19. Burnout, Doldrums, and Depression while Teaching

Brittany 0:00

How many times have you walked into your classroom with a thought? I just really can't do this today. You're feeling sad, burned out, or just really kind of blah?

Have you ever felt that way?

Ellie 0:18

Absolutely.

Brittany 0:20

Me too. Definitely.

And we know there are so many other teachers out there who have felt that way or feel that way, occasionally, maybe more so over the last few years than ever before. Welcome to the teaching Toolbox Podcast. I'm Brittany, and I'm here with Ellie.

Ellie 0:42

Hello.

Brittany 0:43

And today we're going to talk about burnout and depression, and how we can deal with those feelings.

In Canada, 40% of teachers reported a high level of psychological distress compared with 20% in the general working population. So let's just double

during the COVID 19 pandemic, nearly 70% of respondents were concerned about their mental well being and health.

Ellie 1:40

Wow.

Brittany 1:41

And they reviewed those surveys. And they found that 45 out of 70 studies showed that depression was an issue for teachers. Stress was reported in 34, out of 70. While burnout wasn't 32, anxiety was just over a third at 24.

Ellie 2:23

Wow, that is high.

But besides the burnout and depression related to your job, you might also be experiencing sadness or depression because of events in your personal life. Maybe you've lost a parent or someone close to you is ill. And that can make it so difficult to walk into a classroom full of students and act like nothing's wrong. When my father passed away, I was teaching second grade at that time, he passed away on December 13, which, interestingly is the day that we're recording this. So 20 years ago today. And I think I was out of school until after the winter break. So I had a little bit of time before I had to go back to school. And when I went back, I felt like I just needed to be on for the kids. I didn't want to make them sad. But sometimes, you know, we act our way out of the sadness. But that's not always possible when we're feeling the stress and the burnout and the depression. So what do we do when things get really bad?

Brittany 3:21

When you're searching out health for things that are really bad, you've got some different steps that you can take. I have dealt with depression, chronic depression, since I was nine years old. And so I know the road you have to take and can take. And so the first step is to talk to your primary care physician. They're trained to deal with this and they can diagnose you. They can lead you to others who can help you like a psychologist or therapist, a psychiatrist if needed. Your primary care physician can prescribe medications, or they can send you to a psychiatrist who can prescribe medications as well. If you don't mind taking medications for depression or anxiety.

Ellie 4:15

You could search the website Psychology Today. This website helps you find therapists in your area, according to all different kinds of filters that you can put into place like gender, race, religion, LGBTQ plus areas of trauma, that kind of thing.

Brittany 4:34

You can also use the app better help to find a therapist in your area. You might have seen their ads on social media, like Facebook and Instagram, that it's a lot like psychology today, but they help you find a therapist in your area through a series of warm and inviting questions.

Ellie 4:55

Okay, if you're not ready to go public with things just yet, then we have some different coping mechanisms to help you get through the tough days, when you could use a mood tracker to help you see if you have any patterns or underlying causes relating to the way that you're feeling. And a mood tracker, it can be as simple as a grid of months and days that you color in based on your mood. Brittany, I know you will use or you have used a mood tracker, correct?

Brittany 5:22

Yes, I love the app Daylio. Okay, it's da y li Oh, it's a paid app. But it lets you track anything and everything in your life. You can track how much water you drink, how much exercise you get. You can track what foods you eat, how often you eat, how much you sleep, you can track everything. And it also lets you track your moods. So you can start to see patterns in your life. Like maybe you didn't get as much sleep, and then you're more sad or more depressed that day, or you ate a heavy meal the night before. And that has you more sad or depressed or tired the next day,

Ellie 6:13

I noticed a lot that food does have a serious effect on me. There are times I had Cheetos the other month, and I hadn't had Cheetos in a really long time. And I had two or three days in a row. And then notice that shortly after I had them, I was angry. I was like what is wrong with me, and I'm pretty sure it was related to the Cheetos. So that's a great thing to be able to think about and track that that can have a big effect on on mood potentially.

Brittany 6:43

That's so interesting. And the Daylio app gives you monthly reports based on what buttons you've pushed and what you've clicked. And so you can really see those patterns and observations and what you've what you've done throughout the month and the different days of the week. It's really cool.

Ellie 7:05

So we can have a mood tracker, we could get into some different hobbies, try to find a hobby that is peaceful, calm, relaxing, something that brings about tranquility for you. Things like maybe coloring or reading, crocheting, which I love to crochet, needle felting maybe gardening, it's great to work in the dirt, some there's something about working in the ground that just gives you a different kind of feeling kind of lifts your mood and connects you to the earth.

Brittany 7:32

Yes,

Ellie 7:33

maybe you want to learn to play an instrument, you know, there's something that you always wanted to learn something like an instrument or learning to dance or different ways like that, that you could express yourself. I know, when I play the piano, you know, it's not just playing the notes. It's it's an expression of of your feelings, and it can actually help get some of those out, you know, so maybe try to learn an instrument or start some kind of hobby.

Brittany 7:59

I know it's hard to get up and get going when you are depressed or anxious or burned out. So anything that you can do to just move is a good idea.

Meditation can be another coping mechanism that helps you feel better on a bad day. You can use an app like headspace or calm. Or you can just do it yourself if you're more experienced with meditation. And what it involves.

Ellie 8:30

I've actually started meditating every morning when I get up, it's one of the first things that I do to try to just get my mind in the right place. Going outside and getting into nature is a great thing to do when you're feeling down just like the gardening kind of connects you with. With the Earth. Being outside in nature can connect you as well. So you can take a walk, just sit and listen to nature, listen to the birds sit by the water, listen to the water, tried to find different things perhaps like a pine cone, or nest or a yellow leaf, a purple flower, get your focus on something outside of yourself. Nature and especially the color green can help bring about a sense of common relief. So anything you can do outside is great. And any kind of movement, like Britney said, is really helpful. So if you can do a little bit of yoga, even if that's inside or outside or just walking, just moving can sometimes help you from slipping into sadness or farther into sadness, perhaps

Brittany 9:29

another technique is called grounding. And you can ground yourself if the anxiety or depression has gripped you hard and you're, you're kind of spiraling. Try grounding yourself. And this is a technique that there's different ways of doing it. But it involves using the fingers on your hand and for each finger, you're going to find something. So you're going to find something new here. Then you're going to find something you smell. Then you're going to find two things you See, find something you can touch, and then bring the taste into it. If you can find something you can taste, but that's a little bit more difficult. Another way you can do it is you can also count down with your fingers, you can do five things, you hear four things, you see, three things you can touch without moving, fine, two things you can smell. And then one thing you can taste, this technique stops your brain from spiraling and overthinking about things. And instead gets you to think about the little things get you to think outside yourself, gets you to think about just the moment that you're in and helps you calm down, slow down, and focus on the here and now.

So again, there's several different ways to complete this technique. So you might hear about it from a therapist or a psychologist. And it might be slightly different. But that's how you want to do it is with your fingers. And just slowing down and focusing.

I've heard the terminology, but I haven't haven't tried that before. Yeah, I use it quite a lot. I go, I go sit outside on the, on the porch, and then I ground myself and helps quite a lot. So you put yourself in nature at the same time.

Yes.

And of course, everybody deals with different levels of feeling. So some of the things that we're talking about might be perfect for you. Some of the things might be better than others. But we're trying to offer you just some different ideas so that wherever you are, you might find something that is helpful.

So one of those things could be taking a nap naps are a great way to get out of a you know, through a rough moment, let your body re energize and help you to prepare to deal with the issue or you know, re attack whatever is happening or, you know, just again, energize you,

I love naps. That's another technique I use quite a lot.

I'm going to go off the tangent a little bit and explain something my daughter heard of this through tic toc. And it's something that we use in our house all the time now. But it's the philosophy that every morning you wake up and you're given a certain amount of spoons, I don't know why it's spoons, but just go with me it's spoons. So some days you wake up, and it's you can just feel from the moment you wake up, it's a rough day, you only have three spoons. And other days you wake up and you feel like energized and ready to go. You have 10 spoons that day, you know, so every day is a little bit different, you just you wake up and you have a certain amount of spoons. So you assess it in the morning, and you can feel the spoons, how many spoons you have, and then everything you do, takes away a spoon. So getting up for a depressed person, it's hard to like get up and do things. So getting up and taking a shower takes away a spoon. You know, brushing your teeth might take away a spoon, going out and making breakfast and actually like cooking something or whatever, it takes away a spoon. So if you only had three spoons you might be done for the day, you might feel exhausted and out. So you might need a nap right then to re energize and get some more spoons back. Or you might need to go ground yourself and get more spoons back. And so doing one of those techniques that we talked about that helps calm you relax, you re energize you get you more spoons back. And then you have spoons for later in the day to accomplish other things. Okay. And so if you wake up and you have 10 spoons, you can go through more of the day before you need to take a nap or before you need to color for a while.

Interesting. So do you think this is just conjecture? I guess Yeah. If you wake up with three spoons, and then you go and do one of these mechanisms. First, would it cost you a spoon or would it end up giving you more?

I think it would give you more.

Okay, I woke up with three but then I went for a walk outside. So now I maybe I have two more or I have another one. Yeah, to help me get farther through the day.

Exactly. Yep. Like this morning. I think I woke up with probably about 6 or 7 spoons. Okay. And then I immediately went and got a massage. So I think I'm up to about 12 spoons right now because that massage was really good. Yeah, so I feel really good for the day so far. I think I'm gonna get a lot done today.

Yeah, that's excellent. Yeah, I'm feeling really good today, too. I got up and I meditated. And then I worked for a while and then I exercise And then I went out and took my dogs for a walk. So I was outside. So I've been feeling really productive today. So I've kind of alternated, you know, some of those mechanisms with work. Interesting. That's a, that's a great concept to self assess like that.

So we use spoons in our family all the time. So even my husband who's not a depressed kind of person will say, you know, I'm just out of spoons today, I'm gonna go take a nap.

Yeah. That's, that's great that your whole family then can relate to that. And everybody understands that. That's awesome. So these are some great ways to cope that we've talked about. If you have ideas to share with us, please feel free to send us a DM on Instagram and give us some more ideas that we can share. Remember, you aren't alone. And it's important to take care of yourself and reach out for help when you need it.

Check out the show notes for the article we mentioned. And we'll also include links to the various apps we talked about. If you want to see some some of the coping mechanisms in print, and also read about my depression story, you can check out my blog post.

We hope you heard a few new tools you can add to this aspect of your teaching toolbox. We'll see you next time.

Bye