Or Maybe, Just Maybe, It’s Time to Go.
Reader, Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski: The cure for burnout (hint: it isn’t self-care) | TED Talk
How tired is too tired? As I write this I am thinking of the many friends I know who are talking about the years remaining before they can retire. I am thinking of those sitting on that retirement fence, not sure whether to return to their districts come August.
“Just one more year?” They ask their friends and themselves.
Insights and other thoughts from the above Ted Talk, along with a few pertinent questions:
Reader, how do you feel? Does working in the classroom, parenting, fighting for social justice or just managing pandemic life leave you wanting to curl up in bed? Do you feel foggy? Detached? Can you appreciate your victories? Can you even believe in your victories?
It’s worth pausing to look at three common components of burn-out:
- Depersonalization — where a person’s sense of SELF, their sense of caring and compassion, somehow fades away
- Decreased sense of accomplishment — No matter what you did this year, somehow it doesn’t feel as if you achieved much
- Emotional exhaustion — you cared so much, tried so hard, and now you just don’t have the emotional resources left to fight the next battle.
It’s vital to separate stressors from stress. Stressors cause stress and stressors vary greatly from person to person. One person’s deep sigh of vaccination relief is another person’s moan of terror at the thought of an experimental brain clotting 5G DNA rewrite. Deadlines energize some people and panic others. Still others take a more casual approach to deadlines: “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” (Douglas Adams). It makes little sense to attack many stressors directly, because stressors are so individual in character.
I’d say the biggest stressor in teaching today is unmeetable expectations based in absurd standards and even-more-absurd test targets. Family issues, lack of money, COVID craziness, and other factors may add to that stress. The wrong administration/boss can be a huge stressor for anyone in any profession. Our testing stressor demands to be attacked, but wrestling testing and their associated curricula into submission will probably require years. If you are feeling burnt out, reader, you need help now.
My last post was about meditation. Meditating, tapping, exercising, baking, gaming, music, television, psychotherapy and many other activities can help manage stress. Stress itself is the physiological response to stressors, that unfortunate fight, flight or freeze response that ties unlucky people into emotional knots. My favorite methods for notching down stress are watercolors, music and meditation, all pretty harmless. Eating, medicating and shopping can prove more problematic, depending on the person.
A few thoughts from the Ted Talk above and my own life:
The toughest question for those on the retirement fence is often a simple one: How much stress is too much stress?
You can’t self-care your way out of burn-out. What you need are people who care for you, people caring for each other. Do you have those people, reader? Are your coworkers listening to you? Is there anyone to bring you a cupcake or caramel latte after a bad day? Is there a room with a hearing ear out there for you?
If you are a teacher, the odds are good that your administration talks about teams and being part of the team. Does your administration feel like it is on YOUR team? Is there anyone in administration who you can safely ask for help or support?
Here’s a favorite quote from the Ted Talk: “When I feel I need more grit, I need more help.”
Reader, if you don’t expect to have that help and support, you probably should be planning your exit.
Plan B would be to create the support network you lack. Maybe talk to those also overworked coworkers who are bailing out the boat with you to create a support network? I’d set up a Friday night get-together to start, a place to unwind and share your concerns and good moments together. We seem to be nearing a time when that get-together could happen in real space instead of cyberspace.
COVID made everything so crazy this last year that you may be having trouble judging your job and stress level. You may be inclined to go forward, hoping that as life normalizes, work will normalize. That’s your call. I’d suggest you look back before COVID and ask yourself if you were gritting your way through that pre-COVID school year. Did you have help?
Eduhonesty: Summer break is here for many of us. We can take a long breath at last and do the emotional work that does not get done during the school year. Here are my recommendations:
Listen to your body.
Listen to your mind.
Go all the way through the tunnel of your experiences, looking around you at the year’s highs, lows, and WTFs. When you find yourself feeling uncomfortable, examine your feelings and ask what those feelings are trying to tell you. Ask yourself, ask those feelings; “What do you need from me?”
If necessary, seek out a medical professional for help. Therapy is not only for the desperate and broken. Therapy can help you find strategies to manage excessive stress, can enable you to make changes in a daily life that is working only in the sense that you have not fallen over any cliffs yet. Cliffs are not always well-posted or in plain view. Coronary care units are filled with relatively young adults who were fine — until they weren’t fine.
Listen to your body.
Listen to your mind.
And understand that when we tell ourselves we have one more step…one more mile… one more year… in us, we are not always telling ourselves the truth.
Eduhonesty: I owe this blog a post, one that I am fascinated to discover I have not written. I fell over the cliff once, then got back up, left my job for a less stressful position and simply went on. But I have seen the intensive care unit. I know the relief of hospital sheets and strange machines pumping immobilized legs while finals go on… or don’t go on… without me. I honestly have no idea how grades were determined that year. I fell far enough over the cliff that no one even asked me to try to help with grades. I assume they used what I had in the system.
But, readers, I owe you that post when I can put it together. Because I learned a truth that year: Sometimes you should take the smaller pension, and walk away. Or at least change positions.
Only you can know your truth, and maybe more music and meditation will carry you past the crazy. Stress helps us achieve and motivates us to do better. Feeling stressed can be useful and even therapeutic sometimes. Many people do their best work in response to demands and deadlines.
But if you are not having fun, if you are worrying excessively, if work days seem to be nothing but ever-growing stress-stress-stress-stress-stress… If the thought of going back to work feels like navigating an asteroid field while under attack from forces you somehow never seem able to predict or control… If the thought of going back to work ties your stomach up in knots…
P.S. Well, THIS was not what I intended to write. I was going to write a cheery let-me-help-you-cope post. But I am going to publish anyway, because I think teachers (and many other workers) cope too much. Education’s demands get nuttier and nuttier while teachers keep saying, “I will work harder.” Instead, maybe we should plan our retirements or look for positions in better districts — even when changing positions unfortunately involves a pay cut. I am guessing the next few years will be an especially good time for educators, paraprofessionals and other school employees to change districts.
Hugs to all, Jocelyn Turner