Change, Loss, and Why Your Brain Hates It

According to recent surveys, the most common sources of stress include divorce, the death of a loved one, job loss, marriage, retirement, having a child, starting a job, losing a job, and moving.  Some of these are obvious.  The death of a loved one and divorce involve irreplaceable loss, which leads to heartbreak as I wrote about earlier.  Others seem inconsistent - losing a job and starting a job produce fairly equal stress.  Getting married, having a child, and moving all seem like they should be good things, and they are, yet they make this list.  

Why?

Because change is stressful.  All change.  Even the best changes in the world.  

Again, why?

Your brain has thousands of functions, from processing sensory information and telling your diaphragm to move regularly to thinking about the sentence coming out of your mouth to planning for dinner.  

While it has thousands of functions, it has only one job.  Keeping you alive.  

As such, your brain really likes the status quo.  Whatever may be going on your life right now, you are alive.  To quote Dr. Deborah Gilboah, in her 2021 Learning and the Brain Conference Keynote speech, "When change happens, even good changes, your brains say, 'Cool. Cool.  Could ya' die, though."  So, moving is stressful, even if you have the money to pay for your dream house, because you brain is wondering why you would move out of your current house when you are alive in it.  You could be standing at the altar, looking at the best thing that has ever happened to you, heart totally full of love, and your brain will be screaming, "But as a single person, you were alive! Why are you messing with that?!?"

There are a few things you can do to help yourself through the stress of change, and it is not to say something like, "The only thing constant in life is change."  It's not even necessarily to think about the good things that could result from the change.  That's not going to help your change-resistant brain because those are changes too.  

• One thing is to minimize how much dwelling you do.  You have to think about the changes sometimes because they require planning, but it is helpful not to persevere on the fearful thoughts that take you down the rabbit hole of what happens six steps down the road.  When that enters your mind, have healthy distractions (music, crossword puzzles, knitting - whatever works for you).  Setting boundaries on what you think about is possible, but it requires discipline.
• Another option is to minimize how much change happens at one time to the extent that you can control it.  If you are buying a house, it might not be the best time to take on a promotion at work, even one that would lead to more money.  Perhaps find out if one of those things could be put off for six months or so.  It's not always possible to prevent some of the changes from happening, but where you can, you should prevent them from piling up.
• Even when a lot of things are changing, a lot of things aren't.  Remind your brain of the things that will remain consistent.  I'm changing careers right now, and much is changing; but I can remind my brain that we will still come to the same house at the end of the day to the same cat we've had for years.  Reminding my brain that much of what I have in the state where I am currently alive will remain.
• The best thing you can do when change is stressful is to remind yourself that the last change you experienced didn't kill you.  That change had a neuroplastic effect on your brain cells, and reinforcing that can help your brain remember that there is a range of variables in which it can and has remained alive.

With all that said, your brain is going to find the change stressful no matter what you do to help it out, so you may just have to grit your teeth and hang on tightly through it, knowing you won't die even when your brain thinks it might.

 

 

Who Knew I Loved Kickboxing? A Tribute to Matt and His Class

I joined the YMCA on March 1, 2023.  I tried a number of different types of classes.  I liked indoor cycling, but yoga wasn't for me.  I enjoyed Zumba, and I hated Barre.  I was just trying as many things as I could to find what I might want to do regularly.  On March 8, I left school and said to my friends, "Well, tonight I try kickboxing.  That should be interesting."  

I approached Matt, the instructor, as I did in all new classes, and said, "I've never done this before.  What do I need to know?"  His response was, "Well, first of all, don't take yourself too seriously."  This was good advice for someone who was trying new things and likely to be pretty bad at most of them for a while.  What I found was not just a workout, but a source of joy.  It was the first class that I knew I would return to every single week.  When I called my mom that night, I said, "It turns out I love kickboxing.  Who knew?"  This class quickly became and has remained the highlight of my week for the past fourteen months.  When Matt was out of town, I took something else and enjoyed it, but I always felt that week was missing something.  Every Wednesday night, I looked forward to jabbing, crossing, uppercutting, kicking, and grinning from ear to ear while Matt bounced around the room, shining glitter down on every member of the class.  

There is something truly special about watching a person do what he loves, and you can tell Matt loves teaching this class.  He feeds off of the energy in the room.  I also have Matt in a weightlifting class, and he is fantastic in that one too, but I have told him before that watching him teach kickboxing is like sitting in a window with sunlight coming through it.  There is just a warmth and joy in it that is exceptional. 

This week, we had the last kickboxing class we are likely to have for a while (although I'm still trying to write the perfect comment card to get it back), and I am so sad I don't really have words.  I plan to write next week about the neurological reasons your brain finds all change stressful, so I won't go into that here; but we all know that some changes are more painful than others.  I've been thinking a lot about why that is.  Here's the conclusion I've reached.  If your heart is broken by a loss, it indicates that the thing you had was irreplaceably special.  (I have the Coldplay song running through my head - "Tears stream down your face. When you lose something you cannot replace.")  This class was just that - an irreplaceably special source of joy, love, and confidence in my life. While I am not losing Matt because I will still have him in the weightlifting class, the joy of his kickboxing class is not something that can be replicated.  I am so grateful to have had it for the last fourteen months.  Multiply that joy by the 20 years he has been teaching it and the number of "mes" there have been, and there is a lot of joy in the world now that there would not have been if it had not been for Matt's faithful service to the Y.

Thank you, Matt, for the love you put into teaching.  Thank you for being an amazing educator.  Thank you for putting up with me when I am clingy and possessive and "a little much."  Thank you for being a reference for me.  Thank you for the twenty years you have taught such a beautiful class.  

Planned with Purpose

Two weeks ago, I was on a trip to Washington DC with my 8th grade students.  We leave very early on Monday morning, arriving in DC just after lunchtime, and keep our kids moving hard and fast until about 9:30 every night only to return late on Wednesday.  It is fun watching different kids respond to different things, like my little nerd party and the Air and Space Museum, the girls who were very excited to see the Hope Diamond, or the kids who really got into their roles at the International Spy Museum.  Each evening, around sundown, we meet our tour guides who walk the kids through the various monuments and memorials on the National Mall.  

This year, our tour guide kept repeating the same phrase over and over as we encountered each site.  That phrase was "planned with purpose."  As we approached the Vietnam War Memorial, we learned the purpose of the layout of the panels and the meaning behind the two statues.  As we stood by the WWII Memorial, we learned the purpose of the wreaths, the columns, and the relief sculptures.  Even the city itself is laid out with intentional design, for the purpose of eliciting certain feelings in the minds of visitors.  Our trip was designed and planned by our amazing Marcia with many purposes (fun, learning about history, learning about God, honoring sacrifice, bonding time with friends).  The act of taking their phones from them during the five-hour bus ride has a purpose, which was great for me to remember when half of the kids on the bus I was on broke out in a Disney song medley.  "Look at the fun they create for themselves when they don't have their phones," I thought, even though the singing was objectively terrible.  Our purpose had been accomplished.

Because I'm a nerd teacher, I can't help but think of how this should apply to my lesson plans.  I've been writing a fair amount recently about clarity and whether or not students understand the purpose of the activities you are asking them to do.  If not, is there a chance you don't know the purpose behind it?  Are you doing it because it's a fun activity that the kids like (a Grecian Urn)?  Is it a state standard you are required to teach without understanding why?  Or, is there a purpose to your plan?  Have you looked carefully at what you want students to learn and designed learning experiences to achieve that purpose?  Are you planning with purpose?  If not, rethink how you approach your plans.

We know from Scripture that God designed humans with a purpose, both as a species (to tend the earth and subdue it, to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, to make disciples, etc.) and as individuals (Paul going from place to place throughout Greece, Joseph being faithful in prison and used to save Egypt from famine).  As Western Christians who pride ourselves in our individualism, we like to think of our specific call, and we tend to focus only on the big things (college, marriage, career aspirations).  Of course, all of those things are part of our plan and purpose, but each day God gives us also includes a plan and a purpose.  God may have put laundry in front of you today.  He may have put lesson planning or test grading in front of you.  He may have put a conversation with a stranger in WalMart in front of you.  He planned your day with a purpose, and the way you carry out laundry or grading or the conversation is an act of worship as you carry out that plan.  You, as CS Lewis said, "are not a mere mortal."  You are a carrier of the Imago Dei and planned with a purpose every second of your life.  Live in that.  Grow in that.

It's Just What We Call It

Did you know that there is a definition for a properly maintained yard?  According to the American Garden Club, an appropriate type of lawn was "a plot with a single type of grass with

no intruding weeds, kept mown at a height of an inch and a half, uniformly green, and neatly edged."  If you live in Tuscon, Arizona or some other arid place, this would be difficult to achieve, requiring an amount of water you may not have.  For you, a properly maintained yard might be filled with succulents and stones that allow for proper drainage.  

In some places, there are movements to have native lawns or natural lawns, which are more eco-friendly in that they require little watering or mowing, give home to local fauna, attract pollinators, and work with the natural landscape rather than against it. 

For those of you wondering if this blog has changed from education to lawn maintenance, hang with me for a minute.  The Gardening Club's definition is what most American accept, but that's only because we have been taught those standards by suburban cultural norms.  A weed is only a weed because we choose to call it that.  We could just as easily live in a world where a lawn would be considered more beautiful if it had a variety of color rather than a uniformity of green.  While there are objective standards for many things, there are also a variety of contexts in which success is only defined by what we call it.

Let's say a person is in line to ride a roller coaster.  As she nears the front of the line, her heart rate increases as adrenaline and cortisol rev up her muscles. Her pupils dilate, the moisture level on her skin increases, and she feels a tightening in her stomach.  From the symptoms I have described, you may think she is terrified of the upcoming ride.  Perhaps she is.  Or perhaps, she is very excited about the ride.  After all, the physiological symptoms are the same.  An outside observer, when looking only at the biometric data with no context, is unable to differentiate nervousness and excitement.  The difference, it seems, is what we call it.  We make that choice based on our appraisal of the likely outcome.  If we foresee a negative outcome, we call that array of symptoms nervousness.  If, however, we imagine a positive end, we call it excitement.  Helping our students with normal anxieties may be as simple as helping them reframe their predictions.  When a student is anxious about a test, a game, a play audition, or other similar scenarios, they naturally imagine the worst-case scenario.  This is normal and appropriate for our survival as a species because if we do not prepare for danger, we could actually be harmed.  But, it may be helpful to ask our students the next questions.  "Okay, what if the worst happens and you fail this test?  What's the result?  Will your parents stop loving you?  Will I?"  When they realize the answer to those questions is no, it may help them to stop catastrophizing the situation.  Or, you can ask them to imagine the full spectrum instead of just the worst side of it.  Ask them "What if you ace it?"  That may have the effect of helping them reappraise their feelings.  (Please note that I am not talking about anxiety disorders which obviously require medical attention.  I'm talking about the normal day-to-day things that make us nervous like giving a presentation in class.)

The same is true of other things we call stress.  During those especially busy weeks of the semester when it seems like every class is giving a test, students often believe we should take steps to minimize their stress.  I prefer to encourage them to hang in there, recognize it is temporary, and power through it.  When that week is over, I like to remind them that they aren't dead.  "Look what you didn't know you were capable of.  Next time, you'll know you can do it."  This is another one of those things we seem to recognize and find acceptable in sports but not in other places.  When an athlete has a particularly hard workout, we call it conditioning and respect it.  We use phrases like, "No pain. No gain."  When I leave my weightlifting class at the Y with jello arms and wobbly legs after Matt has challenged me, I don't blame him for the pain in my muscles and ask him to make it easier.  I thank him for the growth that he is causing in my muscles and mind.  The same should hold true in academic situations (and all other situations); we should recognize that growth only happens through stress and call it that.  Instead of saying, "This is a really stressful week," we can reappraise that feeling and recognize it is a week that will spur a lot of growth.

We don't have to ignore our feelings, but we also don't have to let them rule us.  We have come to view them as though they are the most real part of us, but they are chemical reactions causing electrical impulses.  As such, we can have some level of control over them.  Importantly, we can teach our students to recognize and manage them as well.

Kids Are Listening (When You Think They Aren't)

One of our alumni came by this week, and we were sharing stories of crazy college professors.  This was after school, and there were only adults around, so we were giggling at these stories as adults, looking back on our common experiences with unusual people.  But, it made me remember being a little afraid of my college years in the years before I got there because I had overheard similar conversations by adults.  My dad had told me about professors who would do things like write with one hand while erasing with their left.  I remember thinking, "I'm a good student, but I'm not that good.  How am I going to do this?"  Of course, when I arrived at college, I found that most professors are mostly normal and teach in mostly normal ways.  But those are boring stories, so you only share things about the strange ones.

On a similar note, when I was a kid, I was a little afraid of growing up.  It seemed like every adult I knew hated their job.  At least, they talked about it like they did.  When I was a teenager, I did a little survey as my fellow choir members arrived at church.  I asked each of them about their job.  I got a wide range of sighs and groans until Ron Butler came in.  When I asked him about his job, he grinned and talked about living with "spizerinctum," a word he made up for how energized he felt by his work.  It was greatly encouraging to hear an adult talk with such joy about the work he was doing, and it was clear that he loved it because he believed it mattered.  

It can be easy to think that kids are not paying attention when adults talk to each other.  After all, they give every impression that they are not listening, and it is frustrating when they seem not to have heard something we explicitly told them.  But they are picking up more than you think they are.  When you call a politician evil (not just wrong, but demonic) while watching the news, they absorb that; and since they don't have the experience to judge whether something is sarcasm or hyperbole, they come to school and share your speculations as gospel truth.  When you skewer the pastor during Sunday lunch, they hear you and learn to disrespect all spiritual authority (and you want to be careful because you are one of the spiritual authorities they are learning to disrespect).  Divorced parents often talk negatively about their ex to other adults while their children are in the room.  You think they aren't listening, but they come to my classroom the next day talking about it.  When I worked in daycare, there was a three-year-old in the building who had a colorful vocabulary, using words his parents had used at home.  His parents were a bit embarrassed by the fact their toddler told us something was BS (except he used the whole word) in his high-pitched baby voice.  He had heard them and didn't know that there were words many choose not to use in public.  It is not possible to tell when they are listening and when they are not.

Not all of the examples of this happening are bad.  I am currently on track to pay my house off ten years early because of a conversation I overheard between two other adults.  One man advised another to always pay whatever extra amount he could afford on his house in order to pay down the principal and save on interest.  I wasn't part of the conversation, but I happened to be in the room and thought that sounded like a wise practice.  As far as I know, the man in that conversation does not know that I have benefitted from his advice to someone else.  I have had casual conversations with juniors about their AP class choices that younger students nearby take as advice three years later.  I only know this because their parents say to me, "She remembered your advice about . . . "  When I say, "I don't remember talking to her about that," they tell me about a conversation I don't remember that I had with someone else (My Lord, the power we wield as teachers should be taken seriously).

I've rambled a bit, but here's my point.  Be aware and be careful.  They hear most of what you say, you don't know what context they are putting around your words in their minds.  They take more in than you think, and they repeat it to others.  It can affect their decisions and may mean they carry worries you aren't aware of.  Don't assume that kids can't hear you, even when they have earbuds in their ears.  Don't say, "Oh, he's never paying attention" because he often is.  If you don't want it to be part of his brain, don't say it.