It is important to recognize that there is a difference between being a reflective practitioner and someone who becomes overwhelmed by their thoughts, fears, and anxieties. While there is a time when we need to let ourselves “be in our feelings” and to experience those emotions of pain and fear, productive reflection requires that we also bring a little more structure and intentionality to our thinking and meditations.
The psychological term for excessive contemplation of oneself is called rumination. It is the mental process whereby someone ponders a past or future event until their emotional response has grown disproportionately to the impact of the original thought. Some people refer to it as a mental “rabbit hole.” Rumination is not abnormal, especially for teachers. Consider the many times you have driven home as you mentally replayed an event from the day. You likely spent a good amount of time revisiting the moment in your head, justifying your choices, and (my personal favorite) re-creating much more snarky or witty dialogue that you had wished you had said at the time.
These scenarios are not unusual. They are the result of the nature of our work, where we are constantly bumping heads with other people, challenging them to do more or do better. Sometimes the things others say hurt us, and sometimes the things we say hurt them. So processing these events are simply natural reactions to emotionally charged events. However, they become a problem when we allow those ruminations to go unchecked, when we continue on with those resentments or hurt feelings until we have blown things out of proportion and painted ourselves out to be the innocent victims who share little responsibility in the outcomes. Even in cases where we have been wrongfully accused or hurt, it is important that we build in some type of mental speed bump, where we can slow down for just a moment, re-adjust, and continue on with our regularly scheduled lives, so that our loved ones do not need to bare the brunt of our struggles and sorrows each day.
Here are some tips to building some of those mental speed bumps.
Write. For me, writing allows me the opportunity to put it out there, bring form to my hurts and sorrows, and to leave it behind (even if for a short while). But I know this is not for everyone.
Exercise. There is nothing like a strenuous workout to reboot the brain and allow you to work out some of that negative energy. Low impact options like yoga are also good for clearing your head, and giving your heart a chance to resettle a little. But perhaps the easiest and healthiest is simply a nice twenty minute walk outdoors. From Henry David Thoreau to Mahatma Gandhi, some of our world’s greatest thinkers worked their thoughts out by going for a nice, quiet stroll.
Confide in a Mentor. Being a good teacher is a demanding task. It should not be undertaken on your own. Find someone who is willing to meet with you briefly on a weekly basis and who might be available for both regularly scheduled visits and the occasional early evening phone calls when you just need to process things or vent.
Laugh. Okay, not the forced kind of laugh that can feel more like an angry burst. But a good, heartfelt chortle. It can start with a willingness to laugh at ourselves. Doing so allows us to avoid taking ourselves too seriously, and if for even a moment, giving us a reprieve from the weight of the world. Losing ourselves in an episode of our favorite comedy, playing on the floor with the family pet, or chasing children around the house until they squeal with laughter allows us all to come back to the beauty of this moment now.
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