[00:00:00] If anyone listening is an educator, wants to do the same follow along, pop your hands over your heart and just say to yourself, I'm doing my best. Because working with humans is always gonna be working with difficulties, distress, human emotions. And whenever you feel like "I don't know what I'm doing", just pop your hands in your heart and just use an embodied affirmation like I am doing my best. And that's enough. Welcome to the Classroom Narratives Healing in Education Podcast. The space for Education Meets Resilience. I'm Dr. Joey Weisler, and in each episode we dive deep into the personal stories of educators, students, leaders, and frontline advocates who are navigating the complexities within modern education. Whether you're just starting your teaching journey or are a seasoned professional looking for inspiration, we'll explore how to foster meaningful change, prevent burnout, and build trauma-informed communities within our schools. Now, let's take a seat at the [00:01:00] front of the classroom as we get started. Welcome back to today's conversation on the Classroom Narratives where I'm so excited to be welcoming Dr. Claire Plumbly, who is a clinical psychologist and director of Plum Psychology, a trauma-focused therapy practice based in the United Kingdom. And Claire has over 20 years of experiencing working therapeutically with individuals suffering with anxiety, trauma, and burnout, both in the national health service and in private practice. She's also an accredited cognitive behavioral therapy practitioner, otherwise known as CBT Practitioner, an Eye Movement Desensitation and Reprocessing as otherwise known as EMDR consultant supervisor .Claire is able to be connected through social media at Dr. Claire Plumley all the way from the uk. Claire, welcome to the show, Dr. Plumbly. Thanks for having me and for reading that bio so beautifully. It was a lot of big, complicated words, isn't it? EMDR Crikey. Well, I invited Claire to the program today [00:02:00] because I ran into one of her excellent texts through social media called The Trauma of Burnout, which she has a US edition and the UK edition. That's how I recognize the difference. I'm like, Hmm. There's two different variations of this text for different audiences. Yeah. Yes. And I, two different titles. Yeah. Yes. Two different titles. Titles . Exactly. And I invited Claire today because when I was reading her text, it really brought me back to my first year of teaching. Mm-hmm. So for those of us tuning in for the first time today, I'm Dr. Weisler, and I am an American, and I live in Florida, and I also teach in New York City. But during my time in Florida, I grew up in an area that was unfortunately the site of a mass shooting after my graduation at our local high school, it was called Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School , it was my alma mater. And it became pretty globally known after that event. Mm-hmm. And that same calendar year, this tragedy had happened on February 14th, otherwise Valentine's Day. [00:03:00] And that fall, I actually began my first calendar year of teaching, mm-hmm. And believe it or not, that semester, looking back, even though I was in a very agonizing place with the PTSD of that tragedy, it went okay. It wasn't until I moved to another end of the district, a year later in 2019, where there was significantly less support because they did not experience that same tragedy from being so far removed on another side of the district. And I remember in that first full year of teaching in the following calendar year, I wanted to try and do everything. I said, let's do this. I'm a first teacher. There's so many things I want to do, let me just jump into it and make it happen. And my administrator called me down one time and she said to me, you're not in trouble, but we need to talk to you. She was my department chair, but she also had her son in my class. So she said, I can see how you operate as both a parent and your boss. [00:04:00] And she says, I can tell you that you're trying to do way too much. You're going for the whole pizza pie in one sitting, and if you don't take it slice by slice, you're going to learn to hate this job and burnout. And she was exactly right and more, yeah, I learned to hate my job. I'm don't mind saying that here, 'cause I had said it on many other podcasts as well that I learned to hate that job. Fast forward, about six months later, that same administrator who was my cheerleader once is now advocating for my downfall. She's sitting in the room with me next to my assistant principal, and I look at both of them in the eye square in the face, and I said, I am disillusioned by the teacher I thought I could be working for you. And I left within six weeks, and my days looked like just trying to survive through it, to going home and taking a long nap because I was so emotionally drained from the experience of being a teacher. And I know that Claire, [00:05:00] in your text, you have some case studies that focus on some pseudonyms of those who have been teachers as well. So I'm sure this kind of connects with the patients you've seen as well. Sure. Yeah. I'd take that long nap. I'd wake up maybe now it's 10, 10 30 at night, maybe 11. Have dinner, do my grading, do my prep in the middle of the night, and I would be having back and forth emails with parents at 3:00 AM 'cause that's when I would be grading their work, and for some reason they were awake and writing back to me. Then I would take a short, I guess at that point you call it a nap and go back to class in the morning, on maybe three, three and a half, four hours of sleep a couple hours later. And I remember I'd walk into my classroom and celebrate like, Hey everyone, Mr. Weisler got four hours. Wow, four hours of sleep last night. Let's celebrate that. Gosh. And I would just try and make that work. And clearly obviously it did not work. So when I heard about burnout, it's been something that I have attributed to [00:06:00] my own trauma as well in the aftermath of that tragedy and the PTSD laid out on top of that and just being a first year teacher. So I wanted to turn to Claire and just continue focusing on how burnout looked. And I wanted to start by asking, what are some signs and symptoms that we can look for in our bodies and in our behaviors for burnout? So the official definition of burnout, can I just kind of whistle stop please to through that because it's helpful. It is different from stress. Stress obviously causes burnout, but you can have stress without burnout, if you see what I mean. So really what you're looking at in the definition of burnout is three conditions that tend to co-occur. The first is physical and emotional exhaustion. So I think the physical exhaustion is one that most people intuitively get. Like, I'm completely flat out, I'm on the floor, I'm heavy, I can't move my body, I'm just exhausted and I can't sleep, I'm tired by wired. The emotional exhaustion can be a bit confusing. Like, what does that even mean? [00:07:00] So the way I describe it to my clients is to think, if you imagine like all your emotions being like a big, rainbow of colors, with happiness, passion, contentment, at one end, and then feeling low, feeling depressed, and feeling irritable, feeling anxious, feeling frustrated. Also, within that rainbow, it's kind of like your rainbows shrunk to just a few of the colors, and it's not the nice bright shiny ones. It is the kind of irritable and overwhelmed and, and flatten dejected ones. So that's what we mean by emotional exhaustion. So that's number one. Number two is this is the feeling detached and disengaged. And that's when we start to say, I'm just operating on autopilot now. We really don't get the same level of fulfillment from the people and projects and hobbies around us feeling really disconnected like you're just floating and just turning up and not really present. Mm-hmm. And then the third one is reduced personal accomplishment. So this [00:08:00] often is the impact of those top two. We start to drop some of the balls that we are juggling or we start to cut corners. You know, maybe as a teacher you were not marking and reading all the words properly, of the marking that you're doing or your sessions plans. I think I give an example in the book of the teacher, her session plans are now one-liners. So all of that happens in the context of unmanaged stress. Stress is coming in and the markers that you're looking for would be like in your body. What are the stress red flags for you? Like for me, I start to get colds more often. Mm-hmm. Start to get cold sores, for a lot of people it'd aches and pains physically, headaches, their IBS symptoms might flare up, I mean, is it too personal for me to ask you on your podcast what yours are? No, absolutely. Do you know what your physical signs are? Stress? Yeah. I'm very open about it. I can tell you within the first month of me in that position, and they could also be seasonal, so it's, it's hard to say if it was correlated or not. I entered a cluster migraine [00:09:00] cycle. Mm. Where I just had migraine attacks constantly for about I think the headache cycle's about six weeks, but it gets really intense for about three weeks. Right. That's awful. Cluster headaches. Yeah. I just remember being in class around President's Day and which is February around here, and I would just like to my second period class, just like do the assignment and get it done, because I am not physically able to teach you today with this headache. Right. That's tough. And that's the body saying, hang on, there's something going on here. Mm-hmm. It is the impact of being in your sympathetic nervous system, the yellow part of your nervous system, but that's only one aspect. It's helpful to kind of think of the other three as well. Cognitive, there are cognitive signs, so that's that brain fog or struggling to focus and concentrate, it's that thought process of needing to keep push through, kind of keep powering through or just get out the end of this marking or just get, you know, through this period and then I'll rest, then I'll stop. It's also escapism thoughts like, oh, I wish I could just catch COVID [00:10:00] so that nobody can come bother. I wish I could break a leg, like not a big serious illness, but enough that no one comes and hassles me. Mm-hmm. Um, you are nodding with some of those, the ones that you ever experienced? I know you were talking about it in your text and what I also experienced was just every single time, like we talk about the nervous system, that every time I would pull into the parking lot I would just get very shaky, like my whole body would shake. It was very nervous 'cause I felt like, is this going to be the day? And eventually it was when you crashed, is this gonna be the day where they're just not gonna ask me to come back because they know that I'm no longer the best teacher for their students. Yeah. That's definitely a strong sign where you think I'm not a good teacher, I'm not a good therapist, it's that imposter stuff you said? Mm-hmm. Um, but also interesting that you said about the car, because that's another, you know, that transition point of the day, it's hard to initiate the next thing, especially there's decision making that maybe it was just get outta the car. That's not such a good example decision making, but that's another cognitive sign is you're struggling with basic decisions [00:11:00] like what to have for dinner, like standing in front of the fridge for hours going, I dunno what to cook. So that's the cognitive. So we've got body and cognitions. Third is the emotions. So I've kind of alluded to those. Anxiety, overwhelm, cynical, feeling cynical about things. So you're snapping more and you're kind of not understanding it. Then look to could this be burnout? And the final one is behaviors. And this is often a result of trying to cope with the intensity of the other three areas. So it's quite often things that we do to quickly press the release valve, get a dopamine hit so that we feel better quickly. But they're not things that we would do when we are calm and feeling good. For example, eating junk food. Kind of quick fix. Trying to switch your brain off at night by drinking an extra beer, an extra glass of wine. Buying things you don't need. Is your Amazon basket total for the month, much higher than it was previously? Doom scrolling, escaping into a rabbit hole on the internet. So these are often like quick ways of escaping the intensity of the [00:12:00] present, and again, that they, they're okay in short days. I'm not kind of saying we should never eat junk food, but if you're constantly doing it and you're noticing that you're not able to then dip in and do all the things that you used to be, healthy stress buffer activities like the gym, socializing, you withdrawn socially. That's another red flag. Did you do any of those things? I remember that I used to love doing yoga before I became a teacher. And as soon as that first year started, I was no longer able to attend yoga when I needed it the most because I could not sit in a room for meditation for 55 minutes and get the thoughts in my mind still enough because I was always wandering and thinking about what else I had to do to get ready for the next day, the next week, the next, yeah, whatever was coming next. And I was like, you know what? I can no longer pay a gym membership and drive half an hour round trip to sit for an hour and just let my mind wander. Just, it didn't feel like it was serving me and I wish I had gone back. [00:13:00] And I think we're gonna talk about the nervous system, but I can talk a bit about that at some point, why stillness is so hard when we're in that place. Tell us about that now, actually, please. So I've already referenced one branch of the nervous system. Actually, maybe I should rewind a moment and just say what I mean by autonomic nervous system. So it's the part of the brain and body that's responsible for keeping us safe and responsive to potential threats. Mm-hmm. So it includes like the brain, the brainstem, peripheral senses, like your eyes, nose, mouth, your body is always, or the autonomic nervous system is always scanning around us, our environment, people faces of the people around us, for any cues or whiff of danger. And if it picks up that there is a danger, it will suddenly switch into a different part, a different branch of our nervous system. So I'm referencing the vagus nerve here, and I talk about this in the book drawing on something called polyvagal theory. But essentially if you think about the modes of your nervous system having three colors, green, [00:14:00] yellow, and red. The green is the part of your autonomic nervous system, which we would ideally spend a lot of our time in. It's known as rest and digest, where all the organs in your body during this mode are functioning as business as usual. So we're digesting nicely, our heart's beating at a kind of regular pace, i'm able to look at your face and understand and interpret accurately what your facial expressions are, I can think clearly, so my frontal lobes are online nicely, which is where all that kind of rational thought is housed. Problem solving thought, creative thought. I can be curious, all capacities that we need to work. Um, I can also think this where language centers are also housed. So when this center goes offline, we go into a threat mode. It's harder to think clearly and, and speak eloquently and find our words and also comprehend well. So if you ever go into panic mode, and you know, I've sometimes had that in therapy with a panicked client, I can see they're not able to follow what I'm [00:15:00] saying. It's a sign they're not in their green mode anymore. So. If a threat, or, a stressor comes in, for our ancestors that might have been the sound of a tiger in the bushes, for us, it can be anything from a small thing like, "see me in my office now" from the boss kind of email dropping into our inbox. And for you, unfortunately, what you'd had was a big T trauma, capital T trauma of the shooting. But you'd also had lots of little t's coming in, little stresses coming in exactly like too much marking, you know, lots of change in, in one go, but imagine these are like tennis ball machines and the shots all being fired at you if there's lots of them, it's intense for our system, but what it's designed to do is switch into that sympathetic mode. The yellow, which is its first line of defense, the autonomic nervous system goes into fight or flight. And to do that, it's kind of like every organ in the body's kind of had a shot of the stress hormones. So your heart starts to quicken and it's quickening to push the blood around the [00:16:00] body faster. So your breathing has to increase in pace in order to oxygenate that blood. And suddenly, you know, we've, we are empowered to run away or hide or fight, and that works quite well. But in modern day that would be avoiding the meeting or going in all defensive or hammering away an email before you've really had time to sit on it and think. And unfortunately, the nature of thoughts and as well as change as well as our body reactions. So that's where we become much more kind of problem orientated and our thoughts become more rigid, quite often, and catastrophic. So we're more likely to think this awful thing's gonna happen, rather than being able to see kind of like, oh, hang on a minute. The chances of that happening are less likely than, yeah, my anxious mode is telling me. And, thinking, you know, that everybody thought you were a bad teacher, that would've been an anxious mode thinking. So those are the big changes that you get. And you know, that tennis ball metaphor that I gave, if those tennis ball machines are still firing shots and you're struggling to keep up and you're missing balls now being pummeled by all those [00:17:00] balls, our nervous system plays its Trump card and we disappear into our own little ball curled up trying to avoid being hit. And that's the last branch of our nervous system in the red mode known as dorsal shutdown. So have you ever watched any nature programs where the predator is chasing the prey? Yes. And on occasions, the predator chases the prey and catches up with the prey and the pre realizes there's no way they can escape being eaten here. Right. So they'll play their Trump card. They'll lie and they'll flop down. They have the ability to stop their breathing momentarily. And that might seem like a strange last ditch attempt to lie still. So the predator can catch them. But actually without the thrill of the chaser, the predator starts to lose interest. Doesn't want to eat something that already looks a bit like limp, that's not appetizing to it. So it's sympathetic nervous system kind of starts to switch off and it loses interest. Um, humans don't necessarily crash and flop, although in clinical burnout, we can, [00:18:00] I have had that where people can't get outta bed. But there's a functional burnout where we go into that and we're still apparently functioning, but we are not firing on all cylinders anymore. And so for us that functional dorsal shutdown can be going through the motions, but we are not really able to remember things well or feel compassionate, feel connected because it's a form of dissociation, which we talk about in trauma, but I also apply it in my book to burnout. I just think it's happening on a lower level. But it's still the same kind of neuroscience. No, I appreciate that. 'cause when I think about that first year, I'm now in year eight. This is my eighth year. Okay. As an educator. And I think what happened during that first year is that I just sort of learned to, in my mind, accept like, wow, this is how the profession is and this will be the next 45 years or however long until I retire. And I just had this long-term vision of dread [00:19:00] because of how that first few months in the classroom went that really set that premise. And at the same time, I think it wasn't until I learned like now that I'm a university professor, I'm like, well, wait a minute. This was not a match to that first year, which is a good thing because, I mean, I joke that I just taught 10 university classes this past semester. I think normal people teach maybe three or four classes. I taught 10, oh gosh, I taught 10 and I felt amazing. I mean, sure, I had a little bit of whip flash last week, like, wait a second. How was it Christmas already? But no, I, I loved getting up. I loved going to do what I did and having robust energizing conversations with students and it felt nothing like it did in that first year. And it leads me to think about like I always knew, but I had a passion for what I did. Now Claire, you talk about compassion in your text, but I think about the word passion. Is there such a scenario in terms of how you can talk about where burnout can differ from [00:20:00] passion fatigue? Um, I think that's a really interesting question. I've not been asked that before. And I don't dunno if there's any studies on this, but I do feel like I completely agree that passion's really important. And when I'm working on something that I'm passionate about mm-hmm. I get into flow, which is actually, I do talk about it a little bit. Do you remember the Yerkes-Dodson? I do. And I do. Yeah. So it's a bell curve and when you're at the top of the bell curve, you're kind of in eustress, which is positive stress. So I think that's probably the difference. When we're burnt out, often we are distressed because of the reasons I've already said, the tennis ball. There's too many things coming in where if there was a weighing scale in front of us, the demands coming in outweigh the resources and support that we've got. But I think passion, if you're doing work that's aligned with your values, you really care about and you're feeling well resourced. Mm-hmm. That can help us a lot to, to feel good about the work. The burnout element [00:21:00] would be loss of passion alongside the other things that I've described around stress. But I mean, I've definitely seen people who've lost their passion without being burnt out. They're beginning to question, is this what I want? You know, is this the long term kind of answer for me? How can I rejig my work to find my passion again? Do I need new projects? I think you can separate those things out. But if you're feeling tired and overwhelmed, all those stress red flags we went through are alongside the passion, then, I'd say that sounds more burnt out to me. Mm-hmm. No, I love that. And it makes me think about one of my favorite texts from Kafka who wrote The Metamorphosis and the Metamorphosis is what made me think entirely of what you study Dr. Plumbly, where in the metamorphosis, we talk about this person, Gregor. His name is Gregors. And Gregors is a normal guy who goes to bed one night. But when the story begins, he wakes up and he realizes that he overnight transformed into a giant cockroach. Mm. And his number one question [00:22:00] is not what happened to me, but his number one question is, oof how am I gonna make it to work today? And not only that, but how am I gonna make my train? Because all he does is study timetables, which I kind of do too. He studies time tables on trains to make sure he catches his train right on time, gets to work, and even his boss shows up at his house and knocks on his door. Nobody knows what's going on because now he just sounds like, I guess if cockroaches could talk, they would squeak. 'cause all he's doing in this text is, squeaking and screeching and making little noises to communicate. But his boss is like, you don't sound well. You've never missed a day at work, like where are you? But he doesn't really say it from a way of support. He kind of says it from a stance that's a little bit more accusatory, right? The entire text in this allegory focuses on how he sees his own life and his burnout factor with that. But, I think that also connects back to the imposter syndrome as well and [00:23:00] feeding into burnout. So what are some of the roots based upon your work that people tends to tell themselves that who they are and what they do just isn't enough? What does that look like and how does that also contribute to burnout? There are times of careers when we are more likely to get some of those thoughts when we are doing anything that's a challenge or is new to us. So like early on in your career, but also transition points. So if you get a promotion for example I, I found I got a lot of imposter thoughts when I was writing my book and thought, who am I to write a book and publish a book? And so my, learnings around imposter syndrome have really helped me to not just give up and just listen to those thoughts because now I recognize that they are my anxiety. They are our anxiety when we're doing something new, showing up in those thoughts. So if you can just go here, I am anxious because I'm doing something new, I have to bring those thoughts along for the ride because it's kind of like if you stood in your comfort zone [00:24:00] and when you're taking a foot outside of the comfort zone, which doing something new is, that's when the anxiety shows up. But in doing so, you are widening your comfort zone. Mm-hmm. So I know that over time, that comfort zone will increase and those imposter thoughts will start to abate a bit. That said, obviously in therapy I see a lot of people with low confidence, low self-worth, low self-esteem, and there are definitely themes in terms of early life experiences and life experiences that will impact on those feeling more intense or creating quite a dominant narrative that's really kind of taken over, you know, if someone's had attachment trauma, that tends to be quite a important root cause. Do you know what I mean by attachment trauma? Is it helpful for me to say a, a word or two about that? I know what you mean, but please talk a little bit more about it for our listeners. I mean, attachment trauma means wounds that come from our attachment figures. So our, a key parental or care givers growing up who maybe weren't able to meet [00:25:00] our needs or were very pushy or perfectionist, expected high things from us and didn't praise us enough or didn't stay tuned to our needs or we're abusive, emotionally abusive or sexually or physically abusive or neglectful. And these unfortunately, can massively impact who we think we are in the world and whether we think we've got a place in the world and our ability to believe in our ability to do difficult stuff. Having someone who can stand alongside us and kind of cheer us on early on in life, that helps 'cause we internalize those messages. We can definitely get that anytime growing up if you recognize some of that for yourself or anyone listening, but you have to focus on your attachment to yourself, right. Your relationship with yourself and just make a dedicated day. I'm gonna work on this. I, I talk about attachment styles in the book a bit 'cause it is important. And your big T trauma will have really knocked your whole view of the world as a safe place. Exactly. Who am I in the world? If the world's like this, that's gonna really impact on your self-confidence and your [00:26:00] confidence to, to kind of know what's the safe step forward here. And not only that, but as an educator, it's like not only do we need to figure out ourselves after that, but we need to figure out who that person can be in order to guide other students beyond us as well. Mm-hmm. And make sure that we're leading in a way that will not also traumatize them. And one of the things that I think about just as a writing teacher and writing versus math and science, and I go into this quite a bit on several podcasts, writing can be this door where we have to really draw a line as educators when we invite students to talk about emotions as part of their academic responses. And I will also say that one of the reasons why I did burn out in that first year was because I did open up Pandora's Box a few times in ways that I probably shouldn't have, where now student writing becomes this outlet to fuel their emotions. And as an educator, I was just on the call with Chris Mukiibi, who I'll link his episode here as well, but we talk about the bleeding heart of educators where most educators in the classroom [00:27:00] really do feel the weight of what their students are carrying. So when I also talk about burnout, a lot of that burnout that was attributed not only to the trauma from that tragedy that had happened, but now it's carrying all that as the educator for my students and thinking as like this superhero model. Like how in the world am I going to save these students as well? While also trying to save myself in a way from that tragedy and it really forced me to realign my values to know that I was not a superhero, I was just a person who really cared for others or otherwise known as a caregiver. So when we think about imposter syndrome as well, there was that question again, like the who am I? Who am I for these kids to trust and pour their hearts and souls into me? 'cause, to me, I'm like, if you've ever seen The Wizard of Oz, like I felt like I was the Wizard of Oz, where they think I'm just this, this wonderful person of greatness, and yet I was just hiding behind mirrors and smoke, trying to be their teacher. [00:28:00] So for educators listening, what would you say to them as well for those that really feel like they have bleeding hearts for the students around them? I mean, that's such a massive question, isn't it? Yes, it's quite hard to have a response, but I suppose when my head goes to is actually I'm just gonna put my hands over my heart and just embody this. So if anyone listening is as an educator, wants to do the same follow along, pop your hands over your heart and just say to yourself, I'm doing my best. I'm doing my best. I'm doing my best. Yeah. Um. And I'm there for them, you know? Mm-hmm. I, I do this with my own clients because I see traumatized clients. Yeah. And, I'm coming down with them sometimes we can't just throw tools and techniques at people till you've done that, until you've met them where they're at, and then you can support them. So sometimes that's a hard place to go. You are human. That's distressing. And sometimes, you know, students will be telling you really tricky [00:29:00] things. I'm working with a teacher at the moment who said, there seem to be more safeguarding issues than ever before. And yes, she's had the training to know what to do with that information, pass it on, how to ask the questions and things. But actually, where's her support? It's not built into the system. So if there are politicians or any leaders listening to this, actually that's needed, that's important because working with humans is always gonna be working with difficulties, distress, human emotions. So the fact that you are human and you care and you're able to listen and make space and not just focus on top-down targets around educational kind of academic targets, creating that safe space for a student is huge. So, if I'm making the situation worse by saying, well, this has got a bit grand, but you are doing your best trust that you're doing your best. And whenever you feel like, how am I, you know, I don't know what I'm doing, just pop your hands in your heart and just use an embodied affirmation like I am doing my best. And that's enough. Thank you so much for that. And that's [00:30:00] really what our students need are just caring individuals that are in the classrooms with them. And I think that one of the things that, again, back to Chris Mukiibi, who I'd love to introduce you to, by the way, Chris Mukiibi , he's a chemistry teacher out in California. We were saying that the thing that a lot of teachers are struggling with is that because of various climates, including political climates over here, they feel like the work that they do is in isolation. Like they're always going about their work alone. And I think if we were to shift the minds and the models to bring people connected and unite them as professionals in between students and teachers, that can really help build the bridges that we need for people to feel better in some essence. It is really tough when you are trying to practice a job compassionately when the leadership and policies aren't written in a compassionate way. And what's being modeled and told is important isn't marrying up with that. So don't try and do it in isolation. Find your accountability buddies [00:31:00] who subscribe to the same ways and models and understandings and make sure you are connecting with them regularly and listening to your podcast is one great way of doing that. Because you're bringing those messages all the time and helping people feel like I'm not alone. Absolutely. And thank you again for echoing that message. I feel like we had a great conversation so far on mindfulness, like trying to still the thoughts in their mind. We can talk a bit more about that if you'd like. We've also spoken about relaxing the nervous system and I think what I would like to pivot towards now if we can, is you offer towards the end of your text what you call it to be this toolkit for thriving. So for those of us listening, especially our educators that might be tuning in in real time here. And by real time, I mean that our episode will probably release in March, which here in the States is the turn of the final quarter of the school year before summer break approaches. Right. And that is, ooh, that fourth. I mean, there is no such thing as a good quarter. There's no such thing. Every quarter is awful. Oh, there's always something coming on. There's always something. But [00:32:00] fourth quarter is when the testing, the state testing is at its peak and everyone is just finished and they're ready to move on to the end of the school year. Mm. So what would you say are some items within the toolkit for thriving that can really help teachers and listeners feel supported and get them through their current state into their next step, wherever they need to go? So there's different ways to pitch the answer, because there's gonna be people listening who feel like, I'm on the cusp. I'm struggling to even focus on this podcast because I'm really like feeling burnt out. I mean, if you are in that place, celebrate the fact that you're recognizing that 'cause tuning and listen to your body and taking off the mask is actually step one, uh, takes a, a big deal to do that. So, trying to learn how to slow down, learning how to switch fluidly between those colors, between yellow red back into green . All those stress hormones you talked about struggling to go into a still place and Yeah. Stillness won't come easily. Gentle [00:33:00] breathing exercises and yoga moves can be really hard until you've done something to burst to release it. So for me, when I'm in that place, I will go for a jog or run up and down the stairs. I'll do something till I'm pleasantly tired. So that's the top tip there. If you're struggling to wind down, do something until you're pleasantly tied to move. And I've got lots of really practical tools where I use bilateral movement to do that. In the book. I dunno if you've remember seen that, the cross call for example, or tapping any bilateral movement, which means moving the body left and right, swimming, walking, jogging are really particularly good you can do that at any point in the day. You know, I always recommend to my clients use the transition points in the day as an invitation to check in. What do I need, which color am I in, what do I want for the next piece of work that I'm gonna go and do? So if you've been rushing to get to class, you might be in your yellow mode. And then if you want to think clearly and teach a class, you wanna be back in green. So try and just like build in, like walking an extra block to get there. And then [00:34:00] you'll arrive and you can take some nice slow breaths. Breathing is always gonna be one of the top ones for regulating the nervous system because it's the quickest way you can bring your autonomic nervous system onto your conscious control. So I've got tips and biofeedback tools in the book about how you can do that. So there are apps you can download, so you can see the impact the breathing is having on your heart rate. You get this kind of rather rugged mountain range on the screen, on the app when you are measuring your heart rate. Becomes these lovely hill looks and the, the, the apps are free. You pop your thumb over the flash in the camera and it starts to pick up your heart rate. So those are some kind of initial things, and if anyone's listening to this thinking, yeah, I get to bedtime, completely wiped out, but so wired, there's no way I can sleep I've got free handout on my website, which we could link so that people could just instantly kind of do a quick, a quickie, like five steps. and obviously if anyone listening feels like professional help is needed, don't delay. You know, reading a book might not be, what you need right now. If you're really struggling to get out of [00:35:00] bed, you're having panic attacks, you are struggling to talk, getting cardiac difficulties like that, you know, can really have a toll on the body. So go and talk to your GP. Um. Is that who you would advise over there in America? That's who I'd advise. Usually here. Uh, general practitioner or primary? Yes. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And then there's lots of other things in the book. Obviously setting boundaries. Yeah. But that's simpler to say than it is to actually carry out. So you need to know why your boundaries are hard to stick to. That's the problem. People can set them and then it's sticking to them. We get pushback. So yeah, expecting pushback, knowing it takes at least three weeks to set a new habit for it to feel more natural. It's gonna feel clunky until then, but not seeing that as failure. And also I invite people to reconsider what their values are because your values change over time. So this is what's important to you. And they're a bit like goals, except they're bigger than goals. 'cause you can reach a goal and then feel a bit fulfilled. But if you are always aligned with your values. It's kind of like [00:36:00] a direction of travel, but it's not like a destination. And if you are walking in that direction, we tend to feel good and aligned and unfortunately life can pull us into all sorts of directions. And it's really helpful in burnout where we focused heavily on one value, like being the best we can at work, but that's pulled us completely out of whack with all our other values. Like for example, for me it'd be being a present parent or a daughter who checks in and spends time with my parents when I can. Like there's so many other places we have values and unfortunately in the hustle culture that we live in, we can end up putting a lot of eggs in one values basket. So I'm literally just chucking a bunch of ideas out here, like for people to know that there are things that you can be doing, we can do really good work in therapy as well. So therapy is another place to explore because burnout is absolutely something a lot of therapists will support people with. You mentioned a key word and oof, especially here in the states hustle culture. I remember talking with some family members in the middle of COVID, [00:37:00] and we said to each other, we celebrate exhaustion. We celebrate a culture of exhaustion, but we don't know how to take care of the people who fall to be exhausted. Yeah. And I wanted to know if you can talk a little bit more about that in terms of the hustle culture that we're all experiencing. Yeah, so we, we live in a very individualistic society where a lot of emphasis is put on always producing, and that has become now woven into our sense of self-worth. I'm only worth something if I'm producing, and something tangible. And that contributes to the economy, which is why jobs where people are in caring roles or work at homes, taking time off, paid work to look after their children quite often will struggle a little bit with their self esteem, self-worth, and knowing that they're offering something really important. You get the select few who can see the importance of their work, but it's quite hard for a lot of people. So a lot of people I work with who at that burnt out spectrum, have [00:38:00] got to the point where every moment of the day feels like it needs to be producing or moving them forward with something. So they'll be out on a walk or chopping the potatoes at dinnertime, they're listening to a podcast or they're doing they're Duolingo, they're downloading a course and they're like, it's exhausting. And, and it, sometimes I'll talk to people about what do you do for fun? Like, do you, do you read, do you, is what series are you watching? And some people just aren't doing anything for fun. Because they enjoy it. They'll be watching documentaries or self-help books. And obviously I don't wanna knock self-help books or useful book like ours, but it's the balance. And that kind of mindset that's got very ingrained now that a plateau is unacceptable. I always need to be on an upward trend. And actually that's not in keeping with good wellbeing and having values that are about connection. 'cause busyness, busyness gets in the way of connection, you know? Mm-hmm. And unfortunately. People will often then [00:39:00] neglect their self-care, but also their ability to connect with their friends and family. With the one exception with the self-care, quite often what I find is people get very productive on certain health goals where they want to be the slimmest or the fittest or the farthest, so they're setting more personal best for themselves, which is all about being productive and pushing hustling in a different way. Yeah. But it's a socially acceptable way. And one thing, I wanna think about, because I know that a lot of, I mean, in this new generation, I'm pretty sure it's a global crisis as well, just the management of adolescents and youth as well, and especially for our adults in I call them caregiver roles like educators. Mm-hmm. Like therapists, like doctors, and I think about somebody like you, Dr. Plumbly, who might be working with a full spectrum of clients in therapy as well. And the issues that they're dealing with here as we now enter 2026, probably different from those seeking therapy in 1996, for example. Right. And just the gap of [00:40:00] what we see as the spectrum of issues in our cultures for today. And especially with those caregiver roles like our teachers, they're managing all different types of behaviors that weren't even existing when I was in the classroom in 2019. So for those in those types of roles that are constantly working to manage and combat new behaviors that in turn are causing them to feel more burned out and more jaded about their job and questioning what they do, do you have any thoughts you can share based upon that in terms of either the caregiver or the student and how to manage that? I mean, I just, I resonate with that on a personal level 'cause I've got three kids and a conversation that comes up a lot in our house is around managing screen time. Feeling angry that there aren't more safeguards in place from like top down like high level government. Like, you know, over in Australia they've chosen to stop social media for under sixteens. I dunno if you saw that in the news a couple of weeks ago. And [00:41:00] obviously I'm gonna be saying this and not everybody would listening would agree with that. That's a good thing. But personally I do think social media is a place that can be very alluring and hook a lot of people and there's a lot of safeguarding issues that I see coming up. So I do see that it's more unhelpful than helpful in my opinion. And so we don't let our children use social media and we are very careful with screens. But yeah, we are constantly having these conversations. It makes us me feel angry because it feels like it's another emotional load for me and my husband that we're having to think about. And it's very well for us to have our rules. But then now. When they're old enough, they are old enough, they're 14 and 11 and nine, they go off to people's houses. And that's another thing that I'm, you know, what are they allowing them access to? You know, do they have TikTok and all these things that, I dunno what my kids are now seeing. Like, I dunno if that's the kind of thing you were referring to with differences in culture, but that's one example. And then obviously you've got these kind of ultra masculine kind of role models, which are also highly stressful to know that our kids are being potentially exposed to that at [00:42:00] school, so yeah, just on a personal level, I do totally, resonate with that. And I think it's really important that leaders take role. Like when our local school, secondary school, decided to ban phones only a year ago, so it's not even a year, six months ago, that was a real relief 'cause they were showing leadership and it made an impact on the way the kids thought about how important a phone was to have. So even if you're not a politician, if you're in a leadership role to be thinking about what are the pressures on the people I'm responsible for, where are they coming from? Can I put some safeguards in? Because people look up to you and it's really hard. There's a lot of people who don't want change. And so a lot of the kids who are already at the school really didn't want to give up their phones in the school day. And the teachers were used to using them for kind of online quizzes and research. Yeah. So there's a big kind of portion of people who didn't want any change, but now it's changed. My kids come home from school and they said the atmospheres at school is so different and there are ways around all the problems so if leaders are kind of thinking [00:43:00] it's too difficult, like you've gotta be the ones who face the difficult challenges. You had me thinking now about just the state of education globally as well because they think about American educators, like you said, they're still struggling with just the whole shift in behavioral climate. And since we're checking into the UK here as well, I wanted to see if you've noticed that in terms of, for example, the teachers that you have seen or either have worked with or those teaching your own children and just what does that climate also look like and do you have any final thoughts for our listeners, especially those in roles within education about just ways to manage their own passion and compassion fatigue and compounding that burnout in this new climate of age? I think it can be really distressing to work in that environment where you feel like you've got very little control. It's focusing on, if you imagine the spheres of control and influence model, essentially it's concentric circles and in the very center is the sphere you can control around it is the sphere of things you can [00:44:00] influence. And the last circle is the things that might concern you, but you can't really influence or control. And the main thing is to not overly focus on that 'cause that's draining. But to focus on your inner circle that things you can control. So the people's closest to you, showing them compassion and listening, you are tending to yourself and your nervous system, pacing yourself, resting, using all your tools even when you don't feel like using them, knowing that that's just a sign of where I am in my nervous system. I need them more than ever. How you move through your body, how you transition your day, making compassionate decisions such as not booking back to back meetings. Saying to someone, oh, that I'll have to wait till next week 'cause then my diary is full rather than staying to the end of the day. Like, these are compassionate decisions. They are within your control. People might not like them. You might get worry thoughts that something bad's gonna happen, but just try them with low hanging fruit, where the easy ways you can try making some compassionate decisions. And this is what compassion is. It's about focusing on that zone of control and not getting overwhelmed with the [00:45:00] outer region. Choose one or two students who have tricky behavior and if they're the kind of ones who look up to you and ask you questions a bit like that's where you're gonna have a little bit more influence. And I think also just finding ways to protect your own personal wellness. For example, saying no to obligations that are not urgent or necessary at that time is another way to just protect the energy that you had. That's what I've been told many times. Protect your energy, protect your energy. One more thing on that, like if you do feel like I allude to this in the book, well actually I don't just allude to it. There's quite a chunk of it about those internal pressures, internal pressures being perfectionism, people pleasing or using business to avoid emotions. If you have a tendency towards those things, that will make saying no and delegating and putting a task down before it's fully perfect, really hard to do and sometimes therapy on those things can really help. So for example, I do trauma therapy. EMDR is [00:46:00] a trauma therapy where we go back and we work out when did this tendency to need to be people pleasing and keeping everyone happy and putting your own needs last come from no wonder it's so hard. And you work on processing that trauma and that frees you up and gets you unstuck in the present. So if the tools and strategies that we're talking in the morning here and now feel like, oh, I kind of feel like I've tried that, consider something a bit more long term, and deeper work. I appreciate that. Thank you so much for that share. And do you have any final thoughts for our listeners today? Any major takeaways that you want them to gain from our conversation? Just that I appreciate that you've listened to the end and that you are doing your best. My hands have gone to my heart again because anyone listening to this I'm sure is really caring, cares about others, cares about their wellbeing, cares about their place in the world and teaching others. And you're doing a really difficult job and we all appreciate you. But I think it's really hard sometimes to feel that appreciation to stop and notice it. So yeah, allow it to flow in. Thank you so much. So that was Dr. Claire Plumbly here to tell us that [00:47:00] no matter what role we partake in, we are always enough. You can follow up with Dr. Plumbly at her social media, @drclaireplumbly, as well as on her website, which you will find in our show notes. That's all for today. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for joining us on the Classroom Narratives Healing and Education podcast. If today's episode inspired you or made you think differently, I'd love to hear from you. Drop a comment or review wherever you listen to podcasts and stay connected with us on the at Classroom Narratives podcast over Instagram and Facebook. Remember, together we can transform our scars into stars and education, one conversation at a time.