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PrimarySecondaryHealth & Wellbeing

Teachers: Why Stress Is Really Your Friend

Rethink everything you know about the physical and mental strain of work and you’ll realise that lifting this burden from your mind is a power you had all along

Liz Scott
by Liz Scott
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Workload, behaviour, class observations, Ofsted, colleagues – I’ve asked many leaders and teachers about why they feel stressed and their answers are always the same. But here’s the thing, they’re all wrong.

Here’s why: none of these situations are stressful (please bear with me if you’re tempted to click off this article at this point!). If you want to know the true reason for stress you need to look closer to home. You need to become curious about how your mind works.

Now, if I’d read this opening paragraph in 2007 when I worked in media, I would have fumed at the idea that my stress was not caused by my job. For months I had dreaded going to work, I often went to the toilets to cry and I physically felt a band of tension surround my head every time I thought about work. I felt the acute misery of stress. But rather than take time off, I quit my job.

Since then I’ve coached leaders in the police, education, local authority and private businesses. For many years I believed their stories about the cause of their problems.

They pointed to staff, expectations, managers, workload and pressure. They used a variety of words like anxiety, fear, worry, self-doubt or insecurity. We would pull apart each problem and try to work it out – providing temporary relief until the next came along.

It was a never-ending game of Space Invaders, where every time we moved up a level, the aliens got faster and our attempts to zap them more frenetic.

So, what does cause stress?

The answer might seem shocking, but please keep reading; it will make sense in the end! The answer is that we create stress – it’s an inside job. We don’t do it deliberately, we’re not trying to make ourselves unhappy, but stress is an emotion that is generated 100 per cent internally by us.

It is never created by an external situation – even though circumstances beyond our control, such as excessive workloads, can make it seem as thought it is very difficult for us to manage our emotions. Let me explain further.

Imagine you’ve been asked to see the head at lunchtime. You don’t know why. Your mind goes into overdrive imagining what you’ve done wrong, who you’ve offended and whether you’re about to be sacked. You feel sick. You can’t concentrate on teaching because your thoughts keep lurching to the lunchtime meeting. By the time you knock on the head’s door you have envisioned yourself homeless and cast out from society.

If you were asked what caused this stress you would have pointed to the unexplained meeting with the head. The actual truth is that you created the stress. So, if you notice you’re on the ‘stress train of thought’, it᾿s worth trying to step off – because that᾿s the best way to manage this emotion.

Our minds have the extraordinary ability to imagine. We can create scenarios in our head that we physiologically react to as true. We can literally make ourselves ill. It happens all day and every day. Many of us become exhausted, not because of the situation at hand but because of the stories we tell ourselves.

I’ve come across many people walking around in a fog of thoughts, flitting from one task to another and feeling physically shattered and sick with stress. They think the answer is to manage stress, so they look for strategies and tools to suppress, fight or calm their minds. But, stress doesn’t work like that.

Fighting the tide

Imagine you are going on a canoe trip along a river estuary. You put your canoe in the water to paddle downstream and it’s hard work. You curse your canoe and berate yourself for not being fitter. You try harder and harder but seem to get nowhere; people on the banks are walking faster than you are rowing.

What you don’t know is that the tide is coming in and you’re paddling against it. Trying to combat stress with strategies and techniques is essentially like trying to fight the tide by rowing harder – you’ll get exhausted very quickly. But understanding how the human psychological system works is a bit like having a tide timetable. Rather than fighting the tide, you wait for it to turn and row with it. Then you’ve got a chance for long-term, sustainable success.

So, forget the idea of combatting stress – it’s really all about understanding how it is created. We create stress internally by telling ourselves frightening stories, recreating painful memories and imagining fearful futures.

Instead, try to think of stress as your friend. It’s like the rumble strip on the motorway. Drive too close to the edge of the lane and you hit the rumble strip. You’re temporarily jolted out of your reverie by the vibration and noise of the strip. The temporary discomfort and noise tells us we’re off track. Therefore, we naturally realign and we’re back driving in our lane again.

That’s not to say your pile of reports will get any smaller; it’s just easier completing reports from a clear head than from a stressful, worried mind.

Stress is exactly the same. It’s not designed to be driven along for the whole journey. Stress is an uncomfortable indication that you’re caught up in some uncomfortable thinking. It lets you know you’re off course. This is very useful information and data. Staying in stressful thinking for too long causes illness.

Inside us all is a place of nourishment, intuition and wisdom – this is where we are able to recharge. You might not be able to do much about your marking, lesson planning and workload. However, you are able to stop fuelling your stressful thinking. Just notice when you start going down that route and give yourself time to reconnect to your inner space.

CLEAR THINKING

Let’s free our minds by doing some stress-related mythbusting

My job, workload and colleagues cause stress. No they don’t. Your thinking causes stress, worry and sense of overwhelm. You innocently and unintentionally create your stress from the inside out. You don’t need to change jobs or relationships to feel less stress. It’s easier than that!

When I feel stress I need to think positive and try harder Not true! If you TRY to think positive you’ll create more stress! When you become more attuned to the feeling of stress you find you catch it sooner. Stress is fuelled by insecure thoughts. Stress is an indication that you are off base. Don’t fuel that worried thinking!

I’m a stressful person and there is nothing I can do about it You are not a naturally stressed person; quite the opposite. At your core/essence you have a well of wisdom and peace that never goes away – you might get distracted but it’s always there. The trick is to start reconnecting with that deeper inspired, intuitive you. This is where you will find the most nourishing space from which to recharge.

Liz Scott and husband Stu Newberry are leadership coaches and trainers. They help schools put mental wellbeing at the heart of what they do. Find out more at lizscottcoaching.com – and download a free 28-day email programme to support your progress.

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