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Tag: teacher burnout

A quiet moment of stillness, representing rest and recovery from burnout

Is ‘changing lives’ contributing to your teacher burnout?

Written by Hannah Young on . Posted in Mindset and Patterns, Overwhelm and Burnout. No Comments on Is ‘changing lives’ contributing to your teacher burnout?

In the run up to the return to school, I saw so many posts reminding people working in schools that they were returning to kids who would be so excited to see them; who would have been thinking about them the whole summer. As someone who spent a decade in a school where we had plenty of those kids for whom school was a sanctuary, I can relate to seeing something like this and it motivating me – and I know that’s the intention behind the post.

And this kind of ‘changing lives’ language is so common in education. It’s common, because it’s true.

The hidden cost of “changing lives”

But let’s just pause for a moment and look at it without the emotional attachment we inevitably build as empathic women working inside or outside the classroom. Because you care, of course you care – deeply. But I do wonder whether being reminded of your impact on the kids you work with feeds into that sense you have of giving your ‘all’ to the job. And it may just be part of the reason you’re living on the edge of burnout and wondering whether you’ll make it through the year.

It’s what stops you from calling in sick even though you can hardly get out of bed – because you know that boy who’s new to Year 7 won’t settle without you. It’s the reason you’re checking CPOMS on a Saturday night because you’re second-guessing the conversation you logged on Friday afternoon. And it’s what’s making you zone-out of a chat with your best friend because you just can’t possibly take on any more emotional load.

Yes, you’re changing lives – but here’s the caveat

So yes, you really are ‘changing lives’ out there. You know it. But, let’s caveat that…

This is not your responsibility. It’s not in your job description to have all the kids you teach, support or safeguard rely solely on you. It’s a collective effort of the whole school community.

What your responsibility actually is

What IS your responsibility? To be the calm, measured, knowledgeable adult in the room – and that means taking care of yourself in order to be the best that you can, whatever your role.

Having a life and experiencing joy outside of the job
Caring for a nervous system that bounces back after stress
And knowing how to accept, ‘That’ll do,’ and switching off to protect your time.

So consider this your permission. Permission to go to work, do your job, and come home with the general sense that you didn’t really change anyone’s life today (though we know you really did – even on your worst days).

And if you’re running on empty, my wellbeing coaching for teachers and pastoral staff can help. Book a chat to find out more.

Why do so many teachers burn out?

Teacher burnout isn’t just about the workload

Written by Hannah Young on . Posted in Overwhelm and Burnout. No Comments on Teacher burnout isn’t just about the workload

It’s taken me a while to realise it, but the main causes of burnout in teaching go far deeper than the workload

I left teaching 6 years ago, and even now when someone asks me about it, I automatically spit out something about the workload. “I couldn’t hack it,” I’ll say.

But it’s taken me all this time, and working with women who are sitting where I was when I decided to give it up, to realise that the reasons I was running on empty were so much more complex than the hours I was working.

Don’t get me wrong. Working 70-hour weeks was no fun. It took over my evenings and weekends, and every waking moment I felt this huge pull that I ‘should’ or ‘could’ be doing something to make the next day, the next week, the next term easier.

But what I know now is that there was so much more to address. If I’d gone into a 9-5 office job, I’d still be hitting the same wall of exhaustion at 7pm every night. It’s the reason why moving into pastoral didn’t really solve anything for me.

And it’s the reason I don’t just talk about coping with workload with the women I support in my coaching room. Here’s what I should have been addressing 6 years ago:

The identity loss

I became the job. I martyred myself to it and was proud of that fact. It was what I talked about. What energised me when I saw friends. But there’s only so far that will carry you before you start to grieve the person you were…or, even worse, you grieve for the fact you don’t even know who you are anymore. Strip the job away, and you have nothing to offer.

The constant stimulation

Your nervous system stays wired. You respond to a thousand questions, subtle (and not so subtle) changes in behaviour, everyone else’s needs. All the while supressing your own needs – even the most basic. It’s why you cry when you realise you’ve no bread left at home; or fly into a rage when the dishwasher just won’t stack properly.

The changing goalposts

Even with the hours, the workload, you can kind of cope when you know what you’re doing. You know the behaviour policy well and you apply it. The exact requirements of the exam board. The best way to make this particular text accessible. Then you go back in September and – SURPRISE! – it’s all changed. Cue massive knock in confidence and the mental gymnastics to work out when you’re going to relearn all of this. Maybe I’m not such a great teacher after all, you wonder.

You see, all of this is about YOU – not the job. We can talk about boundaries, time-management and self-care (which of course, we do!) BUT we have to get to the stuff that’s going to give you deep and lasting change – whether you stay or not. That is: who are you, without the job? How do you get your nervous system out of years in fight or flight? And how do we rebuild the confidence and self-trust you need to be resilient towards the inevitable changes that you’re faced with?

THIS is where we start. So if you’re a teacher who finds herself skating on the edge of burnout, book a virtual coffee with me to find out how I can support you.

Feeling Overwhelmed in Education? Learning to Listen to Your Nervous System

Written by Hannah Young on . Posted in Overwhelm and Burnout. No Comments on Feeling Overwhelmed in Education? Learning to Listen to Your Nervous System

How did it take me until my late 30s to really understand what my nervous system was trying to tell me in any given moment?

In the final couple of years of my role as an Attendance Officer in a busy, challenging inner-city school, I would tell my boss I was having a moment whenever I was feeling “fizzy”. This wasn’t a code word; I literally felt fizzy. My body would be sparking, my ears ringing, and my heart – not racing exactly – but certainly getting a bit of a gallop on.

This would often happen after a particularly busy, unpredictable morning. Perhaps there had been a safeguarding issue, a difficult parent conversation, a child in crisis, or maybe a student had told me to F*** off just to round things off nicely. Over time, I learned to recognise that feeling and, importantly, what it meant. I knew my nervous system was overloaded and that if I could take ten minutes in a quiet space, I stood a much better chance of getting through the rest of the day.

The thing is, this awareness didn’t arrive overnight. I’d spent the best part of eight years working in that same school without really being able to tune into what my body was telling me in real time. Instead, I would push through, keep going, and then wonder why I found myself asleep on the sofa at seven o’clock in the evening after inhaling a party pack of onion rings and a couple of iced buns.

Looking back, I can see that my response to stress was both delayed and unhelpful. At the time, though, I think I simply assumed that this was what working in education felt like. I thought it was normal to spend most of the term running on adrenaline and then limp my way towards the next school holiday hoping it would somehow be enough to recharge me.

It’s a pattern I now see in so many of the women I work with. They are often highly capable, deeply caring professionals who have become so used to carrying responsibility that they no longer notice the signs that their nervous system has been struggling for months, or even years. They tell themselves they’re tired because work is busy, overwhelmed because life is demanding, emotional because they’re not coping very well. What they don’t realise is that their bodies have been trying to get their attention all along.

When I eventually moved into a pastoral role, the work was still incredibly stressful, but I had a little more freedom to step away when I needed to. I could leave the office, find a quiet space and actually listen to what was happening internally rather than automatically overriding it. It was probably the first time I began to understand that stress wasn’t just something happening in my head. My body was involved in the conversation too.

That understanding has become one of the foundations of the coaching work I do today with overwhelmed and burnt-out women, particularly those working in education. Before we start talking about goals, confidence, boundaries or life changes, we spend time understanding the nervous system. We explore what overwhelm feels like in their body, how stress responses have shaped their behaviour over time, and why they may find themselves stuck in patterns that no longer serve them.

Because when you begin to understand your nervous system, so much starts to make sense. The exhaustion. The irritability. The emotional eating. The inability to switch off. The feeling that you’re constantly behind, even when you’re doing more than enough. What often looks like laziness, failure or a lack of resilience is, in reality, a nervous system that has been carrying too much for too long.

I’ve found that real change becomes possible when we stop judging those responses and start understanding them instead. Once we can recognise what our bodies have been trying to tell us, we can respond differently. We can begin to meet our needs earlier, create healthier boundaries, and move away from simply surviving each week.

For many women experiencing burnout in education, that shift is where recovery begins. Not by trying harder, becoming more productive or finding a better planner, but by learning how to listen.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, exhausted or stuck in survival mode, coaching can help you understand what’s really going on beneath the surface and reconnect with the version of yourself that feels calm, clear and capable. I offer life coaching for women in education both online and in Leeds, supporting clients to recover from burnout, rebuild trust in themselves and create a life that feels sustainable again.

Woman enjoying sunshine and rest after overcoming overwhelm

Burnout in Teachers: Why You Can’t Relax (and How to Recover)

Written by Hannah Young on . Posted in Overwhelm and Burnout. No Comments on Burnout in Teachers: Why You Can’t Relax (and How to Recover)

If you’ve experienced burnout as a teacher, you might recognise this feeling…

The other evening, I was sitting in the garden enjoying the sunshine…reading, sipping a cold drink, catching a squirrel in the act of trying to steal the bird feed…

And I remembered a time when I hated the sun coming out. Not because I don’t like the heat (though I do love embracing the cosiness of winter), but because a sunny day made me feel like I ‘should’ be doing more.

At that time, I was so overwhelmed and burnt-out that I just couldn’t bring myself to do anything other than sit in front of the TV. Even getting changed after returning home from work felt like a huge effort. And the weekends would pass by without me leaving the house – just getting up, getting settled on the sofa…and staying there. So if the sun came out? I would fight this inner battle with myself: I should be going out for a walk; I should be getting some Vitamin D; I should be out meeting friends for coffee in the sunshine; I should be doing some gardening…the list went on.

But I just couldn’t summon the energy. I would long for winter and the dark nights – where my desire to be indoors could be excused.

This went on for years. And I put it down to just being pretty ‘normal’ for a woman working in education; even though I knew other people managed to live some sort of life outside of school, there was just enough chat about burnout in teachers, about being exhausted and surviving till the school holidays that I could brush off the nagging doubt that this was certainly NOT how I should be living.

When I left teaching and moved into a pastoral role, things eased slightly. I left work behind at 4pm (no longer bringing piles of work home to do well into the evenings), so I could recuperate enough to find some enjoyment outside of the house again (or at least, not just parked permanently in front of the telly). But there was still something taking charge of my body – something that still made me panic if my half-term holiday calendar started to fill up with plans or ‘stuff’ I needed to get done.

I realised my nervous system hadn’t caught up – it was still braced for survival; for just getting through a day at a time. Having to deal with anything else (like the thought of going for a healthy walk in the sunshine) was still too much.

And this is what I see in so many of the women I work with – stuck in survival mode. Scraping through to the weekend or the school holidays – but crashing when they get there. And of course the irony is that these things I avoided (like going for a walk in my sunnies) would have been just what my body needed. So, the work starts with creating just enough safety in the body (and a healthy dose of gentle accountability) to introduce these healthy, healing habits. This, along with reconnection with the self – our needs, our boundaries, etc., is the beginning of a path out of burnout and overwhelm. And, along the way we find clarity and direction.

So if you’re a woman in education who’s struggling with burnout, overwhelm – and you just want to feel like yourself again – you’re in the right place. I offer face-to-face burnout reset coaching sessions in Leeds and online – arrive as you are, and leave with a sense of calm and just a little more headspace.

If you’re interested, or want to know more about my full overwhelm to clarity coaching programme, you can book a virtual coffee with me here.