June 9, 2025 • 18 mins
You turned in your keys, packed up your office, and told yourself this summer would be a reset. But instead of relaxing, you feel… off. Either you can’t sit still, or you’ve completely shut down.
Sound familiar?
In this episode, we’re talking about what’s really going on when school counselors can’t seem to rest after the school year ends.
We’ll explore the biological stress cycle, the emotional aftermath of constant crisis response, and why your body might still be on high alert... even if your calendar is empty.
You’ll learn:
- Why some counselors feel antsy and others feel emotionally flatlined
- What the stress cycle actually is (and why school counselors rarely complete it)
- What to do instead of trying to “fix” yourself with productivity
- Real strategies to help you downshift: without guilt, pressure, or a color-coded plan
- How parenting, performance pressure, and public education expectations all collide in the summer
This isn’t just about feeling better. It’s about reclaiming your nervous system, your peace, and your ability to start the school year as yourself... not the burned-out version you’ve been trying to push through.
*********************************
⭐️ Want support with real-world strategies that actually work on your campus? We’re doing that every day in the School for School Counselors Mastermind. Come join us! ⭐️
**********************************
Our goal at School for School Counselors is to help school counselors stay on fire, make huge impacts for students, and catalyze change for our roles through grassroots advocacy and collaboration. Listen to get to know more about us and our mission, feel empowered and inspired, and set yourself up for success in the wonderful world of school counseling.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So it's summer, you've turned in your keys,
you've packed up your office andprobably dodged a few
last-minute requests on your wayout the door.
And now, for the first time inmonths, you're not in crisis
response mode.
But, instead of just relaxing,you might be feeling a little
(00:21):
off.
You might be feeling a littleoff.
You can't seem to settle down.
You keep checking your email,you're reorganizing your closet
or starting unnecessary homeprojects, or maybe you're on the
flip side You're feeling guiltyfor not doing anything.
You've hit a wall.
It's like you've emotionallyflatlined, you're napping too
(00:46):
much, you're avoiding people andyou're kind of coming down on
yourself, thinking man, I'mawfully lazy now that I'm not at
work.
Either way, if you're feelinguneasy with either one of those
scenarios, now that summer ishere, you are not alone.
That summer is here, you arenot alone.
You might think that you'rejust tired or burned out, but
(01:16):
what you're feeling right nowwhen you can't relax, you have
that weird flatness or restlessenergy might actually be
something a little bit deeper.
It might be something that yournervous system has been trying
to tell you for a while now.
Hey, my friend, welcome back.
I'm Steph Johnson, a licensedprofessional counselor and
full-time school counselor justlike you.
If you're tired of schoolcounseling advice that sounds
(01:40):
like it came from Pinterest,you're in the right place.
Around here, we're keeping itreal, we're keeping it grounded
and I'm giving you tools andideas that actually work,
because you deserve more thanpretty graphics and empty
promises.
So before I was a schoolcounselor, I was a teacher.
(02:03):
I taught elementary fine artsand never failed.
Every time we had a bigperformance I would get super
sick.
Now our performances, to befair, were pretty big
extravagances.
They weren't like your typicalschool concerts or music
programs where the kids stand onthe risers and sing a few songs
(02:24):
.
They weren't like your typicalschool concerts or music
programs where the kids stand onthe risers and sing a few songs
.
They weren't like that at all.
Our performances consisted ofthree to four hundred students
at one time, with multiple scenechanges, people moving while
others were performing, anabsolutely zero percent downtime
(02:45):
for the entire performance.
It was more like a juniorBroadway style show than your
typical school program, and oncethose curtains closed and we
put all the props away, I knew Iwas going to be on the couch
with a sore throat or a terriblecough or a cold within the next
(03:06):
24 hours.
It was almost like my body waswaiting for all of that stress
to be taken care of before itjust fell apart.
And the really weird thingabout it and this is kind of
embarrassing to admit, but I wasgrateful for that I was like,
hey, thanks, body, thanks forholding it together.
(03:27):
When things were tough and youknow, that's happened to me at
other times too.
When I finished each of mydegrees, when I would complete
big projects, I would dip intosomething that kind of felt like
depression.
But I knew I wasn't depressed.
My energy would crash and Iwould think, why am I not
(03:49):
bouncing back?
I want to.
But now I understand why.
Because it wasn't just mentalexhaustion, it was biological.
And while I know that, you alsoknow that we can experience
that biological exhaustion andthat stress lives in our body.
(04:11):
It's a whole different thingwhen we actually allow ourselves
to feel that and haveconversations about it.
Maybe that happened to you too,where the school year ended and
all of a sudden you felt likeyou were coming down with
something.
It's not uncommon.
I know a lot of schoolcounselors that have done that
this year.
So let's walk through what'shappening.
(04:36):
If you're either just way tooamped up and you just can't calm
it down, or you feel like aslug and you absolutely can't
move.
These may both be stressreactions.
But stress is not onlyemotional.
It becomes a biological processand the only way that we can
(04:57):
resolve these symptoms is tocomplete the stress cycle.
The unfortunate part is thatmost school counselors never
complete that cycle, becausewe're responding to one student
concern, then we respond toanother, then we debrief with
the principal while we'regrabbing our papers for a
(05:18):
meeting and we go from fire tofire to fire and we never really
get a big resolution in our day.
And so when summer hits, yes,those stressors stop, but your
body remains in that stresscycle.
It's not gotten the signal thatthat stress is resolved.
(05:41):
The stress cycle is somethingthat I talk about a lot in
in-person workshops and speechesand when I'm providing master
classes for my mastermindmembers.
It's so important and somethingthat you don't often hear
people talk about.
In the stress cycle I'm goingto paraphrase very roughly but
(06:03):
we perceive a threat.
Our body goes into high alert,right.
We tense, our pupils dilate, webreathe faster, our heart
starts beating you know all thefight or flight responses, right
.
And then somehow we overcomewhatever it is that's posed that
danger to us.
Ideally, what would happen nextis some sort of signal to your
(06:27):
body that the threat has passedand it is now time to relax.
If we were villagers that wereout hunting for food or maybe
fighting a wild animal, oncethat stress was over, we would
drag the animal home right.
We would have a big celebrationand there would be music and
feasting, and that would be asignal to our bodies that the
(06:50):
threat had been resolved.
But in the modern world itdoesn't work that way, and so
often in school counseling we gofrom one crisis right into the
next.
We're not allowing our bodiesthe resolution of the stress
cycle, and so we just keepamping it up with all of this
stress hype and we never, evercome back down and eventually
(07:13):
our nervous system becomes soelevated that not only does that
start to feel normal to us, butwhen our bodies start to
de-escalate, it almost feelswrong.
This is the reason why you feellike you need to stay busy.
It's like a nervous person thatcan't stop talking.
(07:34):
Have you ever been around oneof those?
They are super nervous and theyjust go yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck,
yuck, yuck and they just cannothelp themselves.
They fill all the space withnoise to compensate for their
nervousness.
Your body is kind of doing thesame thing.
It's also scrambling to fillthat silence because that's what
(07:57):
you have trained it to do allschool year long.
And then, if you're one of thefolks that is the opposite and
you feel completely checked out,that could be part of the same
kind of response.
Believe it or not, it's calledfunctional freeze.
That's when you have been onhigh alert for way too long and
(08:19):
your body kind of shuts down toprotect you.
So it's not that you're lazy,it's that you have just been
maxed out.
And, my friend, I think thateither one of these situations
calls for a whole lot more gracethan we usually give ourselves.
(08:40):
We are so quick to try to fixourselves when these things
happen.
Right, we are trying to makenew routines, we're trying to
force ourselves out of the slump, or we're trying to minimize
our discomfort with movement andactivity.
Or we guilt ourselves intobeing productive with movement
and activity, or we guiltourselves into being productive,
(09:01):
but, according to the researchon the burnout cycle, sometimes
we need to stop trying to fixthings and just allow your body
to reset.
That could be one of the mostimportant things that you do all
summer.
So what do you do if your bodyis still on high alert or it's
completely shut down?
(09:22):
You don't fix it, like I said,but you can support it.
So here are a few things youcan do to try to support
yourself through this, withouttrying to fix it all through
this, without trying to fix itall.
The first is developing somesafety signals.
(09:47):
Your nervous system needs helprealizing that the perceived
danger, the chaos, theadrenaline rushes.
They're over for a little while.
You're safe now.
For me, that means you can findme sitting on my back porch
most mornings.
I love to sit back there andlisten to the birds and watch
the trees, drink my morningcoffee and just let myself be
for a little while.
There is a lot of researchbehind that how nature exposure
(10:12):
helps reduce cortisol and helpsre-regulate your nervous system.
But maybe that's not your thing.
Could you go for a walk in thepark while it's still cool in
the mornings.
Or maybe you don't have anoutdoor space.
Could you sit by a window witha view, or could you find that
super cozy chair or thatwonderful spot somewhere in your
(10:35):
home that makes you feel safeand grounded and just spend some
time there.
You don't have to disappearinto a forest, you don't have to
go on a spa retreat or anythinglike that, but you do need a
space that can help your bodybreathe, and maybe, if you spend
some time outdoors, you'll goback to school in August or
(10:57):
September with a really awesometan.
Right, you can also choose oneintentional moment.
I love the work of Emily Nagoski, who talks a lot about burnout
and the stress cycle, and somuch of it is directly
applicable to the work that wedo every day.
(11:18):
She says that our societycultivates kind of two different
categories of people.
There are the human doers andthere are the human beings.
Now, the human doers are prizedfor their ability to get things
done.
People rely on them.
They make things go.
(11:39):
They're the busy little bees insociety that make all the
things happen.
And then we have the humanbeings who, for the most part,
believe that the value that theybring to the world is just in
being themselves.
They rely on the human doers tohandle a lot of the things that
(12:00):
they don't want to handlebecause they are so busy being
amazing.
Now, that is a veryoversimplified version of this,
but when you think about it,I'll bet that you related more
with the role of the human doerthan the human being.
The thing is, when you'reconstantly performing, planning,
(12:21):
pivoting or trying to proveyourself, we forget that we too
were meant to be human beings.
So can you find one intentionalthing to do every day just to
enjoy being you?
Lighting a candle, stretching,dancing in the kitchen,
(12:43):
listening to your favorite songs, sitting in silence after
everybody's gone to bed,laughing with a friend?
Do those things, not becausethey're self-care, as everybody
likes to talk about, but becauseit allows you to return to
yourself, so important in tryingto complete this stress cycle,
(13:04):
so that your body can finallyrelax.
And then I think sometimes weunderestimate the power of
saying things out loud, beingable to talk about this kind of
stuff with friends or colleaguesor a partner.
As a matter of fact, that'swhere this podcast episode came
(13:25):
from.
We've had multiple members inour School for School Counselors
, mastermind, talking about thisvery thing over the past week.
The moment that these folksstarted talking about this,
powerful things startedhappening, because others showed
up and they were like yeah, metoo, me too.
And then just knowing that weweren't alone in this kind of
(13:50):
dissipated the weirdness alittle bit right.
It made it a little bit easierto manage, because sometimes
when we say those things outloud, that gives us more of a
reset than anything.
So find someone that you cansay it out loud to, who will
understand what you're talkingabout and who gets the level of
(14:12):
stress that you work with day inand day out.
Now some of you may belistening and thinking yeah,
this is great stuff and it wouldbe wonderful if I could just,
you know, take a moment tomyself and light a candle and
sit in silence.
But you've got to be kidding me,me, because summer is not a
time of relaxation for my familyor for me.
Summer is a time of running tocamps, trying to make baseball
(14:37):
games, running to the grocerystore a hundred times a week and
refereeing between my kids.
I remember those days.
Now I still have kids at home,but they're not quite as
hands-on time intensive as theyused to be.
But I do remember those summerdays where I felt like I was
(14:57):
drowning and so overwhelmed withall the things that were going
on.
If that's your reality thissummer, you might try to give
your nervous system some smaller, shorter signals in the time
that you have Deep breaths inthe car, stepping outside to
look at the sky aftereverybody's gone to bed, taking
(15:19):
a minute to close your eyeswhile everybody's napping, those
kinds of things.
I think, too, you have toremember to let go of the guilt
that you're not creating theperfect summer.
Social media is so hard onparents and convinces us that
every child deserves thesePinterest-worthy experiences.
(15:41):
Each and every day.
I'll tell you if we havepopsicles at my house, that's a
big event, so I'll set the barreal low for you.
I'm not about chasing all ofthe likes and comments and
accolades on my social media.
As a matter of fact, I don'teven post my kids on my social
media, and that's for a reason.
But all that to say, you don'thave to strive for some level of
(16:05):
achievement in your summer.
Just let it go and let it be.
Beyond everything, what I reallywant you to remember is that
you do not have to earn yourrest, despite what the public
education world would have youbelieve about being a school
counselor.
You are allowed to slow down,and that may mean that you feel
(16:29):
a little strange when things getquiet, because you have carried
so much on your shoulders thisyear.
Some of it you may not haveeven realized you are carrying
until the end of the school yearforced you to put it down, and
so this extra space in your day,the stillness or the moments of
(16:52):
quiet, probably feel reallyweird.
But if you can be patientthrough this, your body, little
by little, will start tocomplete the stress cycle and
remember how to be okay again.
So don't force it, just staywith it.
And then, if you can do that,when the fall semester gets here
(17:13):
you'll be ready to go back, andit won't be because you planned
or outlined or to-do'd yourselfto death, but it's because you
gave yourself the dignity ofachieving a real reset.
Dignity of achieving a realreset.
(17:35):
Hey, if you need the space tosay these things out loud or to
hear somebody say me too, that'stotally me you need to come
join us in the MastermindBecause, like I said, that's
where this episode came from thecounselors in the mastermind.
Get it Head toschoolforschoolcounselorscom.
Slash mastermind if you'reinterested in that.
But until then, take care ofyourself and maybe just go sit
(17:59):
on the porch for a while.
I'll be back soon with anotherepisode, take care.
So it's summer, you've turned in your keys,
you've packed up your office andprobably dodged a few
last-minute requests on your wayout the door.
And now, for the first time inmonths, you're not in crisis
response mode.
But, instead of just relaxing,you might be feeling a little
(00:21):
off.
You might be feeling a littleoff.
You can't seem to settle down.
You keep checking your email,you're reorganizing your closet
or starting unnecessary homeprojects, or maybe you're on the
flip side You're feeling guiltyfor not doing anything.
You've hit a wall.
It's like you've emotionallyflatlined, you're napping too
(00:46):
much, you're avoiding people andyou're kind of coming down on
yourself, thinking man, I'mawfully lazy now that I'm not at
work.
Either way, if you're feelinguneasy with either one of those
scenarios, now that summer ishere, you are not alone.
That summer is here, you arenot alone.
You might think that you'rejust tired or burned out, but
(01:16):
what you're feeling right nowwhen you can't relax, you have
that weird flatness or restlessenergy might actually be
something a little bit deeper.
It might be something that yournervous system has been trying
to tell you for a while now.
Hey, my friend, welcome back.
I'm Steph Johnson, a licensedprofessional counselor and
full-time school counselor justlike you.
If you're tired of schoolcounseling advice that sounds
(01:40):
like it came from Pinterest,you're in the right place.
Around here, we're keeping itreal, we're keeping it grounded
and I'm giving you tools andideas that actually work,
because you deserve more thanpretty graphics and empty
promises.
So before I was a schoolcounselor, I was a teacher.
(02:03):
I taught elementary fine artsand never failed.
Every time we had a bigperformance I would get super
sick.
Now our performances, to befair, were pretty big
extravagances.
They weren't like your typicalschool concerts or music
programs where the kids stand onthe risers and sing a few songs
(02:24):
.
They weren't like your typicalschool concerts or music
programs where the kids stand onthe risers and sing a few songs
.
They weren't like that at all.
Our performances consisted ofthree to four hundred students
at one time, with multiple scenechanges, people moving while
others were performing, anabsolutely zero percent downtime
(02:45):
for the entire performance.
It was more like a juniorBroadway style show than your
typical school program, and oncethose curtains closed and we
put all the props away, I knew Iwas going to be on the couch
with a sore throat or a terriblecough or a cold within the next
(03:06):
24 hours.
It was almost like my body waswaiting for all of that stress
to be taken care of before itjust fell apart.
And the really weird thingabout it and this is kind of
embarrassing to admit, but I wasgrateful for that I was like,
hey, thanks, body, thanks forholding it together.
(03:27):
When things were tough and youknow, that's happened to me at
other times too.
When I finished each of mydegrees, when I would complete
big projects, I would dip intosomething that kind of felt like
depression.
But I knew I wasn't depressed.
My energy would crash and Iwould think, why am I not
(03:49):
bouncing back?
I want to.
But now I understand why.
Because it wasn't just mentalexhaustion, it was biological.
And while I know that, you alsoknow that we can experience
that biological exhaustion andthat stress lives in our body.
(04:11):
It's a whole different thingwhen we actually allow ourselves
to feel that and haveconversations about it.
Maybe that happened to you too,where the school year ended and
all of a sudden you felt likeyou were coming down with
something.
It's not uncommon.
I know a lot of schoolcounselors that have done that
this year.
So let's walk through what'shappening.
(04:36):
If you're either just way tooamped up and you just can't calm
it down, or you feel like aslug and you absolutely can't
move.
These may both be stressreactions.
But stress is not onlyemotional.
It becomes a biological processand the only way that we can
(04:57):
resolve these symptoms is tocomplete the stress cycle.
The unfortunate part is thatmost school counselors never
complete that cycle, becausewe're responding to one student
concern, then we respond toanother, then we debrief with
the principal while we'regrabbing our papers for a
(05:18):
meeting and we go from fire tofire to fire and we never really
get a big resolution in our day.
And so when summer hits, yes,those stressors stop, but your
body remains in that stresscycle.
It's not gotten the signal thatthat stress is resolved.
(05:41):
The stress cycle is somethingthat I talk about a lot in
in-person workshops and speechesand when I'm providing master
classes for my mastermindmembers.
It's so important and somethingthat you don't often hear
people talk about.
In the stress cycle I'm goingto paraphrase very roughly but
(06:03):
we perceive a threat.
Our body goes into high alert,right.
We tense, our pupils dilate, webreathe faster, our heart
starts beating you know all thefight or flight responses, right
.
And then somehow we overcomewhatever it is that's posed that
danger to us.
Ideally, what would happen nextis some sort of signal to your
(06:27):
body that the threat has passedand it is now time to relax.
If we were villagers that wereout hunting for food or maybe
fighting a wild animal, oncethat stress was over, we would
drag the animal home right.
We would have a big celebrationand there would be music and
feasting, and that would be asignal to our bodies that the
(06:50):
threat had been resolved.
But in the modern world itdoesn't work that way, and so
often in school counseling we gofrom one crisis right into the
next.
We're not allowing our bodiesthe resolution of the stress
cycle, and so we just keepamping it up with all of this
stress hype and we never, evercome back down and eventually
(07:13):
our nervous system becomes soelevated that not only does that
start to feel normal to us, butwhen our bodies start to
de-escalate, it almost feelswrong.
This is the reason why you feellike you need to stay busy.
It's like a nervous person thatcan't stop talking.
(07:34):
Have you ever been around oneof those?
They are super nervous and theyjust go yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck,
yuck, yuck and they just cannothelp themselves.
They fill all the space withnoise to compensate for their
nervousness.
Your body is kind of doing thesame thing.
It's also scrambling to fillthat silence because that's what
(07:57):
you have trained it to do allschool year long.
And then, if you're one of thefolks that is the opposite and
you feel completely checked out,that could be part of the same
kind of response.
Believe it or not, it's calledfunctional freeze.
That's when you have been onhigh alert for way too long and
(08:19):
your body kind of shuts down toprotect you.
So it's not that you're lazy,it's that you have just been
maxed out.
And, my friend, I think thateither one of these situations
calls for a whole lot more gracethan we usually give ourselves.
(08:40):
We are so quick to try to fixourselves when these things
happen.
Right, we are trying to makenew routines, we're trying to
force ourselves out of the slump, or we're trying to minimize
our discomfort with movement andactivity.
Or we guilt ourselves intobeing productive with movement
and activity, or we guiltourselves into being productive,
(09:01):
but, according to the researchon the burnout cycle, sometimes
we need to stop trying to fixthings and just allow your body
to reset.
That could be one of the mostimportant things that you do all
summer.
So what do you do if your bodyis still on high alert or it's
completely shut down?
(09:22):
You don't fix it, like I said,but you can support it.
So here are a few things youcan do to try to support
yourself through this, withouttrying to fix it all through
this, without trying to fix itall.
The first is developing somesafety signals.
(09:47):
Your nervous system needs helprealizing that the perceived
danger, the chaos, theadrenaline rushes.
They're over for a little while.
You're safe now.
For me, that means you can findme sitting on my back porch
most mornings.
I love to sit back there andlisten to the birds and watch
the trees, drink my morningcoffee and just let myself be
for a little while.
There is a lot of researchbehind that how nature exposure
(10:12):
helps reduce cortisol and helpsre-regulate your nervous system.
But maybe that's not your thing.
Could you go for a walk in thepark while it's still cool in
the mornings.
Or maybe you don't have anoutdoor space.
Could you sit by a window witha view, or could you find that
super cozy chair or thatwonderful spot somewhere in your
(10:35):
home that makes you feel safeand grounded and just spend some
time there.
You don't have to disappearinto a forest, you don't have to
go on a spa retreat or anythinglike that, but you do need a
space that can help your bodybreathe, and maybe, if you spend
some time outdoors, you'll goback to school in August or
(10:57):
September with a really awesometan.
Right, you can also choose oneintentional moment.
I love the work of Emily Nagoski, who talks a lot about burnout
and the stress cycle, and somuch of it is directly
applicable to the work that wedo every day.
(11:18):
She says that our societycultivates kind of two different
categories of people.
There are the human doers andthere are the human beings.
Now, the human doers are prizedfor their ability to get things
done.
People rely on them.
They make things go.
(11:39):
They're the busy little bees insociety that make all the
things happen.
And then we have the humanbeings who, for the most part,
believe that the value that theybring to the world is just in
being themselves.
They rely on the human doers tohandle a lot of the things that
(12:00):
they don't want to handlebecause they are so busy being
amazing.
Now, that is a veryoversimplified version of this,
but when you think about it,I'll bet that you related more
with the role of the human doerthan the human being.
The thing is, when you'reconstantly performing, planning,
(12:21):
pivoting or trying to proveyourself, we forget that we too
were meant to be human beings.
So can you find one intentionalthing to do every day just to
enjoy being you?
Lighting a candle, stretching,dancing in the kitchen,
(12:43):
listening to your favorite songs, sitting in silence after
everybody's gone to bed,laughing with a friend?
Do those things, not becausethey're self-care, as everybody
likes to talk about, but becauseit allows you to return to
yourself, so important in tryingto complete this stress cycle,
(13:04):
so that your body can finallyrelax.
And then I think sometimes weunderestimate the power of
saying things out loud, beingable to talk about this kind of
stuff with friends or colleaguesor a partner.
As a matter of fact, that'swhere this podcast episode came
(13:25):
from.
We've had multiple members inour School for School Counselors
, mastermind, talking about thisvery thing over the past week.
The moment that these folksstarted talking about this,
powerful things startedhappening, because others showed
up and they were like yeah, metoo, me too.
And then just knowing that weweren't alone in this kind of
(13:50):
dissipated the weirdness alittle bit right.
It made it a little bit easierto manage, because sometimes
when we say those things outloud, that gives us more of a
reset than anything.
So find someone that you cansay it out loud to, who will
understand what you're talkingabout and who gets the level of
(14:12):
stress that you work with day inand day out.
Now some of you may belistening and thinking yeah,
this is great stuff and it wouldbe wonderful if I could just,
you know, take a moment tomyself and light a candle and
sit in silence.
But you've got to be kidding me,me, because summer is not a
time of relaxation for my familyor for me.
Summer is a time of running tocamps, trying to make baseball
(14:37):
games, running to the grocerystore a hundred times a week and
refereeing between my kids.
I remember those days.
Now I still have kids at home,but they're not quite as
hands-on time intensive as theyused to be.
But I do remember those summerdays where I felt like I was
(14:57):
drowning and so overwhelmed withall the things that were going
on.
If that's your reality thissummer, you might try to give
your nervous system some smaller, shorter signals in the time
that you have Deep breaths inthe car, stepping outside to
look at the sky aftereverybody's gone to bed, taking
(15:19):
a minute to close your eyeswhile everybody's napping, those
kinds of things.
I think, too, you have toremember to let go of the guilt
that you're not creating theperfect summer.
Social media is so hard onparents and convinces us that
every child deserves thesePinterest-worthy experiences.
(15:41):
Each and every day.
I'll tell you if we havepopsicles at my house, that's a
big event, so I'll set the barreal low for you.
I'm not about chasing all ofthe likes and comments and
accolades on my social media.
As a matter of fact, I don'teven post my kids on my social
media, and that's for a reason.
But all that to say, you don'thave to strive for some level of
(16:05):
achievement in your summer.
Just let it go and let it be.
Beyond everything, what I reallywant you to remember is that
you do not have to earn yourrest, despite what the public
education world would have youbelieve about being a school
counselor.
You are allowed to slow down,and that may mean that you feel
(16:29):
a little strange when things getquiet, because you have carried
so much on your shoulders thisyear.
Some of it you may not haveeven realized you are carrying
until the end of the school yearforced you to put it down, and
so this extra space in your day,the stillness or the moments of
(16:52):
quiet, probably feel reallyweird.
But if you can be patientthrough this, your body, little
by little, will start tocomplete the stress cycle and
remember how to be okay again.
So don't force it, just staywith it.
And then, if you can do that,when the fall semester gets here
(17:13):
you'll be ready to go back, andit won't be because you planned
or outlined or to-do'd yourselfto death, but it's because you
gave yourself the dignity ofachieving a real reset.
Dignity of achieving a realreset.
(17:35):
Hey, if you need the space tosay these things out loud or to
hear somebody say me too, that'stotally me you need to come
join us in the MastermindBecause, like I said, that's
where this episode came from thecounselors in the mastermind.
Get it Head toschoolforschoolcounselorscom.
Slash mastermind if you'reinterested in that.
But until then, take care ofyourself and maybe just go sit
(17:59):
on the porch for a while.
I'll be back soon with anotherepisode, take care.
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