Teachers in Transition - Episode 135 - Kinds Of Stress You May Experience

There are three kinds of stress that you may experience at any point in time:  acute anxiety, episodic stress, and chronic stress.

Since the pandemic arrived, it has occurred to me that we have all gone from experiencing the whole gamut. We've gone from acute stress to episodic stress to chronic stress all at once and we are all experiencing it collectively.

The point is that you should be aware of the different kinds of stress and their effects on your body, mind, and spirit.

This week's episode is about how we respond to stressful events and the harm that chronic stress can cause to the human body and mind.

To assess the level of your stress, take advantage of this free stress management tool:  https://teachersintransition.com/stresstest.

#stress #acutestress #episodicstress #chronicstress #stressrelief #stressmanagement #stressreliefforteachers #stressmanagementforteachers

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 burn 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 and transition.

Speaker 2: 1:26

Welcome back to another episode of teachers in transition, the podcast and the YouTube channel. My name is kitty Boitnott. I am the owner of Boitnott coaching and the founder of teachers in transition. And I am a heart-centered career transition and career change coach for teachers who are burnt out and ready to make a career change. I'm also a certified stress management coach. However, and so if you've listened to this podcast in the past, you know that I alternate topics each week, one week I talk about stress management. Other weeks, I talk about career transition this week, the topic is stress and it occurs to me to suggest to you that you need to be aware of the three kinds of stress that can occur in your life at any particular time. And I can't remember if I've ever talked about these three types of stress in the past or not, but probably bears repeating. If I have talked about it before, and if you are a recent listener, you may not have heard me speak to it and it's maybe timely for you right now. So there are three types of stress that you need to be aware of. There is acute stress. There is episodic stress and there's chronic stress. Now the acute stress is the result of the specific, a particular singular experience or situation. It can be as devastating as the loss of a loved one, or it can be as simple as getting caught in traffic and running late for an appointment. Your brain doesn't know the difference. They admit that. I mean, your frontal cortex does, but your amygdala, which is an almond shaped organ at the base of your brain, which has never evolved since early cave mandates your amygdala will respond to your feeling of stress in the moment. And depending on the level of anxiety you're feeling, it will release into your bloodstream, a flood of adrenaline and pave man-days. You needed that ability to flee the extra speed that the adrenaline gives you the extra strength to fight off a predator or an enemy to take care of yourself and your family. It made perfect sense back in case mandates that your system would be created in such a way as to help you with the fight or flight impulse in today's world. However, the dilemma is that the amygdala is not, not evolved enough to know the difference between you're facing a lion is about to eat you and you're being stressed because you're running late for an appointment and you're stuck in traffic. So when you were faced with a particular situational stress, there really isn't a lot you can do about the amygdala's response to it. It's going to release into your bloodstream, a flood of adrenaline that's intended to help you think clearer, be sharper, be faster, be stronger. If you have enough of those episodes, however, let's say on a day-to-day basis, it becomes not acute stress anymore. It becomes episodic or chronic stress. Episodic stress is when you're faced with a series of situations that can create stress in your life. A number of things may happen in, in close connection to one another, or they events may or may not be connected, but still you have an event that happens. And then maybe as a result of that event or something else, you continue to be faced with additional stress, additional situations that you have to to handle. And so we are, we're constantly feeling on alert, you know, because we're waiting. Sometimes we're waiting for that other shoe to drop, and then there's chronic stress. And that is you feel so hopeless and you're stuck in a really bad situation that doesn't have a good prognosis. Uh, an example of chronic stress would be the stress caused by an illness that has no cure or long-term, uh, long-term dis disability. That that is, um, you're unable to get resolved. Um, the, the, the loss of a significant maybe your spouse, it can, your, your grief can become chronic. And last over a long period of time, the body is responding to all three types of stress in pretty much the same way, whether it's acute or episodic or chronic, your body is overloaded with the hormones that are accompanied by, um, stress. And you, you begin the, the trouble is your body begins to break down and not come, come back as quickly. You don't bounce back as quickly as you would, if you were younger, if you were healthier, if you had less going on in your life, what occurs to me that that is significant about the differences, the different gradations of acute and episodic and chronic stress is that for the last going on two years, all of us have dealt with acute episodic and chronic stress. As a result of the pandemic. We are all in the same boat, as far as the, the pandemic, creating upheaval, uncertainty, perhaps illness, if you've actually gotten COVID or stress over the debate, whether to get vaccinated or not get vaccinated, who do you believe, where do you go for the right kinds of information, all of that adds to your stress level. And so what I want to suggest to you is that whether you are suffering from acute or episodic or chronic stress, this is the time for you to do more about your own self care than ever before, because the bottom line is no one else is going to take care of your, your yourself, the way you can, and should. In fact, in my efforts to get my stress management workshop off the ground a few years ago, what I was struck by was the indifference by many of the school leaders that I talked to about the stress that teachers are experiencing. And this was long before the pandemic. I know that administrators are trying to tune in. They're trying to be understanding. They're trying to provide space for teachers to express their, their stress and feelings of overwhelm, but just expressing them without some sort of help or solution or, or care, it will be empty. It will be an empty gesture. So my suggestion to administrators who may be listening to this podcast, when that be lovely, if they were listening, by my best advice to the administrators is stop just playing a lip service, stop. A lot of the tone deafness that's going on in your building right now, and really, really tune in. I know that administrators are stressed out too, that the administrator has a different kind of stress than the teacher in the classroom. And many administrators have been out of the classroom long enough that they have forgotten. And they've certainly not been in the classroom probably during the pandemic period. And so just try not to be quite. So tone-deaf about what's going on with your teachers. If you're an administrator, if you're a teacher on the other hand, don't wait for your administrator to do anything for you. You need to do it for yourself, whether it means getting a massage, going to see the doctor talking about for, for at least short term, something for your anxiety, T D T turning out of your social media for a while, taking a time to unplug, setting a hard stop for when you're going to stop school work, whether you're done or not. So you can spend time with your family, your friends, yourself, these are things that you need to do for yourself. You can't wait for someone else to do them for you. Chronic stress gone unchecked will wind up making you ill. And I've talked about this before then the range of illnesses that can be set. Someone who has been the experience or of chronic or episodic stress can show up in diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiac cardiovascular disease. It can show up in lupus, any, any auto-immune disorder that people can suffer from, and any disorder can be exacerbated by an over abundance of stress in your life. And there's a fine line between the w the event that caused the stress in your response to it. So please, please, please just be more intentional about setting boundaries for yourself, setting an intention to take better care of yourself in whatever way that means for you. And don't wait for someone else to be taking care of this for you. You need to take charge and take care of yourself. Everyone experiences, acute stress, periodically everyone experiences episodic stress at times in their lives. And I honestly believe that right now, we're all experiencing chronic stress that will show up in other ways, if we're not really careful, and we need to be careful about how we allow our stress to take over our bodies, our minds, our spirits, because it diminishes our ability to enjoy our lives. So do whatever it takes for you to take care of yourself. And I'll be back next week with some career transition strategies. If you are getting any benefit at all from this podcast, please review it, send me a note, let me know that you're enjoying it and getting some benefit from it. If you have ideas for future episodes or guests, you would like for me to invite to speak. Let me know that through an email@kittyboitnottatgmail.com and I'm going to attach to the notes today, a free stress assessment that I urge you to take so that you can be clear about the level of your stress on this particular stress assessment. The tool is set up so that if you answer yes to 10 or more questions, you need to get help with your stress. And I've had people to score as high as 30, 25 out of 32 are 32 questions on the assessment. So be aware of your level of stress and I'll be back next week. Take care of stay well until then, this is getting boy not.

Speaker 1: 14:35

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 kitty, not at boys, not coaching.com. If you are interested in finding a new career or just enjoying your life more, this is the place to start. I'm Katie Boitnott and this is teachers in transition.