School Counseling Stress: What If We’re Wrong?

What if stress wasn't your enemy, but your secret weapon? In this enlightening episode, Steph Johnson reveals how school counselors can transform stress from a debilitating burden into a powerful strength. We tackle the overwhelming caseloads, emotional toll, and resource scarcity head-on, offering a fresh perspective supported by robust, peer-reviewed research. Discover how your mindset about stress can radically alter your health outcomes, boost resilience, and promote professional growth. Sound too good to be true? The research says otherwise.

00:00 Understanding School Counseling Stressors

00:39 Introduction and Podcast Welcome

01:01 Exploring Stress Solutions

02:35 Challenging Traditional Views on Stress

03:05 Listener Reviews and Feedback

04:44 Rethinking Stress in School Counseling

07:31 Harnessing Stress for Positive Outcomes

11:59 Practical Strategies for Stress Management

14:40 Research Insights on Stress Mindsets

25:54 Final Thoughts

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References/Resources:

Crum, A. J., Akinola, M., Martin, A., & Fath, S. (2017). The role of stress mindset in shaping cognitive, emotional, and physiological responses to challenging and threatening stress. Anxiety, stress, & coping, 30(4), 379-395.

Crum, A.J., Jamieson, J.P., & Akinola, M. (2020). Optimizing stress: An integrated intervention for regulating stress responses. Emotion, 20(1), 120-125. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/emo0000670

Crum, A. J., Salovey, P., & Achor, S. (2013). Rethinking stress: The role of mindsets in determining the stress response. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104(4), 716–733. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0031201

Jamieson, J.P., Crum, A.J., Goyer, J.P., Marotta, M.E. & Akinola, M. (2018). Optimizing stress responses with reappraisal and mindset interventions: an integrated model, Anxiety, Stress, & Coping, 31(3), 245-261. DOI: 10.1080/10615806.2018.1442615

Jamieson, J. P., Mendes, W. B., & Nock, M. K. (2013). Improving acute stress responses: The power of reappraisal. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(1), 51-56. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721412461500

Keller, A., Litzelman, K., Wisk, L. E., Maddox, T., Cheng, E. R., Creswell, P. D., & Witt, W. P. (2012). Does the perception that stress affects health matter? The association with health and mortality. Health Psychology, 31(5), 677–684. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026743

Liu JJW, Ein N, Gervasio J, Vickers K (2019) The efficacy of stress reappraisal interventions on stress responsivity: A meta-analysis and systematic review of existing evidence. PLoS ONE 14(2): e0212854. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0212854

Mind & Body Lab. (n.d.). Stress and performance. Stanford University. https://mbl.stanford.edu/stress

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Chapters

• 0:00 Harnessing Stress as a Strength
• 17:18 Redefining Stress

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

When we're working with things like role overload, confusion, ambiguity, overwhelming caseloads and the emotional toll of our work in addition to things like lack of resources, no support, behavior, intervention and then frustrated staff or parents it's easy for us to feel overstressed and that the solutions to our stress rely on factors outside of our control. Things like if I only had a 250 to 1 caseload, if only my program was ASCA aligned, if only my principal understood what I'm actually here to do. Hello there, my friend, Welcome back to another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast. I'm Steph Johnson. I'm a full-time school counselor, just like you, on a mission to make your work feel more sustainable and more enjoyable, so that you look forward to walking through the school doors each and every day.

Speaker 1: 1:09

This week, I wanna talk about some of those stressors and what we can do about them in the school counseling world, Because often, as we consider the sources and the resolutions for our stress, we realize they're going to take a while and we begin focusing on other things in an effort to try to eliminate our stress, Thinking that instead of waiting for 250 to 1 to come to pass, instead of thinking that our principal is suddenly and magically going to realize that they've been misutilizing us this whole time. We try things that feel more in our control, like setting boundaries or treating ourselves well by using coping or self-care strategies, but then sometimes we might get to a point where coping or surviving just isn't cutting it anymore. I've been guilty about talking about those kinds of self-care things myself. But here's the thing Sometimes we can't control those stress factors. We just can't eliminate a lot of the sources of our professional stress, and that's always been a sticking point for me with the whole self-care conversation in school counseling. It just has never felt right when we're told you know, just put your chin down, gut it out and take care of yourself and then just do the best you can. This is just the way it is, but that's never felt like a good solution to me, and so I'm going to bet it's probably the same for you. So as I dug into the literature trying to find some better solutions for all of us, I learned something surprising and completely counterintuitive about the school counseling stressors that we face every day. My friends, what if everything that you've ever been told about your stress is wrong? It's an interesting thought, isn't it? And that's what we're going to be talking about in this episode of the School for School Counselors podcast about in this episode of the School for School Counselors podcast.

Speaker 1: 3:12

But before we dive in, you might know we just finished an epic pod party in our Facebook group. It was so much fun and some of you were so kind to leave some really cool reviews for the podcast, so I wanted to share a couple of them in this episode. The first one comes from KGND and it was titled Actionable Content. It says I always walk away with something when I listen to an episode. This show is not a sugar-coated view of school counseling, but a realistic and helpful view. I appreciate all the words of wisdom. Thank you, KGND. We appreciate your words as well. They mean so so much to us. Thanks for taking the time to submit that.

Speaker 1: 3:57

Wolves MT left a review titled the Goat man how about that for a compliment? And says this is the only podcast that you need to listen to for school counselors. I take all their advice to heart and believe this allowed me to finally get my first counseling position. Congratulations. Steph and her crew are amazing and caring. And tell it like it is you can't beat honesty, man. That's my mantra If I've ever heard it. I love that. Thank you so much, Wolves MT, for that wonderful review, Y'all. That's how people find the podcast, that's how they get to know what we're doing over here by reading your reviews, seeing your ratings, and then they know. So I just can't thank you enough. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, both from me and from my team. It means more than you'll ever know. It means more than you'll ever know.

Speaker 1: 4:50

All right, so back to the conversation about school counseling, stress. How can knowledgeable, in-touch mental health professionals like us have the stress conversation completely wrong? Well, as it turns out, that may very well be the case. I think. So often we just get immersed in the status quo, we sort of take things at face value and we get so busy that we just kind of take things that we've always seen or heard or believed. They just kind of perpetuate themselves in our consciousness and we never really look outside of that. It seems reasonable that stress could be harmful and it seems reasonable that we would want to avoid stress and all of its negative effects at all costs.

Speaker 1: 5:43

But what if the real answer isn't in eliminating stress? What if it's in harnessing it? It's an interesting question, isn't it? And it's one that you don't generally hear that the thing that you're fighting against your stress could actually be your greatest tool. This is crazy, right? Okay, nobody else is talking about this, but there is actually peer-reviewed literature to back this up. So you know that when we become stressed, we typically experience things like increased heart rate, increased respiration, the cortisol starts pumping through our veins, our pupils dilate, our muscles get tense, we start sweating. All of those things happen when we're subjected to extreme stress.

Speaker 1: 6:34

Stress is also associated with things like heart disease, depression, cancer, all kinds of other health problems. It's interesting a study by Keller and team in 2012 found that nearly 34% of adults perceive that stress affects their health a lot to some extent, and the higher the level of reported stress and the perception that that stress was negatively impacting their health, the worse health and mental outcomes. That's pretty major right, when we think about it. If we believe that our stress negatively impacts us, guess what we are speaking it into existence. They also found that the people that reported a lot of stress and believing that that stress impacted their health quite a bit their health quite a bit 43% had a risk of premature death. Y'all that's scary, but the good news is that isn't the whole picture, because not all stress has to be distress.

Speaker 1: 7:50

That comes from Jameson and Team 2018, within a very large but lesser-known area of research that shows that stress can actually have positive effects on your mind as well as your body. It can sharpen your focus, it can boost your performance, it can strengthen your immune system and help your body heal and, especially in tough times, it has the potential to increase our resilience and our sense of purpose. So what makes the difference? Why is stress harmful in some situations but helps people thrive in others? It's strange, right? Well, according to the research, a lot of the answer lies in our perception of stress, and before you roll your eyes and think this is gonna be another ridiculous exercise and toxic positivity mindset, right, I'm gonna ask you, just hear me out on this one. I'm going to be throwing a ton of peer-reviewed research your way. I have more citations for this podcast episode than almost any other episode I've done, and I have those because I'm making a concerted effort to prove to you that this isn't just some positive self-talk baloney. All right, this is some real stuff.

Speaker 1: 9:05

So people can hold a stress-enhancing mindset. These are people that perceive that stress actually helps their health, it actually promotes their own well-being or it increases their performance. These people, when they believe this, show more adaptive cortisol activity. They also show greater increases in growth hormones. So on the flip side of that, we've got some folks that have the mindset that stress is debilitating and then they have kind of the opposite outcomes. So it's an instance where your mindset and your thoughts actually dictate your physical outcomes.

Speaker 1: 9:49

Let me give you another example. A study by Jameson 2012 found that individuals who reappraised their stress-induced physiological responses so things like sweating heart rate, those kinds of things showed improved performance on stressful tasks. So, instead of trying to suppress their stress and push it down, if they acknowledged it and interpreted it as a tool for enhanced focus, they got better outcomes. Jameson Mendez in 2013 found that by changing the way we think about the physical signs of stress, we can stop those negative feelings from causing harmful effects in our bodies. So we can literally change the way our bodies react to stress by viewing it as a signal and a sign of readiness instead of weakness. They see it as this shows me, I'm ready, I'm primed to take action, my body can handle this. And when they looked at it that way, instead of trying to, you know, get rid of their stress, not acknowledge it, push it down they actually got better outcomes in stressful situations. That's pretty powerful, right.

Speaker 1: 11:06

And when we dive into the literature even further, we learn about another team of Jameson's folks in 2018 who went on to show that reappraising stress is enhancing. It can lead to more adaptive physiological responses. Our cortisol reaction actually changes. We have reduced effects on our cardiovascular function and they have proven this across contexts, from college students who are taking high-stakes exams to professionals in the work environment, and even with Navy SEALs in training. So by consciously changing the way we look at stress, it not only changes our perception of it. It can actually change the way our bodies respond.

Speaker 1: 11:58

Now, I don't know about you, but I think that's kind of wild. So what does that mean for us as we're working in schools? Is it really just as easy as thinking about stress differently and trying to have a positive mindset about it? Sort of, but not really. It's going to be one of those things that you're going to have to file in the easier said than done category, and it's going to take a little bit of extra effort Because our beliefs and interpretations about stress are so ingrained, it's often challenging for us to be able to look at stress in a different way. It doesn't mean that if we just look on the bright side and we have an abundance of this toxic positivity that's in our culture now, that everything's going to be amazing all the time. That's not what it means. It doesn't mean that you're suddenly going to be okay with being misutilized or underappreciated or overworked. That's not how this works.

Speaker 1: 12:52

But it is entirely possible that we can reframe our stress responses as a power source. When we're in specific high-stakes situations, like we're providing support to a student during a crisis, or we're getting up our nerve to have a tough conversation with our administrator, or maybe even if we get called on the carpet by a colleague, we can utilize these stress responses as a benefit to us instead of something that's a bad thing. If we can focus on striving through the stress, we won't spend so much time worrying and ruminating about what's buried underneath it and y'all. This goes beyond just reframing the situation, Because in this approach we're not looking at the whole situational enchilada. We're not looking at all the phases of the situation and what happened first and next and after, and how does it all go together and how can I think about it in a better way? We're not doing that. We're just reconstructing the way that we think about our physiological responses to that stress. About our physiological responses to that stress, we think about our racing heartbeat or sweating as a sign that we're primed to handle the challenge, rather than an indicator that something's about to go horribly wrong. We see that physical response as a sign of strength and that our body is gearing up to be helpful to us. My heart is racing because my body's preparing to be at its best. My increased heart rate is preparing me to keep everyone safe. This extra energy is going to allow me to think more clearly. I'm sweating or my hands are clammy because I'm ready to tackle this.

Speaker 1: 14:41

Beyond stress response and beyond kind of changing the way we're thinking about these physiological signs, there's one more tool that we can use to mitigate stress that, again, hardly anybody ever talks about. Jameson and team 2018 noted that optimizing stress responses can be achieved by focusing on our broad overarching belief systems, otherwise known as our stress mindsets. These are our general beliefs about stress that aren't related to specific instances or specific physiological responses. Research on stress mindsets shows that changing our mindset about stress, in addition to the physiological reappraisal we just talked about, can offer significant benefits. Research on stress mindset shows that changing our mindset can offer benefits similar to those that we gain when we reappraise our physiological stress in real-time situations. So by looking at our physiological responses, by looking at them as an asset, and reframing our mindsets about stress, we can get similar results.

Speaker 1: 15:55

If you have a stress-enhancing mindset, it means that you tend to believe that stress has the ability to enhance your performance, to enhance your health or enhance your well-being. If you have a stress as harmful mindset, you believe that stress is debilitating to your performance, your health and your well-being. Kind of like the two sides to the stress coin, right? Do you believe that stress really benefits you and boosts you up and gives you new opportunities and insights, or do you believe that stress only beats you down? And when we talk about this in general terms, most people I think would say well, you know, sometimes stress helps, Sometimes it can be beneficial. Well, you know, sometimes stress helps, Sometimes it can be beneficial. But if you take a critical eye and you really look at yourself honestly, think about your responses in stressful moments, Are you still able to maintain those beliefs Because a lot of us can't A lot of us, in high-stakes situations or highly stressful situations jump to. Stress is bad. I want to avoid it. This is harming my performance. I can't think straight. This is not good, and so we have to be very, very careful of that mindset.

Speaker 1: 17:19

Krum and team 2017 found that folks with positive stress mindsets experienced less negative outcomes in traumatic situations. This is compared to those with the stress is harmful mindset. So if you believe that stress is harmful, even if it's a minor incidence, it's going to have a worse effect on you than if you believe that stress can somehow be beneficial and experience this hugely traumatic thing. I think that's a tremendous finding and it's a really big call to instilling that stress is enhancing mindset. It also showed that these effects can persist for weeks or even years after they're adopted. So I think we need to be really intentional about this.

Speaker 1: 18:10

I don't think it can be a one and done thing. You know, oh yeah, I'm gonna believe that stress is beneficial and then you move on with your life and expect to reap the rewards of that. I don't think that's how that works. But if we're trying to be intentional about it and really develop the belief, really thinking about what are the positive benefits of stress for me? How have I experienced those in my life? If we identify them and really lean into them, we stand to gain some significant benefits. Now if this sounds to you like more positive self-talk baloney, y'all, I get it. I'm a cynic, I'm critical, I'm very leery of undiscovered secrets of whatever. I'm with you on that. I'm going to give you some more.

Speaker 1: 18:55

All right, there was a study done of 388 employees at a large financial site that found that those with higher levels of stress-enhancing mindset experienced increased life satisfaction, reduced anxiety, reduced depressive symptoms. Here's another one A sample of university students who felt that their stress was enhancing showed moderate cortisol reactivity, meaning that when they were confronted with stress, the cortisol just didn't shoot off the charts automatically. And they also showed a greater desire for feedback from peer and professor evaluators. Let me keep going. Research with almost 1,400 eighth graders showed that those that believed that stress could be beneficial were less likely to be affected by adverse life experiences. They were also less likely to be affected by perceived distress or perceived lack of control. And then there was a daily diary study of employees that showed that those that believed stress enhanced their performance, experienced increased motivation when they anticipated a high workload. That, in turn, increased their engagement and their performance. Who do I know with a high workload? Oh, I know, it's you, it's me too.

Speaker 1: 20:22

All school counselors feel like they have a tremendous workload right and, according to these studies, if we can really harness the way we're looking at our stress, it has tremendous potential to impact not only our own sense of well-being but the way that we do our jobs. So, y'all, we talked about stress reappraisal changing the way we think about our physical responses and we've talked about stress mindset, which is kind of like our metacognition about stressful situations, right, Recognizing what we think and how we think about stress overall. Both of those are based in the idea that stressful experiences can lead to both physical and mental growth, that they can enhance our performance and well-being when we see them as opportunities and when we see our stress responses as beneficial and adaptive. So, even though there are two different mechanisms, our reappraisal is more situation-specific, Mindset is kind of more broad. Both approaches emphasize that changing the way we understand these factors can lead to huge benefits and that ultimately, y'all makes us more resilient and able to cope in the face of challenges, and I don't think I need to tell you we have a lot of challenges, not only industry-wide and in the way that school counseling is seen in general, but challenges on our campus, intervening in moments of crisis, trying to find the best path forward for some of our students that are so dysregulated nobody can figure out how to reach them.

Speaker 1: 22:05

Those are really stressful situations and we often feel like we're at loose ends. When we come up against those, we feel like I don't know what to do. Right, I'm a little panicked. Maybe A little imposter syndrome comes into play. All these things start to happen, but at the end of the day now we know if we can be really mindful about the way we perceive our physical reactions and in the way that we're thinking about our stress thoughts that maybe the effects might not be that bad.

Speaker 1: 22:42

So what do we do, specifically In a world where we're preoccupied with avoiding stress altogether and where sometimes, to be honest, there's a little bit of an undercurrent that stress is rewarded and cheered on? Right man, they're a go-getter, they're so motivated, First in last out of the parking lot. Good for her. There's some really unhealthy messages in the education world. So what do we do? What do we do to harness our stress as a positive tool? According to Croom 2020,?

Speaker 1: 23:17

Rather than focusing on all the ways that stress seems to be harmful, we can focus on the fact that we're stressed because doing a good job is important to us, and we can also consider the unexpected opportunities that might come up as a result of that stress or in the middle of that stress. You know, sometimes we come across situations that make us reevaluate the way we see the world, but sometimes it helps us realign our priorities or just become more grateful for the things that we have, and so it's more than just a gratitude practice. It's more than mindfulness. We need to be thinking in that direction of stress benefits. This stress helps me sharpen my thinking. My body knows what it's doing or I'm ready for this challenge, and it's going to help me rise to the occasion.

Speaker 1: 24:14

Jameson 2018, had a script in one of his studies to help folks reappraise stress. It was students that were taking the GRE in preparation for college, and once they ran this script through their study empirically, they found significant benefits. I've taken the liberty of adapting that script for school counselors and I'm going to share that with you quickly. Here it is School counselors think that feeling anxious while responding to a tough situation will make them less effective helpers, but remember that recent research suggests that this type of response intervention might actually be more effective. This means that you shouldn't feel concerned if you do feel anxious while responding to a challenge. If you find yourself feeling anxious, simply remind yourself that your response could actually be helpful. Nice and simple, right, that's a shoot-off. It's an adaptation of the reminder that Jameson and team used in their 2018 study for GRE takers, and again, their script was empirically validated. It was shown to improve performance.

Speaker 1: 25:27

So something like that might be something that you just want to jot down and tape up somewhere. It goes a little bit further than an affirmation right, Put it in your phone, put it on the back of your walkie-talkie for the days that you need it. Maybe, when you're confronting something difficult or you're rushing to the site of something and you're getting yourself primed and ready for the situation, you can remind yourself, Read through it, take a breath and then walk in and maybe just save the day. All right. So at the end of the day, what do I want you to know? I want you to re-evaluate your relationship with stress and in many instances you're going to be able to see that your stress responses are a skill and not distress. So the next time you're walking into something and you feel your familiar companion, you feel stress start to slide its arm around your shoulders. Companion, you feel stress start to slide its arm around your shoulders. You can embrace these new and more empowering stories and insights, Reappraise your physiological responses as a source of strength and utilize your positive stress mindset to remember that it's not always terrible to be stressed and you might actually find a lot of benefits. All right, I hope this was helpful to you.

Speaker 1: 26:50

We are getting ready in our School for School Counselors Mastermind to be focusing on ways to feel more productive, effective and less stressed in our work as we roll through the school year. As I record this, the next month is going to be Shocktober. We always see an increase in behaviors and needed responses and sometimes that can feel a little overwhelming. So we're trying to be proactive over here. We're trying to get ready and set the stage for your success and also for your students' success. In our mastermind right now we're walking through behavior, de-escalation and all kinds of related techniques.

Speaker 1: 27:34

We have a quick 15-minute challenge going on inside the group right now to help promote data-driven conversations with our administrators about specific situations on campus, but also without a lot of effort from you. It's pretty neat how these work, and then again next month we'll be talking about how to make our work feel more sustainable, less stressful, and we'll have another quick challenge to get you across the finish line there as well. So if these conversations are resonating with you, if you feel like there might be something there, I'm going to remind you. We've got a seat at the mastermind table available for you whenever you want to join us. You can check out the details at schoolforschoolcounselorscom. Slash mastermind, but until then, keep listening. I'll be back soon with another episode. In the meantime, I hope you have the best week. Take care.