I don't respond to things appropriately anymore. This week, five people were shot and killed four and a half miles from my house, and I have spent very little time thinking about it unless someone else brings it up. Yet, I overreact to small setbacks during the day and laughed unreasonably hard at a story during this morning's sermon. It's like the pandemic damaged my barometer. My colleagues have reported they notice the same thing in themselves.
As it turns out, this is a symptom of dealing with chronic stress, which teachers and other essential workers have definitely been doing since the beginning of the pandemic. Now that things are returning to somewhat normal, many have been feeling things they had not been during the height of the pandemic. I compare this to getting sick on the first day of Christmas break; your body knows how to power through the time it needs to an allows you to give in when there is a chance to use that energy in other ways. While most people are calling what we have right now PTSD, I have been searching for another term. For one thing, I am uncomfortable with the idea of being in the same category as those who have experienced acute trauma, like soldiers who have watched a friend die, kids who have witnessed and/or experienced abuse, or victims of bank robberies. Our jobs were very hard, but our experience is not an acute high level event; it is a prolonged endurance of physical, mental, and emotional difficulty. I have spent about a year searching for a name for what we are confronting, and I haven't found it. Therefore, I have decided to name it myself. I am calling it Chronic Stress Recovery Syndrome.
Let me be clear from the start, I have no expertise or training in psychology. What I'm good at is learning, so what I am about to talk about comes from reading and listening. Also, I cannot speak to what this time has been like for doctors, nurses, restraunt employees, or Amazon delivery drivers, all of whom had to reinvent their practice at a time when their services were in the highest demand they had ever experienced. I can only speak to teaching in my context. For me, that included a spring of remote teaching, a year of hybrid teaching, and year that was supposed to be normal but wasn't (due to the Delta and Omicron variants). Also, since I have no professional expertise, my intent is to speak to those of us with relatively mild symptoms that we can treat ourselves. If you are experiencing anything more than that, please seek the help of a qualified professional.
With those disclaimers in mind, here's what I have found.
The symptoms of chronic stress are:
- Fatigue - Teachers all over Twitter are talking about how tired they are. I've seen things like, "I'm February tired, and it's only October." (If you aren't an educator, you may not understand the idea of being February tired, but I have written about it before if you are interested.) Any stress requires physical energy to manage. During the hybrid year, we were learning so many new things, making decisions without being confident in them, and operating each day using every ounce of energy we had. Some days, we operated at an energy deficit, and because it was a chronic experience, there wasn't time to refill those stores of depleted energy. One thing I've learned is that fatigue may present itself differently in some people than others. In most people, it will feel like exhaustion; in others, it may be muscle aches or soreness.
- Emotional disregulation - This is what I was talking about at the beginning of the post. You may overreact to some things and underreact to others. As teachers, we have to be careful because answering an email from an emotionally dysfunction place can get us in trouble pretty quickly. I found myself needing to apologize a few times last year for reacting to a student's behavior disproportionately.
- Frequent headaches, digestive disruptions, and weight changes - Your brain and body are connected, so they tend to influence each other. Fortunately, this is also part of helping yourself, so keep reading.
- Lowered immune system - Because your energy reserves are being used elsewhere, there isn't energy left for fighting off germs. This is obviously not ideal in a pandemic. You may also be more prone to injury and take longer to heal.
- Eat well and exercise - I know you are thinking that you can't possible exercise because you are so tired. That's the paradox of exercise. Once you have overcome the inertia, it gives you energy because your body is working the way it should. If you go outside, you'll also get a much needed hit of vitamin D. Grab a quick walk during lunch or your planning period, even if it is just five minutes. Consuming nutrient dense foods will help with your immune deficiency and fatigue as well.
- Breathe well - Have you ever noticed during times of high stress that you take pretty shallow breaths. You may be tired because you aren't fully oxygenating your blood. It's posisble you havne't taken a deep breath in two and a half years. I'm not suggesting that you have to take a yoga class, but a couple of times a day, take a second to notice your breathing and take a few deep breaths in a row. It will calm you, decrease your heart rate, and help your blood pressure.
- Social interaction - One of the most difficult parts of social distancing was that we were, well, distant. I went ten and a half weeks without being physically touched by another human being. Even then, it was hugging my mom about once a week. Thankfully, I have friends who made the effort to have lunches over Google Meet during that time and who made sure we talked for whatever time we could during the hybrid and depressed year. We sat far across the room from each other while we ate lunch or after school, but we made each other laugh, which mattered a lot.
- Do things you don't want to - Early last year, when I noticed that I wasn't feeling right, I reached out to our school counselor (speaking of people who are still experiencing chronic stress - they are taking on all of ours - pray for them). Perhaps the most important piece of advice she gave me was to do things I didn't want to do. When you aren't mentally healthy, neither are your desires, so what you want to do is probably not what you should do. You may want to stay home and curl up on the sofa with your cat, but you should do the opposite of that. Following through on your commitments will help you feel a sense of accomplishment that staying in won't, and you will usually be glad that you participated in the activity once you are there. Volunteer for something (It doesn't have to be huge, maybe a school activity or a church event that only lasts one day). Meet a friend for lunch or a card game. When you feel the pull of the bed or sofa, say out loud, "I should do the opposite of this." You'll be glad you did.
- Gratitude - It is so easy to slip into cynicism. It requires no effort at all. Gratitude takes effort, but it is well worth it. Unless you are a natural journaler, I'm not suggesting that you start a gratitude journal because you won't keep up with it, and then you'll feel like a failure, which helps nothing. What I'm suggesting is that each morning or night (or both) that you think of something for which you are grateful. It could be a small thing, like having enough school supplies when you know other people don't. It could be a person you love. It could be the fact that we aren't in masks this year. It could be the flowers in your front yard or that you have a front yard. Don't try to force yourself into something with rules (like writing down five things - again, you don't want to set yourself up for failure). Instead, sit on the edge of the bed and think of something, anything, that you are glad to have in your life.
No comments:
Post a Comment