At last, Sophie let herself dive in, and her world transformed. She said, “I thought love would just be like being me, plus knowing that if I’m bleeding to death somebody will call an ambulance. But it’s more than that. I see myself in his eyes, and I find new ways to know and love myself, at the same time that I find new ways to know and love him, and then I know and love us and what we are together, which is this thing beyond what either of us is.”
Then she started using phrases like “emergent properties of complex dynamical systems,” and Emily nodded in excitement, and from there it got technical.
The point is connection is good for us. It is not weakness; it doesn’t mean we’re “needy.” It makes us stronger.
We saw in chapter 1 that positive social interaction and affection complete the cycle. Here in chapter 6, we’re declaring connection to be as primary a source of strength as any basic biological need.
In the next chapter, we’ll talk about an equally important source of strength: rest.
tl;dr:
? Connection—with friends, family, pets, the divine, etc.—is as necessary as food and water. Humans are not built to function autonomously; we are built to oscillate between connection and autonomy and back again.
? We are all constantly “co-regulating” one another without even being aware it’s happening—synchronizing heartbeats, changing moods, and helping one another feel seen and heard.
? Certain kinds of connection create energy. When you share mutual trust and “connected knowing” with someone, you co-create energy that renews both people. We call this the “Bubble of Love.”
? Sadness, rage, and the feeling that you are not “enough” are forms of loneliness. When you experience these emotions, connect.
7
WHAT MAKES YOU STRONGER
Julie was still tired, but bowel retraining meant that she finally accepted help. Lots of it. Help she had needed for years but had been too, maybe, proud, to ask for? Whatever the reason, she had held on to the idea that she was supposed to do all of it herself…right up until the moment when “all of it” broke her body.
So now she was making like Queen Elsa and letting it go.
Vindication, of a kind, and deeper insight, came when Jeremy volunteered to take on Diana Duty when his school was on spring break but neither Diana’s nor Julie’s schools were.
He learned a lot about his daughter that week. He discovered that she had unshakable opinions about what she should wear, and they were not always ideas that conformed to Jeremy’s standards or, indeed, to the school dress code. Jeremy had not known about the dress code until the school called to tell him to bring clothes for his daughter to change into. Diana also had opinions about what she ate, and they were not opinions that conformed to any nutritional guidelines of which Jeremy was aware. Vegetables? No. Fruit? Only in the form of a roll-up or gummy, please. He cooked, and she wouldn’t eat, and they argued, and he felt like an asshole, his stomach churning from anger and frustration and worry.
And the time it took! The shuttling to and from lessons, the negotiations, the monitoring to make sure everything got done that needed to get done, the repetition, the repetition, God help him, the repetition.
But more than the time, the emotional drain! The enforced patience, the reasoning and instruction, the constant management of his own frustration, trying to be the loving, happy, patient father he wanted to be, while counting the hours until spring break was over.
At the end of the week, he sat at the kitchen table, one palm on his forehead, as he described the week. He looked up at Julie for some sympathy and found her smiling at him, relaxed and amused. It distracted him from his tirade.
“You look better. I mean, you look good.”
Julie raised her eyebrow at him.
“I just mean you look not bothered.”
Julie acknowledged his point. “That’s true. A lot of times, I haven’t been able to handle your stuff when I was all stressed out, and then you were unloading your stress on me, too.” She sent her attention to her body, tuning in to what it was experiencing at that moment, and said, “At this moment, I feel like I can handle it.”
This chapter is about where Julie got that strength.
* * *
—
Nietzsche (ugh) told us, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
You’ve been hearing this for years, in one form or another, but let’s be specific. Like, if you’re hit by a car and don’t die, does the car make you stronger? No. Does injury or disease make you stronger? No. Does suffering alone build character? No. These things leave you more vulnerable to further injury.
What makes you stronger is whatever happens to you after you survive the thing that didn’t kill you.
What makes you stronger is rest.
Rest is, quite simply, when you stop using a part of you that’s used up, worn out, damaged, or inflamed, so that it has a chance to renew itself. And it’s the topic of this chapter.
“Rest” doesn’t just mean sleep—though of course sleep is essential. Rest also includes switching from one type of activity to another. Mental energy, like stress, has a cycle it runs through, an oscillation from task focus to processing and back to task focus. The idea that you can use “grit” or “self-control” to stay focused and productive every minute of every day is not merely incorrect, it is gaslighting, and it is potentially damaging your brain.
Let’s take a moment to wrap our brains around this strange reality: Life in the modern developed world is such that many of us have a vast overabundance of virtually everything…yet often we can’t meet our basic, life-sustaining, physiological needs without feeling guilty, ashamed, lazy, greedy, conflicted, or, at best, defiant. An Internet meme we like goes, “You don’t have to set yourself on fire to keep other people warm.” But according to Human Giver Syndrome, you definitely should. As “human givers,” women live with the expectation that we give every part of our humanity, including our bodies, our health, and our very lives. Our time, energy, and attention should go toward someone else’s well-being, not be squandered on our own. What’s the matter with you, you lazy, selfish monster, sleeping seven hours a night? Get back in line, with the rest of us exhausted, righteous givers.
Toward the end of this chapter, you’ll read our science-based conclusion about just how much rest it takes for you to survive and grow stronger, and you may scoff and say, “I don’t have time for that!” or “That’s too extreme!” and maybe that’s true….But maybe that’s just what Human Giver Syndrome wants you to believe. Maybe, to get enough rest to keep yourself fully functional, you’re going to have to choose your own well-being—your own life—over the demands of Human Giver Syndrome.
As Audre Lorde put it, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” This chapter is about arming you for that battle—a battle that is quite literally a fight for your life. We offer the best available scientific evidence to help you build a practice of sustainable living, to protect you from the toxic cultural narrative of self-destruction as virtue.
So curl up someplace cozy, and let’s talk about rest.
Default Mode—aka Daydreaming
We are built to oscillate between work and rest. When we allow for this oscillation, the quality of our work improves, along with our health.
To illustrate: In one study, a group of research participants were asked to write down whatever thoughts they had, but were explicitly told they should try not to write about a white bear. This was effortful enough to deplete some mental energy. Then half the participants were instructed to relax as much as they could between tasks—the researchers even played a Satie piano piece to reinforce the idea that they should be relaxing—while the other half were given no instructions and just sat there waiting for the next task. Result? The group that relaxed persisted twice as long at the next depleting task (a set of three-digit multiplication problems) than the group that simply waited.1 Conclusion: Rest makes us more persistent and productive.