Teachers in Transition

Teachers in Transition - Episode 56 - Daily Practices to Help You Improve Your Mood

April 22, 2020 Kitty Boitnott
Teachers in Transition
Teachers in Transition - Episode 56 - Daily Practices to Help You Improve Your Mood
Show Notes Transcript

As the days drag on that we are self-isolating and keeping to ourselves as much as possible, we may start to experience some symptoms of cabin fever.

Having a routine that limits our activities and keeps us cooped up in the house for this long (we're going on six weeks or thereabouts here in my part of the world) can make us cranky and irritable.

The important thing is to avoid taking your irritability out on your family. Remember, they're cooped up, too! Your kids want to play with their friends. They miss school. They even miss their teachers!

So, during these times of high stress, anxiety, and uncertainty, we have a responsibility to take ownership of our feelings--including our cranky moods.

In this week's episode, Dr. Kitty Boitnott puts on her Stress Management Coach hat and talks about daily practices that may help you improve your mood.

The article that she refers to in the episode is available here:  https://bit.ly/3cEv0zt.

 

#mood #mentalhealth #stress 

#anxiety #cabinfever #irritability #health #healthyhabits #pandemic #COVID19

Kitty Boitnott:

Are you a teacher who's feeling stressed out and overwhelmed? Do you worry that you're feeling symptoms of burnout or are you sure you've already gotten there? Have you started to dream of doing some other kind of job or perhaps pursuing a whole different career, but you don't know what else you're even qualified to do? You don't know how to start a job search. You just feel stuck. If that sounds like you, I promise you're not alone. My name is Kitty Boitnott. I'm a career transition and job search coach and I specialize in helping burnt out teachers just like you deal not only with the stress and overwhelm of your day-to-day job, but to consider what other careers might be out there waiting for you. Join me for"Teachers in Transition." In some episodes I'll be speaking to stress management techniques and how you can manage your stress on a day to day basis. In other episodes I'll be talking about career transition. What tools do you need to be successful in a job search when you're moving from one career into a totally different track? These are questions that you need answers to and I can help you find those answers. My name is Kitty Boitnott. Welcome to"Teachers in Transition." Welcome back to Episode 56 of"Teachers in Transition." My name is Kitty Boitnott and I am the owner of Teachers in Transition and Boitnott Coaching. If you've listened to my podcast at all, you know that I alternate topics each week. One week I talk about career transition strategies because I am a heart-centered career transition coach and I help a specialize in working with teachers who are ready to make a career change and I help them figure out what they'd like to do and how to make it happen. On alternate weeks, I talk about stress management because teachers are stressed, but right now everybody in the country is stressed and I offer these stress management episodes in order to provide some advice, counseling strategies, techniques for minimizing stress or relieving stress. I don't believe you can completely eliminate stress. Stress is part of being human, but it is possible for us to better manage our stress, to find ways to relieve our stress and feel more in control. Now, I wrote an article this this weekend and I've posted it:"Seven Daily Practices for Improving Your Mood." And I'll post the link at the bottom of the show notes for this week. But I wanted to share what those seven strategies are because I am guessing that, u h, I'm not the only one, after going on six weeks of staying in and only going to the grocery store and the d rug s tore or for me, I h ave converting to picking up at the drug store and the grocery store as opposed to going into the store. U m, so I've been pretty much socially isolated except for a neighbor who I've visited with a little bit and people that I've talked to on the phone and t he folks that I've communicated with virtually through zoom. U m, but I'm g oing t o have to tell you, it is just not quite the same as it is being with physically with your friends. And as I wrote in the article, I don't think I will ever, ever, ever take another hug for granted. Um, I just, I miss people hugs. I miss being with people physically. So I know that I'm not the only one who feels that way. Even if you live with your family, um, they may be getting on your last nerve, but they're there and, and they're physically there. So be thankful for that. Um, and it was ironic that I wrote this article about improving your mood or managing your mood at just the time before. I've got up on Monday morning and it was rainy and it was overcast and it was just a yucky day. And the dogs, every time they went out, they got wet. And I have this one that looks at me with these little sad eyes. Why aren't you taking me from my morning walk? And so it ended up that I was having kind of a crappy day yesterday. And the good news was that I was aware of my feelings and I had to wonder, now, what's this? Where is this coming from? I just wrote this article on seven ways to improve my mood and I felt like I was in a crabby mood yesterday. It finally passed. But I was aware of it and one of the things that I finally came to was that it's okay. It's okay to feel the way you feel as long as you're not taking it out on other people. And that is the key, I think, to managing our moods. We can feel the way we feel, but we don't have permission to take it out on other people. So if you're feeling crabby, if you're feeling moody and depressed and stressed and anxious because we're living in an uncertain time, I won't kid you. I don't know what the future holds. I don't know how long this, um, this episode in our history is going to last. I don't know what the outcome is going to be and nobody does. We're just taking it day by day. But because we can only do that, that's, that's what we can do. Take it day by day. There are some things that I would recommend that you could do to make this period easier to cope with. And the first one is one that won't come as a surprise to you at all, I don't think. And that is to get outside and get moving or you don't even have to get outside. Just get moving. Find an app on your TV or your phone that will guide you through some stretches, some um, marching, something that will get you moving. And if you, if the weather permits and you can get outside and you can go outside and be socially distant from other people, then go for a brisk walk. Make it part of your routine. Go a couple of times if you need to. It's not only good for your physical health, but moving is good for your mental health as well. It will help to produce the endorphins that you need to lift your mood. Uh, if you're a runner, all the better cause runners know better than just about anybody else with that endorphin rush feels like. So the main thing is to get off your butt and get moving. If you want to start feeling less stressed, less anxious about the current situation. And especially if you feel like you're suffering from what we would refer to as cabin fever, which is knowing that you can't go anywhere and you know there's the possibilities for socializing or for right now. And that can lead to feelings of depression and anxiety because we are social beings and we long for social interactions. So this is hard. It's hard on everybody. And how we managed to cope with it and how we managed to respond to it is key to our getting through it as graciously as possible. So get off your butt, that's no more. You can binge watch your TV shows later. But for now, plan to get up off the couch at least once today and do something that will get your heart rate going and will cause you to sweat just a little bit because your body needs that. And so does your mental outlook. The other thing. Oh, another thing that you need to concentrate on doing is getting the sleep that you need. I'll go to bed when you're tired and get up when you feel refreshed. Uh, now that you may or may not have to get up at a certain hour in order to be somewhere at a certain hour, you may be staying up late. You may be having trouble sleeping because of anxiety. You know, financial issues can keep you awake at night. All kinds of worries. Things that you know, things that are simply out of your control can keep you worried and awake in the evening hours. So if you need to, uh, take some kind of a supplement, check in with your doctor first. If you're not used to using melatonin or a product with melatonin in it, you'd want to make sure that the melatonin isn't going to be contradictive to some other medication or supplement that you're taking. But melatonin can help. It can help you to get to sleep and depending on the strength of the product that you're taking, it can help you sleep through the night. If you are having trouble sleeping, cut back on. If you're, if you're drinking wine or having a beer dinner, cut back on that because alcohol will cause you to wake up in the middle of the night. You'll have trouble getting back to sleep. Alcohol is systemic and it won't actually wake you up until several hours after you've gone to bed. And then the, the, the, the dilemma is that you can't get back to sleep. So watch the alcohol intake if you're having trouble sleeping. A third strategy that you might try that uh, some people find restful and end useful is to journal during times of stress. Just getting all of your thoughts out of your head and onto paper can help. And it has the added benefit of creating a record of what you are going through right now that your children and grandchildren might appreciate reading years from now. I don't know if you've ever read the diary of Anne Frank, but she kept a diary that that gave us an insight into what it was like to live during that particular period in history and it's a classic, so I'm not suggesting that you might be the next day and Frank, I'm just saying that getting your thoughts out of your head and onto paper can be useful if keeping a journal or a diary doesn't light you up and doesn't appeal to you, you might want to try a gratitude journal. Just jot down all the things you have to be grateful for today. You know, if you have a roof over your head and food on your table, you are one of the lucky ones. Not everybody has that. If you are able to listen to this podcast, you have the luxury of time to be listening to a podcast. Not everybody has that kind of luxury. So be thankful for all of the things that you have. I have said in the past, and I still believe it to be true, even though it's beginning to feel tiresome a little bit. If you have to stay somewhere where better to stay then in the comfort of your own home, just saying there are a whole lot of worse places that you could be isolated and locked. Uh, so be thankful. Uh, another thing that you can do that will help your mood for sure is to eat a healthy breakfast in the morning. It is not good for you to skip breakfast. And I F I know I've heard people say, well, I'm just not a breakfast person. You need to eat in order to help control your blood sugar, which has a direct impact on your mood. So the reason it's called breakfast, it's about breaking the fast that your body has been undergoing since dinner the night before or whatever snack you had right before he went to bed. And hours later needing to eat for the purpose of getting your body going again. Check in again with the doctor if you happen to be diabetic or have another underlying health condition so that you know exactly what kind of breakfast you should be eating. But in general, most people need a protein and a some kind of a carbohydrate, which can be a fruit. Now I would recommend that you steer clear of the fruit juice because that's generally just sugar and eat the actual fruit instead of drinking the juice. Um, but break breaking your fast. But eating a healthy breakfast can help to improve your mood guaranteed. Another strategy that I would recommend is do using less social media even while you are perhaps using technology more in order to stay in touch with your family, your friends, if you're a teacher with your students, with your colleagues, the social media that I'm talking about is the, um, negativity that is rife on Facebook and Twitter and some of the other platforms where if you fall into the wrong group, you can find some pretty ugly stuff. So I would urge you to be aware of what you follow on Facebook, uh, verify anything before you repost it or reshare it. Uh, try to concentrate on finding the positive things on social media as opposed to the negative stuff. Um, I love cat kitten and puppy pictures as well as anybody. And those are the kinds of things that make me smile. But I've unfriended a lot of people during this episode or a snooze them. I haven't necessarily unfriended them, but I, if I've seen something that just smacks of sharing a conspiracy theory of some sort or whining about things that they don't have any control over, they just want to be whiny about it. I've just, I've snoozed them 30 days of snoozing and if it gets too bad I will unfriend them. So the, I'm thoughtful about the social media platforms that you use, the followings that you take part in, the things that you share and do, do, do. And to the extent that you can stay in touch using zoom or house party or whatever other app you can FaceTime to stay in touch with your family and friends virtually when you're not able to get with them in person. Um, sixth F so far, I've mentioned five things at six thing that you can do is simply go outside and appreciate nature, get in touch with nature again. You know, one of the things I have a friend who said she had noticed all of the buds on the trees and, and the flowers and she had appreciated spring this year more than she could ever remember appreciating the spring season. And my comment about that was, well, you've got more time to appreciate it now that you're not rushing off to this or that or the other thing. We have more time to appreciate just what gifts nature has to offer. And there are, once you get outside and in nature, you can appreciate lots of things through all of your senses. You can hear the babbling Brook, you can hear the wind in the trees, you can feel the sun on your face. You can feel the leaves as you walk over them on on foot. So get out in nature, go for a hike, go for a run, do something that will get you outside, cause it can certainly boost your mood to do that. And finally, I would like to suggest that if like to improve your mood, that you figure out some time management skills, whether you are working at home or you're unable to work, you were still being given the same amount of time as everybody else. And what you choose to do with it is totally up to you. So you can binge watch your favorite shows or you can figure out a way to do something more productive. Not that binge watching your favorite shows, not okay on occasion. But if that's all you're doing, you'll start to feel like a little slug and you won't feel good about yourself. And that's wanting to add to perhaps having a crabby mood. So if you are being productive, if you feel like you're using your time wisely, you're creating a routine right now. You may need to create a routine in a way that you never needed to think about a routine before because you're outside the activities, drove what your routine would be. Now you're in charge of your routine. You get to decide if you're working from home. When you do that work, you need some self-discipline when you're working from home. I know, cause I've been working from home since 2013 you need to figure out what kind of routine you want and then you need to be willing and able to stick to it. So think about your time management skills right now or you're using your time wisely or are you going to be looking back on this past week wondering where the week went. So those are some of the suggestions that I can offer. There are others that could help to lift your mood. I'm sure there's some that we'd all love to take part in that just aren't available to us right now. You know, I'm thinking of a massage or going for a pedicure or a manicure or you know, things that right now we just can't do because we can't do them safely. That our help, you know, they're helpful. Uh, uh, an occasional massage can help to relax you and one of these days we'll be able to go back to that. I, uh, I certainly look forward to going back to my nail girl for my nails and I cut my own bangs yesterday. Haven't had a haircut for more than a few weeks past the due date. And I finally, uh, if my hairdresser's listening, she's going to be upset with me probably. But I finally just had to do something about my bang. So I cut them myself. I will love getting back with my hairdresser, but right now we have to stay in, in order to help protect ourselves and our loved ones. And that's, that's what we can do. And whether it, it, whether we enjoy it or not. Right now it's beside the point. It's just what we need to do. And because it's what we need to do, we need to figure out mechanisms and strategies for making the best of it and these daily practices are just a few suggestions for how to make the best of a not great situation right now and that's what I have to offer for today. Do you have any questions please, please, please email me@kittyboitnottatgmail.com would love to hear from you if you have comments, if you'd be willing to offer a review, I would love that as well to help other people find teachers in transition. I love it when I hear people say, I've been listening to your podcast, so keep listening, share it with your friends, let them know that this is a resource that's available to them. And until next week, this is Kitty Boitnott of"Teachers in Transition." So there you have it, an episode of"Teachers in Transition." I hope you enjoyed the information and I hope you'll plan to come back. Please subscribe to"Teachers in Transition" so that you can be alerted of future episodes. And let me know if you have any questions or topics that you would like me to specifically cover in a future episode. I'm more than happy to help with individual questions as well. So email me at KittyBoitnott@BoitnottCoaching.com. If you are interested in finding a new career or just enjoying your life more, this is the place to start. Hi, I'm Kitty Boitnott and this is"Teachers in Transition."