As an avid reader and science nerd, I have often turned to books to help me understand myself and find community when struggling with something. Facing burnout at work was no different. I read and I researched and I asked for suggestions from my therapist. Not all self help books are created equal, so here’s my top 3 books that actually helped and how:

1. TRAUMA STEWARDSHIP: An everyday guide to caring for self while caring for others by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky with Connie Burk

When I started reading this book, I thought “wow this should be mandatory reading for nursing school.” Lipsky writes specifically to those in helping professions like healthcare and social work and addresses the unique challenges of helping professions. If you have doubts about the effects of vicarious trauma (or are unfamiliar with the concept in general), this book will help you understand it and how it affects someone when it’s a daily occurrence. With an ER social work background, Lipsky draws on personal experiences navigating burnout and case studies of former clients from her trauma stewardship work.

This was the first book I read on burnout and it really helped me understand the “trauma exposure” I was reacting to in my work and it’s affect on every aspect of my life, including physical health, relationships, and my attitude towards my career. If you think you’re experiencing burnout, give this book a read and I guarantee you’ll recognize some of the 16 warning signs that Lipsky discusses.

In the second half of her book, Lipsky does discuss some techniques to be mindful of and manage burnout. Be careful, it may convince you that the best option really is a different career path (maybe that’s why it isn’t mandatory reading in nursing school!). For me, the most important things I got out of this book were:

• Trauma exposure/vicarious trauma is real phenomenon that affects many people working in helping professions
• How to recognize the symptoms of burnout or a “trauma exposure response” in myself

If you want a guide that will help you to understand your own burnout written by someone who understands working in the healthcare system, this book is for you.

2. THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma by Bessel van der Kolk, MD.

I cannot say enough good things about this book. Bessel van der Kolk is an amazing physician and writer. Through decades of studying trauma and psychiatry, Dr. van der Kolk has compiled this work. While very scientific at times, it is totally readable (especially for us nurses). He writes about his own experiences as well as those of his patients and he explains physiologically the myriad trauma responses that one can experience. This book helped me understand the body’s trauma response and more importantly, validated the physical symptoms I was experiencing as a NATURAL PHYSIOLOGIC RESPONSE to trauma. This was huge for me. As someone who typically denies their own needs to support others (no mystery why I went into the nursing field there!), to see a scientific explanation for why I was struggling was really important for my understanding and healing.

This book also helped me look at “burnout” through a trauma lens. When you work every day in a certain environment and your coworkers and friends and sometimes family members also work in that same environment, it’s easy to forget that a lot of what we experience as nurses is not normal and can cause our bodies to have a trauma response, especially if we have a history of past trauma. Breaking ribs to try to bring someone back to life, witnessing psychotic breaks when someone is literally screaming about wanting to kill you, holding down elderly patients with dementia so they won’t accidentally hurt you or themselves. These are all experiences that can cause a stress response and put someone into fight or flight. But when you are surrounded by these experiences every day and the workplace culture is to clean up and move on to the next crisis/patient/code, out of necessity your mind will try to move on quickly. It will tell you to repress and dissociate and pretend everything is fine. But the body doesn’t forget and it doesn’t rationalize, it just responds. So if you’re wanting to delve in to how our bodies respond to trauma and why, this is the book for you.

Trigger Warning: Dr. van der Kolk has worked with a lot of patients with histories of severe trauma and while he doesn’t go into detail about those traumatic experiences there are several mentions of childhood physical and sexual abuse.

3. BURNOUT: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski PhD and Amelia Nagoski DMA

While the previous two books look into trauma exposure and responses on an individual level, this book looks at a much broader definition of burnout and how our current societal structure creates it. These highly educated sisters break down the physiologic stress response into simple and relatable terms and offer practical advice to help manage the accumulation of stress in your day to day life.

The second half of the book moves on to look at the big picture. It provides an insightful critique of the patriarchal capitalistic society we are all forced to live in and investigates how this system causes disproportionately high levels of burnout among women and people of color. Understanding the systemic forces that contribute to burnout was both validating and, honestly, a little disheartening. Yes it is totally normal to have burnout, our system is practically built on it-validating. Yes these factors are massive societal issues that you cannot fix on your own-disheartening.

However, the Nagoski sisters don’t just leave you feeling depressed and hopeless about the state of our world. They do offer some concrete suggestions for building resilience against these systems. They also offer anecdotal stories about themselves and women they’ve connected with over the years to help create a sense of community and hope throughout the book.

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I think everyone has their own journey navigating through burnout but it helps to know you’re not alone. To know that you aren’t the only one feeling lost and numb and angry. To know that the system is broken, not you. To know that there is a way out and a way through. I hope these books can help you in some of the same ways they helped me. You got this.