Since the day I started speaking openly about my own mental health issues roughly seven years ago, I have owned my issues and my healing. I have been clear about what I will do. I will be brutally honest. I will make naysayers uncomfortable. I will put myself into positions of vulnerability in order to model it for other people. Even when it hurts. Even when I lose people. Even when the cost to do so seems so much greater than the return. I’ll do it anyway.
But, there are things I’ll won’t do as a mental health advocate.
I’ll never claim to be completely healed and perfect.
I have worked for years on my own healing. Sometimes, it feels like one step forward, two steps back. I will go for years without an issue, and then randomly I’ll have all the things happen – crying, shaking, anger and I’ll have to start all over again. I will never be perfect. I’ll never tell you that I am. I will never expect you to be. I truly believe that one of the reasons my healing process is so all-consuming sometimes is to remind me what others go through. Because of that, I’m okay with continuing to heal. I will take empathetic over perfect any day. I would take the ability to step into someone’s space with them – feeling what they feel – over looking down on them from my self-proclaimed perfectly transformed pedestal in a heartbeat. After all, how else will we heal if not with people who love and care for us? Who will take time to understand what we’re going through? Who have the ability to feel what we are feeling? How else can we transform emotion if we are not able to step into emotions of our own?
I’ll never try to be the boss of your emotions.
I will never tell you to get over your pain. I will never tell you that anxiety is all in your head. I will never assume that you have the power over any of your big emotions at any given moment. I will never ask you to transform, as that implies that emotion and trauma are nothing but a switch to be flipped. And anyone who knows anything about brain science knows that this isn’t possible. The most you’ll get from people who you ask to contain their emotions is guilt and then resentment. Eventually, that guilt and resentment shuts them down. And the last thing we need is people who are hurting who aren’t talking. Nothing good ever comes from minimalizing someone’s pain. I will never ask you to stop feeling to relieve my discomfort. Ever.
I’ll never abandon my search for understanding.
Understanding research, understanding new ideas and theories, but mostly, taking time to understand people. Listen to what they say. People will tell you who they are both in what they say and what they don’t say. Understanding triggers, strategies for healing, understanding what not to say. Even people who tell untruths, at the root, are lying because they’re struggling emotionally in some way. Understanding the root cause of why people do what they do is the first step to understanding mental health issues. Does this mean we need to accept toxic people? No. Does it mean that we need to allow someone else to suffocate us? Call us crazy? Tell us to stop our “bad behavior”? Hell to the no. But in understanding why they do what they do, we begin to accept that their mental health issues are more about them than they ever were about us. And that is another step in healing.
I will never imply that I have my stuff together. Are you taking advice from someone who has not fully healed? Yup. Are you reading about someone who screws up, who has big emotions, who is able to go to battle with the best of them? Unfortunately, yes. But you’re also healing alongside someone who will never make you feel less than you are. Whose passion for helping others feel like they are not crazy, unwanted, or broken far outweighs my own ego and portraying myself as a perfect human. Hopefully, that helps you love your imperfect human, too.
I was recently asked why I have such a problem with the term “learning loss” (or any version of that term). It’s not that I don’t believe that there has been the potential that learning loss has happened. It’s not that I don’t believe that we need to address certain gaps. It’s that focusing on learning loss accomplishes only two tasks:
To make hardworking educators feel like no matter what they did during the pandemic it wasn’t good enough. And there’s no space where I feel like perpetuating an idea like that is going to put people in the right mindset to return to school refreshed versus anxious. Excited versus exhausted.
It may dilute the importance of addressing the emotional gaps and missed social growth that typically also happens in a year. If we continue to rest in the idea of learning gaps, I feel like we are going to hit the ground running – only to find ourselves running in place – or worse – backwards.
Why? We have healing to do before we have any hope of learning content. If we were EVER able to make students learn more than a years worth of growth, why weren’t we doing it consistently all this time? And now we hope to do it as they come back from a global pandemic? If we continue to look in the rearview mirror we are going to crash. Best we look forward and start the learning journey where we can.
Even if school already returned to session in-person prior to the end of the 20-21 school year, many schools moved back and transitioned right into learning content because school was already in session. Taking time to address even the typical beginning-of-the-year family-building, social adjustment seemed out of place. And as I’ve expressed before, whatever happened was the best that everyone could do at the time. It wasn’t wrong, necessarily, it just was. But, we have the opportunity to start fresh next school year.
One of the pathways for healing is to step into emotions. Find them, name them, and walk through them. Students (and most adults) don’t necessarily know how to do this. Here are some activities to help students find social-emotional gaps from the pandemic and identify feelings they may have had and help deal with stress and anxiety.
Collaborate With the Arts
We have had solid research for years now on the positive impact of the arts on social-emotional wellbeing and mental health issues. This research has recently been brought back as a way to support students post-pandemic and provide them an outlet for emotions and stress they may not have had the chance to address.
“The arts offer unique opportunities to support SEL skills such as emotional regulation, personal aspirations and compassion for others, which can effectively engage students facing higher levels of personal trauma or distress…In a child’s early years, participation in the arts can have positive impacts on their cognitive development. Music instruction can help youths improve their self-efficacy and self-esteem, and can provide opportunities to develop relationship-building skills and form new perceptions about themselves and their communities. The benefits of arts participation can also help educators strengthen their self-efficacy and support positive personal transformations.”
Supporting Student Wellness Through the Arts (Dell’Erba & Quillen, 2020)
Specifically, collaborate with the Art teacher (could also be graphic arts, industrial arts) and allow students to complete a piece that represents either their feelings during the pandemic or their feelings now after the pandemic. Allow them to recognize their sad emotions as well as their positive emotions. There are no negative emotions. All emotions are valid and need to be worked through. When finished, display them in an optional gallery (don’t force students to show their pieces as they may be intensely personal).
Another option would be to work with the music teacher to listen to other pandemic era specific songs, analyze them, and then write lyrics that would sound like and address our latest experience as music also has been shown to reduce mental health issues.
CASEL SEL Core Competencies Addressed: Self-Awareness, Self-Management
Maslow Level: Esteem Needs (feeling of accomplishing something), Love and Belonging (we all went through something together, I’m not alone)
Small Moment Narrative
When I was a teacher, one of my favorite literacy lessons was the small moment narrative. We would read multiple mentor texts and excerpts to really understand how important the senses and emotions of the moment brought life to the story.
Couple a small moment narrative with the research behind the power of writing to build resilience and work through emotional trauma, and this can become a healing activity.
“…people experience a positive effect from employing expressive writing to cope with difficult life experiences. Even though a traumatic or grievous experience comes crashing into one’s life unbidden, through writing, one can shape and explore the difficulty.”
Writing for Healing: Writing it down will help you work through difficult times (Hocker, 2018)
There is a powerful student video by Liv McNeill that illustrates what some of her peers were experiencing during the pandemic called Numb (secondary students only in my opinion) that could be used as an example of a visual of a small moment and how she communicated her frustration through the moment – although technically the video is meant to represent time passing.
It’s okay in this situation to ask students to reveal a moment that they were feeling OR that they imagine their peers to feel. This takes the pressure off and allows more vulnerability if they would like to work through that particular healing but do not want to take on the added pressure of the vulnerability. The therapy is in the writing, not in the display of their emotions.
Other options would be to allow students to create a video like Liv’s to express their emotions during the pandemic or instead of a small moment narrative, ask students to write letters to their pre-pandemic selves describing their experience and emotions.
CASEL SEL Core Competencies Addressed: Self-Awareness, Social-Awareness, Self-Management, Responsible Decision-Making
Maslow Level: Love and Belonging (we all went through something together, I’m not alone), Safety (I can experience psychological safety while being vulnerable)
Deep Breathing Exercises
Deep breathing has been shown to reset our brains and bring us to a more neutral place. If this activity needs to be connected to content (I don’t believe it does) it could properly fit into any science lesson on the brain and body or psychology unit on mindfulness.
“Breath-focused meditation and yogic breathing practices have numerous known cognitive benefits, including increased ability to focus, decreased mind wandering, improved arousal levels, more positive emotions, decreased emotional reactivity, along with many others…The research shows for the first time that breathing — a key element of meditation and mindfulness practices — directly affects the levels of a natural chemical messenger in the brain called noradrenaline. This chemical messenger is released when we are challenged, curious, exercised, focused or emotionally aroused, and, if produced at the right levels, helps the brain grow new connections, like a brain fertiliser. The way we breathe, in other words, directly affects the chemistry of our brains in a way that can enhance our attention and improve our brain health.”
The Yogi masters were right — meditation and breathing exercises can sharpen your mind: New research explains link between breath-focused meditation and attention and brain health. (Trinity College Dublin, 2018)
There are multiple types of breathing exercises that can be tried, but keep in mind that not all breathing is considered mindful breathing, meditation, or deep breathing. Here is an activity that can be done quickly and is relatively simple. The recommended time is five minutes which would obviously need to be adjusted for small children.
2-1-4-1 Breathing
Get into a comfortable position. Close your eyes if it feels okay.
Breath in through your nose for a count of two. Pause for a count of one.
Release your breath slowly for a count of 4. Pause for a count of one.
Repeat.
If this becomes too easy or feels too short, change the time to 4-1-6-1 or any version that seems to work for you. Find more breathing and meditation exercises in my Building Resilience Through Mindfulness for Educators on Thinkific or Udemy.
CASEL SEL Core Competencies Addressed: Self-Awareness, Self-Management
Maslow Level: Psychological Needs
Social Games
I believe that games in the classroom are a fantastic way to engage students, and board games specifically help students develop social skills by working collaboratively with their peers. However, as I discuss social games here I’m specifically talking about partnering with the Physical Education teacher to plan additional time for students to interact in a physical way but also try to mind the gap of the social experiences that they may have had because of the pandemic. In tandem with this, I could quote the mountain of studies done to support additional recess time for students as a way of developing SEL skills as well.
“Physical activity has a small but significant effect on the mental health of children and adolescents ages 6 to 18, according to a review of 114 studies. On average, young people who exercise more have lower levels of depression, stress and psychological distress, and higher levels of positive self-image, life satisfaction and psychological well-being. Exercise may also protect children’s mental health over time: One study found that 6- to 8-year-olds who got more exercise had fewer symptoms of major depressive disorder two years later.”
How and why to get children moving now (American Psychological Association, 2020)
There are multiple ways to include physical activity in just about any content area. Reviews can be done in game situations where students need to run and grab a certain color ball or baton to answer a question. Students can collaborate to design their own physical games that the class can then play. Physical education educators are brilliant at developing movement activity and can be an ally when taking on this type of opportunity. Any type of activity that gets them moving (preferably outside or in an open space like the gym) and working together will allow them to build some of the social skills they may have missed during the pandemic.
CASEL SEL Core Competencies Addressed: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Relationship Skills, Responsible Decision-Making, Social Awareness
Maslow Level: Physiological, Safety, Love and Belonging, Esteem
Taking time a the beginning of the year to work on the emotional gaps and social skills that students are lacking from the pandemic is going to be a key way to not only sooth their nervous systems but help them understand their emotions and work through them in a healthy way. It’s also how we will best get to the point of real learning. In this case, the idea of going slow to go fast is going to be key. Some districts might feel like dealing with students’ SEL needs should come second to the work that has to be done, but what they need to understand is that social-emotional support and growth IS the work that needs to be done. And when it’s done well, the rest of the learning will come.
Find more information on the CASEL SEL Core Competencies here.
Reach out to me to discover how I can support your district in professional learning on educator mental health, SEL, edtech, and professional learning books using CARES Act grant funding.
Over the course of the Pandemic I’ve taken the opportunity to dive into reflection and learning more about emotions and how they control so much of what we do – everything from eating and sleeping to how we react in certain situations to certain people. I’ve really tried to get to the heart of what makes me tick. What the core emotion is that throws me into jealously mode when I feel like I’m working so hard and other people are more successful than I am. What ignites my overall frustration with some people when other people can do the same thing and I’m fine with it. Why I have such a difficult time feeling true joy that when I do it feels like an euphoric surprise. I want to be better – a better human. A happy human. And most days, I struggle with true happiness no matter how much I feel like I might be helping other people.
The last therapist I went to see was, to say the least, a little non-traditional. I was with him 15 minutes when he said, “You really need to learn to love yourself.” Now, had I heard this only one time, I might have blown it off, but the truth is that it is the one consistent message I’ve received from every therapist I’ve ever seen. Prior to this man, I had been in a therapy session with another counselor who put me in a meditative state and asked me to repeat the words, “I love myself” and I burst into tears and told her I couldn’t. I literally couldn’t. Like my subconscious was like, “Dude, no way. Not happening.” It’s an experience that has taken me a long time to process, and I’ve actually felt empathy for my little human inside that was so sad that they couldn’t say those words aloud.
I’m going to take a pause here and say that I don’t need anyone to message me and ask me if I’m okay and tell me all my good qualities – although I love that people are kind enough to do that for someone. In this case, I’m good. I’ve got me. This blog post is about reflection and potentially helping someone else who may feel like they see themselves in some of what I say. Don’t feel bad for me. I’m doing good work. Work that not everyone is always willing to do.
In my reflection over the course of the pandemic I’ve found that all roads lead back to the way that I feel about myself and boundaries I have or have not set. That my reactions, actions, and the way I treat others is a direct reflection of how I love myself – or don’t. And I have grown – although very slowly – over the course of time in working on this, and I’ve found that there are pieces of my life that have improved because I have found a friendship with myself. I am better able to relate to others because of this newfound relationship.
I’m better able to hold space for someone else.
If you’ve never heard the term “holding space” it means being present for someone as they work through their emotions. Indications of not holding space might be: saying things to try to make it better, relating their experience back to your own life, or being judgmental of their situation. Holding space is not always easy because it requires you to allow someone to process through their hurt without trying to necessarily fix it or give advice. But, what can make holding space even more difficult is if you’re still working through your own emotional baggage. Clearing your own personal baggage allows you to have the space to hold. So many of our judgments and desire to see people ok stem from our own triggered emotions and experiences that we have boxed up inside. By working through my own emotions and baggage I am now able to have the space to hold for others as they work through theirs. It also makes me feel more whole – more grounded, which makes me a more grounding presence to anyone who needs it.
I understand loving others better.
It’s difficult to know how to love other people if you don’t know how to love yourself. It’s also really difficult to know your value if you don’t love yourself as well. In the past, I could be so desperate for someone to care for me (using “love” synonymous with true friendship here) that I would allow people to walk all over me and I would use their “happiness” as my own because I didn’t know how to generate it within me. If they were asking me to do something for them, they must love me, even if I was giving more time and effort than I had available to give. I would allow toxic people to remain because the small doses of simulated caring was enough to get me through their negative behaviors. When I learned how to better love myself, I also learned that people will value me exactly how much I value myself. And if I don’t value myself, some people will value me that much as well, so the narrative needed to be changed. In learning to love myself I found the people who love me that much tended to stick around, and through that experience I learned to love others stronger as I was able to see what true love looked like.
I embrace the eccentricities of others.
Prior to taking the opportunity to do all this shadow work, my own self-loathing could often be found focusing on my personal “wishlist”. This wishlist included things I wished were different about myself. My weight. My inability to focus on anything for a long period of time. My irrational fear of sharks and heights. My nose. The list was long and I felt what made me different made me less than. This is the current area where I do the most amount of work. Accepting what has traditionally made you feel like you’re not good enough in the past can be a long process as disliking pieces of myself has been something I’ve practiced for many years. But, I’m getting better. The idea that I can both like where I am and still try to be better has been a concept that has helped me. Embracing things like my weight (while still trying to get healthier) and my crooked smile is helping me to love it all without judgment, and loving these things about myself has helped me to appreciate the eccentricities that others bring to the table with the same lack of judgment. And honestly, it feels good. Less judgment and more acceptance should always be the goal.
While some might think that one might take on narcissistic tendencies if they love themselves, I can say with certainty that moving into this space has humbled me unlike many other experiences I’ve had in my life. I’ve had to dig into and challenge my own emotional triggers and reroute the parts of my brain that have been taught to react in a negative way to me feeling good about myself. I’ve had to give myself pep talks in the mirror. I’ve had to literally tell myself “I love you”. But mostly I’ve had to work on myself because I’ve always believed that I’m on this Earth to be in the service of others, and I’m slowly learning that I can’t truly do that until I’ve learned to love, accept, and value who I am.
I haven’t made it a secret on social media that I have been struggling to write blog posts lately. It seems like something that should be a task I could just let go, but the inability to bring myself to write is a symptom of deeper issues and causes me stress that I can’t let go. The stress comes from knowing that it is something I should be doing. From understanding that I committed to a task that I am not completing and it was a promise that I made to myself (which is the most important person I can make a promise to) and I am failing myself at my inability to complete said task. I also feel like I’m letting down mentors who have taught me to be strong in the face of being tired and feeling overwhelmed. I have a ball in my chest knowing that I am missing valuable reflection time and sharing with my fellow PLN, another commitment that I had made years ago. I can’t let it go that I am impacting my own thinking and learning as well as others. When I really start to spiral, I think, “What does my future hold when I can’t even write a simple blog post?” Then comes the “What is wrong with me” and the “Why can’t I be motivated like other people”. All this from a freaking blog post.
The deeper issue here is that I’m overwhelmed and I’m not going to go into all the things I have going on that are causing me to be overwhelmed because being busy is not a competition. Plus, I could have nothing going on and still feel it because the world is an overwhelming place right now. It should not be underestimated the toll that the pandemic has taken on people mentally, emotionally, and physically (hello, additional Covid 19lbs). Yesterday, I went to go into the post-office and nearly fell into tears as I realized I forgot my mask and Tom Hanks told me that only inconsiderate people don’t wear masks and the thought of being inconsiderate nearly pushed me over the edge.
The worst part is that for those of us who spiral about the future and everything we are not doing, we can’t even see the future right now. As in, we have no idea what the world will look like in two weeks. We use repetition, processes, and schedules as safety nets. Most of us don’t know how school is going to begin. We don’t know how our own kids are going back. We don’t know how our own schedules are going to look. And even if districts have a “plan”, most districts acknowledge that they may be back for two weeks before they need to go fully online. And if they’re not acknowledging that, well, then honestly they’re not planning well. Teachers are updating their wills to go back to school. Truly, we are living in unbelievable times. We have lost out safety nets and are crossing a tightrope 10 stores in the air. There is quite a bit of our overwhelm that we can contribute to our lack of feeling safe for multiple reasons, but a slippery grip on our future is definitely one of them.
Because I have been struggling with overwhelm lately, I have been emotional and I prefer to take on tasks that take little thinking. I have taken to playing a Cafe game on my phone. I have never been on to play games on my phone, but it is now a preferred activity. I feel exhausted. The other day I cried because “baby trees” were being taken out of my yard. I can’t stress the impact that true overwhelm can have. It is more than a passing feeling. More than a sudden temper tantrum, although those too can be a sign. I have written more about overwhelm and chronic stress here.
As part of my overwhelm I have taken to trying to meditate more, which I’m going to admit is an ongoing goal. I have improved so much at meditation that I can now mediate for up to 15 minutes. When I began, 30 seconds of sitting still was a struggle as I was bombarded with thoughts of all the things I could be accomplishing if I wasn’t just “sitting there.” As part of my study of meditation, I’ve found that there is an intention setting meditation that is called “Just For Today”. It is actually also one of the teachings of Alcoholics Anonymous as well. The basic premise that you set intentions that begin with “Just for today…” By focusing on getting through one day, you may find yourself saying “Anyone could do this just for today, I can, too”. You may find yourself living more in the moment and taking focus away from what the future is going to hold. You may find the little accomplishments replenish your energy and fill your soul. One step to fighting overwhelm.
Just for today I will be patient with my children. Just for today I will be kind to myself. Just for today I will be considerate of my loved ones and of strangers. Just for today I will smile even when I’m wearing a mask so people can see it in my eyes (something I learned from my daughter).
It’s not that you will only commit to doing these things for one day. It is that today you’re going to focus on doing these things. There is a difference. If you are like me and constantly future-think, this is going to be difficult. But, if you also understand that your constant future-focus with the state of the world right now is causing you anxiety, shifting your focus to the present may help you find that there is a welcome reprieve.
The second piece of this, however, is being okay with where you are and who you are in this day. It’s not enough to claim you’re going to do something just for today and then continue to live in the disappointment you may feel for what you’re doing or who you are. We all know that we have growing to do. We know that it’s possible that who we are right now in the midst of a pandemic and what feels like the world is falling apart may not be our best selves. However, wallowing in that isn’t going to help either and will only add to the chronic stress that we are feeling. So, be okay with who you are and what you are doing today. Whatever it is and whoever you are…trust that you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be at this moment. Take a deep breath. Let go of the imagined stress that you’ve created in regards to your version of a “blog post”. People may judge. They may try to compete with everything you have going on. Let them. They’re not the ones determining your self-worth anyway.
Give yourself grace. Be kind to yourself and others. Put energy into accomplishing something small. Take a bath in Epson salt. Hug your furbaby. Undoing overwhelm isn't about pushing through it. It's about taking care of yourself so you can move forward. Go slow to go fast.
This blog post, like many of my posts, is my version of processing my own thinking and emotions “out loud” with others so I can learn and grow best. Please excuse how disjointed it may read as I try to put all my thoughts coherently together. With this post, I was fortunate enough that my good friend, Desmond Hasty, was willing to collaborate and co-process with me as the concept for this post was due to a powerful conversation we had regarding mental health and beginning the next school year.
In the area where I live, we have a large population of people who have immigrated here from Mexico. Some of them are documented, some of them are not. Some students’ parents have become citizens, some students are the first to have been born here. When there have been heated political discussion about immigration laws and deportation (regardless of how anyone feels on the issue) teachers in our area watched our Latinx students’ fear and uncertainty rise up. They couldn’t tell anyone how they felt because they were either unsure they should feel it or they didn’t want to get their family in trouble. Some of them didn’t even know what questions to ask to begin a conversation. Some of them became quiet and reclusive. Some of them began to show behaviors consistent with trauma. When the pictures of children in cages being separated from their parents began to cross the airways, things got even worse. It didn’t matter whether they were technically able to get deported or not, many feared for their lives and those of their family members. Learning about square roots and how to conjugate a verb doesn’t seem that important when you’re facing possible deportation and being caged. In the midst of this kind of upheaval, I witnessed the mental health toll that the situation was taking on our students and their families. I have never forgotten the looks on their faces. The way their parents seemed to age 10 years in a few months. It was like watching trauma every day unfold before my eyes.
I feel this same way about what has been happening in our country as of late with the murder of unarmed Black people by police officers, but particularly with the murder of George Floyd because the actual act (as in the video of his death) was so highly publicized. We know that racism all by itself breeds its own traumatic impact whether it’s systemic or specific experiences. The constant fear and hypervigilance that it takes to be Black or a person of color has to mimic the feelings of constant and ongoing abuse. We have never done nearly enough to address racism in our schools even though we are willing to begin to discuss mental health. We often address mental health as a way to moderate behaviors instead of a way to keep kids healthy and happy.
“Racial trauma,” according to marriage and family therapist Dr. George James, “is the physical and psychological impact, and sometimes symptoms, on people of color who have experienced racism.” This includes seeing and hearing about the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and countless others. It also includes feeling and experiencing injustices in everyday life through the microaggressions black people face inside and outside of work.“An accumulation of all of this,”…“creates racial trauma.”
So, as we move into next school year, there are some questions that we (Desmond and I) have been thinking about in regard to our Black students and students of color hoping that in highlighting these realities we may be able to support students more effectively instead of backpedaling. We definitely do not have all the answers, but right now, we do have a lot of questions. We also know that we haven’t thought of them all and I encourage anyone reading to please add to the questions and/or comment with thoughts. We feel like if we don’t answer these questions, more trauma will ensue.
How can we support Black or students of color who may be too young to have the vocabulary/words to express the worries they have and the questions they want answered?
How do we support Black or students of color who don’t feel like their schools are safe places (if they did feel that way before) due to teachers being seen as authorities (as are police officers) and not knowing if they can feel safe/will be protected by White teachers (perception of not being protected or feeling safe)?
How do we emotionally support students when they find their White friends may not be the anti-racists they thought they were? How do we support and understand their grief and also address the issue of racism?
How can we be more understanding of the trauma behaviors we may see increasing as school returns? How can we provide additional support, whether that be counseling services or otherwise?
Whether school continues online or not, will we see an uptick in student truancy that is rooted in fear of systemic racism?
What impact is having guards and school liaison officers going to have particularly if they are stationed with uniforms and guns? With incidents of school shootings, how do we balance the trauma that may be present between watching a police officer murder a man with safety measures that have been put in place due to armed intruders?
How, as a community, do we move forward with an anti-racist message? How are we going to communicate that being actively anti-racist is the focus of the district? How is the district going to react when someone openly disagrees in order to best support our Black students/families and students of color and their families? How are we going to recognize and address the systemic racism in our own districts?
I never claim to have all the answers but I have addressed mental health long enough to understand that there needs to be additional support offered to everyone. I think this help should address concerns starting from mid-pandemic, to going back into our schools, and well beyond that. Many of our Black students and students of color are going to have feelings and traumas that are heightened even beyond the systemic racism they experience daily. Beginning to address these issues is really just the tip of the iceberg, but hopefully will be the catalyst to real change in the view of mental health in schools and the specific support that our students need.
One of the most common questions I get in regards to the way that educators may disengage or the topics on educator mental health that I cover in Reignite the Flames and The Fire Within is “How, as an administrator, can I support my teachers who are disengaged?” (OR how can I keep them engaged). “How can I support their mental health?” I find that administrators really do care about their teacher’s mental health even though some of them fumble with how to be supportive. The issues with this support range from the more abstract I’m not sure how to talk about emotions to the practical when am I treading into privacy issue territory. Couple that with the fact that mental health is personal and must ultimately be addressed by the teacher and teachers don’t want to be burdened with convincing their administrators that they are emotionally stable, and it’s a recipe for how do I even know where to begin? Here are three suggestions I have for growing a culture of educator social-emotional support (all for FREE).
Education The education in this area is two-fold: first, understanding the root causes of educator disengagement and second, teaching those causes as well as other opportunities for learning about mental health, self-care, and mindfulness.
The first, understanding the root causes, means to understand that there is more to educator disengagement than burnout. There is also demoralization, secondary trauma or compassion fatigue, personal and professional adversities, or teacher trauma. It’s understanding that sometimes the mental health issues of teachers are born from the very place that they are trying to work in, and then sometimes they are not. Learning about these areas and how they can be addressed as well as educating teachers so they know the signs to watch for can be a proactive way to give people the information they need to put a name to how they feel and subsequently, look for a solution.
The second part of education is providing teachers a way of learning some additional skills in the area of self-care such as meditation or mindfulness. It can also be taking a PD day and instead of learning (more) about literacy or math strategies, provide them with an opportunity to learn from a teacher who is fantastic at fixing all her meals for the week on Sunday night or the yoga instructor who knows special stretches for people who stand too much (or sit in the case of virtual learning). If finding elements of joy help support educator mental health and engagement and aid in building resilience, then help the people who would typically take care of everyone else but themselves find the time and energy to learn what brings them joy. These activities may not look like something you would typically provide for a professional development opportunity, but sometimes getting to the root of the issue doesn’t look like addressing the actual symptoms of the problem. Sometimes you need to go deeper.
Model the Behaviors You Wish To See This, for me, is one of the most important aspects of a leader and definitely goes for self-care and self-reflection on one’s own engagement as well. After all, as I state in Reignite the Flames, educators include administration. If you are touting self-care and mindfulness as activities that would assist in defending oneself against the causes of disengagement, then learn about and find time for these activities. Reflect on your boundaries. How do you help your teachers create/maintain their boundaries? For example, by sending a non-emergency email at 8:30pm, even if you’ve told your teachers that they do not need to respond at night, you are still implying that it is acceptable to be working 12-14 hour days. In regards to self-care and mindfulness, if you hear an admin colleague say “I don’t want to” or “I’m too busy” or “I don’t know how” you may notice that their staff will feel the same way. Even if the teachers don’t acknowledge the administrator is practicing self-care, the vulnerability and commitment will be shown and the seed will be planted.
Insurance Deep Dive This is probably one of the most practical and least addressed areas. Usually, when I ask districts or their employees if mental health services are covered, they know whether they are or not and that’s about it (unless they or a family member have had to use them). I highly recommend that several people go through the process right up to making an appointment with a mental health professional to see how the insurance company 1) updates it’s databases on whether doctors are covered and accepting patients and 2) how easy it is to find this information and make the calls if you do not work with the insurance all the time (in other words not your district insurance folks). When a reliable process can be determined, it is written down in a format that makes sense and put somewhere it can be easily found. I believe in seeing a counselor as a proactive approach even when you’re not struggling, but if you need to see one while you are and it is a struggle to figure out the process, it is difficult to have the wherewithal to want to follow through on a complicated, unclear process.
The ultimate support in this area would be to work with community mental health professionals to come into the schools for appointments not only for students but also for educators (teachers and administrators) who are unable or unwilling to use sick time for mental health sessions.
And the Please Don’t Do: Self-Care as Compliance The activities that educators are participating in for self-care should not need to be reported on to an administrator. To me, there’s not much difference between that and asking a teacher every day if they took a shower before they came to work. Any kind of personal well-being should never be a compliance issue. In fact, demanding it could be a privacy issue. And just from the standpoint of understanding how humans work, the second it becomes compliance is the second that the joy and the life begins to get sucked out of whatever the activity is.
I know so many wonderful administrators who are looking for the best way to support their educators and understand the potential mental health risks they are taking by being in this rewarding but overwhelming profession but just don’t know where to start. I’d say the baseline is always knowing what you need to know, teaching others what you know, implementing what you know, and watching the results grow. If you understand educator engagement you understand how much of a part it can play in climate and culture, student achievement, and many other areas of the education ecosystem. And supporting all of those areas are, of course, extremely important. But I always prefer to bring it back to the standpoint of being a human and understanding that educators deserve to be happy in their jobs. Administrators deserve to be happy in their jobs. And there are steps we can take tomorrow to help develop the culture of understanding and support we all desire.
Years ago when I began speaking about educator mental health, I was met with a lot of blank stares and uncomfortable glances. When I began speaking about educator trauma and the impact of disengagement, I was told that people didn’t want to hear sad things, that educators shouldn’t have mental health issues and if they did, they certainly shouldn’t talk about it. I was told I was going to get fired or I was going to get someone else fired. I was turned down by online education article sites because the content wasn’t something they were “interested in sharing” and by conferences because it rarely fit their theme. But I believed in it wholeheartedly and secretly held onto the idea that it was my purpose and I was at least planting the seed of recognition and destigmatization.
Lately, the topic of educator mental health has been blowing up. There are books and blogs and podcasts and articles written about educator mental health, adult social-emotional support, mental health issues, and burnout. The pandemic has highlighted the need to support teachers so they can best support students. The emergency learning and in some cases utter chaos that the move to virtual learning has caused has brought about a sincere look at the wellbeing of educators. And the part of me who has been trying to bring attention to this matter for years has finally felt vindicated! Like all the times that I had felt bad about myself because my message wasn’t well received or recognized as valuable is finally worth something. If you have ever been looked at like you were crazy more times than you were accepted, you may understand my point.
Now, people who weren’t speaking about it before have been practicing their own vulnerability. Articles are being written in regards to the very topics I’ve been toiling over! There is the part of me that is rejoicing that attention to mental health is becoming a more accepted conversation to have (although I believe mental health issues are still off the table in many ways). However, there is the other little part of me that knows how education works. I’ve been in education long enough to understand the New Hot Topic in Education, and the trends tend to wear out and die down, sometimes with a lot of talk and very little action.
When I began speaking about educator mental health and mental health issues it was not because I could see the pandemic coming. It was because being an educator was already challenging and nobody was willing to recognize the toll it was taking. We were in the era of being “for the students” many times meant “at the expense of the adults.” Being an educator is also incredibly rewarding, don’t get me wrong. Living and loving your purpose can be one of the greatest life experiences. But, there has increasingly become an expectation that educators are willing to give up taking care of themselves in order to take care of others. Some may argue that this is not an expectation, but in doing so they’re ignoring the undercurrent of assumptions and martyrdom that are forever present. The pandemic was simply the cherry on top of many already burnt out people. This is not a new phenomenon and it will not go away when the pandemic is gone. This is not a trend. It is not something we can speak about now so people feel they’re heard in their greatest time of need and then forget it later when we move onto another hot topic. This is not a new concept. It is just one that we have been hiding from for a very long time.
My fear is that at the end of this pandemic we are going to settle into our new normal and miss the still present deer-in-the-headlights look that many of our educators are wearing. And in true educator fashion, their students will be doing well because the teachers will be giving everything they have to make sure of it. So, because the students are doing well we will forget to address the educator mental health AND mental health issues because the conversation never continued past educators are burnt out because of the pandemic.
No.
Educators are burnt out because teaching is hard. They also can be demoralized, traumatized, and be facing adversities that we don’t even understand all of which may require different support and coping strategies. Zeroing in on pandemic burnout is missing the bigger picture of how does this look in a month? In the fall? In a year? In five years? The pandemic did not bring on these issues. It only magnified the need that was already there.
Moving forward, the conversation needs to shift from the recognition of “this is what is happening” to the action of “this is what we can do about it.” Bringing attention to the issue is great. That is a fantastic start. This topic doesn’t need to be difficult anymore like it was years ago. We have a catalyst to push us forward and make changes. By bringing action to the conversation the topic of educator mental health, mental health issues, and addressing the whole educator can get teeth into our culture and can become an Expected Education Topic We Address instead of just a New Hot Topic in Education.
This blog post is one of a series on #MentalHealthAwareness for May. Follow my blog to get the special updates, or you can find the rest of the posts here. You can also read more about educator mental health and engagement, as well as ways to create action in the conversation, in my upcoming book Reignite the Flames.
One of the reasons that I think mental health can be a difficult concept for some people to make sense of is because it’s so complicated. It’s so multifaceted that when we say to someone, “What’s wrong?” they may be able to start at a million different points in their life where the pain may have originated. And there are so many different moving parts to try to keep up with. For example, for me I have the regular mental health day-to-day stuff: practicing mindfulness, self-care, etc. But I also have the stress of the moment or stress of stuff that is coming up. I try to build resilience for challenges that are unexpected. But, I also need to deal with the pain and mental health issues caused in my childhood, as well as forgiving people who have hurt me, coping with the goals I haven’t met or practicing acceptance for all the things I want to be but I am not. I waver back and forth between trying to stay proficient in my mental health while trying to heal my mental health issues. And it feels like there are only so many things you can do at once.
There are areas I have become pretty close to understanding and accepting as my own. For example, I know my professional purpose. I can tell you that I support teachers because I believe that when we support teachers we best support students. I have known that for years. I know that I have a healing nature and that people feel comfortable enough to open up about topics they would typically feel uncomfortable discussing, hence my knowledge-base and experience discussing mental health. My professional purpose is solid, I feel. I have done the necessary reflective work to know where I belong. However, I also have other areas that need attention. My personal purpose, for example. I’ve been putting in a lot of work trying to figure that out lately. From the existential, why am I here to more practical what is my role in the things that happen to me? But, like mental health is multifaceted, healing and growing is as well. There is so much more than our personal and professional purposes. As humans, we are on multiple journeys at any given time to try to become our best selves. And I’ve found one of these journeys, for me, to be self-love.
This was a realization for me a few counseling sessions ago. I’ve been putting in the real work to try to actually heal. Not the healing that we sometimes do when we place feelings into a box and only sometimes revisit them like a photo album in our head and feel bad and maybe cry before we put them back again, but the kind of permanent healing that allows for forgiveness and to move on. And this kind of work is not for the faint of heart. It’s difficult and taxing and sad to relive old wounds on purpose, forgive people who probably don’t deserve it, and fill the psychological holes that they left and you feel like you shouldn’t be responsible for. It’s been one of the most grueling things I’ve ever done, especially since it is so much more comfortable staying in the anger and sadness where you’re used to. It’s like the epitome of “productive struggle.”
But, I’m roughly 42 years old and I’m just now figuring out that the way I feel about myself isn’t anywhere near healthy. It’s difficult to love yourself as a child when you’re constantly told how worthless you are, but to blame all of my feelings of unworthiness on my childhood would be short-sided because I have still had the choice to allow myself to feel this way up until now. And when self-love is your issue, it doesn’t matter when people tell you that you’re amazing or intelligent or a good person because in your head you have a million reasons why they’re so wrongand you will prove it if they just know you long enough to figure it out. And how can you love others correctly when you don’t even love yourself? All the times I’ve been jealous or unkind was because I couldn’t stand that I didn’t feel like I could ever measure up to what the other person was doing no matter how much I truly loved and supported them as best as I could.
I don’t think that what I feel is unique, although the depth of it and my willingness to admit it might be. But, one place I might be ahead of the game is that I know it and now that I’ve been able to name it, I can try to move forward and heal. What does that look like for me? It looks like learning to love my body now while understanding that I can both love it AND improve it. It looks like learning to accept that I will never be the best. There will always be someone smarter, kinder, wiser, better than me. But, also knowing how lucky am I to know these people and that I’ll be better because I do. It means knowing that I am capable of both keeping up with my mental health and healing myself from my past and I don’t have to choose one over the other.
These mini-journeys that we go on are just as important as finding our overall purpose. Sometimes I look at it like someone threw a 1000 piece puzzle on the table and told me I have a limited amount of time to put it together. But it can be done step-by-step. Find the corner pieces. Look for the edges. Match the colors. And eventually, it starts to become one clear picture. As more of the puzzle falls into place, we can feel more like we are supposed to feel when we are mentally healthy and able to be our best selves. It can take work, but nothing worth it is ever easy.
This blog post is one of a series on #MentalHealthAwareness for May. Follow my blog to get the special updates, or you can find the rest of the posts here. You can also read more about educator mental health and engagement in my upcoming book Reignite the Flames.
Stress is any stimulus that requires us to change. Stress isn’t inherently bad or negative, but when it becomes traumatic stress or overwhelming stress is when we encounter problems. Sustained overwhelming stress over a period of time can have a negative effect on the brain and body. In the brain, sustained stress will decrease dendrites in the hippocampus which are connected to memory. The brain can also experience dendritic retraction and synapse loss in the frontal cortex where our supercomputer is housed. These changes lead directly to attention loss and decision-making impairment. Sustained stress increases frontal motor connections and decreases hippocampus ones. Our brain is rewiring itself to fight off danger and run away or to collapse to make sure we don’t get too traumatized by remembering every possible moment should we get injured.
This worked well when we were hunters and gathers and needed to be aware of the dangers all around us. However, our brain doesn’t understand that we don’t always need that in today’s world. Stress is everywhere. These changes can undermine neuroplasticity and our ability for our brain to function properly.
The body reacts to chronic stress in a similar way. Your nervous system can be thrown into a survival strategy (fight, flight/flee, freeze/collapse) which can increase your heartbeat which raises your blood pressure and prepare your body to run, hide, or fight. Because muscles can be taut from the preparation, injuries and joint pain are more likely from the tension.
Extra glucose production to provide a boost of energy can increase the chance for Type 2 Diabetes. “The rush of hormones, rapid breathing, and increased heart rate” can also aggravate existing ulcers and cause a surge in acid production in your stomach (Pietrangelo & Watson, 2018). The immune system, over time, begins to deteriorate, which not only leads to getting sick easier, but also lengthens the time to get better when we do get sick.
Our reproductive systems can be affected as well. Men may find that with chronic, sustained stress, their testosterone levels are affected, which can cause reproductive and desire issues, insomnia, and exhaustion. It can also cause emotional dysregulation including an increased risk of depression, reduced memory and concentration, and decreased motivation and self-confidence (Gotter, 2019). Women can also experience a loss of desire and their menstrual cycles may be affected, which can lead to reproductive issues. Chronic stress may exacerbate menopausal symptoms (Pietrangelo & Watson, 2018).
One of the issues I’ve dealt with for years is the fact that I don’t feel stressed until it hits me with brute force. That is a result of my childhood trauma and the fact that my body handles stress differently because my body is more accustomed to the feeling of it. I don’t get the feeling of an “adrenaline rush” as easily as others, and that’s why many times you’ll find people who thrill seek to be trauma victims. But that adrenaline also doesn’t allow me to feel stress in the same way, so I don’t have the ability to try to react to it, and yet it still causes the same turmoil inside my body. Just something for trauma victims to be cognizant of as you need to be more aware of your body and sensations that indicate high or sustained stress levels.
And you’re thinking, “Awesome. So now what?“
The above information is to try to make it clear how truly dangerous sustained stress can be. Especially now, when we are dealing with so many changes and stressors, the chronic stress that people may be experiencing needs to be recognized and dealt before it becomes overwhelming.
Strategies to help fight chronic stress
Mindfulness and meditation Mindfulness and meditation are a way for your brain to focus on what’s going on in the here and now. It helps with spiraling out of control with thoughts of things that need to be done or future events that haven’t even happened yet. There are a few apps that are free for educators that aid in meditation. The most common ones are Headspace and Calm.
Self-care Self-care is a way of taking proactive steps against stress. Although nothing will mitigate stress completely (it is the body’s warning system that something is changing), it does help the body be ready. I have written about the four types of self-care that I believe to be important and have a free educator self-care course available for more information.
Set healthy boundaries Boundary setting helps us let others know what is an acceptable way to treat us both physically and emotionally. When it comes to stress, having established healthy boundaries can help empower you to make decisions based off from those boundaries and what you consider to be okay or not okay. For example, if you set a boundary for the amount of time you are willing to work so you have enough time for your family, having a healthy work boundary will help you say no to extra things that people may try to put on your plate. Boundaries are important to respect when it comes to other people as well. When they are clear and understood, it can reduce frustration between people and even improve efficiency when everyone understands what is acceptable and what is not.
Figure out how you process and communicate during stressful times I have known for awhile that I process out loud. Knowing this information has helped me in multiple ways both personally and professionally. I am able to tell people, “I need to talk through this” and it helps me tremendously because I am able to get immediate feedback on my thinking. That also means that the people I gravitate toward during times of stress are my friends that also either process out loud (because they understand what I need) or the ones who are great listeners. During times of stress we often don’t have the energy capacity to look around and try to figure out what we need. That’s why knowing this information is vital to alleviate the stress of just knowing what to do when we’re feeling stressed.
Pandemic specific Unfortunately, the longer that the pandemic lingers, the more likely chronic stress is an issue as we continue to adjust to the new normal. Here are a few tips to help with chronic stress during the pandemic:
Set work hours and take sick days (boundaries) – As a Technology Director it was a common misconception that I was available all the time because I was “always on” technology. It was not uncommon for me to get texts or emails late at night expecting to be answered immediately. In some cases, I’ve seen teaching morph into this during the pandemic as well. Even though you can be online doesn’t mean you should be. Set working hours. Set your email to automatically respond that you will return the following day during your work hours. Also, find out what your district’s current policy is for sick days and if you would take a sick day during the year, you should be able to take a sick day during virtual work as well.
In cases of overwhelm, start small. When I recently became overwhelmed I started struggling to get anything done. I started making myself a small list, and at one point it was four things: Start drinking water at noon (versus the massive amounts of coffee I was drinking), eat one healthy meal, go for a walk, and one work piece that I had to get done. Did I fall a little behind? Yep. But some things also started to fall off my plate that didn’t need to be done and I had taken them on anyway. Eventually, I was able to build myself back up to a normal work day and I had also managed to implement new habits.
Chronic stress isn’t something to be taken lightly, and the first step in fighting it is understand ourselves and how we think and feel. Developing a high emotional intelligence and true reflective skills are a huge part of preparing ourselves for times of inevitable stress. Sometimes that means taking care of it ourselves, but that can also mean going and seeking out professional help. Either way, to know our limits are going to be the first step in dealing with chronic stress.
This blog post is one of a series on #MentalHealthAwareness for May. Follow my blog to get the special updates, or you can find the rest of the posts here. You can also read more about educator mental health and engagement in my upcoming book Reignite the Flames.
I am not a doctor. Claims in this blog have been researched and double checked by a doctor, but please check with your own physician if you have specific concerns.
One of the areas on my body that I am the most self-conscious of are my knees. I hate the way they look. I know, it’s weird. I have always called them my “fat” knees and have avoided shorts for as long as I can remember. One day when my daughter was a pre-teen, she came out of her bedroom with shorts on and said, “Mom, do these shorts make my knees look fat?” I looked at her size 2 body and said, “What?” She said, “My knees, do they look fat?” I was shocked. It wasn’t like the quintessential does-my-butt-look-big question that she could have picked up anywhere. She was specifically asking about her knees. She had been paying attention. I complained about my knees. She started to worry about hers.
There are many reasons to pay attention to our mental health: to keep our cup filled so we can be healthy for others, to be healthy for ourselves, and live our best life. Taking care of our mental health will help us reach a higher level of happiness and have less stress. However, if those are not good enough reasons, we should be taking care of our mental health because our younger generation, whether it’s our own children or our students, are watching. We have the opportunity to raise generations of kids that are gratuitous, mindful, and mentally healthy. We can influence their mindset about self-care and emotional intelligence and forgiveness, understand how kindness impacts both their brains and bodies and also the brains and bodies of others. We have the ability to impact how they feel about mental health and how accepting they are of mental health issues by educating them and de-stigmatizing the topic. If you think that learning about mental health or mental health issues aren’t for you, then do it for them.
When my eldest son reached college he reached out to me at one point because the generalized anxiety that he had in high school had morphed into what seemed to be a test/performance anxiety that was impacting his grades. A successful student in high school without much effort, he had gone to college with little to no study habits and it had shown, which resulted in him fearing tests and his anxiety convincing him he just couldn’t do it. He called me and said, “Mom, my anxiety has been so bad and this is what has been happening. What can I do?” He did this because in our house I spoke about my anxiety in the context of having strategies for coping and it wasn’t something to be ashamed of. I modeled being open, and although having anxiety is nothing to be proud of, the work that goes into healing (which can be ongoing) and the ability to find strategies that work and allow you to thrive in spite of the anxiety IS something to be proud of.
We know as teachers that students watch everything we do. If you’re a parent, you have most certainly seen your kids mimic you at some point. Usually, when they do it’s at the most inopportune times and potentially something you would not want them mimicking – like the disgust they feel about their knees. However, we also have the opportunity to model for them the behaviors and attitudes that will support their own mental health and de-stigmatize mental health for younger generations.
This blog post is one of a series on #MentalHealthAwareness for May. Follow my blog to get the special updates, or you can find the rest of the posts here. You can also read more about educator mental health and engagement in my upcoming book Reignite the Flames.
Divergent EDU 