Don’t Make Self-Care Another Item On Your To-Do-List
Have you searched the term “self-care for teachers”? Or even “self-care” in general? What you’ll get are lists of “self-care ideas” that quite frankly are not that useful. They are self-care ideas that one, you already know, and two, they are self-care ideas that you wouldn’t do. But, the worst part of these self-care ideas is that they just become one more item on your “to-do-list”. Which kind of defeats the distressing intent of self-care. Today, I am sharing my advice about creating some self-care ideas that will help destress and not add more stressors.
With the Covid-19, your school has either gone online, classes have been broken into blocks, or arranged in some other strange configuration. These changes have brought about stressors for today’s school teachers that have never been experienced in our lifetimes. And the consequence of these stressors are feelings of being overwhelmed and greater teacher burnout. But there is some relief for school teachers by applying a few daily self-care strategies.
My goal in this post is to provide some practical advice around teacher self-care that will help destress the distress and overwhelm school teachers are feeling. Specifically, what I want to do in this post is help you understand; what is self-care.
Hi, I am Brett R. Williams, psychotherapist and Chief Executive Director (CEO) of the Gathering. The Gathering of Good People is a nonprofit that is dedicated to helping you with personal growth and emotional healing. In addition to sharing mental health advice and free content we also provide support to anyone and everyone who needs help, through our self-care groups.
We are using this post to announce the start of a new teacher self-care group, so go to the gathering and register. Also, I would also love to hear in your comments about what’s the most overwhelming part of teaching in the time of Covid.
As I started to write about self-care for teachers it quickly became clear that this can’t be one trite little post that’s going to provide all the answers in a few words. That kind of superficial approach to self-care ideas is already out there. What’s needed is a series of articles that will cover a wide range of information and ideas to truly cover the topic of self-care for teachers. And today’s post will be the first.
I want you to begin to understand self-care by imagining for a minute that someone wrote a blog post about how to home school or help students with distance learning. And imagine it was written in the same simplistic style you see the issue of self-care ideas are being addressed.
“10 ways to make your child’s reading more fun.” Or what about a post “7 steps to gamify your child’s learning.”
Education required a certain amount of pedagogy, an understanding of how students learn. These blog post ideas may be a part of a child’s learning, but schools, either online classes or through other distance learning formats require so much more understanding than what could be created in any single post.
If you are offended at the suggestion that improving a child’s education can be done with a quick blog, then you are feeling my frustration with these posts on “6 self-care ideas for teachers.”
Suggestions such, “read a book”, “take a bubble bath”, or “enjoy a session of hot yoga” are not adequate. In the beginning, I mentioned three reasons why these ideas won’t work. First, these are not original ideas. We all know how to relax, or what to do to unwind. These suggestions don’t provide any information to a school teacher, or to anyone, that we don’t already know.
The second problem with such silly suggestions is that if we are not already doing them, then how is reading them on a post going to provide the drive and motivation to start doing them now.
But my greatest frustration with these oversimplified self-care ideas is that they only become one more demand and expectation on what already feels like an endless list of stressors. School teachers are already overwhelmed. Shaming a list of things that school teachers need to do for self-care only makes things worse.
I worry that school teachers or anyone reading about self-care ideas will only feel worse. All of us understand that self-care is important and that if we actually had time to practice good self-care it could help our lives. We all understand that taking time to relax would help our stress, but who’s got the time?
Self-care is not a task it is an attitude or a focus on yourself. Let me begin this series on self-care ideas by helping you understand what self-care is all about. Then in subsequent posts, I can go into more detail as to how to create meaningful self-care strategies.
Think of self-care as self-love. Now, that may not seem like a completely useful idea, because no one understands what love is. But in my first book, You Can Be Right Or You Can Be Married, I define love as the free gift of our attention.
Think about it, when you love your children, or when they love you, how do you all show love? Attention. When I pay attention to my kids they feel my love. I could give them gifts or be in the same place as they are but that does not show love. Giving things, spending time, and even taking care of my kids’ needs are all seen as love, but that’s because I am paying attention to them.
Imagine you hired a nanny to care for your kids and she did all the same things you did but without her full attention. For her, it’s a job, and these are not her kids. So the same actions are taken but without the nanny’s full attention. Your kids would NOT feel loved by such a nanny. They would be taken care of, but not loved.
As a school teacher, the same example could be drawn. There are school teachers who bring a lot of attention to their kids and there are school teachers who simply do the job and bring very little attention to the kids. Which school teacher is seen as loving? The one who is attentive to her or his students.
How this applies to your self-care strategy is simple. Self-care starts with you paying attention to yourself, to you loving yourself. Taking a moment throughout your day and asking yourself, “What do I need right now?” is how self-care works.
For me, I need to do some quick self-care between clients. I see patients all day long, sometimes 10 a day. It is important for me to stop between charting and returning calls and take a minute and focus on me. It could be taking a breath. Or sometimes I need to get outside and take a few minutes walking around my building.
The best time for me to focus on me is before work. Somewhere sandwiched between getting the kids up and getting them ready for school, and me going into the office, I will take a few minutes to ask myself, “What do I need right now?”
It does not have to be much. It could be a few moments of mindfulness meditation. I will maybe get to do a little devotional reading. And on those really good days, I would exercise on the beach.
But here’s the important point, the activity is NOT important, nor is the amount of time. What is essential is taking a moment to focus on yourself. Love is attention, therefore self-love or self-care happens when you give attention to yourself.
I would even like to say that sometimes working hard and being productive is self-care. I like helping others and feeling successful. That’s not a bad thing. Where work can be a problem is when you work so hard you forget yourself. When you don’t have time for your own needs.
It is great to love others. The work teachers do is such a blessing, and now it is harder than ever. It is alright to do your best and want to serve your students. Thank you.
My hope is that you spend some time each day also focusing on yourself, and asking “What do I need right now?” And maybe that means doing nothing. Maybe self-care is to sit and veg. It could be watching Netflix or scrolling through Instagram.
There is no right or wrong with your self-care. Unless you are not doing self-care at all.
One final suggestion, that maybe a little outside the box, is a self-care group. Through this series of blogs, I will be posting lots of self-care ideas, but one of our most basic human needs is belonging. A self-care group is designed to help you focus on yourself as you connect with others. We can’t do it all ourselves, and often we learn better together. So, I would suggest you look at the Gathering of Good People and see what a self-care group would be like for you.