Amelia Nagoski, D.M.A. (Doctorate of Musical Arts) is the co-author, with her sister Emily, of the New York Times bestselling Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle and upcoming Burnout workbook. As a choral conductor, she was trained to express the full range of human emotion on stage, and elicit it from her performers.  Personally, her emotions were bottled up, until she was hospitalized (twice) with physical issues resulting from stress.  

Fortunately her sister Emily Nagoski, Ph.D., is an author and sex educator, whose work training therapists, medical professionals, college students, and the general public about the science of women’s sexual wellbeing had demonstrated just how much women also struggled with stress and burnout. With Emily’s help, Amelia learned how to understand the messages from her body, and how to complete the stress cycle so that emotions could be released, no longer causing physical harm. 

In this conversation with Amelia, we explore: 

• What the stress cycle is, and how we get stuck in it
• Why we don’t do the things that help us feel better 
• Giving yourself permission to take care of you 
• Separating your stress from the stressor 
• How the game is rigged
• What it really takes to recover from burnout
• Surrounding yourself with a bubble of love 
• The connection between marketing and burnout 
• Why negative emotions aren’t bad 
• Not everyone is wired to receive message from their body (but you can learn to listen) 
• How creatives can avoid burnout and continue to love their art 

To learn more about the book, the authors, and what’s coming next, visit their website https://www.burnoutbook.net/ 

Join the conversation in the comments below, or visit the Live with Less Stress facebook group. Interested in a Burnout book group?  Leave a comment and let me know!

Image sources used in video: @the.millenialgrind, via their blog, and Vanderbilt University