The Truth About Teacher Burnout
Do you ever feel like you want to…
- Numb with Overeating, drink to excess or supplement with sugar?
- Hide away and isolate?
- Cry or scream?
- Sleep for days?
I am no stranger to being ‘not okay’. I didn’t realize it then but I didn’t like myself very much when I was deep in the throes of teacher burnout. I dreaded going into work every day. I was new to a community and didn’t fit in. I had to go along with a system that I didn’t believe in. I stayed away from other teachers. I felt like a fraud, an outsider and the butt of everyone’s joke.
I felt like nothing I did made any difference. My frustration and anger had me pull further and further away so I was depleted of all empathy and care. I was emotionally exhausted from caring too much for too long and this had the most negative impact on my self-esteem and worth.
What it looked like, if you were a trusted friend that year...it was a lot of blaming. A lot of complaining, a lot of avoiding and a lot of wine (and sugary treats in my desk drawer).
I shut down. I gave up. My patience wore very thin. I didn’t have the energy to fight for it or even rise above.
I thought I would feel amazing once I left the job. So I did. While I admit, I contemplated breaking the contract, I waited until the very last day and I biked away, flipping the bird as peddled off as fast as I could.
I left teaching and ‘boom’ I thought I’d be healed.
Wrong.
Fleeing was only the first step. My body got me out of it. My stress response was to flee and so I did. In that way, my body saved me. But that was only the beginning of healing from it.
My Biggest Truths about Burnout
Teacher Burnout: A syndrome resulting from prolonged stress due to increasing demands over time. A teacher's capacity to protect themselves against threats to their self-esteem and wellbeing is disrupted or strained. The coping mechanisms activated to deal with demands fail, increasing stress and threatening mental and physical wellbeing.
1.You can still feel the stress without the stressor.
Even months after leaving the classroom I couldn’t talk or think about it. My teacher pals would talk about teaching and I would shut down or immediately change the subject. There was a part of me that went into shame. I should have been able to...How are you going to take care of yourself now...I thought it was weak. That I let them get me down. Even though the stressor was gone, I hadn’t dealt with my feelings. Cue, intense anger. (Honest truth, I sometimes STILL feel that trigger of anger after TONS of work and two years later).
I learned that removing the stressor didn’t mean I didn’t feel bad anymore. Leaving teaching didn’t mean I wasn’t burnt out. You don’t need to wait for stressors to go away to heal and when the stressors do go away, you still need to deal with the stress that is flooding through your body. You have to do something to signal your body you are safe.
2. Burnout revealed unhelpful patterns and coping I had relied upon for decades.
I have always had a deep fear of being criticized. I still see it flare up when someone tells me to put my dog on a leash and I know he should be. I, as many women do, feel I have a moral obligation to ‘give’ (which is amplified if not imposed upon by our culture). By believing that it is my moral obligation to be calm and patient, when I would fail the internal critic would be the first to flare up and cast judgement and blame. I’d combat it all with trying to be liked. As my coping mechanisms failed, it sent me deeper and deeper into frustration and overwhelm.
3. Feeling my feelings saved me.
Even months after leaving the classroom, a holiday and a summer vacation later, many of the feelings and stress responses remained in my body. My mind was ready to move forward long before my body and emotions were. Feeling feelings is a learned skill I had never learned. I believed emotions were something getting in my way. I thought that if I dealt with the problem that caused the emotion then I would have dealt with the emotion itself. Wrong again.
Feelings exist in your body whether we like it or not. There was a lot of emotion in my body from my whole life! What I needed to do was to turn towards the suffering (which at the time sucked!) but in the long run was the only way though.
4. Burnout Cycles repeat themselves if left untreated.
Learning about my feelings meant I had to understand feelings a lot better. Emily and Amelia Nagoski describe emotions as natural cycles of the body. They are normal and happen everywhere and all the time.
I like to think of emotions as waves with a trough and a swell and crest (a beginning, middle and end). If you ride the wave you get to the end, if you try to stop the wave...well, you get slammed in the face or maybe drown. Exhaustion happens when we get stuck in an emotion and can’t find our way through. This happens a lot with really heavy emotions like rage, grief, despair and anger that are too hard to navigate on our own. Getting stuck in emotions leads to dis-ease. We can stay in this chronic stress state for days, weeks (months in my case).
5. There is so much more in our control than we think!
My favourite part of my burnout definition above is this: “The coping mechanisms activated to deal with demands fail” because this is where our power rests. It means we get to activate new ways of coping….and there are plenty! (yes, it’s hard to do a new thing because of our brain wiring, but it’s totally possible and totally within us!)
The good news is that stress isn’t the problem. (some amount of stress is actually good for us). We waste too much energy stuck in trying to control and understand and blame the stressors. But it’s the coping strategies we are tuning into that are the problem. Being stuck is the problem.
Ever said - “I just don’t know what to do!”
Now you do.
Acknowledge that you can’t control the stressors (in my burnout I couldn’t control the school-wide expectations, I couldn't control the parent behaviour, I couldn’t control the schedule or infinite interruptions or attitudes of the children, the list goes on). Then turn towards the difficult feeling with awareness and acceptance - kindness, compassion, so you can finish the feelings and ride the wave.
I had to learn new ways to signal my body that I am safe. For me that looked like Yoga where I learned to attune to my inner world and move and breathe. And getting a coach to help me navigate the hard feelings. I learned how to listen to my body.
The Biggest Truth of All
We need you.
Your families need you.
Your students need you.
Your colleagues need you.
We need you taking care of you.
But the cure for burnout isn’t just in self-care but caring for one another... In your house, in your team, in a trusted friend. In a coach.
Most Efficient Ways to Diffuse Stress:
- Physical activity - get the hormones and chemicals moving! (dance, walk, zoomba, yoga, running)
- Breathing - regulate the nervous system with 1-2 minutes of deep belly breaths.
- Positive social interaction - laugh, look into eyes, hug and listen, create a deeper connection with others.
- Cry! Allowing the emotion to go all the way to the end. Turn towards the physical experience of crying, the sensation of heat, the water, the snot, not feeding it more thoughts about the cause of the stress but feelings in your body. Feeling it all the way through only takes a few moments.
- Create - take something difficult and put it outside of yourself.
Need some help? Why not connect with someone who has been there and lived to tell the tale? Someone who understands the ins and outs of teaching these days and can feel your pain? Someone who sees you and can hold space for your journey to heal your burnout and beyond. I'd love to chat and hear your story.