Why Summer is the Best Time for Teachers to Go to Therapy

Summer is finally here (at least it is where I am in Alberta, Canada). I remember how chaotic June felt as a teacher - somehow it was always busier than any other month of the school year. Time seemed to slow down rather than speed up the closer we got to the end. I always kept a countdown of how many days it was until July 1st. If I could make it to the finish line, then I knew I would finally be able to catch my breath, take a real break, and enjoy time spent away from working.

Summer is obviously a great time to rest, recharge, and get back to feeling like yourself (at least for a few weeks before you have to start thinking about starting to plan and prepare for the fall). For teachers, summer can also be the perfect time to start working with a therapist or to increase the frequency of your sessions. This might seem counterintuitive. Work is often the largest stressor on a teacher’s plate, so why would they need therapy when the work aspect is on pause? However, as someone who has experienced that stress as a teacher and now supports educators to manage stress, I believe summer is the perfect time for teachers to dive into therapy. Here are a few reasons why:

You can address the stress from the year that you’re carrying in your body. There is a difference between stress and stressors (I have a whole blog post about it - read more here). Stress is the neurological and physiological shift that happens in your body when you encounter a real or perceived threat (Nagoski & Nagoski, 2019). Stressors are what activates the stress responses, and they can be sensory, external, and internal causes. Work is an example of an external stressor. Just because the stressor itself has ended does not mean that you have dealt with the stress itself. If you’re like most teachers I know, you’ve been working in conditions that cause chronic stress. You may be feeling these effects in your body – they often show up as symptoms that impact your appetite or eating, sleep, energy levels, and emotions. Working with a therapist can help you to understand more about the effects of chronic stress on your body. Learning how to deal with your school year stress in the summer can help you create a plan for managing it better when you return to work in the fall.

You need support to process a challenging year. When we are living through chaotic or stressful situations, we don’t often have the luxury to pause in the moment and deal with what’s happening. It is after we have survived the crisis that we have the emotional space or energy to circle back to address the challenges we have experienced. A therapist can help you making meaning of and process the challenges of your year, to bring closure to them. I offer workshops and groups about processing and bringing closure to the year for this exact reason. Having a safe space to acknowledge and validate the things about your school year that were difficult can be an important part of the healing process. A therapist can help you with this important work.

You have better emotional availability to explore your needs. Teachers often tell me that summer is when they feel most like themselves. Without the stressors of work on their plates, educators finally have time to connect with others, themselves, and nature; to travel; or to get to those hobbies and activities they haven’t had time to do during the school year. All of these things contribute to a state of wellness. Wellness is “the freedom to move fluidly through the cycles of being human. Wellness is thus not a state of being; it is a state of action” (Nagoski & Nagoski, 2019). Being in a state of wellness and feeling good can be an important starting point for therapy, or addressing things you don’t have the capacity to touch when you’re surviving the chaos of a stressful year. For example, I use EMDR which is a form of non-talk trauma therapy. This work can be intense and often heightens clients’ emotional sensitivity for a few days after processing. Teacher clients may not have the luxury of time to do this type of work throughout the year. Summer is a great time to do some intensive work without the challenges of having to tend to students’ needs at the same time so that you can prioritize your own emotional and mental health needs.

You have the time to build new habits that you can carry into the fall. Without the busyness and stress of teaching on your plate, you are in a great position to make changes or build habits that will increase your overall wellness. It can be helpful to use your summer downtime to identify what your needs or what helps increase your wellness when you aren’t chronically busy or stressed. Maybe you notice that weekly coffee dates with your friend, regularly playing a loved sport, or taking time to engage in your favourite hobby make you feel like your best self. Play, exercise, creativity, and social connection are all things that humans need regularly to feel rested and rejuvenated. Identifying these activities in the summer when you have more time for them can give you information about what is important to continue doing in the fall. A therapist can help you to prioritize those non-negotiables to that they’re built into your life and schedule when the busyness starts up again in the fall.

Adding therapy to your summer self-care list can be an important way to not only get back to feeling like yourself, but to set yourself up for a successful return to work. Do any of these points resonate with you? I’d love to support you! I’m accepting new Alberta clients for in-person and virtual sessions. Book a free consult to learn more, or book an individual counselling session here: https://york-psychology.janeapp.com/#staff_member/1

What Is Anxiety and How Can I Handle It? New Perspectives

Let's talk about anxiety! One of the therapeutic lenses that I practice from is Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP). This model has a great tool called the Change Triangle that comes from AEDP therapist Hilary Jacobs Hendel's work - the information in this post is a small snapshot of this concept. You can find her work here - highly recommend giving it a read.

Let’s talk about emotions

In a nutshell, humans have 7 core emotions: joy, fear, sadness, disgust, anger, excitement, and sexual excitement. They are typically experienced as physical sensations in the body. Core emotions are adaptive and provide us with the information we need to know about our environment so that we can survive but also thrive. Thriving is when we are wholehearted and connected to ourselves - which occurs when we are able to feel our emotions and use the information they give us for our betterment.

 What is anxiety?

Sometimes, we are unable to fully experience our core emotions, and that's where anxiety comes in. Often times, it shows up to protect us from being overwhelmed by strong emotions. This can be adaptive, like when you are at work and cannot afford to ride the wave of anger or sadness in the moment. The problem comes if we never dip below the anxiety to engage with those core emotions and let them run their course. We can get stuck in feeling anxious, which comes with all kinds of symptoms that can be both physically and emotionally distressing.

 How to manage your anxiety

What can be helpful is learning to notice anxiety as a cue that there are core emotions underneath that are asking for attention. In my experience, it's often fear, anger, and sadness.

When you notice you're feeling anxious:

• Pause and take a moment to breathe

• Notice the sensations that come up in your body, which are clues to which core emotions you might be feeling

• Listen to what the emotion is telling you without judging it - feelings are just information

• Think about how best to proceed

Taking time to pause, notice, listen, and think can create the space to connect with yourself and let your emotions give you the information you need to shake off the anxiety.

Not sure how to do that, or how to stay with strong emotions and process them? I love to do this work with clients, and I'd love to support you, too. Connect with me here to book a session.

Rest and Rejuvenation: How Play Can Help You Recharge

As we move through the holiday season, with many folks getting some much needed time off, it’s important to think about how we can use this time to get the most out of our break. How can rest and rejuvenation help? I’m so glad you asked.

I recently shared a post (by @RevDaniel) where he discussed some sage advice he received before taking a leave of absence: there is a difference between rest and rejuvenation. The analogy he used was the difference between unplugging and charging: unplugging simply means you’re not draining your battery; rejuvenation is something different. Both are important, but they are not the same.

Rest and rejuvenation are not the same

Rest is something we tend to be more familiar with: we know it involves slowing down and taking a pause or unplugging from some of the more strenuous, everyday demands we are faced with. Trisha Hersey of @thenapministry puts it this way: Rest is anything that slows you down enough to allow your body and mind to connect in the deepest way. Maybe that means a nap, or a taking a walk in nature. Or it could mean spending time on the couch, listening to your favourite music, or turning off all your devices so that you aren’t on call or connected for a while.

So what is rejuvenation, and how is it different from rest?

Simply, the Oxford definition of rejuvenation is “the action or process of giving new energy or vigor to something”. One of the best ways to engage in rejuvenation is through play. We can think about play as something that is purposeless, all-consuming, and fun; something we do for the sake of enjoyment with no other goal. We often think that play is for kids, but it’s actually just as important for adults – play helps us to flourish. The act of engaging in play is what rejuvenates and helps to recharge our batteries, and get our joy and energy back. (There’s also a growing body of research for how and why play is a biological imperative for humans, associated with things from higher intelligence, to social skills development, to problem solving – check out Dr. Stuart Brown’s work on play for more information).

Ways to rejuvenate

So what might rejuvenation through play look like for you? Think about the things you get lost in doing – the activities you perhaps loved when you were younger and could spend time doing for hours. Think about the things that bring you joy, that you do for no other reason than that they are fun. It can be hard to think about doing things that aren’t “productive”, but this is exactly the type of activities our brains and bodies need to feel recharged again.

Play activities could look like:

·         Playing a sport

·         Playing an instrument – solo or with others

·         Having a games night with friends or family

·         Creating art of any kind: painting, crafting, knitting, collage

·         Anything that makes you belly laugh – going to a comedy or improv show, or watching your favourite funny movies or TV series

·         Cooking or baking

·         Getting outdoors in nature

·         Building something out of Lego

·         Swimming

The key to rejuvenation is finding ways to engage in play that is meaningful for you. Think about something that’s fun, that allows you to get into a flow state where you can lose track of time. Rest can help you to pause and catch your breath; play will get your batteries recharged again.

What kind of play activities will help you rejuvenate this season?

If this post resonates with you, but you need some support to figure out what rest, rejuvenation and play look like for you, connect with me! These are goals I can support you with. Click here to book a session or email me at laurel@yorkpsychology.org.