A Strategic, Smart Approach to Depressurizing the Teacher Soul

Hey there — here you'll find links to the whole series on depressurizing the teacher soul:

• Intro, Part I: The Teacher's Journey: A Deeper, Better Way of Thinking (and Doing Something) about Burnout and Demoralization
• Intro, Part II: Efficiency Hasn't Saved Us
• Intro, Part III: The Mechanics of Teacher Burnout (AKA the Workload-Pressure Cycle)
• Intro, Part IV: A Strategic, Smart Approach to Depressurizing the Teacher Soul (below)
• Depressurizing the Physical Self:
  • why exercising to look a certain way is not it
  • why bedtime revenge is so seductive and nappucino's are so 🔥
  • intake (coming soon — subscribe to be sure not to miss it)
• Depressurizing the Social Self:
  • the day Mr. Rogers stopped judging
  • more soon — subscribe to be sure not to miss it
• Depressurizing the Intellectual Self:
  • the thing about minds
  • coming soon — subscribe to be sure not to miss it
• Depressurizing the Emotional Self:
  • why we all probably need emotionally honest support groups
  • how BIFF can de-escalate hostile incoming communications

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What are we? Last summer, I explored this a bit.

Our culture is suffused with a sense that human beings are brains, or bags of chemicals, or primates 3.0. If that's how you think, I'm good with that.

EXCEPT that it's not super practical.

For example:

• How many of us KNOW that we need better sleep, THINK and LEARN about how to get better sleep… and yet still go to bed way too late?
• How many of us KNOW social media is bad for us, THINK and LEARN about how social media can be bad for us… and yet still look with shock at the number of minutes we spent on social media this past week?

My point is that if we're going to do a good job depressurizing our selves so that we can simplify our workloads — that is, if we're going to disrupt the Workload-Pressure Cycle beneath our burnout — we've got to draw on some deeper wells than the common view of the human being.

The view I find most useful is vetted by various cultures across the ages, makes sense of divergent disciplines like psychology, sociology, biology, philosophy, and history, and is observable each day as I live as a person. We're souls — creatures comprised of five deeply integrated parts.

So when I say me, or when I say you, or when I say student, I'm talking about creatures that are:

• Physical
• Intellectual
• Social
• Emotional
• Volitional

In order to drain the malicious whirlpool of the Workload-Pressure Cycle, we've simply got to habituate the depressurization of these parts of our selves and de-habituate the stuff we do that adds pressures to these parts.

And lemme tell ya: it's gonna be fun. Not easy — but fun. And a loooooot simpler than most folks make it seem.

Next time: physical depressurization.