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Beware the Mad Woman in the Attic — Then Befriend Her (Sort Of)
“Each person’s madwoman is different. For you, maybe she’s more like a shadow, following you around, a perpetual reminder of what you’re not.”
– Emily & Amelia Nagoski, “Burnout”
Have you read the “Burnout” book yet?
If not, I am giving you another friendly nudge to do so!
“Burnout; The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle” by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski does an outstanding job of explaining how to effectively handle stress. It also does a brilliant job of explaining where much of that stress originates from — for women in particular.
In a previous blog about the “Burnout” book, I wrote about what happens in our body when we experience stress, and what we can do to complete the biological stress cycle. Because if we don’t complete the cycle, the stress remains stuck in our body — and that’s dangerous.
In this blog, I’m writing about a different aspect of stress: the importance of constructive and useful self talk…versus the far more familiar type of self-talk that most women (and many men) hear in their heads on a daily basis: the negative, nagging, critical voice that loves to remind us of all that we are not — or have not achieved (because of all that we are not).
Meet the Mad Woman in the Attic…
The mad woman in the attic is that annoying voice in our head that says things to us that we would never dream of saying to a friend (if, that is, we are nice people and care about the impact of our words on others). If we happen to be looking in the mirror, our madwoman in the attic might say, for example: “You are FAT! You need to lose twenty pounds. The cellulite on your thighs is disgusting. Stop eating so many damn cookies!”
Or…perhaps you’ve just put in a huge workday — but only got 80% of your tasks ticked off your mammoth to-do list. The madwoman in the attic might say: “Seriously? Only 80% of your tasks completed…again? What’s wrong with you? You are NOT getting enough done!”
“If you have beaten yourselves up for needing to say no to a friend, that was the madwoman,” say the “Burnout” authors. “If you have felt sure that a broken relationship was all your fault, that there had to something more you could have done, that was the madwoman. If you, like so many women we know, have struggled when you look in the mirror, it’s the madwoman you see looking back at you.”
If all this sounds like madness, it’s because it is. But the good news (sort of) is this…
