Bringing Our Emotional Strength to Our Classrooms and Work
Burn-out is a major problem for professionals today. Many are surprised to learn that burnout is the result of emotional stress, not physical exhaustion. It is no surprise that some teachers are emotionally exhausted! Our rabbis teach that an ‘impatient person cannot be a teacher’. At times, even the most patient teacher will be stressed when searching for even more patience to deal with their students, colleagues or other challenges, resulting in burn out.
There is a more effective, less emotionally stressful way to lead, to teach, and to interact with others according to Rabbi Friedman. Teaching is about the teacher and a teacher with integrity, wholeness and a sense of self is best for the child. Parents and teachers are worn out by a child’s unregulated behavior from being too ‘available’, or too ‘understanding’. He writes,
“I have found that parents (and teachers) are far better able to sustain a growth-producing attitude toward their children by adopting a new perspective - parents must be able to concentrate on the preservation of their own integrity rather than changing the child. When we focus on the other, the unrelenting lack of self-regulation in a troublesome child gives the child a never-ending, relentless strength that is hard for parents and teachers to resist as long as they are trying to be empathic.”
I was surprised to understand the difference between empathy and sympathy. “Sympathy, unlike empathy, does not involve a shared perspective or shared emotions, and while expressions of sympathy do convey caring, they do not convey shared distress.” Sympathy is a wonderful way to care for others, while too often empathy becomes an unhealthy and unhelpful tactic. For example, when a student is upset over receiving a vanilla cupcake instead of a chocolate cupcake, I will employ sympathy, however, if I truly feel empathy then I will be as distressed as the child because I am absorbing their anxiety.
Rabbi Freidman would urge us to:
- Stay calm, do not absorb another’s anxiety
- Take a stance and stick to it
- Realize that people cannot hear you when they are unmotivated to change
Rabbi Feivel Strauss
Temple Israel
Memphis TN
October 2019
