Disclaimer: This is transcribed using AI. Expect (funny) errors.
Mindy Peterson: [00:00:00] I’m Mindy Peterson, and this is Enhance Life with Music, where we explore the practical ways music transforms everyday life, health, happiness and beyond. It is officially December and “the most wonderful time of the year.” The holidays can be wonderful and they can also be a lot. This is a time of year when a lot of us are feeling overwhelmed, stretched thin, and maybe running on fumes. Whether it’s because of academic finals, complicated family dynamics, end of the year deadlines, or just that pressure to make the season magical for a young family. And regardless of when you’re listening to this episode, if you’re listening to it right when it releases or another time of the year, stress and burnout are unfortunately common realities in our culture today. Today’s guest doesn’t just understand burnout. She literally co-wrote the New York Times best selling book on it, and she’s a musician. Doctor Amelia Nagoski is here to share what burnout really is, and how music offers practical, science backed ways to complete your body’s physiological stress cycle and restore your sense of balance. Doctor Nagoski is a conductor with a doctorate of musical arts who teamed up with her identical twin sister, Emily, a PhD, to write the New York Times bestselling book Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. Welcome to Enhance Life with Music, Amelia.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:01:37] Hi. It’s my pleasure to be here.
Mindy Peterson: [00:01:39] At the beginning of your book, you and Emily write about what led you to write the book, Burnout, and I found this story so fascinating. It it’s a story not many people would guess is the origin of this book. It came out of Emily’s best selling book, Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life. Which I heard her interviewed on the same podcast that I discovered your work on, and she had a wonderful interview, too, but a little outside the scope of this podcast. Um, but tell listeners the story of how you and Emily came to write this book and how it came out of this completely different book that she wrote.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:02:20] Yeah, Emily wrote this book about the science of women’s sexuality and just traveled all over the world talking to women about the science of sexuality. And they would come talk to her afterwards and be like, yeah, yeah, Emily, all that sex science, that’s great. But you know what really stuck with me is this one part of one chapter that’s about stress and feelings. And she was pretty surprised. She told me about it, because she spent all that time writing about the science of women’s sexuality. And then just this little part is the part they really take away.
Mindy Peterson: [00:02:53] Yeah.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:02:54] And I wasn’t shocked at all because I had had to learn that stuff about processing your emotions for the purposes of expressing them on stage. I learned that in conservatory setting as part of my musical training. What I did not learn was that I can use that same skill every day outside the conservatory.
Mindy Peterson: [00:03:13] In real life.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:03:15] Just just. Yeah. And, uh, and when I did learn that, it saved my life twice.
Mindy Peterson: [00:03:23] Wow.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:03:24] And I reminded Emily of that. And she said we should write a book about that.
Mindy Peterson: [00:03:28] And you did.
Mindy Peterson: [00:03:29] And this is the book. And if we have time later, I’d love to have you share with listeners kind of that story of how it saved your life twice. But first, tell us a little bit more about burnout. How common is burnout, and what are some indicators that we may have or might be approaching burnout?
Amelia Nagoski: [00:03:47] Yeah, I mean, these days a huge number of people are feeling burned out or approaching burnout. It’s important to know that burnout is not a medical diagnosis or a mental illness. It’s a condition that’s brought on by a disconnect between what you are capable of as a human being, and what demands are being made of you. So this becomes the purview of, like the W.H.O., for example, uh, because their job is to talk to governments about how to keep their populations healthy. And if governments don’t regulate, like, how employers treat their employees, then employees are going to burn out if they’re being asked to do things that are beyond their capacity, as, you know, living, breathing animal people. So we define burnout as the experience of being overwhelmed and exhausted and yet still somehow worried you’re not doing enough. That’s not the official definition, but we find it’s the one that people relate to the most. Sure. It’s been officially a diagnosis since the 1970s, when research psychologist named Herbert Freudenberger codified the three characteristics of burnout, which are emotional exhaustion, decreased sense of accomplishment, and depersonalization.
Mindy Peterson: [00:05:05] And are those progressive elements, or is it the combination, the presence of all those at the same time that he sort of considered to be burnout?
Amelia Nagoski: [00:05:16] In the 50 years since that time? It’s there’s been a lot more research and it’s been identified that in general, broadly speaking, for women, emotional exhaustion becomes the primary experience of burnout. For men, the decreased sense of accomplishment becomes the primary experience of burnout. So that experience of emotional exhaustion is the thing that we talk about most in the book.
Mindy Peterson: [00:05:42] And I just want to go back to something you mentioned. You mentioned the demands placed on us that we feel like we’re not capable of of meeting those. And I just think that there’s probably a lot of us that it it could be imaginary demands placed on us, demands that we’re maybe creating in our minds is how accurate do you feel that is?
Amelia Nagoski: [00:06:07] Oh for sure. There are demands being placed on us that we place on ourselves. But who taught us to place those demands on ourselves? We didn’t invent them on our own. Sure, there’s a very large scale system telling us what our goals should be. Sure, you know.
Mindy Peterson: [00:06:25] Well.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:06:26] And it’s how clean your house has to be.
Mindy Peterson: [00:06:28] How.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:06:29] What behaviors your children have to engage in, what things you should be taking them to. Like there’s a very clear cut, unmovable goal that is set for us, and it is, by definition and by design, unreachable. Sure. And keeping us striving also keeps us burned out. Sure. Which also prevents us from taking a look at the wider world and how we can engage to actually make change to that unreasonable expectation.
Mindy Peterson: [00:06:58] Yeah. And you talk in your book too. I’m just going to mention this because it’s a little bit outside the scope of our conversation today. But the human giver syndrome is really fascinating that you talk about in your book. So listeners, if any of that is resonating with you that Amelia just mentioned, you’ll want to check out the book for more information on that. But let’s talk a little bit about the prevalence of burnout. Your book says that moderately high to high levels of burnout are found in 20 to 30% of teachers, university professors and international humanitarian aid workers in the US.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:07:32] That was 2018. It’s much worse.
Mindy Peterson: [00:07:34] Mhm. So that was before Covid. Okay. And this next stat is probably also vastly different since Covid. And that is 52% of medical professionals are experiencing high levels of burnout. So I imagine that’s quite a bit higher now because.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:07:49] What’s happening now is people are leaving that profession.
Mindy Peterson: [00:07:51] Yeah. Uh, and there’s a growing area of research on parental burnout. And that’s another area that I am seeing more in the news also. So we’re hearing more about that. And it makes sense because, yeah, the expectations of parenting are completely different. Even in the 20 plus years since I was raising my kids. But then for sure, compared to the 70s and 80s when I was growing up. And then you think back to when our kids were growing up, our parents were being raised. So, yes, so highly prevalent. And as you mentioned, that element of emotional exhaustion is the one that’s most strongly linked to negative impacts on our health and relationships and work, especially for women. Um, in the book, you talk a lot about differentiating our stress from our stressors and also the importance of completing the stress cycle, which I found so enlightening. Give us just the basics on how our bodies process stress, so that we can better understand the tools that you’ll give us in our later in our conversation for managing that process.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:08:56] Yeah. This is if I begin with the metaphor that emotions and stress is an emotion. All emotions are like tunnels. You have to make your way all the way through the darkness to get to the light at the end. And if burnout is an experience of emotional exhaustion, you exhaust an emotion by getting stuck. Instead of being able to move all the way through to the end of the tunnel, you get stuck and it starts to feel like a cave, which is, you know, a lovely metaphor. But I’m a very literal person and I need to know, like what actually happens. So how you get stuck in an emotion is it’s easiest to imagine in the environment of evolutionary adaptiveness. So if you imagine, like a little proto mammal going down to the water to get a drink and sees, oh my God, a hippo, it’s coming right at me. And, uh, your body responds to this stimulus with a flood of like stress juice, its adrenaline and glucocorticoids and cortisol. And you all know the things and it’s the fight or flight response and it prepares your body to fight or flee. There are a lot of effects of this hormonal neurotransmitter cascade. Uh, every system in the body is affected, some of which you are consciously aware of. Like you might be aware of yourself breathing more deeply or faster. You might be aware of your cardiovascular system with your your breath. And your heart is now pounding. You can feel your blood and your heart pumping through your veins.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:10:28] And of course, the purpose of this is to deliver more oxygen to your muscles so that you can run. However, there’s also stuff that is happening way below the level of conscious awareness and that includes like your immune system. We don’t have like a sensory organ to be able to tell what’s happening to our immune system so we don’t notice it. But our immune system gets this message from the fight or flight response to like, chill the heck out because who cares about malaria if we’re about to be trampled by this hippo, right? So the immune system’s like, oh, okay, I can take a back seat for a minute. Your reproductive system. We don’t really have sensory capacity to know how healthy our reproductive system is right here in this moment, but it does happen that in a moment of stress, your reproductive system gets the message that I take up a lot of energy. So I’m going to back off right now because who cares about babies if hippo. So all these things are happening. Every system in your body changes to prepare you for the fight. The flight to run, to leap, to jump, to climb, to hide in the cleft of the rock. And as you get there and you’re, oh, you’ve used up all those neurochemicals and you’re looking out and the hippo is walking away. It’s satisfied because you’re outside of its territory and you have used all of that neurological nervous system preparation in order to escape.
Mindy Peterson: [00:11:58] All the stress juice.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:12:00] You you burn up the stress juice and that returns you to your baseline. It might feel like you’re one with the universe. Now just calm.
Mindy Peterson: [00:12:12] Euphoria.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:12:13] Or yeah, you. It might feel like jubilant, like bouncing up and down. And you want to hug everybody, you know, and tell them the story and sing a song about it at the campfire that night. But whatever that, whatever your experience of it is, it means that your body has gone through and completed the entire physiological stress response cycle. Mhm.
Mindy Peterson: [00:12:35] That that’s.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:12:35] All the way through.
Mindy Peterson: [00:12:36] The. Yes. Yeah. Yes. That cycle. Yes.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:12:38] Unfortunately we don’t live in the world where we’re going to be chased by hippos anymore. Um, not that that would be good to do that.
Mindy Peterson: [00:12:45] But like.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:12:46] Uh, the unfortunate part is that our bodies were designed to do that, and the things that cause us stress now that initiate the stress response, those things cannot be defeated with fight or flight, right? There’s the things that cause us stress now, like the pings on our phone and the emails from our bosses and changing legislation. The things that actually make us safe are are not fighting and fleeing. And because we live in a in a functional society, it’s really good that we don’t fight each other when we’re mad. We we’re polite to each other, even to strangers. Even when it’s a difficult time. We we shove all the anger down.
Mindy Peterson: [00:13:28] Well, and I found that really interesting how you talk in the book about why we get stuck. And one of those reasons is social appropriateness. Like the adrenaline, all that stress juice is telling you to run, but you’re in an exam or it’s telling you to punch the jerk. But that jerk is your client. So you’re you’re being.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:13:47] Or maybe if you punch that jerk, he’s gonna punch you right back.
Mindy Peterson: [00:13:49] Yeah, really.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:13:50] The safest thing to do is to smile and nod and walk away slowly.
Mindy Peterson: [00:13:54] Yes.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:13:55] So it’s not bad that our society has changed so that it no longer matches our physiology. It’s not an inherently bad thing, but it does mean that we are left with this incomplete stress response cycle. These like literal physiological changes have happened and we have not given the opportunity to move all the way through that cycle. So that means we have to separate the stress in our bodies from the stressor and deal with them in separate processes. So deal with the guy who you want to punch in the face by smiling and nodding and walking away slowly. Deal with the rage you feel about that in the gym or at your therapist’s office, or by getting a massage, or all of the many ways you can complete the stress response cycle, independent of solving the problems that initiate the stress response.
Mindy Peterson: [00:14:45] Love that. So tell us, what are some ways to complete the stress response cycle overall? Like big picture. But then let’s talk more specifically about the musical, uh, tools that are at our disposal. Yeah.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:14:58] Great. So at a population level, the most efficient way to complete the stress response cycle is if you’re being chased by a hippo, what do you do?
Mindy Peterson: [00:15:06] You’re run.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:15:07] Physical activity. When people say that physical activity helps you manage your stress, this is why, um, and at a population level, it is true that for most people, this is it. And if you are a natural exerciser, you already know this. You know that when you get home from your run or your walk, or you dance it out to Beyonce for five minutes in your kitchen, and you, it’s like the weight of the world has lifted off your shoulders. And you know, if you’re a natural exerciser, this works for you. That’s Emily, she’s a total that’s my identical twin sister raised in the same house with me. I identical twin raised in the same house have never experienced that. I’m not a natural exerciser. It It just it doesn’t work for me. So at a population level, yes, that’s true, but it’s not true for everybody. But there’s a bunch of other ways to complete the stress response cycle that are not just through that one path. So I just want to when people say like, oh, physical activity, you have to get exercise in order to manage your stress. That’s just not true. Here’s one, and probably the most important one. I say, if you’re going to change one thing about your life to help you manage stress better, let it be getting more and better sleep. Sleep is more important than exercise every single time. If you are not sleeping well, don’t exercise because you’re going to do your body damage. Spend the time getting better sleep and we talk.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:16:30] I mean, sleep is its own chapter in the book. That’s how important it is. But in general, you want your sleeping bedroom to be cool, dark and quiet. You want to sleep probably between 7 to 9 hours is typical, and Everyone who’s listening already knows this, right? We all know sleep is good for us. Why are we not doing it? We can talk about that separately. But let me get through the the third people’s most favorite thing of how to complete the stress response cycle, which is connection. Um, a 22nd hug or a six second kiss. Something that puts you in close physical proximity to a really special person who you love and trust deeply. This is not a thing you do with a casual coworker. This is what you do with your closest friends and loved ones. That kind of connection can change your physiology in a matter of seconds, but it doesn’t have to be human to human connection. Connection with animals, with nature, with a loving divine presence, connection with your own inner child. As long as you feel recognized and safe and held in the presence of another being, that is. That’s the connection that’s going to remind your body. It does not have to be vigilant right now. The world is safe right now, and I can go all the way to the end of this stress response cycle, and I can return to my baseline and feel safe here.
Mindy Peterson: [00:17:52] Love. That creative expression is another way we can complete the cycle. Tell us some more about that.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:18:01] This is again, people who know you already know. If you sang in choir at school or played in the band and you would leave rehearsal just feeling uplifted and just better. If if during band camp, your whole everything about you leave and you feel like these people who you play an instrument with or sing with, this is your family now and you get this like intense bond with them and you can feel the difference it makes to you. If you craft or you cook and you’re always experimenting with recipes and showing off like these cupcakes you made that are amazing. If you make anything and it makes you feel like the weight of the world has lifted off your shoulders, or that you are somehow at peace or euphoric. That you know that you are a person for whom creative self-expression allows you to take what you’re made of, the stuff that’s inside you, including this bad leftover old stuff from stress from 30 years ago. And you’re pouring it into this, this booty that you’re knitting up, made of your rage, that creative self-expression. Um, yeah. Yeah. Just like if you’re an actual exerciser, you already know. If you’re if you’re a creator, you already know. Um, it might be that you have lost touch with doing that thing now. And maybe doing the same thing now does not feel the same as it did back when it enraptured you. But that’s okay. That’s a normal part of the process. Uh, you can find another means of expression that you can get the same high from.
Mindy Peterson: [00:19:37] Yeah. I love how you call creative expression a cultural loophole In your book, you say the arts create a context that tolerates, even encourages big emotions literary, visual, and performing arts of all kinds. Give us the chance to celebrate and move through big emotions. It’s like a cultural loophole in a society that tells us to be nice and not make waves. Take advantage of the loophole. So I love that quote from your book.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:20:06] Yeah. I adjudicate a lot of high school choral festivals, and when I do clinics, I very often focus on what is the meaning of this song, what emotion is being communicated. Because a lot of very good choirs sing with good technique and excellent vowels, and they sing in tune and they maintain their parts, and it’s very accurate. And even maybe they’re doing like dynamics and that kind of expressivity, but they’re kind of locked into a sort of perfection of sort of automaton mode of do it right, do it right, do it right. And so I in clinics with choirs that are honestly every choir in the world is ready for it. But so especially if I don’t have to talk about technique stuff first. Um, I talk about how, okay, here’s how to find your way into actually feeling this emotion that the composer had in mind, because you and the composer you have experienced. You’ve all experienced the same thing everybody in this room has. And when we make this music and we sing this story as if it’s our own, it, it evokes it in every one of us. And we feel connected because this is a universal human experience. And point out often to the teachers to praise the work they do. Because throughout a school day, kids are school is hard.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:21:29] School is not designed to be helpful for children. It is, uh, the kind of discipline that is required. And focus is does not come naturally to almost anybody. So the fact that they come into choir class and they talk about feelings and they’re expected, encouraged to feel, to remember times that they have yearned or celebrated or mourned and to bring that emotion to life right there in the middle of their school, and to see it and to share it with each other. Yeah, it’s it’s like a loophole, like this one place where they have permission to have humanity. Humanity is not really allowed in schools, unfortunately. A lot of teachers try, but like all the regulations, make it so that you’re just you’re not really allowed to let that happen. So I make it a point to let choir directors know and clinic like what you are doing matters and is important and like, thank you for making this happen for your kids. And I know that nobody is telling you this, and nobody else values this thing that you’ve accomplished. But I want to know, I see. I want you to know I see you. Yes. And I see what an important thing you’ve done for these kids.
Mindy Peterson: [00:22:51] Yeah. I love how some of the musical tactics and strategies you’ve mentioned sort of overlap some of those various methods of completing the stress cycle, like you mentioned, dancing to Beyonce. So that’s physical movement and music. You mentioned singing in a choir and that involves breathing. It involves music, of course, and it involves that connection and creative expression, which I guess music and creative expression sort of are one and the same in a way. But, um, I love those those strategies and those tips that cover multiple areas. What are some other specific ways that we can use music as a tool to manage stress, or even prevent stress or recover from stress or burnout. And I’ll point out, too, that what you’re about to tell us, I think, is probably they’re probably tools that we can utilize, whether we consider ourselves musicians or not.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:23:50] Oh, absolutely. There are a lot of modalities for music therapy to use in, like an actual therapeutic environment of making music, listening to music, talking about music, even, but mostly experiencing music by either listening or making or moving. Um, which I like, as I’m not a music therapist, I’m not really qualified to, like, talk about those things. But if you’re interested in using music as a therapeutic modality that is available. Um, but I will tell you that we even talk in the book about, uh, we call it the magic trick, which is a particular combination of ways of completing the stress response cycle that you do all in one combination, and that is moving your body in the presence of others toward a shared goal. So that’s your physical body is moving. You are connecting with other people and you have a shared meaning or purpose. Um, and that encompasses dancing together, attending a concert together, not playing on a sports team. I’ll admit that playing sports is also good for you in this way, but singing in a choir and playing in a band and those things are even better. And I know I can’t claim that they’re better, but they do accomplish that same magic trick. So if you want to, like, get there the fastest. Find your way through the stress response cycle that’s left over from your eighth grade bully or whatever. The way to get there the fastest is the magic trick. Moving your body in time with others toward a shared goal, worship or prayer in church or any other setting where you gather in prayer or song. Um, watching a movie like on opening night with a bunch of fans who are all, like, really hardcore about being there. That’s a I mean, that’s not so much with the moving, but it gives you the connection and you’re all moving through the story the same.
Mindy Peterson: [00:25:46] It’s or dancing at a concert together, or dancing at a Zumba class or just.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:25:52] Being at the concert. The physical presence, I mean, bodies move naturally to music. Like if you’re at the concert, you’re not just you’re probably not just sitting still if it’s, you know, unless it’s a classical concert where now we’ve all been trained that we must be silent. But like throughout most of history, sitting quietly while music happens, is not it? Sure, that’s not what people have done. So if you’re at the kind of concert where, yeah, you’re you’re connecting with your people, you’re you’re swaying, you’re bopping or you’re outright dancing or there’s a freakin mosh pit, like, yeah, moving your body in time with others toward a shared goal. And that shared goal might just be participating in the same, um, artistic experience.
Mindy Peterson: [00:26:35] Or celebrating together. Yeah. Could be. Or celebrating a shared goal. Yeah.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:26:39] Singing happy birthday is one of those things.
Mindy Peterson: [00:26:43] Yeah. Yeah. And there are so many internal muscles that are being exercised through the process of singing, whether it’s lungs, vocal cords, other things too. So singing is is quite physical and even playing a musical instrument. I remember when I was pregnant, I had awful morning sickness, 24 over seven for the entire nine months. I just was had zero energy. And there were times that I thought, oh well, I could just play the piano because I don’t have energy for anything else. And that’s when I realized how much energy it actually takes to play the piano, because I would be sitting there and, and, you know, even since then, too, there will be times where we live in Minneapolis. It’s cold there, and there are times in the winter where I’m kind of chilly, but I sit down to play the piano, and I notice that it’s not like I’m working up a sweat. But you work up body heat by just playing an instrument, and one that you don’t think of as being super, requiring a lot of physical energy.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:27:40] So yeah, yeah, even in terms that don’t require a lot of physical energy. But I have found just in my there’s no research about this, but in my own personal experience, the musicians who are the most like, chill and laid back and really like in tune with stuff are percussionists. They move their bodies so much and they tend to move in a really strict rhythm, which is unlike, you know, melodic instruments tend to have some flexibility, but when they’re really engaged in the rhythm and the moving of their bodies and coordination of rhythm, I have discovered that percussionists really have the most advantage of this. But singing also evolutionarily, is so ancient our bodies are designed to sing. Darwin theorized that song came before language because, duh, of course, even less advanced Creatures sing even if they don’t speak. I’m talking about whales and birds. Yeah. Like. Yeah.
Mindy Peterson: [00:28:38] Well, in babies. Babies can’t. We don’t know what language yet, but we can recognize singing and interpret it. Yes.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:28:46] Exactly like it is. Yeah. So singing taps into something very old in us, the human. That’s another one of the things I talk about when I clinic high school choirs is like singing is ancient. The idea of using your voice to express is so innate. And then we spend every day in rehearsal trying to, like, make it perfect. And we sort of, like, filter out all of that instinctive expression. And then the job at the in performance really is to get that instinctive or whatever, back into the perfect technique.
Mindy Peterson: [00:29:21] Yeah. Talk to us about strategies for selecting the best music to help move us through that physiological stress cycle. Say that I’m with a client and it’s like that previously mentioned jerk that you’re dealing with where it’s like the stress juice, the adrenaline’s telling you to punch that person, but you’re being socially appropriate. But then you get in your car and you drive home or you’re experiencing street harassment. And the safer issue, the safer choice is to walk away and not listen to what the adrenaline is telling you to do and engage. So you get in your car and you drive home. You get in your car, talk to us about, do we want to listen to angry music? Do we want to listen to calm music? Talk to us about how we should strategically select music that’s going to move us through that cycle, through the tunnel to the end?
Amelia Nagoski: [00:30:11] Yeah, I have talked about this when I teach college. I’ve taught at Music Psychology course. And also just like an intro to music course where I talked about this class.
Mindy Peterson: [00:30:19] Yes, I want to take that class.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:30:21] Yeah, it was great. And one of the many things we talked about was intrinsic versus extrinsic meaning in music. Uh, does music have an affect built into it, or do we impose it on it from ourselves? And which aspect of that sort of nature of affect has the most impact on us? And by far, my college students said that the thing that mattered most was what the song meant to them, not the actual content of the song. Is it fast or slow? Is it loud or quiet? Is it sustained or percussive? Is it? Yeah. You know, like how wide is the melody that the thing that mattered was that it was the song they danced to at prom. It was the song that was playing when they met their significant other. Um, it’s it’s the song that their boyfriend introduced them to the first time that they went to a stage crew, uh, building sets. And they all learned to like and jam to this, like, super loud music. So there might be other research on this that I don’t know about, but as far as I can tell, what matters most is that the music means something to you that allows you to return your body to a physiological state, not by shutting down the other emotions, but by moving all the way through them. So sometimes you need a song that’s going to cheer you up when you’re sad, and sometimes you need a song that’s sad to be sad with you so that you can have your sads until the sads move through the tunnel.
Mindy Peterson: [00:31:57] So maybe go with whatever feels innately like you need in the moment, or experiment.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:32:03] 100%. You’re you’re gonna know your hand’s going to go to the dial and you’re going to be. Or the touch screen, I guess it is. Now I’m.
Mindy Peterson: [00:32:12] So old.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:32:13] You’re going to use your onboard navigation computer or whatever it is, and you’re going to know what you want to listen to right now. You’re going to know.
Mindy Peterson: [00:32:20] Well, in your book, you talk to about how do you know you’ve completed the cycle, and it’s all you have to do is recognize that you feel incrementally mentally better. So if before the song, you felt like your stress was at a ten, after the song you felt like you’re an eight. Like, okay, that feels good, you’re moving in the right direction. Any other advice on that topic that you want to give?
Amelia Nagoski: [00:32:42] Participating in the song is even more effective. Like when you’re using more senses and more of your body, so singing along to the song will be more effective than just listening. Moving your body to the song will be more effective than just singing. Um, the more you can engage all of your senses and all of your body in it, the the deeper it’ll go into your nervous system.
Mindy Peterson: [00:33:07] Well, and there we get back to also what we talked about before with overlapping areas of strategy where it’s like if you can involve music and movement and maybe you have some your friend in the car with you or your spouse in the car with you or whatever, you know, then you have that connection too. So yeah, layer absolutely on the benefits.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:33:26] Yeah. For me and for, I think a lot of professional musicians, we go into music because of how it helps us feel like more of ourselves than we ever have in the past. And as this becomes our job, like the thing that once fed our soul now puts food on the table, our relationship to it changes. So for me, after I when I was teaching college, I had my doctorate of music. I make music every day. It is my job. The thing for me that really helped with completing and complete stress response cycles was horseback riding. Um, I was bad at it, which is completely okay. Um, but it was connecting to an animal. Yeah, it was moving my body and also kind of in timing and rhythm with this animal. And also like being sort of breathing and being focused and mindful and paying attention to what I’m doing while I’m doing it. It’s this other sort of magic trick, multi sensory multimodality.
Mindy Peterson: [00:34:26] They’re two.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:34:27] And you’re connecting.
Mindy Peterson: [00:34:27] With nature.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:34:28] It is. Absolutely. So these like multi-sensory things. Um, because it’s perfectly normal for, for pros to sort of lose what your old relationship was to whatever you used to do as creative self-expression. So by all means, do another thing. Yeah. Um, but I did, and it was great.
Mindy Peterson: [00:34:47] Well, I know we’re running out of time here, and I want to respect your time, but I want to ask you one more thing specific to musicians and educators before we kind of move toward wrapping up, because I’ve heard you say that the biggest lie for musicians is do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:35:05] And you said that saying.
Mindy Peterson: [00:35:07] Well, tell us more. Tell us why you hate it and what you feel. The truth is.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:35:12] I, I love music more than any other thing. I love my like, animals and people more than music. But like in terms of experiences I have in my life, music making is absolutely at the top of the thing. I learned how to be a person on the podium before I learned how to be a person in real life. Like it’s really important. But the idea that I’m a professional musician and people are like, oh, that’s nice work if you can get it or whatever, that’s there’s no such thing. Because first of all, when you’re making music for someone else, for an audience, you’re selling a product. You have to conform to external expectations. You’re not just doing it your way. It is no longer creative self-expression. It is no longer just doing a thing you love. It is work, and it is a disillusioning experience to have been told that if you do work, you’ll love, then it won’t feel like work. That’s, that’s, that’s that’s enraging that people do that. It sets up a standard that’s unrealistic. And you start to feel the abyss between who you are and what your experience is and what the world tells you it ought to be. I totally hate that.
Mindy Peterson: [00:36:25] Yeah, well, back to that earlier stat that we mentioned. Teachers, educators are 20 to 30% and more now likely to have moderate to high levels of burnout. And musicians and educators both tend to be underpaid, underappreciated. Yeah, they have.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:36:45] Unreasonable expectations set for them in terms of the number of hours they work, the goals they’re meant to achieve that are not goals that they set. They’re not even goals that other teachers set. It’s goals set by Betsy DeVos, who literally knows nothing about education. So like how enraging, how frustrating to have to strive to meet these goals, these goals that aren’t even yours.
Mindy Peterson: [00:37:12] Sure. Well, I want to just read one more quote from your book that I loved to sort of wrap things up here, and this is what your book said. It said 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 or excitement back to safety and calm. And I would again, stress is not bad for you. Being stuck is bad for you. I love that quote. So hopefully this conversation will prompt people to get your book to read even more about how to move through that physiological stress cycle for greater health and equilibrium, and balance and pull music in as much as possible as a strategy and a modality for doing that. Well, Amelia, as you know, I ask all my guests to close out our conversation with a musical ending, a coda by sharing a song or story about a moment that music enhanced your life. Do you have a song or story that you can share with us today? In closing?
Amelia Nagoski: [00:38:16] I have both.
Mindy Peterson: [00:38:17] Perfect.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:38:18] Um, there’s a story we tell in the book about a time when Emily was the wellness director at Smith College, and she was putting on a program to like, encourage and teach her students about ways to maintain their wellness. Um, and she was using as a structure, uh, the movie frozen, which was big at that particular moment. And she was like, wow. So I was teaching college music. She was a college health director, and she was like, okay, so college music, how do you how do you college music this. Uh, I was like, um, just make it a sing along because the thing they need is to experience the making of the music. And I wasn’t there. But Emily reported back that it was, like, the most impactful thing she ever did in her career at Smith. I mean, she like reduced deaths by drinking while she was there, too. But like a particular night where these highly driven, intense intellectual women were just filling the auditorium and singing like, that perfect girl is gone.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:39:22] Like, It’s so loud, you can hear it on the quad outside. And Emily’s reflecting that like, oh, these women did not need this talk about their autonomic nervous system. They needed this experience of pouring their hearts out. Um, because that’s an experience of the thing we call the Uber bubble, which is that what you achieve in the magic trick is this Uber bubble, this sense that you are like all one and elevated to this lofty state that humanity is capable of, you know, sort of above and beyond our mundane daily existence. And I have a song that I wrote after the book came out about the bubble, um, that we call the bubble of love, um, which is the way that you, uh, it’s the means by which you can remind yourself that those external expectations are are made up. I want to say bullshit. But I don’t know if swearing is okay. Um.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:40:20] Uh, and that you and that you are safe in your own little herd of friends. Um, so this is the Bubble of love song. I’m going to open my file here.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:40:37] I want to do and be everything that the world has demanded of me. Sometimes I feel I don’t deserve love. Not until I’m productive enough. That’s when I need supplementary help to reinforce my boundaries in my bubble of love. I am enough. In my bubble of love. They’re people who care about my well-being as much as I care about theirs. We guard each other from outside. Messages show each other. We care because I want to want. And like all the gold that the world has set for my role. Sometimes I fear I don’t deserve love. Not until I’m successful enough. That’s when I need supplementary help to mine. What gives life meaning in my bubble of love? I am enough. In my bubble of love.
Transcribed by Sonix.ai