Teachers: Join Me in Learning How to Reduce Burnout
Teachers: Join Me in Learning How to Reduce Burnout
Note from Dr. Emily: If you are a parent who has been following me for a while, you have likely noticed a pivot in my work to include teachers in our discussions. This is intentional. Parents need to hear the perspectives of our teachers and educators need to hear the perspectives of parents. I truly believe that listening to each other’s challenges and successes is not only missing from the current conversation but is the key to building collaborative relationships. For the next few weeks, I will be sharing ideas related to education. Parents, I encourage you to stay for it all.
Teachers, you are busy. You are asked to do too many things with too little time and energy. I’m here to remind you that you CAN find time for yourself. The most important thing to know is that a little bit of time will go a long way. Join me this week inside my FREE video series for elementary educators to learn how to beat burnout this school year. You’ll only need to set aside about 15 minutes a day. Today’s blog post is a sneak peek. Let’s get started!
Taking Time
If you’re interested in finding more time for yourself, then you already understand that spending time alone or just spending time doing things that YOU have chosen to do is incredibly helpful to managing your energy. Inside the video series, I will teach you how to notice the signs of burnout, how to prepare yourself for stress before it happens, and how to set boundaries. Imagine if you could figure out what triggers stress for you, get ahead of it, and set boundaries so that you have time to recover after stress happens.
Here’s How
When we experience stress, most of us benefit from a change to our sensory system like a deep belly breath, a cold drink of water, a warm cup of tea, breathing fresh air, feeling the sun on our skin, or standing up to stretch or walk. However, as adults we often have deeply ingrained patterns of responding to stress that involves either numbing our feelings or overriding them.
One example of numbing stress is when we grab sugar and carbs for a treat even when we’re not hungry. Instead, we’re often distracting ourselves from feeling negative emotions. The dopamine we feel in our brains when we eat sugar and carbs makes us feel temporarily better, but if we overdo it, we don’t feel well later. Drinking alcohol is another example as alcohol will depress all of our sensory responses so we feel less of everything. Trouble is, we might feel less stress but we can also miss out of feeling joy if we drink too much.
Sometimes we try to override fatigue by drinking caffeine to remain alert rather than getting better sleep and moving our bodies more often. Listen, coffee is one of my favorite things, so I’m not suggesting that you forgo it (or sugar and carbs for that matter). I’m just pointing out a connection to be aware of: Caffeine is not the only way to perk up and if we have too much of it, we feel jittery and anxious, which doesn’t help us in the long run. What does help us long-term is really taking a look at our sleep and movement patterns as systemic solutions to become more resilient to stress over time.
Notice the Child Inside
I also want to ask you to think about how you handled stress as a child. This might seem unrelated, but it’s not. It’s actually extremely related. Many of us have deeply ingrained patterns of stress responses that are a culmination of our temperament and life experience this far.
For instance, when met with stress, some people dismiss or minimize their feelings as a protective strategy. This is often rooted in a parent saying to you as a child, “Oh, you’re fine” or “It’s not a big deal” when you felt like it actually was a very big deal. These types of minimizing comments are not harmful to every child, but but do stick with some of us. If you have an internal voice shaming you for feeling your feelings, think through how your caregivers talked about feelings when you were younger. There are likely some clues there.
Some of us have anxious temperaments and when faced with stress become hypervigilant, jump into problem-solving, or focus on perfectionism to avoid negative emotions by making sure there is a solution for everything, just in case. These are the young children who are pretty crafty with coming up with solutions to avoid conflicts at all costs. But, experiencing conflict helps us develop a healthy tolerance to our feelings. We need to mess up, feel disappointed, cope, and then find a better way for next time. Both dismissing our feelings and avoiding them through perfectionistic problem-solving are exhausting strategies and not emotionally sustainable over time.
A Better Way
What’s incredibly important to know is that research has shown that the feelings we experience after an event like a negative comment, a mistake, or a person annoying us typically lasts only about 90 seconds. If we can tune into that feeling, allow it to happen to us, and move through it, we end up releasing it rather than trapping it inside our body. Trapping feelings in our body leads to emotional fatigue, chronic stress, and burnout.
For a deeper look and tips for strengthening your resilience to the negative emotions you feel as an educator during the school day, register for the FREE video series that will be delivered to your email inbox starting TOMORROW! As part of your registration, you will also be able to join me on a LIVE Zoom call Saturday morning 9:30-10:30amEST for Q&A and discussion with like-minded elementary educators.
You can sign up for this free resource here: https://www.learnwithdremily.com/beatburnout
Let’s Stay Connected! ~Dr. Emily
**All content provided is protected under applicable copyright, patent, trademark, and other proprietary rights. All content is provided for informational and education purposes only. No content is intended to be a substitute for professional medical or psychological diagnosis, advice or treatment. Information provided does not create an agreement for service between Dr. Emily W. King and the recipient. Consult your physician regarding the applicability of any opinions or recommendations with respect to you or your child's symptoms or medical condition. Children or adults who show signs of dangerous behavior toward themselves and/or others, should be placed immediately under the care of a qualified professional.**
