What To Do When Back to School Burnout Begins
From fanning the flames to extinguishing the fire
The August Crunch in higher education is here and even though we had June and July to prepare, there is never enough time to do all we need to do before students return. I’m starting my 17th academic year working at the college level and this is the season when my stress levels pick up, my morning and workout routines get shattered, and my emotional eating peaks. Last week, I wrote about the compounded stress from emotional eating in Food to Soothe. While I haven’t figured out the foodstuff yet, I’m starting to wrap my head around managing this stressful time of year.
The Early Years
My master’s program for Student Affairs in Higher Education had a hidden curriculum. While they openly taught about the history of higher education, counseling strategies, leadership, and budget management, they also showcased what’s expected in the higher ed world. Busy days blend into long nights and weekends are spent either on-call or running events.
Extroverted people excelled due to the high demand for customer service and being “on” all day, every day. Back then, I thought I was an extrovert. I wore my overwhelm like a badge of honor. I believed the hours put into my work defined me and I wanted to be seen as a hard-working strong independent woman.
My immature view of the world thought my work was so critically important and anything “for the students” became more important than anything for me. My sleep, well-being, and relationships all came after my work. And it worked for me until it didn’t.
3 Schools, 3 Styles
After graduation, I moved to a fast-paced city school with VIP students in Washington, DC. To say it was not the right environment for me is a vast understatement. Over my four years there, I developed monthly migraines and a stomach ulcer and I broke out in stress hives - twice.
I share a deeper dive into that first job and its impact on my physical and mental health in my book, Fragile Thoughts, and also in this Substack brief post from May 2024 which was written at the end of the last academic year.
When I finally found the courage to leave, I discovered a smaller school closer to home with a mission that included enhancing holistic health. I felt supported in a whole new way. Unfortunately, the work and the mantra remained the same. We were there “for the students” and their needs always came before our own.
I spent 8 years there and enjoyed the people I worked with, but it became just as stressful as my first job because budget cuts and layoffs became a recurring theme and stunted staff morale. My road rage grew as the commute grew from 45 minutes to 75 minutes each way as the areas between my home and the college were built up over the years.
My therapist at the time helped me manifest the job I wanted at the only college just 10 minutes from my house, an even smaller liberal arts college. The interview was easy as the job description looked like my resume. I interviewed with ease and got the job.
When I started there, it was a dream. Not only did leadership talk openly about the importance of supporting staff, but they backed it up with amazing benefits and flexibility that the other schools didn’t offer. The work was challenging in a new and exciting way, the easy commute gave me hours back in the day, and I felt like I found my perfect fit.
Like Goldie Locks, I had to spend some time in the wrong one before I could find the right one. The first job was too demanding and high-stress, the second job resulted in road rage and disappointment, but the third job was just right!
And Then Covid Happened
I started at my current job in July 2019 and that first semester I was learning about the campus community, building relationships, and creating a vision for the new office. At the start of the spring semester, I had a solid plan - and then it all went to shit. At the beginning of our spring break, March 13, 2020, the world shut down and you all know what happened next.
Working in education was always hard, but became more difficult as student needs shifted to be more focused on mental health crises and accommodations and the budgets shifted in response. Wearing masks removed our ability to smile at one another and social gatherings were banned for safety reasons. We all were dealing with burnout and extreme stress around that time.
Serendipitously, that’s when I started a Learning Circle - a book club with a self-study twist - and began opening up to strangers on Zoom about my life. A few months into that new venture, I read a book that changed the way I live my life.
I don’t say that lightly but I mean it - this book impacted my daily routines and was so mind-blowing that it was all I could talk about (still true!)
Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagoksi.
This book shares the scientifically researched and proven effective strategies to stop the stress response in the body. The stress response is our evolutionary reaction to dealing with fear. When we are afraid or believe we are being threatened our survival instinct kicks in and turns on the bodily responses to stress. Some of these include:
our hearts pump faster to get ready to run or fight
our platelets in our blood get stickier to help us not bleed out if cut
our blood flow moves to the heart and brain which means our blood flow moves away from the gut - because who has time to digest our food when we have to fight for our lives?
All this happens subconsciously. We don’t tell our hearts to pump faster, it just does it. So telling ourselves to “calm down” isn’t going to work to stop it. Stress is a physical thing, not just a mental thing.
Once the stress response is on, the only way to turn it off is by using the body to send signals to the brain that you’re safe.
In the book, they review 7 evidence-based strategies to signal to the brain that you’re safe - to turn off the stress response - and they are all simple and easy to add to our daily routines. Here’s the list in the simplest format possible (but please read the book as it goes much deeper into how and why these things work scientifically but in easy to understand terms):
Physical Activity
Deep Breaths
Positive Social Interactions
Laughing
Crying
Affection - A 20-second hug, 3 minutes of petting an animal, or orgasms alone or with someone else release oxytocin and turn off the stress response
Creative Expression
Since we’ve likely got the stress response firing off constantly, we’ve got to combat that with fairly consistent messages back that we’re safe so incorporating all 7 of these as often as possible is key.
I’ll dive into the science for just one of them here: Physical Activity.
This does not require an hour at the gym or running a 5K. The great news is that as long as we get the heart rate up for a few minutes - 2 or 3 minutes minimum - then get the heart rate back down, the brain sees this as a signal that we’re safe.
The Nagoski sisters share the science and tell us that because back in the day when a saber-tooth tiger or wooly mammoth or whatever dangerous killer came close, our stress response kicked on and all the hormones reacted and our body became primed to survive. We ran or we fought the beast - and if we survived, we likely sat down to catch our breath. That shift in the body was identified as the signal that the threat was gone and it was safe to turn off the stress response.
So that’s what we need to do to reduce stress - get our heart rate up, then back down again. For physical health, you might need more than that but for mental health, it’s just a few minutes.
Maybe it’s 20 jumping jacks in your office after a stressful meeting, maybe it’s dancing all-out in your kitchen before cooking dinner after a long day, or maybe it’s playing basketball in the driveway with your kids after a heated argument with them.
Incorporating this critical information into my daily routine, along with the other 6 amazingly simple strategies I learned from the book, I began to notice a shift. I could get out of a stressed mind faster and sometimes even counteract it so quickly that it became null.
The sisters shared easy strategies for dealing with stress in their Burnout book and I built my routine around their wisdom. Life seemed to get easier. Of course, stress still hits but I feel like I can combat it when it shows up quicker than ever before.
Realizations
With school starting and the busy season upon me, my routines typically begin to break down. With the required early morning shifts, my walks with my dog Charlie get shortened. With late nights for events, my typical yoga classes with friends are not possible. With weekend work, my creative writing gets cut. Each of these important parts of my routine is needed to turn off the stress response - but this is the August Crunch, so options are limited. It’s easy to blame the job.
Looking at my upcoming schedule shows many late nights and weekend work, sixteen presentations in the next two weeks, and deadlines for grant reports that have a big impact on my future work. Seeing this calendar, my heart starts to beat in my chest. I can feel it getting faster - so I have to remember what I’ve learned.
In writing this, I’m realizing, it’s not the job and it’s not the August Crunch that causes the stress. The real root cause is my routines being wrecked which ensures my stress response stays on. So instead of complaining about the job, I could find humor in it all and laugh. Instead of stress-searching for jobs on LinkedIn, I could write and express myself creatively during that time online.
Skipping my morning routine of movement and breathwork and my nighttime routine of community and writing is the problem - not the school year itself. I mean, I love my job! Over time, my brain identified the threat as the students returning but really, the true threat is not finding time for deep breathing in the middle of the day.
I have to use my body to give signals to my brain that I am safe. Since that only takes a few moments to a few minutes - I can certainly fit that into my day.
Writing this helped me remember that I’m living the life my younger self dreamed about and I don’t want to leave higher education, I just need to focus on the 7 strategies to turn off the stress response.
The Next Three Weeks…
I also realized I need to do whatever I can to carve out some time for the things I know work for me to destress. That’s why over the next 3 weeks I’ll be posting interviews with 3 amazing women who I’ve met on this writing and publishing journey.
The 3 guests will focus on the 3 powerful healing tools that we discuss in this Write to Heal community often:
Cheryl Cantafio will share her experiences with using writing, especially poetry, as a healing tool and her experience publishing two books (so far!)
Stephanie Olenik will share how book clubs and finding community around a shared passion is part of her healing journey and how it all culminated in opening The BookHouse Hotel!
Janine Agoglia, Substack author of Yoga Living 50 and Beyond, will share how the powerful practices of yoga have been a part of her healing journey as she ages.
I know you will love to hear what these amazing women have to say because each of them has inspired me.
Journal Prompts:
What are the most common signals from your body that indicate you’re stressed? How can you train yourself to “habit-stack” and add one of the above 7 strategies to your day when you recognize those stress signals?
What daily routines do you have that help to prevent stress? Do you incorporate any of the 7 strategies from the Burnout Book? *If you have questions about any of them, ask in the comments and I’d be happy to expand on it.
Is there a specific time of year that tends to be busier and more stressful for you? How can you incorporate healthy habits to turn off that stress response at those times?
Thank you for reading Write to Heal. Please hit that heart button❤️if you made it this far. I’d love to hear your thoughts about back to school or any kind of burnout and how you have learned to handle it.
Write to Heal will always be free. If you’d like to donate to the cause, feel free to buy me a chai! Your support is much appreciated.
Fragile Thoughts: A Healing Memoir is available anywhere books are sold.
Thank you Katie. For me it for a long time I coped with stress by laughing and these days it is crying and both serve me well as a burn out survivor. BTW I put your memoir on my to buy list once I am done with all my current reads. It is available in the Netherlands in the paperback version :-)
Both laughing and crying are valuable tools to destress! And thank you so much for you interest in my book and support 🙏 you would be my furthest from me global sale ever!!! 😊