School for School Counselors Podcast

A Surprising Secret Weapon Against Chronic School Counselor Stress

September 02, 2024 • School for School Counselors • Episode 115

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Are you tired of feeling overwhelmed and burnt out as a school counselor? Discover game-changing strategies to not only manage- but also thrive- amidst the unique stressors you face daily. Join me, Steph Johnson, on the School for School Counselors Podcast as we navigate the complexities of stress management, especially with the new school year kicking off. We'll discuss the escalating mental health demands post-COVID-19 and how traditional self-care practices may not be cutting it anymore. Learn how to balance your high caseloads with sustainable, actionable measures that protect your well-being and professional effectiveness.

In this episode, we tackle the mismatch between your rising responsibilities and outdated frameworks, highlighting the importance of setting professional boundaries and seeking support. A groundbreaking journal article reshapes our understanding of chronic stress and offers fresh insights into maintaining mental health. This is not just about surviving but thriving in your role as a school counselor—equipped, confident, and ready to meet each day with renewed energy and purpose.

00:00 Welcome Back to the School for School Counselors Podcast

00:25 Exciting Updates and New Beginnings

01:06 Addressing Stress in School Counseling

02:40 Behavior Interventions and Mastermind Group

04:53 Understanding Chronic Stress

07:47 The Impact of Chronic Stress on School Counselors

16:17 Strategies to Mitigate Chronic Stress

23:25 The Importance of Professional Consultation

29:27 Final Thoughts and Encouragement

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References/Resources:

Agyapong, B., Obuobi-Donkor, G., Burback, L., & Wei, Y. (2022). Stress, burnout, anxiety and depression among teachers: a scoping review. International journal of environmental research and public health, 19(17), 10706.

Liu, Y. Z., Wang, Y. X., & Jiang, C. L. (2017). Inflammation: the common pathway of stress-related diseases. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 11, 273283.

Niles, J. K., Mullen, P. R., Kitching, E., & Schofield, K. (2024). School Counselors’ Hope, Stress, and Job Satisfaction. Professional School Counseling, 28(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/2156759X241259487

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Speaker 1:

Hey, hey there, school counselor, and welcome back to the School for School Counselors podcast. I'm Steph Johnson, your host, a full-time school counselor just like you, on a mission to make school counseling more sustainable and more enjoyable. I want you walking through the door every day, excited and on fire to serve students and feeling like you have the tools to be competent and confident. Hey, it's been a fun couple of weeks here in our School for School Counselors world. We've just wrapped up our pod party. We released a bonus power pack of podcast episodes and they were so fun to make. I hope you enjoyed them as much as I enjoyed making them. We updated the cover art for the podcast. We added a new description. There are just all kinds of things going on with our podcast because we really do want to do our utmost, my team and I, to support you in your school counseling endeavors and truly paint a beautiful picture of a wonderful journey for you throughout your career.

Speaker 1:

Speaking of the school counseling journey, speaking of the ins and outs and the nuances of the work that we do every day, we have noticed in our School for School Counselors mastermind, the topics of conversation are already turning toward stress, and that's not surprising. We work in public education for the most of us, and the education world just in and of itself, is a stressful environment, isn't it? We have lots and lots of people in a relatively small amount of space. We have lots of expectations, we have goals, we have grades, we have frameworks. We have all of these things going on all the time. There's no wonder that schools feel like stressful environments. But I think the stress conversation is also a lot different for school counselors than some other folks working on our campuses. Right, I think we can all agree we have some very specific and very different aspects of our work, that kind of up the ante in the stress conversation, and so we want to talk about this. Throughout the month of September, we're going to be walking through ways that you can make your school counseling career and programs feel more enjoyable, more sustainable, and give you more of that feeling like I've got this. I may not know everything, but I've got this and I love this. That's what we want for you.

Speaker 1:

Last month, we spent a lot of time in podcast episodes talking about behavior intervention, because we knew that was on the horizon for our school counselors, and we're continuing those discussions and trainings in our mastermind group right now, as we're talking through behavior interventions, what are protocols, what are specific considerations in working with behavior-oriented problems on campuses. So if you're interested in continuing that conversation, if you want to broaden your horizons and grow your perspectives with regard to behavior, you need to go jump into that School for School Counselors Mastermind right now. But in September we're going to be talking about how do we make our practices more sustainable, how do we make our practices more sustainable, how do we make our work more enjoyable and how do we just come away with this feeling of I can do this and I can do this for the long term, instead of going home every day saying I don't know how I'm going to make it another day, when I see good counselors doing that, going to make it another day, when I see good counselors doing that, it absolutely breaks my heart, and so my team and I here at School for School Counselors are going to endeavor to do everything we can to support you and give you the tools that you need to enjoy this career that you've spent so much time and effort and money pursuing right. We want you to be able to enjoy it once you get there. As I mentioned, conversations in our mastermind have already turned towards stress, which is funny to some of you, I'm sure, because you haven't started school yet. I'm talking to some folks in some areas of the country that are due to start school any day now but have not had the privilege of welcoming their students on their campuses just yet. But we want to have this conversation now because we want to be proactive and I'm going to warn you, if you are looking for the feel-good, fuzzy-wuzzy conversations of bubble baths and me time and walks in nature, this is probably not going to be the podcast episode for you. You're probably going to walk away feeling very disappointed. We're going to jump into the nitty gritty aspects of chronic stress in the school counseling world what it looks like, what the dangers are. It's going to feel very intense for a minute and then we're going to talk about some things that you can do to mitigate chronic stress, and there's been one recent new finding that is absolutely going to blow your mind. It's something that you don't hear often. A new journal article that was recently published that kind of tips the self-care conversation and the chronic stress situation on its head a little bit. It's pretty interesting.

Speaker 1:

We live and work in a society that tends to praise stress. We tend to see stress as a marker of achievement, signs that you're on the right path or an indicator that you've got it all figured out right. In our society, stress is kind of seen as a badge of honor and it's glorified in a lot of venues, and that can be super dangerous to all of us. Chronic stress shows up when you perceive that the demands that are on you to meet the expectations of your job exceed your capabilities. You start to feel stressed, you start to worry and feel anxious about how am I going to do this? Are they going to figure me out? Am I going to be discovered as an imposter? All those kinds of things. And a survey by Agapong and team and we'll give you the citation in the show notes found that teacher stress is about twice as high as the general population. So already we're on a trajectory to have a lot of stress in our work lives right.

Speaker 1:

A little stress is a good thing. It can be good for us. It boosts our energy, it kind of sharpens our thinking, it heightens our alertness and it motivates us to meet our goals. Stress is not always bad and we know that from being practitioners in the mental health field, we know that sometimes stress can be a good thing. Did you know that manageable stress even encourages the growth of stem cells that eventually become brain cells? So stress can be a very positive thing. But when you have prolonged activation of all of these stress hormones in your body, right, the cortisol and the adrenaline are just pumping all day long, over and over and over. You start to have a lot of physical and mental effects from that that really kind of affect your functioning and your sense of well-being, and that's where we don't want to be. We know that chronic stress can keep that immune system torquing up really, really high until all of a sudden it bottoms and craters out.

Speaker 1:

I can remember in my career as a teacher, I was a fine arts teacher and so I was tasked with putting on productions, and in true Steph Johnson style, it wasn't just a regular old performance like every other school would do. No, no, it had to be a big one, and so often in my performances I would have my entire fine arts team with students in this performance. We would have between 350 and 400 students in a performance and we would have them constantly moving and entertaining, with absolutely no downtime in between. Think about that for a minute. Think about the orchestration that was required to make that happen, in addition to all of the teaching, the content, the costumes, the deadlines, the parent notifications, the making sure all the kids are there, and on and on and on. It was stressful, and we did that multiple times a year and every time we had a performance I knew the very next day I was going to be sick, and it wasn't just going to be like allergies or the sniffles. I was going to go down with the flu, I was going to go down with something major. Still to this day, one of my stress responses is to get shingles, and that's how I know I've pushed it too far.

Speaker 1:

Too much stress can hurt our bodies. This is not new news to you, right? But I just kind of want you to think about if you are in one of those seasons now or if you're on the verge of wandering into this chronic stress territory. We don't want you to be there. There are some specific things with school counselors that no doubt contribute to chronic stress. Job strain, just the job in and of itself Vicarious trauma, right, having to see and hear sometimes the worst of things that are offered on your campus. Having to process and hold those things in your mind and your heart without good consultation available, role confusion or role conflict those are two very nice ways of saying either your administrator has no idea what you're supposed to be doing or they have their own idea about what you should be doing, but either one of those can be stressful on a campus.

Speaker 1:

Certainly, students' growing mental health needs is a major factor, especially post-COVID. We know that student mental health needs have skyrocketed and we are now becoming the frontline response staff for youth mental health issues. The problem is our frameworks and paradigms have not changed to meet this need. We're still being expected to do things that aren't exactly in alignment with that increased responsibility. High caseloads have been empirically shown to promote higher stress levels for school counselors, and so we have all of these things going on. It's almost like we're working inside of this vortex of potential stress-inducing circumstances.

Speaker 1:

Right, we also are prone to chronic stress because we don't typically get a lot of thank yous for our work. We are often the ones that are having to point out uncomfortable truths or who know things about people that they wish maybe we didn't know so much about, right, and so in the context of doing that kind of work, we don't receive a lot of thank yous, and that's okay for sure. We didn't get into this job because we thought everyone was going to be fawning at our feet telling us how amazing we are, but it's nice to hear a thank you or an acknowledgement every now and again, and when you don't get those, sometimes that can increase your stress levels. I mentioned before, but I will mention it again. I think it bears being repeated Vicarious trauma Huge, huge concern in the school counseling world, and in my opinion, there are not enough conversations going on about that right now, and I mean real conversations about vicarious trauma, what it really feels like to experience that, what really mitigates the threat of extended repercussions from vicarious trauma.

Speaker 1:

I think the bubble bath, glass of wine, walk in nature conversation is over. It needs to be done and we need to be talking about some true protective factors for school counselors, and one of those things is developing sustainable and realistic frameworks for our work with administrators who understand what we are there to do for their campus. Right, give me an amen on that. You know, it's true, we've got to have some better fundamentals in place and we've also got to be aware of the fact that chronic stress can tend to creep up on us. It tends to start out as little pockets of stress and we think I'm managing this, I'm doing okay with it, everything's fine, it'll calm down soon. But then it just kind of starts to stack up on itself and often if we don't catch it, if we don't diffuse it in a timely manner, it stacks up to become chronic stress, and that's the danger that we want to avoid. You know you're in the danger zone with chronic stress when it starts to affect your day-to-day functioning or your emotional balance. If you're struggling with some anxiety or depression and you can't identify the reason for it, it might be chronic stress.

Speaker 1:

Chronic stress can also affect your job satisfaction. It can lead to demoralization. It can lead to demoralization, it can lead to feelings of burnout and sometimes it even contributes, as I mentioned earlier, to folks leaving the profession altogether, either literally, as in walking out the door, I'm going to go do a different job or psychologically, just kind of checking out from the whole thing. These are the folks that just kind of wander around all day, not really accomplishing much, not really engaging with anybody. They may have so much chronic stress that they've just checked out of their job role.

Speaker 1:

We talked about in a previous episode and again we'll link to this in the show notes about the three components of chronic stress. They are emotional exhaustion, where you just feel emotionally depleted. You have this huge loss of energy and you just feel like you really can't care anymore. Then depersonalization, which is a manifestation of burnout. That's when you start feeling very negative about your work, very callous, you start to have very detached responses to other people in your environment because you're just done, you're over it. It's beyond cynicism, it's beyond that and it's into some more major territory. And then we get to the point where we feel like our personal accomplishments are reduced, we feel incompetent, we feel like there is no way we're ever going to be successful at this. We're not making any headway, we're not gaining any ground and we just feel like, why am I here? What am I doing? I don't want you to feel that way, because when you feel that way, certainly it affects you.

Speaker 1:

We've talked about some of those physical and mental manifestations of chronic stress, but it also affects the caliber of the services that you're able to provide to your students. So it's not just one person not saying that it's fine you, the services that you're able to provide to your students. So it's not just one person not saying that it's fine. You know, if you're chronically stressed and it's hurting you, that's fine as long as you're not hurting the students. I don't mean to say that at all, but I'm saying that it reaches much further than any one of us, and so we need to be mindful of that and how our chronic stress not only affects ourselves but everyone else in our immediate environment. So what do we do about chronic stress? How do we prevent it or how do we mitigate its effects?

Speaker 1:

If we've already started to kind of toe into that territory, I think there are some really specific things that can happen and, again, these are all empirically validated. We'll be providing these resources to you in the show notes. First of all, if you're seeking some physical or mental health concerns and you can't quite put your finger on what it is, you might need to go seek some counseling or services from a healthcare professional and just get checked out to make sure that it's not something else, to make sure there's not something else driving this or some other reason for you to be feeling this way. Case in point personal story and I haven't yet shared this on the podcast but over the summer I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that I've likely had for years and years and years, but it went undetected and once it was identified and I was able to start being treated for that, my mood improved, my affect improved and I realized maybe how badly I'd been feeling and didn't even know it. So that's a very real thing and not to say that all your problems are caused by diseases or by chronic stress, one or the other. But it's worth checking out, right, it's worth just investing to make sure that you're okay. That's number one.

Speaker 1:

Number two I think that we have to realize that our work on school campuses is different from the others we work with. We have to acknowledge that the more we try to portray teachers or psychologists or administrators or insert whatever job role you want to there, the more we try to picture ourselves in those boxes, the less aligned and the less understood we're going to feel in our work. We have to understand that our rules and our roles are different. Again, we see and hear some really disheartening things. We walk through very complex situations with school staff, with students and with families. We have to have additional buffers beyond what some of our other campus employees have. Against stress, against emotional overwhelm, against overwork. We have to be more thoughtful and careful, because if we're not healthy, we're not going to be able to effectively serve our clientele, who are likely struggling with some sort of mental health, behavioral, emotional concern. Does that make sense? So we have to get rid of the ideas that just perpetuate the education world, that are so unhealthy for everyone but probably exponentially more unhealthy for us. As an example first in, last out. Are you one of those people? Are you one of the first cars in the parking lot or one of the first people into the building and then one of the last out? At the end of the day, school counselors should not be those people. It's not good for us Establishing essential boundaries and when I say boundaries I don't just mean between work and home.

Speaker 1:

I'm not talking about boundaries between professional life and personal life, although that's important too. What I'm talking about is boundaries in the school. What are some things that you can do to promote your own well-being and your ability to best support your students? That might be things like setting professional boundaries as far as conversation and student confidentiality, so you can walk away at the end of the day feeling confident that you've fulfilled your role without violating anybody's needs or rights, instead of walking away and questioning yourself Ooh, did I say too much? Maybe I shouldn't have said that. I don't know, maybe I made the wrong decision. You don't want to do that. Maybe it's setting boundaries.

Speaker 1:

About white space I intentionally schedule 15 minutes about every two hours just to sit and decompress. That sounds like a lot of time to some of you, but if I don't do that, I do not have the clarity of mind to be able to effectively serve my students. It is in their best interest as well as my own. I need processing time. I need time to digest the things that are going on. I need time to plan what are the next interventions for the new chapter of what I've just discovered. I don't like those rote curriculum things. I'm sure you've noticed that if you listen to the podcast for any amount of time. I want to grow and evolve with my students and so I need that white space. I need decompression time.

Speaker 1:

If we've had to do some sort of behavior de-escalation, I need a minute to bring myself back to center, to If I've had to have a difficult conversation with a parent. I need a moment. So be aware of those. Establish those boundaries. What do you need? I am going to eat lunch every day. Some of you think that's an impossible goal. It's not. But it has to be done with intentionality and it has to be done mindfully. Sometimes you can't just step forward all at once and say I'm going to start taking my lunch every day. Sometimes it doesn't work that way, but you can walk toward that goal.

Speaker 1:

I think good training also helps avoid chronic stress. It helps us to reduce overwhelm and reduce professional fatigue. It's less decision-making If we know what works, if we're well-versed in our craft, we don't have to second-guess ourself as often. We don't have to be in conversations and be scrambling in our head like the hamster running on the wheel as fast as it can, trying to come up with what to say because we're not sure We'll be able to answer confidently. Evidence-based says this. This is maybe what we should try next. It's not going to be an immediate change. We can expect a change, probably within the next two to three months. Here's how we'll know if it's going in the right direction. Teachers are going to be fatigued when implementing this. These are the kinds of things we can tell them as they do it. The ability to have those conversations is gold in the school counseling world, and the way you get to that level to be able to have those kinds of conversations is through good training, learning more and investing your time in your craft. And then, last and again, if you've listened to my podcast for any amount of time, you knew this was coming up, but this is empirically validated. Y'all Good consultation.

Speaker 1:

Singh et al found that support can serve as a sort of protective factor against compassion fatigue and, by extension, against burnout. 2024, just this summer, indicated that the importance of hope in maintaining job satisfaction, even when additional stressors are added, is a specific protective factor. They found that mindfulness leads to hope and hope leads to feelings of self-efficacy. That is huge for us, absolutely huge. That is why they also went on to say and I'm going to read this because I think it is so important the participants who had a greater ability to see a way forward to achieving their goals to see a way forward to achieving their goals also found their job more enjoyable, even when additional stress was added.

Speaker 1:

That is the whole purpose of good quality consultation. That's why I'm always talking about it. That's why I'm always trying to lead you toward our mastermind. It's not because I'm trying to make a buck off my colleagues. As a matter of fact, I find that pretty oogie. We charge for it because we have certain platforms and ways to deliver this information to you and those have to be paid for. But I believe in good quality consultation for school counselors. I don't believe enough is out there. I do not believe that social media is quality consultation. If I had a dollar for every piece of bad advice that I had seen given by someone on a social media forum, I would be a millionaire.

Speaker 1:

And folks are giving this information out of the goodness of their hearts. And folks are giving this information out of the goodness of their hearts but they don't understand sometimes the nuance of the situation or that there's new information out that supersedes what we previously thought about our craft. We have to make sure we're getting information from the best sources, but then, above all of that and our Mastermind members currently express these same thoughts the hope that you receive when you're in a room with people who get it, who do the kind of work that you do, who are not directly linked to you. That distance gives you an ability to be very real about situations, without fear of judgment or repercussions. That's what we're aiming at within our professional consultation community, and throughout all of that, I strive to be the poster child of hope in school counseling because I so vividly and desperately believe in the impacts that you have on your students each and every day.

Speaker 1:

There's no other profession like the school counseling profession, none where we get to be with students, where they spend the majority of their time during their waking hours in school, and we get to identify needs, we get to teach lagging skills, we need to support emotional concerns, we get to provide resources to families all right there. How incredible is that? And I do believe that there are some very positive things coming our way in the school counseling world. I think beliefs are shifting, I think there is a new awareness coming, and I'm super excited about where this is headed, and so I'm endeavoring in everything that I do to communicate that excitement and that hope to you, so that you can hold it too. During the days that are hard, when they feel overwhelming, when you think I don't even know if I want to go back tomorrow, you can hold on to that hope. You can come to consultation and you can uncover a path or a mechanism to where you can find your hope in your program, and that's what I want for you.

Speaker 1:

So please excuse, that was a completely impromptu soapbox speech, but I believe in this passionately and I know that the majority of school counselors out there working their tails off every day feel unappreciated, unheard, unseen. They feel like they're all by themselves, even when sometimes they're working on a team, because they don't feel at liberty to talk about what's really going on. They're afraid to ask questions, they're afraid of judgment, and we need more opportunities in our field for school counselors to come to a safe space and feel like they can find a way forward. That's what I want for you. It almost brings me to tears. All right, so go to schoolforschoolcounselorscom. Slash mastermind. All the information is there. If you want to join us, I think that would be great.

Speaker 1:

If not, go find a good quality professional consultation organization locally. Make sure that you meet with them regularly, not just when you have a gripe or a complaint or something that you want to be mad about or concerned about or outraged about. You need to have a good consultation group that you can share the good things with, too, because that's part of your professional satisfaction and your hope. All right, I hope this episode was helpful to you. Please keep these things in mind as you begin your new school year.

Speaker 1:

Keep in mind these good boundaries time boundaries, boundaries between work and home and boundaries within the schoolhouse. Make sure those are all intact. Good training to reduce your cognitive overwhelm and your decision making. And engage in good consultation that not only provides you with constructive feedback but also gives you hope. You with constructive feedback, but also gives you hope. These are going to go such a long way to addressing chronic stress or the potential of it, without meandering into this world of suggestions for bubble baths and me time and walks in nature. Sometimes that's not what you need. If those are soothing to, you, do them. If not, you may want to try these instead. All right, I will be back soon with another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast. I can't wait to talk to you again. This is absolutely one of my most favorite times of the week, and I hope it is yours too. I am looking forward to seeing you again on the next episode, so stay tuned, but in the meantime, I hope you have the best week. Take care.