Any teachers/former teachers out there?

Depression
#1

I’m a teacher and this year has been a real struggle (due to my depression). Last day with the students was Friday. Now I have a little time to recoup, although I will work three weeks of summer school in July. I was off work for ten weeks in the fall. That is when I had my initial “crash” and diagnosis of severe depression. This last month or so has been like a relapse. Too much stress. Things really got to me. I tried to keep a cheerful face at work, but it was really terribly exhausting.
This last week, I had a couple of problems and lost my temper and dealt with a student in a way that was out of character for me. I am worried about my ability to continue doing my job. My therapist is in fact is encouraging me to make a change. However, I feel like teaching is my identify. It is something that I was very good at in the past. Although the job has definitely changed in recent years (so many more pressures; control taken out of the teacher’s hands; so many more demands), there are still moments when I love it.
I have no idea what else I would do. Where do burned out teachers go? I can I support my family? What other kinds of jobs are teachers trained to do or can learn to do? Any suggestions?
Does burnout have to be permanent? Anyone else experienced severe depression and made it back into the classroom? How did you do it?

P.S. My situation is complicated. Teaching did not cause my depression. I have other things going on in my life or that happened in the past that contributed to the onset of depression. But teaching is a very stressful job and at this time I am easily overwhelmed. Then when I can’t deal with things, I feel like a failure and feel guilty about what I can’t do. I fall into depression and think all kinds of crazy thoughts.

I am getting so frustrated and exhausted. I barely made it through the last couple weeks of school. Any ideas, advice, …?

#2

I sent you a message… hope it helps :slight_smile:

#3

There are probably other options. Maybe working at one of those private tutoring places. Maybe a part time teacher’s aid? Maybe doing training in for some company, almost all of those places teach internal classes on all sorts of things. They often prefer someone who is experienced in teachning, because they can always “teach” you the subject matter.

None of these is actually the same as “teaching” but they are sort of in the “teacher” capacity. Perhaps you can visit a career counselor.

And I hate to disagree with you. However . . . it’s t rue your job did not actually “cause” the depression. But any stress helps to make the “triggers” the depression to make itself apparent.

For almost my whole life I had some kind of low level depression, but as I got older, and life stresses started stacking up, out popped the major depression. Sometimes it’s all the little stresses stacking up. Sometimes it the combination of all the stress making the brain chemical switch flip to on, and kaboom.

Believe me, I understand all about defining myself through my job. Instead of defining myself by WHO I am, I defined myself by WHAT I do. Ifk the WHAT starts to fail you, you can suddenly start feeling as an absolute and complete failure. Remember you are still you. Your WHO is still there.

Maybe therapy alone can help you deal with the stress that has piled up in your life. After seeing you a few times, a good therapist gets the “feeling” that meds may help you. Then they can refer you a doc they know – whick is always better than picking one out of the phone book!

but don’t do down the med road unless you absolutely need to. It’s ain’t any fun, trust me. Both meds and counseling/therapy can take 3-5 weeks to start showing progress. There is no quick fix or silver bullet.

we here at careplace will help as much as we can.
peace,
c.

#4

P.S. You certainly are NOT invisible to us here!

#5

Thanks to both of you. Everyone at Careplace has been so good to me.

SeeSaw, your comment defining yourself by the WHAT I DO really hit home. That is so me. In the past twenty years I have worked so hard to be a good teacher, mother, wife that I lost the WHO I am along the way. When problems came up in my job and home, that is when I felt like such a failure.

I still haven’t found the WHO yet.