Educator Well-Being: Self-Compassion as the Ultimate Act of Self-Care
By Lisa Baylis, Teacher Consultant
This article was originally published here.
Teaching in our current school system is hard work. There has never been a time when educators are expected to take on so many roles, with more expectations and less support.
Teachers are exhausted and regularly face burnout. Why? Because teachers care, and they are seeing more students struggle with academics due to lack of mental, emotional, and physical health resiliency.
Support staff are tired and don’t get paid nearly enough to support the educators and the students they work with one-on-one. Why? Because support staff care, and they are seeing students and teachers struggle.
Administrators are weary; they are expected to be always “on” with no chance to recharge and rest so they continue to push themselves and give. Why? Because administrators care about the school cultures they are leading.
And yet, we continue to push on, fake it and survive. Educators are working with our most precious commodity: our children. Over the last few years, we’ve learned that if want to enable our kids to flourish we need to take care of the adults that care for them.
Brain science tells us that children’s brains aren’t fully developed until they are twenty-five years old. Until that age, children, teenagers, and young adults look to a developed brain for attunement and regulation. This helps their brains understand how and when to stay calm under stress. They use their mirror neurons to “mirror” the behaviour of others.
Have you ever walked into a room where everyone is frowning and instantly your stomach drops and your shoulders tense? You immediately, instinctively inhabit the same feelings? This is called emotional contagion. And this is what is happening in schools. Kids are facing tough challenges and stress at home, at school, in their community… let’s face it, in our whole world right now, and they bring this stress with them to school.
Educators feel it and absorb this stress.
Many educators hold this stress and too often don’t have adequate self-care and self-compassion strategies to release the build-up of stress. Therefore, they burn out. Burnout rates for educators continue to skyrocket and personal leaves, medical leaves, and sick days are going up. As our educators burn out, our students feel it — and the cycle of unwellness continues.
However, emotional contagion works with positive emotions as much as it does with the negative. When we focus on happiness, hope, gratitude, compassion, and joy we see a greater shift in resiliency. By supporting the resiliency of our educators, we may see a positive shift grow within our schools.
As a high school counsellor and teacher in the Greater Victoria School District in BC for the last 15 years, I have seen my own wellness teeter-totter with the highs and lows of both my personal and professional life. I have become a mom and have seen youth in my schools die of overdoses and suicide. I have engaged with colleagues in amazing learning opportunities and have been overwhelmed by the expectations placed on myself and my colleagues in schools. I have laughed out loud with students and seen great joy in their learning, and I have watched them struggle with tears in both our eyes.
I have ridden these ups and downs at times with ease and grace and other times while feeling like I was falling apart. There is no easy way to be an educator and a human being without sensing the suffering in our own lives and that of our students. Through it all, I have learned some very important strategies that have helped me retain my composure, my resiliency, and my well-being.
As a practicing educator and counsellor in a challenging school of diverse learners, I know first-hand what burnout feels like. I have also repeatedly seen colleagues suffer from burnout and compassion fatigue. I believe we need to create space for educators to practice self-compassion, self-awareness, and well-being habits. In essence, educators need to be encouraged and supported to have a self-care practice to avoid burnout.
The ultimate act of self-care is a self-compassion practice. Self-compassion is meeting ourselves during difficult and stressful times with kindness and tenderness that you might offer to a dear friend or a small child. Kristin Neff suggests, “Instead of mercilessly judging and criticizing yourself for various inadequacies or shortcomings, self-compassion means you are kind and understanding when confronted with personal failings — after all, whoever said you were supposed to be perfect?”
There are three elements of mindful self-compassion to better care for ourselves and to calm the inner critic:
Mindfulness vs. Over-identification
Mindfulness is a non-judgmental, receptive mind state in which one observes their thoughts, feelings, and body as they are, without trying to suppress or deny them. Meeting these thoughts, feelings, and body sensations with kindness allows us to be present instead of over-identifying and swept away by negative reactivity. By paying attention with kindness we stay more present.
Common Humanity vs. Isolation
Often when we are suffering, we tend to think we are alone. We believe that we are the only ones who may have felt this pain. So, we hide away and keep our struggles to ourselves. With self-compassion, we are aware that all humans suffer and that we are never alone, instead of part of a shared human experience. The very definition of being “human” means that one is mortal, vulnerable, and imperfect.
Self-Kindness vs. Self-Judgement
We are often quick to judge and criticize ourselves when we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate. However, self-compassion entails warmth and understanding toward ourselves in these moments of suffering. Self-compassionate people recognize that being imperfect, failing, and experiencing life difficulties are inevitable, so they tend to be gentle with themselves when confronted with painful experiences rather than getting angry when life falls short of set ideals.
As I have practiced and taught mindful self-compassion over the past few years, I have seen it as an essential strategy to improve my well-being. I often find myself slowing down and seeing what I need in any given moment to truly care for myself. I also am more conscious of my inner voice, and if it’s being unkind (as it so often is for many of us), I ask myself if I would say what I’m saying to myself to my daughter — and if I wouldn’t then I change the tone.
Mindful self-compassion is a practice that has changed my well-being and is the key component of my self-care practice. Self-care cannot just be indulgent acts like bubble baths and pedicures (although lovely and wonderful moments), self-care is actually a discipline in how we treat our bodies and our minds. It’s boundary setting, saying no, discovering your values and living within them, and finding many ways to be kinder to ourselves.
Only when we have strongly focused on our well-being as a priority will we see a shift in well-being in schools.
When we as educators feel emotionally regulated, physically strong, self-aware, and socially connected we create a strong sense of well-being in our lives. Together, let’s find ways to rebuild our resiliency. Let’s focus on self-care AND self-compassion. Let’s reignite our passion for teaching. Let’s awaken educator well-being so that together we can make a difference in our schools again.
Lisa’s work involves creating positive change in and out of schools by supporting the well-being of educators, while simultaneously building resiliency and restoring the joy of teaching. Her accessible and inclusive presentations have built her a reputation as one of the most trustworthy mindful self-compassion experts in North America.
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