When I took a 1-year long-term sub position, I knew I was taking a risk. But I never thought about how painful it might be. When I first learned that there would be two positions open in my department, I was ecstatic. Until reality set in: the reality that applying for a permanent position rather than a long-term sub position means competing again much more experienced teachers; the reality that I work in a school that has, historically, hired the top candidate, not the familiar one; the reality that the teachers on the interview team aren't the ones who have in recent months expressed great desire for me to return; the reality that one crappy pop-in observation means that an administrator who used to think I was a great teacher now thinks that my classroom management skills aren't any good. (You know what's not a good time for a bad observation? When you're trying to compete for a job.)
On top of it, I'm exhausted. I'm weeks behind on grading. I had to front-load a lot of my final prep because in one course, half of my students are released for the rest of the school year to work on special projects and in my other course, I wanted my students to do a teaching review (meaning I had to get them tons of review materials a week ago to give them time to prepare the review sessions that started today). I have parents, counselors, and special ed teachers to contact about students who are in danger of failing. And because my future at school is uncertain due to my long-term sub status, I'm attempting to squeeze in some time to apply elsewhere, but I'm so focused on trying to get work done for my current job that I can't manage to find time to take care of my own future. And already working in a school where I'm also competing to have a job
next year means that I feel like I'm constantly in the spotlight and any
misstep could cost me the opportunity to work there again next year. The only reason I'm managing to get even 4 hours of sleep a night is due to me falling asleep while trying to complete work. And on top of it all, I just completed week 5 of my 6-week wait since last seeing my counselor due to circumstances beyond my control in a 5-week time span that I could have used a counseling appointment about once a week. The pressure, stress, workload, lack of sleep, and uncertainty about my future have left me drowning. All I can think about is finding some way to survive.
And I'm starting to wonder if I should actually be a teacher. Up until this year, it was always a question of what type of teacher I should be - math or music. People always ask me all the time which one I like better; quite frankly, my response is entirely dependent on who I'm talking to. To the music people, I always answer "music" without skipping a beat; that's where my greater passion and joy lie. To the math people, I say that I enjoy both for fear of losing the opportunity of actually having a job with the many more music positions than math positions that are available. The truth? I think I'm more cut out to be a math teacher - I fit the mold better. But I love teaching a lot more when I'm teaching music. There are more math jobs out there, and it doesn't always require networking to get one. Music jobs are few, and you have to network to get one. I stink at networking with music people; reason 1: my social anxiety and introversion make it difficult for me to randomly introduce myself to random people at conventions, and I didn't have the advantage that many of my peers did of having a high school music teacher who took me under their wing and introduced me to all sorts of people; reason 2: I kind of rebel against the music mold (though my philosophy of teaching music does tend to align more with the teachers I've worked with than it does my peers, the majority of whom are music snobs who refuse to recognize even Broadway musicals as real music). So I feel like I should just give up on my dream of teaching music and resign myself to teaching math. I still enjoy the teaching aspect, but I forsee burning out. Initially, I thought I'd burn out in 3-5 years. I never thought it would be 1. I just can't take the pressure.
Plenty of people have told me I'm a great teacher. But none of them are the people whose opinions matter at the moment (and I should clarify that by "matter" I mean "determine my future"). I've had plenty of family and adults who are friends tell me that I'm a great teacher, but few of them have ever worked in schools, much less been teachers, themselves. I've had some education major peers tell me that they'd want me to be their kids' teacher (one of the greatest compliments a teacher ever bestows on another teacher), but who are we to know anything as young teachers anyway? In recent weeks I've had some of my most critical students tell me that I'm a great teacher (to the point that one who didn't like me when the year started was trying to convince me to teach the math class that she's taking next year so that she can have me again), but I'm pretty sure that the powers that be aren't taking student opinion into consideration. I've had mentors and supervisors through the teacher training process and even colleagues now who tell me that I'm a fantastic teacher, but none of them have the power to make the final decision now. The people making the decision include an administrator who I think has lost faith in me due to a non-stellar observation last week, a teacher in my department who I barely know, a teacher in my department who is super analytical and critical of everything and everyone, and a teacher who I may have made the mistake of sharing my every weakness with this year because they felt like someone safe to confide in.
On top of it all, I feel isolated. All year, I've reached out to my department for help, but as long as I'm competing for a job, I feel uncomfortable (though I'll feel even more uncomfortable if I don't get re-hired). I don't know how to reach out to my new teacher peers because, even though according to more experience teachers the first year (or few years) of suck, I seem to be the only person I know who's in their first year of teaching and feels that way. And I don't know how to reach out to the teachers that have been mentors to me over the years because I'm so afraid of them finding me to be a bother and a burden. And reaching out to anyone who isn't a teacher doesn't help at all because no one understands what it's like to work in the educational system unless they've been in it themselves.
Here's the deal: I love my kids. I love getting to work with them day in and day out. Even though they sometimes drive me crazy, they are fabulous people, and I love the time that I get to spend with them. Students are what make teaching worthwhile. And if my job consisted of the time I spend with my kids and the work I do planning and grading, I would be fine. But my job requires so much more than that. And as someone with increasingly out-of-control social anxiety, I feel constantly watched and criticized by all of the adults I work with, be they teachers, administrators, support staff, counselors, parents. etc. I feel like everyone around me is watching me and judging me constantly, and that even the tiniest misstep will cost me my livelihood.
All I've wanted to do for the last decade is be a teacher. Before that, I wanted to be a veterinarian; but seeing as I can't handle fictional dogs getting hurt without bawling, I don't think I could handle the emotional toll of working with animals who were sick, injured, or dying. I once considered being a youth director, but my stomach still turns when I think about all of the unethical things that happen behind closed doors at churches; my faith can't withstand working at a church. And I've considered becoming a writer, but I don't think I can take the rejection of publishers and editors any better than I can take the pressure of teaching.
I love my kids. I love working with kids. They're refreshing and hopeful. They bring more joy to my life than I can ever imagine being able to give them in return.
But I'm cracking under pressure. I'm drowning in obligations. I'm in pure survival mode going into the last two weeks of the school year. And when it's all I can do to stay afloat just enough to gasp for breath every once in a while, people are still telling me that I'm not good enough and I need to improve by the end of the school year. And for every person who tells me that I don't have to be a super-teacher, there's another person asking me to do more and do it faster. And some days I just want to scream back that I have no life outside of school, no time to do what I want to do, I'm getting under 4 hours of sleep most nights, what the heck more do you want from me? I'm only human. And on those days, I just want to quit.
But I don't want to be anything else but a teacher. So even when I want to quit, I'm left with the question: Where would I go from here?
On a side note: If you had "Where Do We Go From Here" from "Once More with Feeling" running through your head at any point in this blog post, we should probably become best friends.
Friday, May 24, 2013
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Rejection
I don't deal well with rejection, in any situation. I'm not sure when it started, but it's been there as long as I can remember. It's the reason that I'm horrible at fundraising and could never be a salesperson. It's the reason I never ask for help. It's the reason I'd rather sit isolated from a new group than join in before a direct invitation. And I think it's half the reason that the job search process is especially tough for me.
Finding a job is stressful for most anyone. No job means no money means no food/home/anything in our world. But I'm so afraid of being rejected, it's difficult for me to face the whole process. I can mostly handle the application portion - it's the interview and beyond that are harder. The actual rejection conversation is what's most difficult for me - having to face someone who says that I'm not good enough.
It doesn't help that I have such low self-confidence that at least 90% of my self-worth is based entirely on what other people think of me - which is why any negative comment that anyone makes about me tends to send me into a downward spiral for minimally the rest of the day, if not longer. And any rejection sends me the message that I'm not good enough, which in my brain means I'm not worthwhile at all.
My current application/interview process feels worse than any possible rejection I've ever faced before. I'm in the strange position of having worked somewhere for a year and needing to now apply, interview, and compete to have a position again next year. This year I'm a long-term sub, so even though there are two positions open in my department, I have no guarantee of getting one because I'm not currently in a permanent position. The whole possibility of not having a job 3 weeks from now is scary enough. But the level of rejection that would come with that reality is sending my anxiety and depression through the roof.
I've spent the last 8 months working along side the people who will be making the decision about who gets the two open positions. And depending on when a final decision is made, I may still have a couple of weeks working with them before the school year is over. And if I don't get the position, I don't know how I'm going to make it through the rest of the school year. And it's not because I would be super angry or because I feel entitled to the position. It's because I fear the rejection I know I'll feel. I fear the awkwardness of, after a year of others telling me that I'm doing well and that they hope there'll be a place for me next year, it turns out that I'm not good enough, that I'm not wanted. I don't know how I'll face people the rest of the school year. I don't know how I'll trust new people again in my life. (Have I ever mentioned that I already have massive trust issues? Because I definitely do. And I tend to assume the worst of people as a defense mechanism to keep from getting hurt unexpectedly.) And thanks to my badly-wired brain, I can't manage to move past these fears.
It doesn't help that I've faced rejection after a year or two of positive relationships too many times in my life. In elementary school, I wasn't in the same class as my good friends from 2nd through 6th grades. Each of those years I tried to make new friends with people who were in my classes. We would do projects together, have play dates and sleepovers, and by the end of the year it seemed like we were pretty good friends. But when the following school year started, it all disappeared; even when we were in the same class, they would replace me with someone else. Thanks to my junior high years, I was finally able to build a core group of friends who I had some classes with, but in high school I was met with one-year friendships all over again. With the exception of a handful of people, my college friendships were the same way. Even in my three summers working at camp, where I was told I would make deep, lifelong friendships, I'm not even in occasional contact with the people I considered my closest friends during those summers. I've been discarded after a single year so many times - I don't know that I can face it again. I don't know that I can face the rejection.
So now I have a job interview that's less than a week away, and I should be elated that after a year as a long-term sub, I have the opportunity to at least compete to get my position back next year. But I find myself so crippled by the fear of rejection that I just want it to be over. I want to skip to the time when I know whether I get to come back next year. Or if I don't get to come back, I'd like to skip to the end of the school year. I just want to skip to a time when I can start moving past this fear of rejection.
Finding a job is stressful for most anyone. No job means no money means no food/home/anything in our world. But I'm so afraid of being rejected, it's difficult for me to face the whole process. I can mostly handle the application portion - it's the interview and beyond that are harder. The actual rejection conversation is what's most difficult for me - having to face someone who says that I'm not good enough.
It doesn't help that I have such low self-confidence that at least 90% of my self-worth is based entirely on what other people think of me - which is why any negative comment that anyone makes about me tends to send me into a downward spiral for minimally the rest of the day, if not longer. And any rejection sends me the message that I'm not good enough, which in my brain means I'm not worthwhile at all.
My current application/interview process feels worse than any possible rejection I've ever faced before. I'm in the strange position of having worked somewhere for a year and needing to now apply, interview, and compete to have a position again next year. This year I'm a long-term sub, so even though there are two positions open in my department, I have no guarantee of getting one because I'm not currently in a permanent position. The whole possibility of not having a job 3 weeks from now is scary enough. But the level of rejection that would come with that reality is sending my anxiety and depression through the roof.
I've spent the last 8 months working along side the people who will be making the decision about who gets the two open positions. And depending on when a final decision is made, I may still have a couple of weeks working with them before the school year is over. And if I don't get the position, I don't know how I'm going to make it through the rest of the school year. And it's not because I would be super angry or because I feel entitled to the position. It's because I fear the rejection I know I'll feel. I fear the awkwardness of, after a year of others telling me that I'm doing well and that they hope there'll be a place for me next year, it turns out that I'm not good enough, that I'm not wanted. I don't know how I'll face people the rest of the school year. I don't know how I'll trust new people again in my life. (Have I ever mentioned that I already have massive trust issues? Because I definitely do. And I tend to assume the worst of people as a defense mechanism to keep from getting hurt unexpectedly.) And thanks to my badly-wired brain, I can't manage to move past these fears.
It doesn't help that I've faced rejection after a year or two of positive relationships too many times in my life. In elementary school, I wasn't in the same class as my good friends from 2nd through 6th grades. Each of those years I tried to make new friends with people who were in my classes. We would do projects together, have play dates and sleepovers, and by the end of the year it seemed like we were pretty good friends. But when the following school year started, it all disappeared; even when we were in the same class, they would replace me with someone else. Thanks to my junior high years, I was finally able to build a core group of friends who I had some classes with, but in high school I was met with one-year friendships all over again. With the exception of a handful of people, my college friendships were the same way. Even in my three summers working at camp, where I was told I would make deep, lifelong friendships, I'm not even in occasional contact with the people I considered my closest friends during those summers. I've been discarded after a single year so many times - I don't know that I can face it again. I don't know that I can face the rejection.
So now I have a job interview that's less than a week away, and I should be elated that after a year as a long-term sub, I have the opportunity to at least compete to get my position back next year. But I find myself so crippled by the fear of rejection that I just want it to be over. I want to skip to the time when I know whether I get to come back next year. Or if I don't get to come back, I'd like to skip to the end of the school year. I just want to skip to a time when I can start moving past this fear of rejection.
Thursday, May 9, 2013
In Honor of National Children's Mental Health Awareness Day
This evening I learned that today is National Children's Health Awareness Day. I didn't even know that such a thing existed - but I'm glad it does. Because there shouldn't have to be any more kids like me.
I'm fairly confident that I've had social anxiety since at least the time I was in 2nd grade. That year I learned that I grew a pit in my stomach every time my teacher reprimanded anyone in the class. That was also the first time I struggled to find friends at school; I mean, I had friends, but none of them were in my class, and for whatever reason I was unable to make new, lasting friendships with my classmates - this issue persisted throughout my time in elementary school. By the end of the year, I would make "friends" - but none of them stuck around if we weren't in the same class the following year. But that particular year, I had a good teacher who I think was probably instrumental in the fact that I wound up spending some time with the school counselor in a "friendship club" with some other girls in my class who happened to be new to the school that year - I never realized that such a thing may have had something to do with my mental health until my new counselor asked me if I had ever been in a group like that.
But beyond that first year, things took a general turn for the worse. My fear of authority figures was solidified in my third grade teacher who had little tolerance for my personality; between her and my rocky neighborhood friendships, I spent many a Monday intentionally giving myself a stomachache by swallowing as much air as possible until I complained of feeling sick enough that my mom would let me stay home. This ended when my parents brought me to the doctor for my persistent stomach aches; I figured I was in trouble, so I stopped using that technique to get out of going to school.
In future years, I had better teachers who at least allowed me to feel safe in school, but school was still an anxiety-causing environment. I loved learning but wanted little to do with my classmates. Each time that I struggled to fit in and find friends, I became more anxious in social situations. And even in elementary school, I remember dropping an extracurricular project because I feared the portion that required me to talk to strangers (people working at stores).
Life got better when I hit junior high - unlike most people, I count junior high as the best three years of my childhood. What made the difference? I was in honors classes surrounded by other smart kids who, because they were like me, didn't ridicule me for my academic excellence or for every time I was anything less than perfect. Additionally, I found my niche in the weekly before-school Bible study that consisted primarily of people who I already counted as friends; we shared our faith with each other, and, unlike my peers at my own church, these people thought it was cool to have strong faiths and be super-involved in church activities.
But when I hit high school, my mental health took a severe turn for the worse. I spent my sophomore year beginning 4 of 5 school days each week in a hostile classroom environment led by a teacher who put down everything that I believed in. I spent at least 2-3 days each week in tears. Junior year had a chance at being better until my choir director committed suicide and, though I wasn't one of the inner circle choir kids, a part of my world fell apart. Except I felt like I didn't have the right to feel so broken about it because I wasn't one of the inner-circle choir kids. At about the same time I discovered the great corruption that lay in the inner workings of my church, and the one stable part of my life fell apart as well. It was around this time that my mom figured out that I had mental health issues, but I was in denial and rejected any help that she tried to bring me. I figured I was just over-sensitive and prone to crying a lot. But the kicker to me is the fact that no one else seemed to notice.
I feel like someone else should have known by this point that my mental health was not okay. I cried through the same classes so many times, shouldn't at least one of my teachers noticed and done something? Not that they would have known how to help, but at the very least couldn't one of them have contacted my counselor about meeting with me. (Given, my counselor canceled every appointment my parents tried to set up for me, so maybe that's where the blame lies...) But no one ever reached out enough to help me. Only twice did teachers ever pull me aside to chat about what was going on (and I'm pretty sure one of those was only because he thought his reprimand was the sole reason I was crying...) I do have confidence that one other teacher may have reached out to me, but by pure chance the only day I ever cried through her class was a day that she happened to be gone.
Yet at the same time, I think that the social anxiety came long before the depression - may have even led to the depression (as my depression symptoms have often been triggered by embarrassment and/or criticism). And, beyond my many intentional sick days in 3rd grade, I internalized the anxiety I was feeling. By the time I hit high school and symptoms of depression began to show, my brain was already greatly set in its ways.
I wish someone had noticed earlier.
We don't think of children as people who would live with mental illness. Mental illness doesn't seem to hit the radar until people hit adolescence or adulthood. But I was 7 years old the first time that I experienced consistent anxiety in social situations. But I don't think anyone thought to look for it - even knew that it could be an issue for me at such a young age.
And as I got older, I was so highly functional that I don't think anyone realized how bad my mental health issues were. I was a quiet, non-disruptive child who didn't need a lot of attention. Academically, I was a top student - excelling through elementary school, earning a single non-A (A-) in junior high, pulling a 3.9 unweighted GPA through high school and a 3.94 through 5 years of college and a double education major that included two semesters of credit overloads. But what I don't think people realized was that schoolwork was my coping mechanism. As long as I had homework to do, I could ignore the rest of my problems - the conflicts with people and fear that anyone might see me as something less than perfect that caused me such great anxiety could be stuffed away as long as I had homework to keep my mind busy. I was rarely absent, and only fell from functional when homework and anxiety-causing situations were too intertwined for me to compartmentalize them. Even my on-campus counselor praised how functional I was. But that didn't make my issues any better. It just pushed them away for me to deal with when I lost my schoolwork coping mechanism.
Hello first year of teaching. Though I still have schoolwork to do every night, I now feel that all eyes are on my every move. My work affects more than just me now, and the possible judgement that could come at any moment from my administrators, colleagues, parents, and even students scares the crap out of me. And my newest coping mechanism is to get lost in the stories of TV shows and movies, which takes away from my work time, causing me to stay up later, get less sleep, and therefore be even more prone to awful bouts of anxiety and depression. A few weeks ago, I made it to school only to leave again because I realized I couldn't be a functional teacher that day. There are some days I don't know how I make it from my van to the school building in the morning. Other days I dash into my office between classes to have a panic attack, a couple of times even needing to have a colleague cover my class until I could settle enough to be a functional teacher.
I'm finally to a point where I'm working through my anxiety and depression with a counselor and am working to retrain my brain to act like a normal person's. But I've spent over 15 years of my life falling into my current habits, and habits of over 15 years are tough to break.
I wish someone had noticed earlier.
I don't want there to be more kids like me. I want to live in a world where we detect and treat mental illness early. Because having to start dealing with mental health issues as an adult after the issues have persisted for the majority of one's life is a steep task - and it's preventable.
I do the best I can on my own. As a teacher, the students that I know struggle with mental health issues are especially close to my heart, and I keep special watch over them. And while I know that I can't expect myself to catch everything, I know that if a kid showed up in my classroom in tears 2-3 days a week, I'd at least contact their counselor. But, unfortunately, I've found that more often than not the people who are working to be aware that other people in their lives might be dealing with mental illness are the ones who are dealing with mental illness themselves. My mom was the one who saw my depression - and she struggles with depression herself. My greatest mentor was the one who worried that my perfectionism, the pressure I put on myself, and my tendency to take on more than I could handle would lead me to have anxiety issues - only after she was diagnosed with anxiety herself. And the people who have most often offered support for me as I work through my anxiety and depression are people who struggle with mental illness themselves. The people who haven't dealt with mental illness haven't always been as supportive. When I finally realized I should be evaluated for depression, one of my friends tried to convince me that I didn't have depression. When I was struggling with anxiety, some of my Christian friends were certain that the anxiety would disappear if I read my Bible and prayed more. And it took even until recent months for me to get my dad to understand how much anxiety I have over seemingly easy everyday tasks like calling to make a doctor's appointment or asking a store employee where I can find something. Even when talking about mental health in my education classes, many of my classmates stated that they wouldn't take much action with a sullen withdrawn student who's not a classroom management issue, even though the student in the scenario seemed to have symptoms of depression. From what I've seen - if you haven't dealt with mental health issues, they're either off your radar or you have to work extremely hard to understand them.
I want the world to be more aware of mental health issues (and to stop judging and stereotyping people with mental health issues, but I'll save that topic for another day). But even more so, I want to world to be aware of children who have mental health issues. Because it's easier to retrain a 7-year-old brain than an almost-24-year-old brain. And I don't want any child to have to go through what I have.
I'm fairly confident that I've had social anxiety since at least the time I was in 2nd grade. That year I learned that I grew a pit in my stomach every time my teacher reprimanded anyone in the class. That was also the first time I struggled to find friends at school; I mean, I had friends, but none of them were in my class, and for whatever reason I was unable to make new, lasting friendships with my classmates - this issue persisted throughout my time in elementary school. By the end of the year, I would make "friends" - but none of them stuck around if we weren't in the same class the following year. But that particular year, I had a good teacher who I think was probably instrumental in the fact that I wound up spending some time with the school counselor in a "friendship club" with some other girls in my class who happened to be new to the school that year - I never realized that such a thing may have had something to do with my mental health until my new counselor asked me if I had ever been in a group like that.
But beyond that first year, things took a general turn for the worse. My fear of authority figures was solidified in my third grade teacher who had little tolerance for my personality; between her and my rocky neighborhood friendships, I spent many a Monday intentionally giving myself a stomachache by swallowing as much air as possible until I complained of feeling sick enough that my mom would let me stay home. This ended when my parents brought me to the doctor for my persistent stomach aches; I figured I was in trouble, so I stopped using that technique to get out of going to school.
In future years, I had better teachers who at least allowed me to feel safe in school, but school was still an anxiety-causing environment. I loved learning but wanted little to do with my classmates. Each time that I struggled to fit in and find friends, I became more anxious in social situations. And even in elementary school, I remember dropping an extracurricular project because I feared the portion that required me to talk to strangers (people working at stores).
Life got better when I hit junior high - unlike most people, I count junior high as the best three years of my childhood. What made the difference? I was in honors classes surrounded by other smart kids who, because they were like me, didn't ridicule me for my academic excellence or for every time I was anything less than perfect. Additionally, I found my niche in the weekly before-school Bible study that consisted primarily of people who I already counted as friends; we shared our faith with each other, and, unlike my peers at my own church, these people thought it was cool to have strong faiths and be super-involved in church activities.
But when I hit high school, my mental health took a severe turn for the worse. I spent my sophomore year beginning 4 of 5 school days each week in a hostile classroom environment led by a teacher who put down everything that I believed in. I spent at least 2-3 days each week in tears. Junior year had a chance at being better until my choir director committed suicide and, though I wasn't one of the inner circle choir kids, a part of my world fell apart. Except I felt like I didn't have the right to feel so broken about it because I wasn't one of the inner-circle choir kids. At about the same time I discovered the great corruption that lay in the inner workings of my church, and the one stable part of my life fell apart as well. It was around this time that my mom figured out that I had mental health issues, but I was in denial and rejected any help that she tried to bring me. I figured I was just over-sensitive and prone to crying a lot. But the kicker to me is the fact that no one else seemed to notice.
I feel like someone else should have known by this point that my mental health was not okay. I cried through the same classes so many times, shouldn't at least one of my teachers noticed and done something? Not that they would have known how to help, but at the very least couldn't one of them have contacted my counselor about meeting with me. (Given, my counselor canceled every appointment my parents tried to set up for me, so maybe that's where the blame lies...) But no one ever reached out enough to help me. Only twice did teachers ever pull me aside to chat about what was going on (and I'm pretty sure one of those was only because he thought his reprimand was the sole reason I was crying...) I do have confidence that one other teacher may have reached out to me, but by pure chance the only day I ever cried through her class was a day that she happened to be gone.
Yet at the same time, I think that the social anxiety came long before the depression - may have even led to the depression (as my depression symptoms have often been triggered by embarrassment and/or criticism). And, beyond my many intentional sick days in 3rd grade, I internalized the anxiety I was feeling. By the time I hit high school and symptoms of depression began to show, my brain was already greatly set in its ways.
I wish someone had noticed earlier.
We don't think of children as people who would live with mental illness. Mental illness doesn't seem to hit the radar until people hit adolescence or adulthood. But I was 7 years old the first time that I experienced consistent anxiety in social situations. But I don't think anyone thought to look for it - even knew that it could be an issue for me at such a young age.
And as I got older, I was so highly functional that I don't think anyone realized how bad my mental health issues were. I was a quiet, non-disruptive child who didn't need a lot of attention. Academically, I was a top student - excelling through elementary school, earning a single non-A (A-) in junior high, pulling a 3.9 unweighted GPA through high school and a 3.94 through 5 years of college and a double education major that included two semesters of credit overloads. But what I don't think people realized was that schoolwork was my coping mechanism. As long as I had homework to do, I could ignore the rest of my problems - the conflicts with people and fear that anyone might see me as something less than perfect that caused me such great anxiety could be stuffed away as long as I had homework to keep my mind busy. I was rarely absent, and only fell from functional when homework and anxiety-causing situations were too intertwined for me to compartmentalize them. Even my on-campus counselor praised how functional I was. But that didn't make my issues any better. It just pushed them away for me to deal with when I lost my schoolwork coping mechanism.
Hello first year of teaching. Though I still have schoolwork to do every night, I now feel that all eyes are on my every move. My work affects more than just me now, and the possible judgement that could come at any moment from my administrators, colleagues, parents, and even students scares the crap out of me. And my newest coping mechanism is to get lost in the stories of TV shows and movies, which takes away from my work time, causing me to stay up later, get less sleep, and therefore be even more prone to awful bouts of anxiety and depression. A few weeks ago, I made it to school only to leave again because I realized I couldn't be a functional teacher that day. There are some days I don't know how I make it from my van to the school building in the morning. Other days I dash into my office between classes to have a panic attack, a couple of times even needing to have a colleague cover my class until I could settle enough to be a functional teacher.
I'm finally to a point where I'm working through my anxiety and depression with a counselor and am working to retrain my brain to act like a normal person's. But I've spent over 15 years of my life falling into my current habits, and habits of over 15 years are tough to break.
I wish someone had noticed earlier.
I don't want there to be more kids like me. I want to live in a world where we detect and treat mental illness early. Because having to start dealing with mental health issues as an adult after the issues have persisted for the majority of one's life is a steep task - and it's preventable.
I do the best I can on my own. As a teacher, the students that I know struggle with mental health issues are especially close to my heart, and I keep special watch over them. And while I know that I can't expect myself to catch everything, I know that if a kid showed up in my classroom in tears 2-3 days a week, I'd at least contact their counselor. But, unfortunately, I've found that more often than not the people who are working to be aware that other people in their lives might be dealing with mental illness are the ones who are dealing with mental illness themselves. My mom was the one who saw my depression - and she struggles with depression herself. My greatest mentor was the one who worried that my perfectionism, the pressure I put on myself, and my tendency to take on more than I could handle would lead me to have anxiety issues - only after she was diagnosed with anxiety herself. And the people who have most often offered support for me as I work through my anxiety and depression are people who struggle with mental illness themselves. The people who haven't dealt with mental illness haven't always been as supportive. When I finally realized I should be evaluated for depression, one of my friends tried to convince me that I didn't have depression. When I was struggling with anxiety, some of my Christian friends were certain that the anxiety would disappear if I read my Bible and prayed more. And it took even until recent months for me to get my dad to understand how much anxiety I have over seemingly easy everyday tasks like calling to make a doctor's appointment or asking a store employee where I can find something. Even when talking about mental health in my education classes, many of my classmates stated that they wouldn't take much action with a sullen withdrawn student who's not a classroom management issue, even though the student in the scenario seemed to have symptoms of depression. From what I've seen - if you haven't dealt with mental health issues, they're either off your radar or you have to work extremely hard to understand them.
I want the world to be more aware of mental health issues (and to stop judging and stereotyping people with mental health issues, but I'll save that topic for another day). But even more so, I want to world to be aware of children who have mental health issues. Because it's easier to retrain a 7-year-old brain than an almost-24-year-old brain. And I don't want any child to have to go through what I have.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)