Jennifer L
My name is Jen, and I’ve been a teacher for 20 years. I started out as a visual arts teacher in grades 6-8, then taught technology as an elective course, and have since moved to an elementary library/media specialist role.
Looking back, I can say that I’ve struggled with anxiety and depression since adolescence, but was undiagnosed until I was in my mid-thirties. My mother has a history of anxiety disorder, and my younger brother has his own story to share, so it's not a surprise that I also deal with some of the same issues. My father, however, is the type that “doesn’t believe” in this sort of thing (as though that will make it cease to exist) and is an emotionally abusive narcissist… so it makes sense that I was never identified or received any help until far into adulthood. I don’t have contact with him now, so I finally have the confidence to make choices that prioritize myself and my family when it comes to mental health.
Only after I had my son in 2012 did I start to think that I might need outside assistance. He was eight months old, and I was still struggling with some postpartum issues that caused me to seek out professional counseling. At that time, I had only started to realize that there might be more going on with me than I had previously thought. It wasn’t until 2014, when I had bariatric (gastric sleeve) surgery and I was required to see a psychologist as part of the pre-and post-operative care that the doctor asked me, “So, why is it that you’ve never wanted to try medication for your depression in the past?”
“Wait, what?” I replied. “I didn’t know that I might need it, and no one’s ever offered it to me as an option before!”
It was like a light switch being turned on in my head. THAT’S what had been going on all along? I suddenly felt a huge weight being lifted. It wasn’t just ME, all along, doing something wrong? Was this actually beyond me?
Just knowing this fact went miles towards shifting my mental state - that it wasn’t all my fault. I started medication very slowly. The doctor and I worked together to find dosage/combinations that balanced out my anxiety and depression to a manageable level. Any fears I had about medication making me feel like I wasn’t “myself” were quickly settled. When you get it right (and yes, it can take a while to find what’s right for you), you don’t feel different on meds. I just looked back one day and realized that minor events that would have triggered extreme reactions in the past no longer affected me… the way it probably should have been all along. My brain perseverates less on minor setbacks and disappointments than it would have done in the past.
It’s important to note that I’m NOT 100% cured. Especially right now, in COVID/quarantine times; I’ve been struggling hardcore, but then, everyone is. I started seeing a therapist via teletherapy once a week, and it helps to talk about what's going on and just get the thoughts that go on in my head out of there.
When I feel overwhelmed I want to escape, I go into fight-or-flight mode. This is the worst for a teacher, because we can’t escape. We can’t leave our classrooms. We don’t have flexible schedules to work around. We can’t just walk out of a meeting or ignore a conversation with a boss or colleague. In my last school building, there was nowhere to go. We had no empty spaces where I could decompress. The best way to describe how it feels when I’m overstimulated and panicking is that I want to crawl into a giant cardboard refrigerator box, in the dark, with a weighted blanket on me. But there isn’t one, and I’m an adult, so I’m expected to just deal with it, and that’s hard.
Then there’s the opposite feelings. Some days I’m having “down” days. Those are the days that I feel nothing. I don’t want to do anything. I can even mentally step outside of myself on those days, look at myself, and try to tell myself to get up and do something. I think of things that make me happy, and try to convince myself that if I just got up and did something, the apathetic feelings would go away…honestly, it doesn’t usually work. The only thing that works is time. The next day, I wake up in the morning and it’s gone. I don’t get it. I know when it’s there, and I can even articulate it to my husband. I can say to him, “I’m having a down (or weird, or blah) day.” But outside of that I feel pretty helpless, and I go through my day on autopilot. Fortunately, this isn’t often… but it happens sometimes.
Being in education and dealing with mental health has a positive in the fact that I have a unique platform to talk about mental health, to share my story and destigmatize mental health. But the negative is that education feels like one of the most stressful jobs out there, especially now. I feel like neither my physical health nor my mental health matters to people. I feel expendable. I’m distrusted and disrespected by my school board and upper administration, and definitely not treated as a professional. I’ve been dragged through the mud and made to feel like trash, and the expectation is that I’m just supposed to endure it and be okay with it. But I’m not okay.
How do we fix this? It’s easy. Listen to teachers. Take their words and recommendations into consideration. Treat teachers as human beings and as professionals. We went to school. We hold advanced degrees. We know what we’re doing, and we are good at what we do. Being ignored is the highest form of invalidation, and we’ve never been ignored as much as we are right now. Hang in there, friends. You are not alone.