms of burnout in the body so that we can all be on the same page about what it is.

[00:14:47]Okay, here's the problem. The stress cycle, the stress response that is initiated when we experience something stressful or when our nervous system believes that something is a threat, which could be the ding on your phone of an email, it could be like a piece of mail that comes in your post office box that might be a bill, a jerk conversation with some random [ __ ] anything your nervous system perceives as a potential threat initiates a stress response, which is literally the release of neurotransmitters, hormones like glucocorticoid, cortisol, that literally affect every system in your body, right? So, when you feel stressed, it's your preparation for fight or flight. It's your heart racing.

[00:15:32]It's also your breath maybe getting deeper or faster, but it's also things you might not notice. Like they don't happen above the level of conscious awareness. For example, immune system in the stress response, who cares about malaria when you're being, you know, chased by a tiger, right? That's what your body's preparing you for. Your immune system's like, "Okay, I'm going to use less energy now." So, it might shut down. So, you might get more infections when you're chronically stressed. Your reproductive system also takes a lot of energy. So, when it gets the signal from the stress response, "Hey, stressful thing is happening."

[00:16:05]Reproductive system learns, "Aha, so in this moment we don't care about babies because we're about to be eaten by a lion." So, it might be reproductive symptoms. It might also be your skin breaking out cuz your skin has multiple systems like the things that cause pimples, but also changes the way your hair grows. And when this is chronic, it might show up in any system in your body. So, I can't tell you what it'll look like, but it could look like anything. I'm not saying every single illness that you experience is stress-induced, but every single illness or pain you experience could be stress-induced. In fact, the definition that we use in the book is that burnout is the experience of being overwhelmed and exhausted by everything you have to do and yet somehow still worried you're not doing enough. And the term burnout was first coined in the 1970s in like psychological research, and there's three characteristics. And the first one is emotional exhaustion, which in the past 40 years of burnout research, emotional exhaustion has been the primary characteristic, especially in women. In men, it is the second characteristic, which is a loss of sense of feeling of accomplishment. So, you feel like you're working so hard and so hard and not accomplishing anything.

[00:17:21]Because one of the other systems that takes a lot of energy in your body is cognition and awareness of the world around you. So, when you are being chased by a lion in that the stressful situation that your body's evolutionarily prepared for, like the thing that the stress response is supposed to be for to save your life, it's really unhelpful to be aware of your surroundings and and conscious of the ways that your contribution connects you to other things, you get this kind of cognitive tunnel vision. So, you're just focused on your own thing to save your life.

[00:17:52]Um because cognition, to be aware of like larger connections and stuff, that takes just a lot of energy. And who needs that when we're being chased by a lion, you know? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:18:03]So, I want to ask you a little bit more about the stress cycle for those who are unaware, unfamiliar. Could I ask you to sort of explain that aspect and how it plays into burnout? Okay. So, the stress response cycle makes sense if you imagine it in the environment of evolutionary adaptiveness. So, some proto you is just down by the river getting some water. And here comes some proto lion, some super scary thing that's going to eat it. That is the stressor, the thing that initiates a stress response in your body. The stress response is a cascade of hormones, neurotransmitters, and electrical signals. In the case of a lion, you're probably going to flee cuz it has fangs and claws. And it's going to eat you.

[00:18:46]So, you run. You leap. You jump. You climb. You hide in the cleft of the rock. And when you look out, you can see, you know, your your heart rate [laughter] and your breath are all and you're looking out and you can see that the lion has given up and it's walking away. You have escaped. You have saved your life using the very tools that the stress response gave you. It gave you all that oxygen to your muscles. It allowed you to breathe deeper, to run faster, to focus more narrowly than you have ever focused before, and you've used it all up in order to save your life. And it feels like it might feel jump up and down excited, amazing, happy, buoyant, or it might feel just like kind of an an awe-struck calm and like connection with the universe. And you probably want to like tell all your loved ones about it and go home and hug your friends and family and and and make up a song about it and and dance about it around that night. Um yeah. And that feeling is the complete stress response cycle. It has a beginning, which is the initiation, because your nervous system perceives something that it suspects could be a threat. The middle is the expression of all those hormones and the use of all those hormones to run and jump and leap and climb, and then you use them all up and you save your life and you come to the end. The alternative is that you use them all up and you don't escape, in which case none of the rest matters. But, assuming that you escape, you have done what the stress response prepared you to do in order to solve your problem. These days we're not we're not chased by lions much. These days the things that cause us stress are relationships and money and traffic, notifications, notifications and deadlines and and like existential dread and stuff. Uh so, those things cannot be fought or fled from. Those things have to be handled by standing in line and filling out forms and smiling politely, even though we freaking hate that guy, because that's what keeps us safe, because that's how we maintain a civilization that makes everybody's life safer, mostly. Except that it also doesn't. So, when we have this fight or flight response, we don't use it to get rid of the thing that initiated the fight or flight response.

[00:21:03]So, the the secret to avoiding burnout burnout happens when we get stuck in this way, where we're we're having a stress response, but we can't use it for the thing to solve the problem that initiated it. So, we need to deal with the stress that's happening in our bodies in a separate process from the process that we use to deal with the thing that initiated the stress response. So, we need to yes, deal with the problem by standing in line and filling out the forms and smiling politely at people we hate. And then, in another totally separate process, we need to communicate with our bodies that the body has the capability to move us from danger to safety. And there's so many ways to do that. The most effective one at a population level, yes, is physical activity. When people say exercise can help you manage your stress, this is what they mean. However, when they say that, they don't take into account that like not everyone's the same, not everyone's circumstances are the same, and that's not a thing that can be universally true. Nothing is universally true. But like, my identical twin sister who was raised in the same house with me, very much a natural exerciser, can go for a run and come home and just feel like, "Yeah, the weight of the world's been lifted off my shoulders." And I thought she was making that up. Genetically identical, raised in the same household, I've never experienced that thing that she experiences, and apparently, she is in the majority at a population level. But for me, other things work better. And you know, there's a bunch of other things like a good night's sleep, a big old laugh, creative self-expression, or even just using your imagination. So, that's the good news is there's a lot of ways to complete the stress response cycle. Yeah, what you're saying really lands. First of all, a lot of us grow up hearing that exercise can help with your mental health and your stress. And because I lean a little paranoid and and and skeptical sometimes, particularly when I'm burnt out, what I hear in those messages is like, "We want you to be skinny." Like, I think [laughter] like this is just this is just a uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh Be healthy."

[00:23:06]>> medical propaganda cuz it's not really about your health. It's weight loss propaganda, which is about your obedience. There it [ __ ] is. And so, I have historically been perhaps overly cynical of the mind-body sort of like exercise to help your brain stuff. Not overly cynical, appropriately cynical.

[00:23:26]Look, when we were writing the book, Emily and I were taking on these like diagnostic whatever to like evaluate where we stand and how real world this research applies to us cuz we figure we're like a living twin study. And when we studied pessimism versus optimism, optimism has all kinds of like wellness benefits. It's so good for you to be an optimist. And I scored highest of everyone we knew who took this test, I scored the highest of pessimism among all of us. [laughter] Um it's not great for my wellness, but you know what? Like pessimists also have a more accurate perception of reality. So, that's handy.

[00:24:02]But yeah, no, I I I don't think that there's any kind of skepticism that is excessive skepticism except in the face of evidence.

[00:24:10]And when you look at the evidence about what people call mind-body, it's not that cuz you don't have a mind and a body as two separate things. You live in a in an electrified meat suit, right? And when the electricity in your meat suit goes away, you're dead. And if the meat suit goes away, like what's left of the electricity? I don't know. That's where philosophy comes into it. But like, you live in an electrified, watery meat suit and you have to deal with all its components in like it's a whole one thing made of many complicated things. For sure. I feel like I lost track of that sentence, but >> No, no, not at all. It made perfect sense to me and it also reminded me of some research that I read for my most recent book and ended up cutting, but it was really interesting. It was on the topic of mind-body dualism and particularly how women more than men are inclined to believe that the mind is separate from the body, which might be correlated to our better theory of mind.

[00:25:12]We have like a superior theory of mind.

[00:25:14]We're better at understanding that, you know, different people do things for different reasons. And like that person's experience and motivations are different from mine. And for some reason, that was correlated with this notion that your mind and your body are separate, which is also connected to like belief in witchcraft and ghosts.

[00:25:33]Because if the mind and the body are separate in theory, your mind could leave your body. Yeah. Yeah. And so, I thought that was interesting that women perhaps are witchier because of this increased mind-body dualism, which actually has to do with the fact that we're better at sort of empathetically placing ourselves in other people's shoes and determining their motivations for things. That is a whole separate tangent.

[00:25:58]I don't think it is, actually. Because what we learned in the research for burnout was that the impact of social forces, I mean, like it's possible that there's some biological thing that makes women better at the whatever whatever. But, I mean, you can't deny that in society women are given more permission to be empathic than men are.

[00:26:18]Women are expected and required to be more sensitive and emotional than men are. And men are often punished for being empathic and sensitive and artsy and they're you know, called effeminate terms that are meant to be insults. But, like also historically looking it back at like the Enlightenment, which was a you know, philosophical and artistic movement led by men. Because men were allowed to be given these powers. And ever since the Enlightenment, we've seen a preference for this like separate knowing where we examine an idea on its face and try to measure it as a skeptic to prove it wrong, to poke holes in it and see if it holds water, right?

[00:27:00]Whereas there wasn't a a kind of empirical hole-poking system before the enlightenment. But what women are more likely to do is what we in the book, I forget the author who originally came up with these terms of separate knowing versus connected knowing, which women are given more permission to do and therefore get more practice at and are better at where you take on a new idea and you imagine what if this is true?

[00:27:21]Let me hold on to this idea and just imagine for a minute what if this is true instead of trying to poke holes in it and see if it holds water and say what if this isn't true? You know what I'm saying? Yes. Yes, absolutely. And through history patriarchy gives different roles and permissions to people depending on their gender. The point of the book that we figured out is that like that that kind of like social conditioning based on gender has an impact on the way that people of different genders experience health.

[00:27:50]Wellness.

[00:27:50]>> Yeah. So when you were talking about how like after evading a physical threat, you might experience awe, I found that really interesting because I can think of one instance in my life where um my partner and I had to escape a bear.

[00:28:06]>> [laughter] >> And I uh weirdly handled that so much better than I handled these like material non-threats like stressful emails >> [laughter] >> and dealing with health insurance, you know, like That bear [ __ ] Yeah, yeah. I was my like best, most locked and loaded self. And when we did survive that, I was like yeah, in awe of nature.

[00:28:32][laughter] And we did, we went and told everyone and I even like included a little teeny parenthetical about it in my new book. Like yeah, I you know, and I'm not I'm I'm 5'1" and really weak.

[00:28:43]>> [laughter] >> Like I was super like my best self in the bear attack situation. I am my totally worst self in these disembodied, can't handle the health insurance situations. And so, I that was really interesting to to hear you break all of that down. The other thing I wanted to ask, inspired by a piece of listener feedback, perhaps it could be an interesting experiment to react to a stressful email or something like that by like getting up and >> spending a burst of energy? 100% yes.

[00:29:17]Cool. Okay, great. Get an email that makes you go and go for a walk. Jump up and down.

[00:29:23]Punch a pillow. 100%.

[00:29:25]>> Right. The good news is though that you don't have to do it right when it's happening. Your brain will save that stress for you forever. [laughter] So, like, that time when your eighth grade bully and you got advice about your eighth grade Well, if you just ignore him, he'll go away, right? So, you did. You did what you were told cuz you were such a good girl. You ignored him so he would go away and he didn't go away and you ignored him and he didn't go away and you ignored him and you experienced all that stress and you never ran. You never fought. Your body will hold that stress response and it'll like keep that in your muscles, in your everything cuz I mean, if you're not going to burn up those neurotransmitters, they're going to create literal toxic waste in your blood like these are chemical reactions and they have leftovers, right? So, like, there's literal chemical bad things that go on when this happens and your body will hold on to that and you've never processed it and you've never done anything with it. The good you can do that anytime. So, like, that email in 6 years, you can handle that email that stressed you out.

[00:30:28]>> [laughter] >> Like, if you never did it. And this is one of the things I think that kept me from understanding how this worked because all this like emotion processing, which is really what this is, stress is an emotion. You need to like go through the whole cycle. You need to go through the whole process.

[00:30:42]Well, it's interesting and I think encouraging to know that it's never too early to address the stuff and it's never too late.

[00:30:49]>> Never too late. Never too late.

[00:30:55]Even in 2026, somehow getting new glasses can be such a production. It's so inconvenient. You got to schedule an appointment and pay a fortune and then wait for them to arrive. It's not for me, which is why I used to almost never replace my glasses. They would just break and get wonky and bent. Thank the optical lords for Zenni Optical, who are here to fix all of our spectacle-related woes. I remember the first time I got a prescription and purchased glasses at the eye doctor. I was 22 years old. I think I put $700 on a credit card for two pairs. But those days are gone, thanks to Zenni, which is an online eyewear shop selling prescription glasses, sunglasses, blue light glasses starting at under $30.

[00:31:39]You just go to zenni.com, pick out a frame, and then they ship it to your door. No appointment, no store, no upsell at the counter, no credit card debt. Zenni has over 150,000 five-star reviews. If you're a four-eyes like me, you got to check it out. If your glasses are overdue for a refresh, now is the time. Go to zenni.com/podcast and use code podcast15 for 15% off your first order. The styles sell out, so don't sit on it. That zenni.com/podcast promo code podcast15. Okay, I want to explore this gender topic a little bit more. I believe you and your twin have shared some research about female rats who swam for twice as long as male ones when dropped in water, with their speed, you know, never dropping to that of the males, which is interesting. So, at least in rats, there does seem to be a sort of natural inclination in females to like do the most in response to stress. Can you talk about how women homo sapiens might react to stress and what is the sort of nature versus nurture in that?

[00:32:44]>> Yeah, we've kind of already talked about the sort of socialization question. I mean, there's there's no question that women are socialized differently from men to respond to stress. We women, I identify as a gender. I was, you know, assigned female at birth, but one of the reasons I had so much trouble acknowledging that sexism is what I was experiencing is cuz I didn't understand that I was a woman and that other people saw me as a woman until like my 30s. I was like, "Okay. Oh, it's sexism cuz they think I'm a woman." But I had never like come to Anyway, so when I say woman, I include myself because it's people who are perceived and socialized as women. AFAB people who are socialized in feminine ways. So anyway, I include myself in that. So when I say we women, even though I don't identify as a woman, I I'm I exist in the universe as the way I were. And now I know that, so it helped me understand things. Anyway, we are expected to be at all times pretty, happy, calm, generous, and attentive to the needs of others. And if we have a need, like we've experienced a traumatic or stressful thing, and we need to complete the stress response cycle, we need to express our rage, we need to feel our feelings, we are not allowed to cuz we're supposed to be pretty, happy, calm, generous, and attentive to the needs of others at all times. And that means that we are not given permission to get a good night's sleep, to laugh loudly with our mouths wide open, not like drooling a little bit, and like we're not allowed to just like ball our eyes out. Or there's a real stigma against a woman crying, like it's manipulative. Like it's not us just having feelings and needing to like let the feel It's not okay. It's definitely not okay for It's even worse for dudes, but like there's like a There's a whole thing. So because we are not expected to like meet our own needs or take resources like time or energy or attention for ourselves, we are not given permission to be healthy and whole and complete because how dare we sleep for 9 hours when Becky needed us to bake cupcakes for her birthday party, right?

[00:34:46]We're supposed to stay up till 3:00 a.m.

[00:34:47]doing that because we're supposed to be happy to sacrifice our own wellness on the altar of someone else's convenience.

[00:34:53]That's just expected of us. So, in this rat research, what they found is that yes, when you stress out a rat, it will give up at this thing called the forced swim test. It'll give up at it at a certain rate. And um it turned out that female rats gave up way later than the male rats. And so, is there a biological thing that keeps female people or female rats or female anything, is there something about the hormones or the biological structure, I don't know, that tells us that we're supposed to keep going even though we are stressed, even though we don't have enough resources, even though we are more likely to drown, that tells us we're supposed to keep going and do not give up even after it might have been healthier and safer for us to have quit. I mean, like there's this kind of uh stereotype about how guys are real wimps when they get sick, right? Like a woman gets sick and she takes care of herself and the whole house, too. And a man gets sick and he needs, in a stereotypical way, his wife to bring him chicken soup can't move cuz he's got a fever of 101.1. Like and the wife meanwhile has a temperature of 103 and she is making soup for him. You know, that's the stereotype. And like, has anyone ever lived through that? I kind of I kind of have. I've I've had a guy in my life who like just told So, there's these stereotypes and are they true across the board? No, not literally, but I mean, these perceptions come from somewhere, right? Right.

[00:36:26]That's That's humorous. And there is the well-observed fact that women have a higher pain tolerance than men. I mean, ask any tattoo artist. I was just going to say like whenever I've gotten tattooed, I'm like pretty heavily tattooed. I don't find it painful. I'm not saying that to be badass. I'm just like saying like I don't really Listen, talk to me about my IUD insertion. My life flashed before my eyes.

[00:36:50]>> [laughter] >> A little tattoo? It's nothing. But the men in my life when they get tattooed, mhm. Oh yeah.

[00:36:57]>> [laughter] >> Oh yeah, ask a tattoo artist. I mean, there's there's YouTube videos of tattoo artists being like, oh yeah, women. Like women can take anything and men will cry at the least bit of like yeah. I mean, and yet when we go to the hospital with pain, our expressions of pain are taken less seriously. We're given less pain medicine, especially if you're a woman of color. They're less likely to believe how much pain you say you're in.

[00:37:18]>> Well, I'm glad you brought that up because women's pain tolerance is observed to be higher, not always, but there's data to reflect that. Yeah. And many anecdotes to reflect that. You would think in an equitable society, which we do not live in, that when a woman, and particularly a woman of color, expresses the experience of pain, you should like really take that [ __ ] seriously. But instead, the opposite applies because of once again, misogyny.

[00:37:46]Yeah. The white supremacist cis heteronormative exploitatively capitalistic patriarchy. I call it the Wishnelt for short. The Wishnelt. The Wishnelt, the white supremacist cis heteronormative exploitatively capitalistic patriarchy. Wishnelt with a silent C.

[00:38:03]Yeah, of course. With a silent C. I love that. It's charming and haunting at the same time. It's like Dr. Seuss-ian.

[00:38:10]Yeah. Freaky. Um all right. I have a couple more questions and then we're going to get into a bit of a lightning round. So, there is obviously a great deal of self-blame that goes with burnout. Can you talk about how acknowledging like, "Oh, capitalism is doing this to us." and and you know, imperialist prejudicial systems are doing this to us. Acknowledging that doesn't always help us manage the self-blame. Could you kind of like speak to the like shame aspect and why we can't talk ourselves out of it? We blame ourselves because we are instructed explicitly to blame ourselves. We are told that we are the problem, that we're not trying hard enough, when in fact, we are doing everything we can. We are trying [clears throat] so hard all the time to do all the things. And meanwhile, external messages are coming to us that say we're not doing enough, we're not working hard enough, and what we are doing for ourselves, we don't deserve. That we need to be, you know, pretty, happy, calm, generous, and attentive to the needs of others. And that if we fail at that, we're failures as human beings. And that if we're failures, that means we deserve punishment. And if no one's around to punish us, which they will, then we'll just punish ourselves. And it's really hard to get out of that thought pattern because you were surrounded by it all the time. Social media is full of messages that, "Here's all the things you can do." right? They I mean, they call it self-help. All the you you know, you read the books about the self-help, how to help yourself. And you know, women read self-help books more than men. But like, self-help is almost exclusively dedicated to women because we're told we're supposed to fix ourselves cuz we are the ones who are broken. Whereas men just kind of live in a system that is increasingly dangerous for them, but on the whole, is still designed to accommodate them and their default states. It's not great.

[00:40:06]Patriarchy's real bad for dudes, also.

[00:40:09]Oh, for sure. Yeah, for sure. But the reason it's so hard to break out of the self-blame is cuz you're constantly being told by external forces that that's correct. It's your fault. You're doing it wrong. You've given up too soon. You have accepted too much luxury and comfort and how dare you sleep for 9 hours, that kind of thing. And the cure for that is is to surround yourself with people who care about your well-being as much as you care about theirs and remind each other, "Hey, those external messages are are a lie from the white supremacists heteronormative exploitatively capitalist patriarchy to get you to burn yourself out, to spend all your money, to commit all of your resources to the service and perpetuation of the wish note. And actually, in reality, you are a human who deserves love and compassion and rest and resources just as you are. And we will stand guard in front of your bedroom door to make sure you get your 9 hours of sleep and that nobody feels entitled to those 9 hours just because you're a woman." Right. Yeah, no, I love the point about like surrounding yourself with people who care as much about your rest and well-being as you deserve. Because the self-blame also stems from doctors being like, "Just relax." So, it's like, "Oh, great. I'm not working hard enough and I'm also not relaxing well enough." Cool.

[00:41:28]Yep. Yep. [laughter] But then also like when women do things that do feel relaxing to them like getting a manicure and having a bubble bath. Like those are villainized and joked about as like these self-indulgent frivolous garbage that women women do. But also we are told that that self-care is a bubble bath and a manicure. Like no, self Okay.

[00:41:50]If I can just have a little tangent about self-care, it comes from like social work and working with like mentally ill people and self-care is keeping yourself clothed and fed and bathed. That is self-care. If you can keep yourself clothed and fed and bathed, then you don't have to worry about self-care. The rest of it, the managing the stress response cycle and making sure that you have access to resources like sleep and time and nutritious food, that's not self-care.

[00:42:20]That's not the same as as like the actual textbook definition. So, that word gets bandied about a lot like, "Oh, I am eating a chocolate bar. #selfcare."

[00:42:30]Like, okay, can we can we not with that?

[00:42:32]But, I mean, it is often if you take pleasure in delicious food that might not be super nutritious, but it like makes your soul happy, that is care that you deserve, but it's not really what self-care means. So, anyway, that's my little tangent. No, super valid. And I think [snorts] another sort of hashtag that I've seen to go along with some of those behaviors is like hashtag like treat yourself kind of thing, which is maybe more more accurate cuz it's a treat, you know, it's not like survival.

[00:43:04]>> And that's also like playful, whereas self-care gets kind of demonized as like an indulgence.

[00:43:11]But, like actual self-care is not. It is I mean, I say this as someone who became disabled after the age of 40. Like, all of a sudden, I could not care for myself. I could not keep myself clean and fed. And like, I didn't I don't change my clothes every day cuz it's real hard to change my clothes cuz you have to stay upright in order to It's like, you know what I'm saying? Like Yeah.

[00:43:34]Yeah, so let's anyway. Anyway. No, good, good. I'm so glad you made the point.

[00:43:39]So, we're talking about morality and external messages, and that brings me to my last question before we get into some thought spirals submitted by listeners.

[00:43:48]And that question is how do people experience burnout differently depending on their culture? Because I can't say that I notice the same attitudes toward work and productivity and fatigue and exhaustion, etc. in every culture compared to the sort of American Protestant capitalist culture. Yeah. So, the WHO is an international organization, the World Health Organization, which has recently included burnout among its things that it studies and gives advice to governments about. Specifically, burnout as a workplace hazard. Burnout, as they define it, which is correct, is not like a mental illness, and it's not a medical diagnosis. It's a condition brought on by a disconnect between the demands of their job and their capacity as human beings. So, expecting someone to work 14 hours a day is not realistic. There's a gap between a human being and its capabilities and that demand, right? So, that's going to lead to burnout because you're going to use up all of the resources that you have inside you and not have any way to refuel or replenish.

[00:44:57]So, that's why the World Health Organization is interested in giving countries guidelines to set legislation to require employers to set limits on how many hours a worker can work until they're given time to rest and refuel and replenish. Does that make sense?

[00:45:13]Yeah. Is there a culture that you've come across that has that sort of figured out the best? It's hard to say cuz I'm not in all those cultures, but I can tell you that like in Europe, it is much more common to have many weeks of vacation.

[00:45:26]Like, yeah, like 6 weeks in Scandinavia.

[00:45:30]>> American standard, right? I think that's much more realistic in terms of percentage of how much work we need. And then there's also like in the US, and I think this is largely a lot in sort of tech and business environments that you're expected to like work beyond your job description, and it's this unwritten rule. Like, if you don't go above and beyond, then you won't be given promotions or, you know, opportunities to advance or to be compensated in ways that are proportionate to your effort.

[00:46:01]That is horrible and dangerous and bad for people. So, I can't say like specifically these are cultures, but at the same time there are also different kinds of stressors in those environments because it's not just work. The WHO helps governments decide what are the minimum standards to make sure that people who support capitalism, who give jobs to pay for stuff, like if if we've decided capitalism is the way to go, then employers need to to set limits on how much they can expect a person to do relative to how much compensation they get. But, there are other things that are outside of a government's literal control because in the UK especially they call it minority stress. Living as a person who does not conform to a very narrow socially constructed ideal, which is rich, white, mostly male, mostly straight, definitely cis, definitely well-educated, in the US and the UK definitely speaking English as your first language with an accent that is the dominant on a large scale, not having a regionalized accent, or definitely not an accent from a foreign language, in the US especially Christian. If any of these ways you do not conform to this very narrow socially constructed ideal, you're going to experience what they call minority stress, microaggressions, harassment, prejudice, expressions of prejudice.

[00:47:21]Different cultures have different stressors, right? And they're going to come from the way in which you fail to conform. It is acknowledged on an international global level that human beings need human rights and to be protected from the exploitation of workers. Meanwhile, it is still legal to exploit workers, especially if you do it kind of off the books by creating a culture of overwork. Emily calls it the stress Olympics, where like you win a prize for being the most stressed out, for being the one who who works the most hours for the least compensation, and you're supposed to get rewarded for that, but you don't cuz what you you rewarded for is conforming to the socially constructed ideal, for being thin, rich, white, male, educated, et cetera. So, I mean, you've mentioned some very generously throughout this conversation, but truly before we get into the thought spirals, could you share, just rattle off a couple quickie burnout mitigating techniques? Thing one is to separate the stress from the stressor and to deal with them in separate processes. By all means, deal with the thing that caused your stress, smile and nod, be polite, fill out the form, stand in line, vote, and then also deal with the stress that happened in your body through physical activity, getting plenty of sleep, having a big old laugh, using your imagination and watching movies or reading books or just imagining your own stories where like you're the hero who rescues the princess or who smashes all of the evildoers, or a big old cry, or connection with other people. All these things can remind your body that the world is a safe place and that it does not have to be on guard all the time, that it can go into a state of relaxation and safety and calm. And safety is the most important part of that. The next thing is to acknowledge that you're not doing those things already and the reason you're not doing them is not because you're not trying, not because you're not already putting a lot of effort into it, it's because you're not given permission by the wide-scale social forces. And that's not your fault. You are this expectation.

[00:49:19]And look, wanting to conform to an expectation is not vanity, right? Humans are a herd species. We thrive in communities. Jonathan Haidt calls us 90% chimp, 10% bee. And we are built to do great things together. When you isolate someone, that's a form of torture.

[00:49:36]>> [snorts] >> Um, we need to be connected to other people. So, when our brains and nervous systems notice that we are on the fringes, well, where's the safest place to be in a herd when the lion comes? In the middle. It's the ones on the fringes that are going to get attacked. And that is literally true. When you are on the fringes of society, it's literally true that you will have less access to resources and safety. So, the fact that our nervous systems want to push us to belong, to conform, is not because we're trite or superficial, it's because our nervous systems understand that the safest place to be is in the middle. And what we need to do is stop imagining ourselves in the middle of like an international herd, and we need to imagine ourselves in the herd of our bubble, of our small community of people who care about our well-being as much as we care about theirs, so that we can remind each other, "No, you don't have to have two-tone kitchen cabinets in order to be worthy of having us over for dinner, right? Your avocado green linoleum countertops are wonderful for us all to sit around and eat together and enjoy each other's company, and they don't have to be perfectly clean, like it's all good, like dirt happens, it's fine." This is how we feel safe is understanding that we are not being held to some international standard of conformity. We conform to the small community of people who really care about who we are, cuz corporations, your workplace, does not care about who you are, what you're capable of, it just wants you to like suck yourself dry, to squeeze you like a tube of toothpaste until you're empty, and then throw you away. So, that was complete the stress response cycle and then surround yourself with a bubble of love, people who will remind you that you don't have to conform to the messages that you're receiving about what conformity means.

[00:51:17]Oh my gosh, thank you so much. I I I know that when you're saying the word you, you're talking about the second person plural and all of our listeners and anyone who you know, who cares to receive this message, but I truly feel like you're talking to me. And I mean, I guess technically you are, but >> [laughter] >> And I literally am you, you, and also you, anyone who's listening, you, you're there in your car, in your tub, doing chores, wherever you're listening, you, you deserve resources, you deserve care just as you are. You don't have to conform before you earn a good night's sleep.

[00:51:50]You don't have to work before you earn love and support and for your tribe to be proud of you, for your people to express how awesome you are. You just deserve love cuz you're human and you are valuable. Yes. Oh, I'm about to cry.

[00:52:06]>> [laughter] >> Okay. Mission accomplished then.

[00:52:11]Um on that very warm and fuzzy note, I think it's time to get to a lightning round.

[00:52:19]So, I had my wonderful Magical Overthinkers community on Instagram.

[00:52:24]Follow us at Magical Overthinkers on IG if you are not totally pained by that social media platform. I had them submit some thought spirals on the topic of burnout. I chose the ones that can be formatted into like a yes or no question. And so, I am going to just lightning round read a whole bunch of them and ask you to simply respond yes or no, true or false. Don't overthink it. All right, the first thought spiral.

[00:52:51]Can the burnout experience be correlated to a four versus five-day workweek? Yes.

[00:52:57]Next thought spiral. My dad died unexpectedly four months after he retired. Will burnout just be my life forever? No. I want to expand so bad, but no, no.

[00:53:08]There's so much hope. Okay, I'm not expanding, it's fine. Thank you. No, that was that was a very worthwhile expansion. I appreciate it. Next thought spiral. I'm a social worker. I worry about how long I can do this. Are there jobs with especially high burnout rates?

[00:53:21]Yes.

[00:53:23]Feel free to name one or two, actually.

[00:53:25]Teaching, medical care, if you're caring for sick people or if you're caring for children or doing what's basically figured to be women's work, that is probably the most likely to be a field with more burnout than average. Word.

[00:53:38]Next thought spiral. Can burnout be defined by a sense of dread and or just complete disinterest in something I used to enjoy? Yes. Because it's easy to conflate depression with burnout because they all they both kind of feel low energy. So, if you are no longer interested in something you used to be interested in, that is among several signs of depression. The key difference is that with depression, even if your circumstances changed, your your mind still feels sluggish and hard to pull out of the mud, that might be depression, which is a disease with a lot of help available, with a lot of treatments available. Burnout, if you change your circumstances, you start to feel better. Yeah. Can I ask one follow-up actually? Yeah. Cuz you mentioned burnout being low energy. For some reason, my burnout doesn't always feel low energy. I actually in my body don't feel like somnambulant.

[00:54:36]You know, what the way that I describe it, I'm always like tired and wired. You know, I actually feel like sort of buzzing with this sort of empty adrenaline.

[00:54:46]>> [laughter] >> That feels like my burnout. Is that real? Yeah. Valid. Yeah. Cool. Next thought spiral. Someone says, "Capitalism drives individualism. So, does being in community with others make burnout less prevalent?" Yes.

[00:55:00]Next thought spiral. Someone says, "I will never recover from this. There is not enough sleep in the world." False.

[00:55:07]Next thought spiral says, "I think some stress is necessary for motivation."

[00:55:11]Yes. Stress is not the enemy. Getting stuck is the enemy. Emotions are tunnels. You have to move all the way through the darkness to get to the light at the end. Stress is an emotion. And you get stuck, you get burnt out. But if you can move out, stress is not the enemy. We were designed to experience stress. We wouldn't exist if our bodies could not experience stress cuz then we'd never escape the lion. You know what I'm saying?

[00:55:34]>> Right. If If had no stress, you would seek out stress, right? That's what kids do. They play and they practice at life-threatening situations cuz it's fun and it's exhilarating to have a little stress.

[00:55:45]Right. As long as you can move out of it. Wellness is not a state of mind or a state of being. Wellness is the freedom to oscillate through all the cycles of being human, from stress to safety, from eating to digesting, from waking to sleep, etc. The next thought spiral says, "But I don't even deserve to be burnt out. Should I be doing so much more, actually?"

[00:56:10]>> [laughter] >> No.

[00:56:13]You are part of the world. We want the world to be a better place, and you are part of the world. No matter how much privilege you may have, if you are not feeling free to be whole and happy, and you don't have the energy to help work to make the world a better place for people who have less privilege, then the world is not as good as it could be. You are part of the world. And if you want to make the world a better place, that includes making you your best. Thank you for that. Okay, the next thought spiral says, "Recovery takes 2 to 3 years. I read that 3 years ago, and now I know it's true." Yeah. Since I've moved out of burnout, I don't get sick as easily.

[00:56:52]It's actually wild. Yes. It feels impossible to avoid until you're already in too deep. The need for productivity never sleeps.

[00:57:02]No. Get ahead of it. If you're surrounded by people who are reminding you that your productivity does not make you worthy, that you don't have to be successful or conform to someone else's external idea about what success means, if you're surrounded by people who tell you you're worthy of love just as you are, then the idea of productivity becomes sort of meaningless. Way less important. Yeah.

[00:57:26]>> Yeah.

[00:57:26]The next thought spiral goes, "We're all overstimulated and don't know how to truly rest."

[00:57:33]Somewhat, yeah. But it's not our fault.

[00:57:35]Totally. The next person says, "It seems to be the norm now for working millennials and Gen Z, and that's scary." Yeah. I feel like I have to extend the burnout as long as possible so I can retire early. It's disordered.

[00:57:49]No. Yeah, I I actually I relate to that.

[00:57:52]It feels impossible to avoid, especially if you're not financially privileged.

[00:57:56]>> [sighs and gasps] >> The common denominator is me. I think it'll get better at a new job, but I still don't set boundaries and the cycle repeats.

[00:58:06]Yeah.

[00:58:08]It's cuz the system is so large and overreaching. It's It doesn't matter where you work cuz a small cultural that's not burnout culture still exists in a larger context that is burnout culture, so Yeah, yeah.

[00:58:22]Yeah. This thought spiral says, "I never get burnt out if I'm in love with what I'm doing."

[00:58:28]>> [laughter] >> No.

[00:58:31]No. No. No.

[00:58:33]No. [laughter] No. No. No. Okay, next thought spiral just says, "Can you ever recover?"

[00:58:39]Yes.

[00:58:41]>> Yes. You can feel better right now.

[00:58:44]Yeah, just stand up, do a jumping jack.

[00:58:47]But the whole touch grass thing, it's there's some there's something real right there. I'm just [snorts] Let's just do a couple more. Next thought spiral says, "I wonder if intergenerational friendships help fight burnout at all?"

[00:58:58]Yes.

[00:58:59]I agree. Let's just do one more thought spiral. As someone who experienced it, it's so much more than what social media makes it out to be. Yeah. Yeah, I totally relate to that because when I see people post a sort of like self-helpy, pastelly, like cures for burnout things on Instagram, I don't feel represented by that. Yeah, I mean, we wrote a book about it about managing stress so you don't burn out, and it was 80,000 words with 26 pages of references.

[00:59:27]So, yeah.

[00:59:29]Yeah. Incredible, Amelia. I appreciate your time so much. Your wisdom, your charisma, your everything. One more question for you. What is the number one thing that you think people are overthinking the most about burnout? And what is the number one thing you think people are underthinking? I think the most common thing people overthink is how to deal with the things that are causing them stress. They think their stress is their stressor, and they fixate on solving their problems and never turn inward toward the the experience of their bodies, which is the natural stress response cycle that's happening and dealing with the literal changes in chemistry that are affecting literally every system of your body.

[01:00:08]And I think what people are underthinking is the importance and power of connection, by which I mean like relationships with other human beings, and also with their animals, pets, nature, the ocean, a divine loving presence, their own inner child, of feeling connected to someone or something that makes you feel safe and held. And of course they're underthinking that because they're told by the world that the lone cowboy is the hero. It is the independent individual who accomplishes thing all by themself, when actually it is perfectly natural and better for your well-being and better for the thing you're trying to accomplish if it is done in connection and in community.

[01:00:52]Ah, [sighs] this conversation alone has made me feel safe and held. Oh, I'm so glad.

[01:00:57]>> want to keep up with you and your work, where can they find you?

[01:01:00]Yo, I'm not on social media cuz that shit's bad for me.

[01:01:03]>> [laughter] >> Totally.

[01:01:04]>> Sorry.

[01:01:05]That's a slay. Yeah, yeah. The original burnout, 80,000 words, 26 pages of references. We got feedback that people were like, "Okay, like I'm burning out.

[01:01:14]I don't have the bandwidth for an 80,000 word book with 26 pages of references.

[01:01:18]Like, no." So, we We a workbook that's for the people who just want the results and don't need the receipts. And then we just this year made the workbook into an audio workbook and which has like songs that make stuff memorable and it's very fun and cool. That is so perfect. Thank you so much. And thank you magical overthinkers for listening.

[01:01:41]Now is the time in the episode where I share a little tidbit of evidence-based advice for how we chronic thoughts viralers can get out of our own heads this week. This one is a little bit anecdotal actually and it has to do with my one and only favorite >> [music] >> wellness habit and that is infrared sauna and cold plunge therapy. I know, I [music] know, I sound like a wellness bro, but I have recently adopted the habit of alternating super super hot and super super cold temperatures. I love any physical activity that allows me to sit [music] or lie down. Whenever I'm going through something extremely stressful, I've really found that this hot cold therapy helps me so much. And as [music] it turns out, there is fairly new research to actually support this with evidence. A 2023 study involving fMRI imaging, which was published in the peer-review journal Biology, I'll link it in [music] our show notes, found that cold plunging made people feel more active, alert, attentive, proud, [music] and inspired while reducing distress and nervousness. And these effects were noticed in the brain. I also just personally find that experiencing these hot cold extremes gives me a gush of positive hormones like adrenaline that makes me feel like I can really do anything. Sometimes I'll scrunch down in that 45-degree cold plunge and I'll just whisper to myself, "You can handle anything."

[01:03:02]While listening to some sad girl tunes.

[01:03:04]I endorse this.

[01:03:05]>> [music] >> And with that, thank you again for listening.

[01:03:08]Until the next spiral, remember think it over. Just don't overthink it.

[01:03:14]>> [music] >> Magical overthinkers was created and [music] hosted by Amanda Montell and edited by Jordan Moore of the Pod Cabin.

[01:03:23]Our theme music is by Casey Cold. Thank you to our magical manager, Katie Efferson, coordinator, Reese Oliver, and [music] Network Studio 71. Be sure to follow the pod on Instagram @magicaloverthinkers.

[01:03:35]We're also on YouTube, [music] link in show notes, and ad-free episodes as well as behind-the-scenes extras are available on the Magical Overthinkers Substack at amandamontell.substack.com.

[01:03:43][music]