Teachers in Transition - Episode 79 - Dealing with Upheaval That is Outside Your Control

We have been living in unprecedented times of upheaval and stress. ALL of us. From the pandemic to economic fragility to social unrest, and here in the U. S. a high-stakes election. Regardless of which side you may be on, you feel like it's "high-stakes."

All this upheaval can cause stress. So, you may need some new stress management strategies.

In this episode, Kitty talks about how to deal with upheaval that is outside your control--and everything we just mentioned is. Learn some strategies for how to deal with the upheaval so you can manage your stress more effectively.

For the article that Kitty mentioned in the episode, click on this link:
https://kittyboitnott.lpages.co/dealing-with-upheaval-that-is-outside-your-control/

And if you are ready to talk to Kitty about your stress or your desire to change your job or career, use this link to set up an appointment for a 20-minute Discovery Session:  http://teachersintransition.com/calendar.

#upheaval #stress #stressmanagement #stressrelief #stressmanagementstrategies

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

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 burnout 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 to 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 and transition.

Speaker 2: 1:27

Welcome back to episode 79 of teachers in transition the podcast and the YouTube channel. My name is kitty Boitnott and I'm the owner and founder of teachers in transition and boys not coaching. If you've ever listened to this podcast or watch the YouTube channel before you know that I alternate topics. One week, I talk about career transitions, especially for teachers because I specialize in working with burnt out teachers who are just ready to make a change they're over it and ready to look at what other options there might be out there for them. And that's the primary activity that I conduct in my business. I help with career transition for those teachers, but I'm also a certified stress management and sleep science coach with a certification in life strategies and the holistic life coaching. And so on alternating weeks, I talk about stress, stress management, finding ways to relieve your stress. And this week, the topic is stress. What I wanted to share today is an article that I wrote that was part of a series on how to manage in times of upheaval in our lives. And upheaval certainly describes what we're experiencing right now, globally, nationally, and individually, right? I mean, I don't think I'm the only one who feels like everything is just sort of like a deck of cards has been thrown up into the air and allowed to fly across the room and land wherever Willy nilly with no, with no rhyme or reason at the top of my list of things that are creating upheaval in the lives of so many people all across the planet is climate change. And in spite of the fact that so many people still want to say that that's not a thing that it's not real, that we don't need to worry about it, that people don't have any control over the climate. I want to suggest to you that we better decide we've got ways to control it or else we're headed toward ultimate extinction. So I think climate change should be at the top of everybody's list of what we can do to help mitigate, and hopefully start to minimize the effect ill effects of climate change on the planet. And if you don't believe in climate change, simply look at the evidence around you, the fires that are burning up and down the West coast, the increased ferocity and number of hurricanes and tropical storms that beat against the coasts and the predictions that if, if everything goes as it is currently going with the rate of the glacier, the glaciers in, in the North pole and South pole melting that whole cities of people will be misplaced in the same way that the fires are displacing people and creating environmental refugees on the West coast. We're going to see increasing numbers of people having to move away from their homes on the beach and near the coast around the country, because just a few inches of a rising sea level can make a tremendous difference in the landscape. Anyway, I don't, I'm not a scientist. I don't need to get into a science lesson. I'm just saying, I think the evidence is compelling that we need to be doing something about climate change. And then there's the pandemic, which is also of global concern that I don't know of any country that hasn't been affected by it. I suspect that there's a small pocket of the world that hasn't yet been impacted, but I don't know where that is. All of the major industrialized countries have certainly been impacted. And then we have the economic fragility in the United States. That's been created by the loss of so many jobs, millions of people out of work, not knowing if and when they will be able to go back to work or even if the job that they had before will still be available to them. And then there's the social unrest. And in the midst of all of that, what I know about the folks that I keep up with the teachers is that they are also dealing with the stress and upheaval of not being allowed to teach in their classroom with their students in an any normal kind of sense that instead they're, and I'm not saying they shouldn't be teaching from home because I honestly, as much as I know kids need to be back in school, I don't think it's safe in a lot of places for them to go back. And I know that a lot of teachers are concerned for themselves because they have preexisting health issues that make them immune compromised and they don't dare run the risk of picking up the virus. And the idea of being exposed to it is literally terrifying to them, but trying to teach, especially the little ones through a computer, trying to keep them engaged, trying to keep them on task, trying to teach them what they need to know as though they were in the classroom is it's stressful. And I saw a video on Twitter last week of a young teacher, and she said, she'd been teaching for a long time. She looked young to me that she said, I've been teaching for a long time. It's not that I don't know what I'm doing. It's just that this, what we're doing now is just so hard in her face, melted into tears. You just wanted to reach through the screen and try to give her a hug. She was so sad and distressed and feeling like such a failure and not knowing how to fix any of it and not, not. And knowing that she's not the only one who feels that way. She said, you know, this is not the L I'm not the only one who feels this way. And she pointed to her face covered in tears. And she's not the only one who feels that way. I I've talked to teachers on a regular basis. There it's not yet the end of September. And they are already burning out at a rate that I've never seen before. Because what we're asking teachers to do is not sustainable over the long term. We need to take into account, not only that the students need to learn, but that the teachers need to have some sense of support and time to recoup between classes and to have the time that they need to prep and to plan and to it's become an, an, an incredibly difficult job. And it's because we're living in a time of upheaval, unprecedented stress. I've learned to hate the word unprecedented, but I don't know any other word to describe what we're dealing with these days. So what I would like to share with you is an article that I wrote that was part of a series about upheaval and ha th one of the articles is about the effect that upheaval and stress and checked has on your body, your mind, your spirit, your emotions, but the third and final article in that series was about how to manage in times of a people. And that it is possible for you to better manage your stress. If you practice certain strategies and maybe strategies is not even the right word, mindset is probably a better word or to think in terms of preparing yourself. And, and to some extent, planning for periods of unhappy people, because here's, here's the truth. I mean, we're, we're dealing with collectively, we're dealing with things that we've never been asked to deal with before, but on an individual micro level, we all deal with, uh, people at times in our lives, uh, people is created when we are going through the loss of a loved one, a people is created when we're going through the loss of relationship, whether it's through a divorce, um, just a broken relationship that felt like it was full of promise. And then suddenly, boom, it was gone. Uh, people can be caused by an illness, serious illness of your own or illness of someone you love. Uh, people can be created by the loss of a job. So on a micro level, we've been dealing with people in various forms individually, since the beginning of time, it just, it is what it is. This may be the first time that we've dealt with so much upheaval on such a massive scale when we're all impacted by the pandemic and the climate change and the economic fragility and the social unrest, but a people is not new. So in this article, and I'm going to offer you a link so that you can access it. If you'd like, and you, if you're already on my email list, you don't need to access it. You you've already received it a few weeks ago. So you can go back into your email if you'd like, and look for it. It's called dealing with a people. Um, that's outside of your control. And the point of the, this particular post is that at times we have to just accept. We have to accept that there are going to be events that play out in our lives, that we have no control over part of the stress that we experience comes from resistance to the acceptance. They don't like it, that this has, this changes occurred. We're not happy about it. And we want to act as if it hadn't happened. You know, it's one of the stages of grief that, that denial is the first stage that this didn't happen. This isn't real. It's not a no. So dealing with a people means turning that around and finally being willing to accept that it is what it is what's going on, is going on. You don't have any control over it. You don't have to like it, but you need to accept the reality of it. Because if you don't accept the reality of it, you can't do much of anything else about it. You can't try to take steps that will help to fix it. So acceptance is important. And on occasion we can plan so that when something unthinkable happens, we've created a contingency plan. You know, most of us, I hope have a fire extinguisher and our kitchens so that if the unthinkable happens, if a, uh, part pan of grease catches on fire, you've, you've got, you've got your fire extinguisher. Is that the right thing to do with a pan of oil? I don't remember, but you need, you get what, I mean, you have a plan. You have, you know, that you can call nine one one when you're, when you're in the midst of an emergency and you need help. So you know that, but you also have the potential of you. Maybe you want to create a list of other emergency numbers, emergency, you know, I had a puppy, you got a hold of a prescription drug. Once she, she opened up the tablet and had sucked up most of the powder in it before I caught her and realized what she had done. And I was in a panic and I ended up having to call the emergency number for a poison control. And then I also called the emergency vet. And I had to frantically look up the numbers if I'd had a list, if I had planned. So you want to think in terms of what's, what are the worst things that could happen? And then what would you do in the event that they happened? This is why we have emergency kits. It's why people buy generators. It's why we have insurance, because we want to plan for the, the contingency of the unthinkable. So you need to just be, be willing to plan. And there are some other steps in the article as well. So if you're feeling overwhelmed, if you're feeling stressed out, if you feel like you've been pushed to the edge and you, you are just not able to figure out how to cope with one more thing, this article might be useful to you. There are some other steps in it that I would recommend that you pay attention to, including taking care of yourself, not forgetting that you need to take care of your mind, your body and your spirit. Nobody else is going to do that for you. You have to take control. You have to be responsible for taking care of your health for taking care of your mental health, as well as your physical health and your spiritual health and your emotional health. At the end of the day, we all need to probably be a little less hard on ourselves about how we've dealt with this unusual set of circumstances. But what I would leave you with is this, and that is for the last six months, we've been living in a time of unprecedented change, unprecedented upheaval, and we are, we've all done the best we could to get to this point. I want to suggest to you that moving forward, we treat, this is our new normal for the foreseeable future climate change. Isn't going to go away on its own. The pandemic is going to play out its course until we get a vaccine or a virus or a cure. And the economic fragility, eventually it will write itself, but that just means there'll be some jobs that don't make it. And other jobs that evolve and change and morph into something new and the social unrest. I think that's, that's one thing we do have some control over individually. We have to take responsibility for our part in whatever is going on in that realm. And we have to be willing to have dialogue with others, to try to figure out how to move forward in a different way in race relations in this country. But there are certain things outside of our control and certain things that we can control. And our job is to figure out the difference between the two, what can you control versus what you cannot control and recognizing that upheaval as a part of living, there is a time when we will look back on this and go remember when. So if you would like to have the article, please feel free to click the link in the show notes. If you are struggling and want to talk to someone, I recommend that you find a good therapist to talk to. I'm not a therapist, so I'm not the right person to talk to if you really in need of therapy. But if you need help with your stress management, I can help with that. And if you've decided it's time to look for a new job, because you're just ready for that change. You've been maybe thinking about it for a while, but decided for whatever reason to stick around. And now you're just feeling stuck and not unable to figure out what you would do. Instead in these crazy times, we can talk about that. So make an appointment for 20 to 30 minute discovery session. I'll leave the link to my calendar in the notes for that as well. I can help you with your stress and I can help you with your job search strategy. If you've decided you want to do that, that's it for today. Stay

Speaker 1: 20:48

Safe, stay well, continue to do the best you can. And don't forget to give yourself a Pat on the back for hanging in there and doing everything that you can for yourself, your family, your students. If you're a teacher, thank you for everything you're doing and I'll see you next week. So there you have it. An episode of teachers in transition. I hope you enjoy 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@kittyboitnottatboitnottcoaching.com. If you are interested in finding a new career or just enjoying your life more, this is the place to start. I'm kitty Boitnott and this is teachers and transition.