How I Transformed My Secondary Traumatic Stress - A Compassionate Call to Educators.
Transforming Secondary Traumatic Stress
My Beginning
I was at an organizational constellation workshop. The question I had asked was about the high-stress level in our school.
The facilitator was one of the founders of the systemic education movement started in the UK, Judith Hemming.
At the time, I was very ill. I was receiving help for my health concerns, but I had never looked at how my work was contributing to my illness.
My System
As a school counselor in an urban magnet mostly low-income community, I created a safe space for the students and my colleagues.
The teachers were dedicated. But many were also angry, frustrated, demoralized. They wanted to see their students thrive, and they felt like failures when they did not. Many carried this sense of failure as a personal shame.
The teachers came to me for resources and support, so they shared things they might not share with others. But I found myself so drawn into this system that I became sick.
“This is life or death for you, personally.”
My Realization
The workshop focused on illuminating how our problems were embedded in a larger system. Only by influencing the system could we address our challenges.
But we didn’t analyze the system - we EMBODIED it. Judith Hemming used workshop participants to stand and represent the parts of the school system.
In my case, she chose four representatives: one for the children at my school, one for the life-path of the children, one for myself and one for the principal.
As the representatives started to move and describe how they felt in relation to each other, I was struck by how accurately they reflected my sense of the dynamics.
Judith Hemming turned to me in the middle of the process and said, “this is life and death for you, personally.” She pointed to my representative and showed me how I was getting in between the child and their life-path. I could see I was out of place.
My Path Forward
What I understood through the workshop was that in my desire to help the children, I had crossed an unseen boundary. I had tried to take on their challenges as if they were my own, rather than creating the personal boundary that would allow me to appropriately - and more effectively - support them.
After the workshop, I knew I had to do something or leave the school. A few months later, I went to England to receive systemic education training.
What I found at the systemic education training was a group of educators from all over the world who, by learning how to develop their own systemic knowing, generated creativity, learning and joy and a renewed sense of presence for themselves and their students.
They also sponsored a South African trainer, Janet Goldblatt, to offer a two-day training at my school for leaders and teachers. I started to provide teacher’s circles, peer mentorship, parent circles, and classroom lessons.
My energy and health had a tremendously positive shift. I discovered I had so much to offer to others. I remember at my retirement party all the thanks from all the teachers and their stories and offerings of how much the work meant to them.
Your Path Forward
I really want to make the offer that was made to me, so that other educators and leaders can receive what I did. Please join Alison Fornés and me at the upcoming Teaching From Presence workshop on Saturday, March 23.
>> New Haven Area Educators:
Experience powerful and inspiring tools, and a pathway to transform the stress you are experiencing.
A One-Day Workshop
10am - 4pm Saturday March 23, 2019
379 Whalley Ave, New Haven CT (Edge of the Woods, Rear Building)
$80 Early Registration; $100 Regular Registration