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Tag: Teacher Wellbeing

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.