Tag Archives: feelings

Fear to share

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I’m pretty honest when I write here. I have written about challenges with my headspace, about how hard it can be to write every day, and when things haven’t necessarily gone well for me. I’ve even ranted a few times about things that drive me nuts. But if you were to look back at my 1,600+ blog posts since I started writing daily, I think you’d see that I’m a pretty positive person.

And still I find myself struggling to share that today was a crummy day for me. Nothing bad happened, I didn’t get any bad news, I just had a crappy, unhappy day. I was in a funk and I couldn’t get out of it.

I recognized it enough to ask a friend to connect with me after work, and he gave me some good advice. So I stayed off my phone other than listening to a podcast in my hot tub. And I’m in bed at 9pm writing this so that I can set it to publish in the morning and sleep in a little later.

It bugs me that I wanted to hide this melancholy feeling and pretend that everything is ok. I am thinking about the problem with the happy lives of Instagramers, who put only the happiest, most perfectly posed photos on their stories, and who hide every blemish, ever disappointment, and every mundane experience or feeling. I don’t want to replicate that. I think it’s ok to say, ‘today sucked, I’m not feeling like I’m in a good place,’ without making people worry about me, or question my happiness at work or at home.

We stigmatize sharing mental health challenges and simultaneously glorify our best lives on social media. No one wants to be seen as ‘broken’. So a simple bad day gets tucked away. And a selfie with a pet and a smile goes online.

Today was not a good day. I’m privileged enough to be able to say that because I have 1,600 other things I’ve written that normalize me and don’t make me look fragile or weak. But how many people hide it? How many smiling Facebook and Instagram posts are masks hiding darker, unshared feelings? How many people would benefit from sharing but don’t have a friend or partner to rely on, or a space to share their feelings and feel safe rather than vulnerable and exposed.

Tomorrow will be a better day for me, I know this already. I’m lucky, I have good coping mechanisms figured out and I’m told by many I have an ‘even keeled’ disposition. Those who know me aren’t going to be concerned about what I’ve written.

But what about those who aren’t ok? Who don’t have good coping strategies, and who have a fear to share? How hard is it for them to see the happy, smiling social media posts, oblivious that some of those posts mask the same feelings they have?

Not everyone is as fortunate as me to be able to share a crappy day and not feel judged.

The battle beyond

Yesterday I wrote, ‘The battle within‘ and said,

“The battle within is greater than the battle beyond.“

And while I firmly believe this I am seeing countless tweets from educators and educational leaders across different districts, provinces, states, and international borders, talking about the overwhelm and exhaustion of their role in a pandemic. The challenge ‘beyond’ is taxing the battles ‘within’ and burnout seems endemic.

I’ve seen comments like:

“I can’t sleep thinking about how much I have to do.”

“I have no time to exercise or take care of myself.”

“I have to take the weekend off.”

“I asked for help but it isn’t coming fast enough.”

“I’m in my second year teaching and I feel I have to quit.”

“I’m tired of just doing an adequate job.”

“This is unsustainable.”

“I won’t make it to June at this pace.”

“My students deserve more, but I have nothing more to give.”

Here are a few suggestions I hope can help:

  • Take care of yourself. Busy times are exactly when self care matters most. Everything you do for yourself during these times will give you the energy to help and provide for others… but more importantly, you will just feel better!
  • Ask for help. It’s ok to let others know you need support.
  • Collaborate. Find others who can share the load, and find energy by working with others.
  • Reduce your own expectations around work load. What can you do to reduce marking, or to provide assessment that is student rather than grade focussed? Example: Instead of giving a test that takes 10 min. each to mark, give a 1-1 assessment that takes 5-10 minutes. You and your students will both get more out of the experience.
  • Take body and brain breaks. Have fun, while recharging yourself and your students.
  • Turn off work for a set time each night… be militant about this. Go for a no technology walk with someone. Put a block of time in your calendar. Play a board game.
  • Do something creative.
  • Meditate daily.
  • Get to bed early.
  • Exercise. Suggestion: Try to do a quick workout early in the morning… get your heart rate up for 20 minutes to start the day.
  • Pack healthy treats that you enjoy, so that food breaks are rewarding in more ways than one.
  • Connect with friends digitally. Your digital bubble need not be small just because your face to face one is.

This is a time when the battle beyond can overwhelm the battle within… so make intentional efforts to care for yourself and not only you, but those around you will benefit!

The battle within

The battle within is greater than the battle beyond.

It is challenging to realize that our ultimate enemy is ourselves. Our vices vary. Our demons come in different sizes. But they come from within, not from outside.

In today’s Daily Calm meditation, I heard this quote worth contemplating, “You can close your eyes to the things you do not want to see but you cannot close your heart to the things you do not want to feel.”

Anger, frustration, jealousy, hurt, upset, sadness, embarrassment, pride, guilt, shame, fear, regret, anxiety… These are all things that we can not simply close our eyes to when we feel them. We rarely have complete control over how deeply we feel them. But we can decide how much we fuel them. How much we let them burn us up.

I chose my words carefully when I said, “We rarely have complete control over how deeply we feel them.” If I feel sad, I can not easily make the sadness disappear. Just like when you shut your eyes in direct sunlight, light shines through your eyelids, so too does an emotion like sadness seep in as you try to block it out.

Sometimes it’s better to feel than it is to block emotions, even if they are negative. Embrace the emotion and let it come over you. But how long do you allow this? At what point does the emotion take over? At what point does a feeling like sadness or anxiety or grief become an enemy within? At what point does it take control of you?

‘Don’t be sad.’

‘Don’t be anxious.’

There are few words that can be said with good intentions that could be worse than saying one of these phrases to a person feeling those emotions.These worlds only magnify the emotion’s hold on a person, who desperately wants to escape the overpowering feelings that are burning inside.

So if it is a battle within, how does one fight it? I’m not sure I have an answer that works for others. What works for me is to play with the ideas that bring those feelings to me. I imagine the emotion being first worse and then better. Not just worse but horrific. How much more could it hurt, how much worse could it feel. I take it to places further than it could possible go. Then I weigh how bad I really feel. Then I think about how I could feel better.

That’s how I battle. I shine the light brighter than I can look at it, then look away and the brightness seems so much less intense. I don’t try first to look away, I look more intensely, and then I choose to look away. Then it feels less like a battle to fight and more like something I have fought and moved on from. But I also don’t pretend it’s gone, I simply care less that it is there.

I don’t pretend this always works, I don’t imagine it would work for everyone, but I seldom spend time on battles I see others struggle with… and I’m sure some of my battles within are battles others could handle with ease.

I think it’s true for most everyone that the battle within is greater than the battle beyond. But I also believe that these battles need not be as big as we make them.