This post is a modified excerpt of Chapter 5 from Jess' book Planning to Stay: Burnout, Demoralization, Exploitation, and How to Reclaim Self-Care, Your Classroom, and Your Life... Anyway
Not All Activities Are Equal—Caring vs. Coping
Self-care is frequently misunderstood to mean “stuff that feels good.”
Is it important to feel good? Yes. Especially for people navigating teacher burnout. Are all forms of feeling good created equal? No way. That difference is the difference between caring and coping.
When my burnout, demoralization, and exploitation level was so all-consuming that I was no longer behaving honorably nor joyfully, my internal dialogue changed. After an exhausting day, I identified with the exhaustion I felt so fully that I would let myself off the Inner Adult hook. I said things to myself like, “Today was too much. I have nothing left to give. There is no way I can exercise.” I felt victimized, but I hadn’t named the sources of my victimization in order to disempower them. Instead, I started acting like a victim.
At a certain point, the conversation in my head stopped entirely. It just became a decision that my dopamine-seeking brain seemed to make without me. I’d reach past the vegetables for the pasta. I’d let one beer turn into four. I’d watch TV. And keep watching. I couldn’t do anything else. All of it was to numb against the combo of dread and anxiety that I was carrying around everywhere I went. All I wanted was to not feel those feelings anymore.
Rather than exploring my feelings and changing how I interacted with them, I was simply striving to not feel them. To be numb. To excuse myself from participating in the life I had chosen so decisively.
It is risky to publicly acknowledge my stress and my socially judged coping mechanisms. I have been saddened by how my honesty here has impacted some friendships, and how people view me as a person. Still, transparency is important. Education ranks among the top 10 professions likely to struggle with “problem drinking.” I use alcohol-related examples
intentionally, as I have seen alcohol use be tightly correlated with BD& in myself and my colleagues.
While drinking is a commonly understood mechanism for addictive behavior, it’s not the only one. Anything that brings us short-term relief has the potential to bring us long-term pain. We can be addicted to so many things. You are the only one who can decide if a behavior is a problem for you.
The Difference Between Caring and Coping is How it Feels When You’re Done
Both coping and caring feel good at some point.
Coping stops feeling good the second I stop the coping behavior. If I’m coping, I’m pushing a pause button on whatever emotion I’m trying not to feel, whatever conflict or pressure-filled expectation I’m avoiding. Coping behaviors do, indeed, provide relief from these feelings. Temporarily. When they stop, though— when the bottle is empty, the series is over, the party ends (literally or figuratively)—all of those feelings are sitting there waiting for us, unchanged. Coping feels good while it’s happening. That’s why we do it.
Too much coping, though, and we start to inadvertently multiply the parts of our life we feel we need to cope about, and a cycle can emerge. The cycle or coping initiating more need to cope is as exhausting as it is predictable.
Self-care can, like coping, feel good while we’re engaging in it, but it doesn’t have to. We know it’s self-care if we feel better, if we are better, or if our world is better because we’ve engaged in it, either on a short- or longterm scale (but, ideally, both).
Self-Care, Like Teaching, is a Practice
At this point, you’re likely picking up that self-care isn’t all bubble baths and happy hours. Rather, self-care is a discipline.
There’s a tight correlation between how effective our self-care is and how developed our Inner Adult is. If you haven’t had many models for how to care for yourself, and you’ve swung wildly between Inner Parent over-responsibility and Inner Child tantrum-y rejections of responsibility in exchange for activities that hurt you in the long run, building a self-care plan can feel overwhelming.
Good news! You have what you need to build a self-care plan that’s perfectly tailored toward your unique you-ness. What’s more, with time, you’ll get better and better at it. You’ll also have some days that are better than others, so it won’t be perfectly linear growth, but with intention and attention, you will get better at caring for yourself.
(For concrete exercises to enact strategic self-care, see Planning to Stay: Burnout, Demoralization, Exploitation, and How to Reclaim Self-Care, Your Classroom, and Your Life... Anyway)