This is the time of year when posts start popping up on social media commiserating with teachers in the last days before winter break pop up, proclaiming, “There’s no tired like teacher-before-winter-break tired,” or encouraging teachers to “hang on” because the break is coming. Memes on this theme are funny because they are so true! They make us laugh and they help us feel understood!
Teachers have two compelling sources of stress in December: school stress and holiday stress. Media traditionally feature blurbs on “10 Ways to Destress your Holidays”, and “How to Survive the Holidays with Family.” The explosion of these well-intended articles makes holiday stress feel almost mandatory. But school and holiday stress is not insurmountable! There is a fine line between excitement and stress. The trick is to make enough right choices to enjoy the excitement without being drawn to the dark side of stress. Here are three ideas with examples for school and for home, offered so that you can choose a very few that most resonate with you to try:
Separate from inherited or borrowed stress
- School: address real stress as proactively as possible through traditional project management techniques. Leave others’ stress alone, like an unopened gift. If there are co-workers or parents who are vocal about how busy they are or how stressed-out they are, offer sympathy and remove yourself from the conversation. Know that people don’t really expect you to solve their problems. Listening to others empathetically can actually produce stress hormones if you take on some of what they feel when you cannot help their situation.
- Home: critically evaluate attempts to unnecessarily involve or advise you at this time. The existence of a need “out there” doesn’t mean that you have to be the one to fill it, nor does it need to be filled right now. People will still have problems and puppies will still need to be rescued and after the holidays. Might the need be as great or even more acute after the holidays? If so, defer your help until then. Secondly, beware of well-meaning self-help advice. The proliferation of advice on dealing with unpleasantness at family gatherings, for example, doesn’t mean that you should expect difficult times at your gathering, nor does it mean that you have to take on responsibility for managing it if it does occur. Sometimes it is important to remember that you can only destress difficulties that authentically belong to you. (For a discussion of Circles of Concern and Influence, see the blog from 10/25, https://lockhart-learning.com/2019/10/good-drama-bad-drama-iv-control-issues/).
Proactively defend yourself against mental and physical stressors
- School: expectations coalesce at this time. That is real. Separate the ones that are required from those that are optional or self-imposed. Intentionally manage the have-tos and let the nice-tos go for now. For example, if semester reports are due before break attend to them and proactively make space for them. One way to do that might be to follow the lead of a school in Cork, Ireland, and replace written homework that needs to be checked with practical life homework to be of service each day in some way at home or in the community. Let the “nice-to” desire to intricately hand-craft a gift for each family go.
- Home: Follow common sense, well-documented guidelines for self-care. These aren’t things that only work at this time of year! We just need to be reminded to do them. For “bonus points” bring these practices into your classroom; when the class destresses, the teacher destresses.
- Get out in nature and get some sun. Even 10-15 minutes of sunshine per day raises vitamin D levels. Build a snowman, take a short bike ride, walk to an appointment. BONUS: at school, take a whisper-walk around the neighborhood to appreciate the beauty of this time of year. Culminate the walk with some kind of mindful creative writing/art about the experience.
- Get exercise and hydrate. Get some adrenaline going; produce some endorphins. Remember that water is your friend! BONUS: At school, start each morning or finish each recess next week with a fun-run, taking laps around the playground.
- Do something meaningful and mindful. You probably have a practice like yoga, meditation, or prayer that helps center you. If you have abandoned the practice in the name of efficiency, re-establish it. Single-task. It is well documented that multitasking is a myth and that it tends to raise anxiety. BONUS: At school, there are many ways to encourage mindfulness. Try something new: institute a power half-hour where children work independently and silently for 30 minutes; prompt children to journal about their greatest passions; prompt children to design and make something to brighten the day of someone at a local assisted living center.
- Do something for yourself – get a massage, go to bed on time even when deadlines loom, watch for and acknowledge joy in your day (even something as small as your morning coffee). BONUS: At school, teach children to activate stress-relieving acupressure points, The Inner Gate and the Sea of Tranquility, and practice with them. https://www.acupressure.com/blog/?p=1799
Lay down your burdens – seek forgiveness
We all have injuries in our lives, personal and cultural. It is human nature to respond to being unjustly treated, excluded, or looked down upon with feelings of anger and a desire for revenge. The problem is that these feelings do not serve us; left unresolved, they imprison us. Anger and resentment weigh upon us silently and relentlessly. While we may push them away for a time, they always resurface. Each time we re-experience the injury and the pain. Ironically, the person who mistreated us has usually long since forgotten about the incident. It has been rightly noted that holding a grudge is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die.
So, what must we do to free ourselves from this cycle of revenge-seeking? We must do the only thing that releases the injury: we must choose to forgive.
Easier said than done, right? The way that we think about forgiveness is often part of what makes forgiving another so very difficult. Despite what we tell ourselves, forgiveness does not mean excusing whatever behavior started the cycle; it does mean dismissing the event. It means choosing to no longer allow what happened to control you.
To do this requires that we find some little sliver of empathy for the other person. We have to believe that they acted as they did out of pain or fear – people are not born angry and vengeful. Hurt people hurt people. It may require thinking about the other person as a small child, before patterns of physical, emotional, or social aggression established. If, through our own pain and anger, we can find empathy for the pain that they must feel, we can release at least the intent behind the behavior that we found so hurtful and we can use that to begin to forgive. We can think, “They wouldn’t have done this if they could have done otherwise. Because of this, I can forgive their behavior as being outside of their control at that time.”
Forgiveness is empowering. We don’t have to wait for the other person to take responsibility and express remorse. As long as we think we need to see their regret or to teach them a lesson, they hold us in their power. Forgiveness releases us from craving revenge. It short-circuits the cycle of pain. And it makes us free. In fact, at no time are we more empowered than when we forgive someone before they apologize. When we are free of anger and the desire for retribution, what is left? Disappointment that someone would have treated us in such a manner. Disappointment is much easier to live with than anger; it clears the path for us to find our own peace.
Reflections
Note that the first of the three ideas, separating from borrowed stress, is typically an adult issue. Children are still sufficiently egocentric at this point that they are less apt to take on others’ stress unless something prompts them to do so. The exception to this is when a parent who is under tremendous stress shares the stress with the child. This is a bigger issue than can be handled with a one-and-done reflection. If you feel this is happening with one or more children in your class, please seek help from a professional at your school.
The second idea, proactively protecting against mental and physical stress, is largely about self-care. The topic can be handled throughout the year with adult-initiated discussions and implementation of good practices, particularly any that are child-nominated.
Only the third topic, forgiveness, lends itself to private reflection time for both children and adults. The reflection presumes that the topic of forgiveness is brought up in a Grace and Courtesy lesson, complete with children practicing ways to respond to a freely-offered apology with simplicity and grace. For example, “Thank you for your apology. I am glad that you understand that it hurt at the time. I have forgiven you.”
Adult Reflection on Borrowing Stress AND Proactively Protecting Against Stress: Which of these ideas most resonates with you? Which might bear the richest fruit? Which might be most easily implemented? Choose 1-3 things to implement from now until winter break. Over the break, decide if those were productive enough to make a permanent part of your practice.
PS – over the break, take time to choose a few things that you can eliminate from next year’s expectations to set the bar at a more realistic height! If you can’t eliminate them, can they be delegated to someone else (a parent volunteer?) to do as they see fit? Or perhaps they can be moved away from this busy time of year. Can the “Holiday Concert / Party” be moved to mid-January as a “Winter Celebration”? Moving parent-involved events to a less frenetic time might be very well received!
Reflection on Forgiveness (Children and Adults):
- Is there something that happened that causes you to feel anger towards someone else – anger that either never goes away or comes and goes? If so, how can you begin to forgive that person for what they did or said? Is it possible that they don’t know how hurtful it was? Is it possible that they thought they had no choice but to behave as they did? Is it possible that they don’t know another way to express their own fear or anger? Can you take the courageous step to say to yourself, “I am sorry that you felt you had to act the way you did. What you did was not ok, but I know that you wouldn’t have made that choice if you knew another way to solve your problem.”
- Is the person that you most need to forgive you? Can you take the courageous step to say, “I am sorry for what I did. What I did was not ok, but I didn’t really know that at the time. I am proud to have grown to the point where I know that there are better ways to handle the situation.”
- Is there someone who would appreciate hearing an apology from you? Is there something that you said or did that you now realize was hurtful? If so, can you take the courageous step to say, “I think I owe you an apology. What I did was not ok, but I didn’t realize at the time that it was hurtful. Can you forgive me?” Do you need to forgive yourself before you can ask another for forgiveness?
“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
Mahatma Gandhi
Image credit: silviarita from Pixabay