The Rollercoaster Is Real!

I present Wellness Workshops to many local educators and staff, in both private and public schools, throughout the school year. These workshops help those working in schools to manage their emotions so they can better serve themselves and their students.

I had the honor of presenting my “Emotions and Intentions” Wellness workshop to educators and staff at a local preschool this week. In my presentation, the hot topic of “burnout” came up. Burnout is not only a huge discussion piece in the education field but also in the rest of the world. 

I think it is important to define what burnout really means. What is it and how does it feel? According to the World Health Organization, burnout is defined as, “chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.” Someone with burnout may feel….

Overwhelmed

Helpless

Overstimulated

Frustrated

Exhausted

Angry

Anxious

Numb

Hopeless

Depleted

These emotions are heavy and feel truly unpleasant when they all swirl together in our minds. But the reality is, many humans are walking the Earth feeling burnt out….feeling all the feels I’ve listed above and more. And many entities are quick to try to come up with solutions to the burnout. But I think we really need to talk about why the burnout is happening before we can try to solve it.

So in my workshop this week with a local preschool, I gave a few reasons why many people, especially educators, are feeling all these feels…..

Decision Fatigue

A constant state of fight or flight.

….and emotional fatigue.

Have you ever actually written down all the emotions you feel throughout the day? Maybe even just throughout an hour or two? Probably not….

That sounds a little crazy.

Who has time for that?

Whelp….I do, apparently. In all honesty, I took a class a few years ago where I was asked to list as many emotions as I could identify in a two hour period throughout my day. This made me curious….do I really feel that much? I decided to write down all the emotions I could identify from the time I woke up in the morning to the time students entered my classroom.

After going through the process, I surprised myself at how many emotions I felt in such a short amount of time. I was also shocked (but not really) about how my emotions were all over the place! I saw that one minute, I felt really pleasant. And then, in an instant, that feeling would morph into something very unpleasant. The energy level of my emotions bounced around from high to low throughout this time frame, as well. 

It turns out that throughout this two hour period, I could identify 9 different emotions. That’s roughly 4 emotions an hour or one emotion every 15 minutes. To be honest, I know I felt more than that but I wasn’t really able to identify all the emotions at that time. When I look back, I can probably name about 5-8 more feelings I experienced in addition to what I could identify.

With a variety of triggers in that two-hour period, I felt happy and determined. Then, I felt overwhelmed and disappointed, which quickly turned to relief and optimism….just to name a few.

I was sharing all of this with a group of teachers that were preparing to start the schol year with their new students and I could tell they could relate to the rollercoaster of emotions I was feeling a few years ago when I actually recorded them. Starting a new school year brings up more emotions than the average day for teachers….for everyone involved in the school and classroom, as well.

Students

Parents

Principals

Custodians

Committee Chairs

School Secretaries

You name it, new school years bring up a lot of feels for humans….and those emotions are all over the place. 

This week my daughter started 7th grade and my son started his Sophmore year at a new high school. The levels of anxiety, worry, excitement, sadness, and more that they felt the days leading up to and during the first week of school were real. And they were valid.

As a parent, I find myself strapped right next to my kids on their emotional rollercoasters. When they are worried, I worry for them. When they are sad, I’m sad for them. The hard part about this is that I am riding their rollercoaster and my rollercoaster simultaneously. This week, I was having big feelings about the school year starting, too…. 

I felt nervous about whether or not we made the right decision to send my son to a new school. 

I felt anxious that my daughter’s placement in her seventh grade class might not have been the right fit. 

I felt apprehensive and stressed about the changes in routine and schedules from summer to fall. 

I felt sad that summer vacation was over. 

I felt proud of my children.

I felt hopeful that everything would be OK.

I was feeling all of this on top of the big emotions I was having about work, my family, my home, and life in general! See what I mean? This week, my feelings were all over the place and some of them even conflicted with each other! My own emotional rollercoaster is bumpy enough….to feel my kids’ as well is downright exhausting.

Burnout-level exhausting.

But that is what we do as parents, right? It is part of the job. And I don’t have a choice other than strapping on my seatbelt and holding on.

This too, shall pass.

That’s the thing about emotions….they come and go like waves on the ocean. They can arrive quickly and leave before you even have a chance to process what is happening. We can’t avoid them and they will hit us no matter what. But we do have a choice…

We can duck dive under them.

We can surf them.

We can brace ourselves.

We can let them knock us down.

I’m not saying that burnout is a choice. But I will say that we have many options of how we want to manage all the emotions on the burnout rollercoaster. After all, according to the World Health Organization, burnout occurs when “stress” (aka emotions) aren’t properly managed.

That was the message that I was trying to convey in my workshop at the preschool this week. I wanted my fellow educators to know that all the feelings that go into being an educator (AND a human)....

Are real and they are valid.

And we can learn and use more tools to help move us through them.

This goes for those of us working outside the field of education,as well. We aren’t born learning how to manage our emotions. As humans, we need to feel them, name them, express them, and manage them. This is a learned process that takes time, practice, and lots of mistake making. It is a life-long school of learning.

Putting feelings into words can actually reduce the force of unpleasant emotions. As I’ve heard many professionals in the field of psychology say,

“You have to name it, to tame it.”

Feel it, to heal it.

Recognize it, to humanize it.

The one thing that educators, parents, and human beings in general have in common is that along with having jobs to do, we also have lives that include families, relationships, work, trauma, and more! We ALL need tools and strategies for managing all that life brings us. Or we will, for sure, suffer from burnout.

Somedays we have nice, calm, lapping waves of emotions. And others, the waves hit us like the sea in a hurricane. Understanding that the rollercoaster is REAL, and extending grace, patience, and understanding to ourselves and others, will help us navigate life’s challenges more smoothly.