April 30, 2025 • 13 mins
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Finding sustainable joy in teaching begins by rejecting toxic positivity and embracing emotional literacy. Teaching with emotional honesty fosters deeper connections and authentic classroom experiences without sacrificing professionalism.
- Toxic positivity denies real emotional experiences and keeps educators stuck in stress cycles.
- Emotional literacy is about recognizing, feeling, and honoring emotions in real time without judgment.
- Processing emotions is a powerful way to relieve stress and lighten the load on your nervous system.
- Many educators wear an "emotional uniform" — forced smiles and controlled voices — that hinder real connection.
- Taking off this emotional uniform doesn’t mean oversharing; it’s about being honest with yourself first.
- True happiness is a practice, not a mask; it's a muscle that strengthens over time.
- Classroom breakthroughs happen when teachers show their authentic selves, allowing students to connect with their humanity.
- Joy comes from embracing all emotions, not from pushing away the difficult ones.
Ready to move from surviving to THRIVING? Say YES to YOU in our signature program, THRIVE. See you there!
Stay empowered,
Jen
Let’s keep the conversation going! Find me at:
empowerededucator.com/resources
Instagram: @jenrafferty_
Facebook: Empowered Educator Faculty Room
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Are you feeling exhausted by the constant
demands of teaching?
Do you find yourself wonderingif there's a way to balance both
your career and your well-beingwithout burning out?
Welcome to Unlock your TeachingPotential.
Your permission slip to hit thebrakes, recharge and reignite
your joy for teaching and living.
(00:20):
I'm Dr Jen Rafferty, formermusic teacher, author, tedx
speaker and founder of EmpoweredEducator, and I've been where
you are exhausted, overwhelmedand just trying to get through
the day, making it all work.
So each week, I'll bring youshort, powerful episodes with
actionable tools to help youreclaim your energy, set
(00:41):
boundaries and step into yourfull potential, both in and out
of your role as an educator.
So take a breath and let's divein.
It's time to unlock yourteaching potential, because the
world needs you at your best.
Today, we're diving intosomething that every teacher I
(01:03):
know wrestles with at one pointor another, and that's how to
find and sustain real joy inthis work, without glossing over
all of the hard stuff.
Because, let's be honest,happiness that demands that you
deny your struggles isn't realhappiness.
It's performative, and we'renot here to perform.
(01:24):
We are here to reclaim our joy,and that starts from the inside
out.
So let's talk about thedifference between true
happiness and toxic positivity,and how to unlock a deeper sense
of fulfillment withoutemotionally bypassing what's
real.
So we're going to start with areason why just think positive
(01:45):
doesn't work, because we've allheard this before, you know.
Just be positive, think happythoughts, because it could
always be worse, and at leastyou have a job.
Remember, we're doing this forthe kids, and while all of these
comments might come from awell-meaning place, they can be
deeply invalidating.
Toxic positivity is the denial,the minimization or
(02:09):
invalidation of authenticemotional experiences.
It tells us to just smilethrough it instead of feeling
through it.
And when we suppress thesedifficult emotions, we are
actually activating the stresscycle even further instead of
completing it, which is what weneed to do.
(02:29):
And we keep our amygdala onhigh alert.
And if you've been hanging outwith me for a while, you know
you cannot teach or lead or loveor connect from that place of
high alert.
For very long, suppressedemotions are unprocessed stress,
and stress recovery is brainrecovery.
(02:52):
So we need to do something elseinstead of pretending that
everything is okay all of thetime, and that means that we get
to practice emotional literacy,which will, of course, increase
our emotional intelligence, andemotional literacy is about
naming your emotions, feelingthem in real time and honoring
(03:13):
them without any judgment.
This is the foundation ofself-awareness and sustainable
well-being.
And, of course, this is what wecover deeply in the Empowered
Educator Signature Course,thrive, which the link is in the
comments, if you want to checkit out.
But think of it like this Everyemotion that you acknowledge
and that you process through isone less that your nervous
(03:36):
system has to keep on carryingin the background.
It's not that you're weak forfeeling sad or angry or
frustrated.
Your brain is wired for theseemotions.
It is a beautiful part of beinghuman and it's essential for
being an empowered educator.
So if you're feeling likeyou're in the middle of a tough
(03:57):
season at school, I invite youto say this, either out loud or
silently, to yourself.
I can feel this feeling and Iam still whole.
My joy is not gone.
It's just waiting for me on theother side of my emotional
honesty.
(04:20):
Emotional literacy is more thanjust naming your feelings.
It's the practice of noticingand naming and navigating your
inner emotional world with bothself-compassion and skill.
And this is important herebecause it is a skill that needs
to be learned and needs to becontinually fostered, fostered.
(04:46):
We can't just learn it once andthen we're done.
We don't need more informationabout this, we need more
reminders, and the best sort ofreminders that we can get is
within community.
And this is a foundational partof resilience, and it directly
impacts how your brain and yourbody is going to process your
stress.
When you practice emotionalliteracy, you move from reacting
to responding.
(05:08):
You get to calm your amygdala,engage your prefrontal cortex
and create the conditions thatyou need for clarity, for focus
and for real connection, notjust bypassing it and saying
everything is okay.
But the truth is, most of uswere never taught how to do this
, and instead of learning how tofeel our emotions, we've
(05:31):
learned how to perform them.
Which brings me to somethingwe've started calling here in
Empowered Educator our emotionaluniform.
And the emotional uniform isthat invisible armor that you
put on every day.
It's that forced smile, it'sthe steady voice, the I've got
it together.
Look, even when everythinginside feels frayed and frenetic
(05:56):
, it's the mask that we wearthat says I'm fine, even when
you're not.
And we wear these masks toprotect ourselves.
We protect ourselves fromjudgment, from vulnerability and
from the fear that, if we letour real feelings out.
We might not be able to keepgoing, and what would everyone
(06:18):
else think of me?
But here's the truth.
The emotional uniform mightfeel like it's keeping you safe,
but it's also keeping you stuck, because when you're always
armored, you're not truly ableto connect.
You're not able to connect toyourself or to your students or
(06:40):
to your loved ones at home.
You're just surviving, andemotional literacy invites you
to take off the uniform, to bewith what's real, to trust that
acknowledging your emotionsdoesn't make you weak.
It reminds you of yourwholeness.
(07:00):
So imagine this you're walkinginto your classroom not armored
but grounded, not shut down butself-aware.
That's the difference betweensurviving the day and actually
being present for it.
And, to be clear, this doesn'tmean that you're crying at the
whiteboard or oversharing orcomplaining all of the time.
(07:22):
It means that you're internallyhonest with yourself, that
you're tending to your innerworld with the same care that
you give to your students.
You're asking yourselfconsistently what am I feeling
right now?
What do I need right now?
And then aligning yourself withgetting those needs met.
(07:44):
Then you start to reclaim yourhappiness, not as a mask but as
a muscle.
Your happiness isn't aboutignoring what's hard.
It's about choosing what givesyou life, even in the presence
of the things that drain you.
And this, this right here, iswhat truly unlocks your teaching
(08:07):
potential.
When you stop hiding youremotions and start honoring them
, you become a clearer, kinderand more grounded version of
yourself.
You know, there was a year I wasteaching chorus and general
music, holding space for 150middle schoolers a day, while
navigating my marriage that wasfalling apart, and day after day
(08:32):
I would pull it all together,put a smile on my face, try to
keep on going.
And one day, as I was passingout music to my chorus class,
one of my students took thesheet music from my hand and she
looked me in the eye and shesaid Are you okay?
And it was the strangest thing.
(08:54):
It brings me to tears even justthinking about it, because in
that moment I felt seen.
I thought I was pretendingenough that I could not only
fool my students, but I couldfool my colleagues and, of
course, fool myself, because itwas easier to wear a mask and to
perform than to deal with whatI was going through.
(09:16):
But it doesn't work that way.
You can only fool everyone andyourself for so long.
And in that moment I juststopped pretending.
I was so taken aback that shenoticed that.
I genuinely and honestlyresponded to her by saying by
(09:45):
saying no, I'm not okay, but Iwill be.
And in that moment I even gavemyself hope, because I
recognized where I was in thismoment and it was okay.
And so that class that day Iended up sharing.
I was having a rough day youknow we all have rough days but
I'm really glad that I get to behere with you in class today.
Even with the rough day thatI'm having, and you know what
happened, the class that I hadsoftened.
(10:08):
They leaned in and met me withhumanity and we sang.
We sang in that chorus classand that period felt more joyful
, not because everything wasperfect, but because it was real
.
And I'm going to invite you tosit with this question what if
(10:30):
your path to happiness isn'tpaved with positivity but with
presence?
What if your joy isn't found inpushing away your pain but in
letting yourself be whole,because you already belong the
way you are?
You won't get there bypretending everything is okay
(10:53):
and sprinkling it with all ofthis toxic positivity.
This is teaching with the brainin mind.
That's your power and, as Isaid before, that's how you
unlock your teaching potential,and as we close out the podcast
for today, I have some news thatI want to share.
(11:15):
Things are always shifting andchanging, and we are changing
right along with it at EmpoweredEducator, and that is why we
are moving this podcast to alive format, which I am so
excited about.
Starting this summer, I will behosting a live webinar
Wednesday.
This world right now isinteracting with you.
(11:49):
I am a teacher at heart, andbeing in the classroom is the
thing that gets me going, so,while my classroom looks a lot
different than it did when I wasteaching music in the public
school, I want to spend my timebeing in the room with the
people I serve, and that meansgetting out behind this
microphone and getting intorooms with you.
(12:09):
So this new format will replacethis podcast temporarily, and,
while I might return to thisformat in the future, this is
another example of how Icontinue to walk the walk.
I practice everything that Ishare with you, and when
something doesn't feel alignedwith me anymore, when there's
something tugging at my heartthat's different than what I'm
(12:31):
doing right now, I get to chooseto follow it, and sometimes
that means saying goodbye tosomething.
Sometimes it means changingyour mind from something you
thought you wanted not so longago.
But I am so excited about thiswebinar series and you are the
first to hear about it, so makesure you sign up for our mailing
(12:53):
list at empowerededucatorcom soyou get to know when those
sessions will be.
I can't wait to see you there.
Thanks for listening and I'llsee you soon.
Thanks for listening and I'llsee you soon.
Remember, the most generousthing that you can do for your
students is take care ofyourself.
So if you found today's episodehelpful, be sure to subscribe
so you never miss a moment ofinspiration.
(13:15):
And if you're loving the show,I'd love for you to leave a
review.
This helps more educators likeyou find the space to unlock
their teaching potential too.
Until next time, pleaseremember that you are a gift to
this world, so act accordingly.
See you soon.
Are you feeling exhausted by the constant
demands of teaching?
Do you find yourself wonderingif there's a way to balance both
your career and your well-beingwithout burning out?
Welcome to Unlock your TeachingPotential.
Your permission slip to hit thebrakes, recharge and reignite
your joy for teaching and living.
(00:20):
I'm Dr Jen Rafferty, formermusic teacher, author, tedx
speaker and founder of EmpoweredEducator, and I've been where
you are exhausted, overwhelmedand just trying to get through
the day, making it all work.
So each week, I'll bring youshort, powerful episodes with
actionable tools to help youreclaim your energy, set
(00:41):
boundaries and step into yourfull potential, both in and out
of your role as an educator.
So take a breath and let's divein.
It's time to unlock yourteaching potential, because the
world needs you at your best.
Today, we're diving intosomething that every teacher I
(01:03):
know wrestles with at one pointor another, and that's how to
find and sustain real joy inthis work, without glossing over
all of the hard stuff.
Because, let's be honest,happiness that demands that you
deny your struggles isn't realhappiness.
It's performative, and we'renot here to perform.
(01:24):
We are here to reclaim our joy,and that starts from the inside
out.
So let's talk about thedifference between true
happiness and toxic positivity,and how to unlock a deeper sense
of fulfillment withoutemotionally bypassing what's
real.
So we're going to start with areason why just think positive
(01:45):
doesn't work, because we've allheard this before, you know.
Just be positive, think happythoughts, because it could
always be worse, and at leastyou have a job.
Remember, we're doing this forthe kids, and while all of these
comments might come from awell-meaning place, they can be
deeply invalidating.
Toxic positivity is the denial,the minimization or
(02:09):
invalidation of authenticemotional experiences.
It tells us to just smilethrough it instead of feeling
through it.
And when we suppress thesedifficult emotions, we are
actually activating the stresscycle even further instead of
completing it, which is what weneed to do.
(02:29):
And we keep our amygdala onhigh alert.
And if you've been hanging outwith me for a while, you know
you cannot teach or lead or loveor connect from that place of
high alert.
For very long, suppressedemotions are unprocessed stress,
and stress recovery is brainrecovery.
(02:52):
So we need to do something elseinstead of pretending that
everything is okay all of thetime, and that means that we get
to practice emotional literacy,which will, of course, increase
our emotional intelligence, andemotional literacy is about
naming your emotions, feelingthem in real time and honoring
(03:13):
them without any judgment.
This is the foundation ofself-awareness and sustainable
well-being.
And, of course, this is what wecover deeply in the Empowered
Educator Signature Course,thrive, which the link is in the
comments, if you want to checkit out.
But think of it like this Everyemotion that you acknowledge
and that you process through isone less that your nervous
(03:36):
system has to keep on carryingin the background.
It's not that you're weak forfeeling sad or angry or
frustrated.
Your brain is wired for theseemotions.
It is a beautiful part of beinghuman and it's essential for
being an empowered educator.
So if you're feeling likeyou're in the middle of a tough
(03:57):
season at school, I invite youto say this, either out loud or
silently, to yourself.
I can feel this feeling and Iam still whole.
My joy is not gone.
It's just waiting for me on theother side of my emotional
honesty.
(04:20):
Emotional literacy is more thanjust naming your feelings.
It's the practice of noticingand naming and navigating your
inner emotional world with bothself-compassion and skill.
And this is important herebecause it is a skill that needs
to be learned and needs to becontinually fostered, fostered.
(04:46):
We can't just learn it once andthen we're done.
We don't need more informationabout this, we need more
reminders, and the best sort ofreminders that we can get is
within community.
And this is a foundational partof resilience, and it directly
impacts how your brain and yourbody is going to process your
stress.
When you practice emotionalliteracy, you move from reacting
to responding.
(05:08):
You get to calm your amygdala,engage your prefrontal cortex
and create the conditions thatyou need for clarity, for focus
and for real connection, notjust bypassing it and saying
everything is okay.
But the truth is, most of uswere never taught how to do this
, and instead of learning how tofeel our emotions, we've
(05:31):
learned how to perform them.
Which brings me to somethingwe've started calling here in
Empowered Educator our emotionaluniform.
And the emotional uniform isthat invisible armor that you
put on every day.
It's that forced smile, it'sthe steady voice, the I've got
it together.
Look, even when everythinginside feels frayed and frenetic
(05:56):
, it's the mask that we wearthat says I'm fine, even when
you're not.
And we wear these masks toprotect ourselves.
We protect ourselves fromjudgment, from vulnerability and
from the fear that, if we letour real feelings out.
We might not be able to keepgoing, and what would everyone
(06:18):
else think of me?
But here's the truth.
The emotional uniform mightfeel like it's keeping you safe,
but it's also keeping you stuck, because when you're always
armored, you're not truly ableto connect.
You're not able to connect toyourself or to your students or
(06:40):
to your loved ones at home.
You're just surviving, andemotional literacy invites you
to take off the uniform, to bewith what's real, to trust that
acknowledging your emotionsdoesn't make you weak.
It reminds you of yourwholeness.
(07:00):
So imagine this you're walkinginto your classroom not armored
but grounded, not shut down butself-aware.
That's the difference betweensurviving the day and actually
being present for it.
And, to be clear, this doesn'tmean that you're crying at the
whiteboard or oversharing orcomplaining all of the time.
(07:22):
It means that you're internallyhonest with yourself, that
you're tending to your innerworld with the same care that
you give to your students.
You're asking yourselfconsistently what am I feeling
right now?
What do I need right now?
And then aligning yourself withgetting those needs met.
(07:44):
Then you start to reclaim yourhappiness, not as a mask but as
a muscle.
Your happiness isn't aboutignoring what's hard.
It's about choosing what givesyou life, even in the presence
of the things that drain you.
And this, this right here, iswhat truly unlocks your teaching
(08:07):
potential.
When you stop hiding youremotions and start honoring them
, you become a clearer, kinderand more grounded version of
yourself.
You know, there was a year I wasteaching chorus and general
music, holding space for 150middle schoolers a day, while
navigating my marriage that wasfalling apart, and day after day
(08:32):
I would pull it all together,put a smile on my face, try to
keep on going.
And one day, as I was passingout music to my chorus class,
one of my students took thesheet music from my hand and she
looked me in the eye and shesaid Are you okay?
And it was the strangest thing.
(08:54):
It brings me to tears even justthinking about it, because in
that moment I felt seen.
I thought I was pretendingenough that I could not only
fool my students, but I couldfool my colleagues and, of
course, fool myself, because itwas easier to wear a mask and to
perform than to deal with whatI was going through.
(09:16):
But it doesn't work that way.
You can only fool everyone andyourself for so long.
And in that moment I juststopped pretending.
I was so taken aback that shenoticed that.
I genuinely and honestlyresponded to her by saying by
(09:45):
saying no, I'm not okay, but Iwill be.
And in that moment I even gavemyself hope, because I
recognized where I was in thismoment and it was okay.
And so that class that day Iended up sharing.
I was having a rough day youknow we all have rough days but
I'm really glad that I get to behere with you in class today.
Even with the rough day thatI'm having, and you know what
happened, the class that I hadsoftened.
(10:08):
They leaned in and met me withhumanity and we sang.
We sang in that chorus classand that period felt more joyful
, not because everything wasperfect, but because it was real
.
And I'm going to invite you tosit with this question what if
(10:30):
your path to happiness isn'tpaved with positivity but with
presence?
What if your joy isn't found inpushing away your pain but in
letting yourself be whole,because you already belong the
way you are?
You won't get there bypretending everything is okay
(10:53):
and sprinkling it with all ofthis toxic positivity.
This is teaching with the brainin mind.
That's your power and, as Isaid before, that's how you
unlock your teaching potential,and as we close out the podcast
for today, I have some news thatI want to share.
(11:15):
Things are always shifting andchanging, and we are changing
right along with it at EmpoweredEducator, and that is why we
are moving this podcast to alive format, which I am so
excited about.
Starting this summer, I will behosting a live webinar
Wednesday.
This world right now isinteracting with you.
(11:49):
I am a teacher at heart, andbeing in the classroom is the
thing that gets me going, so,while my classroom looks a lot
different than it did when I wasteaching music in the public
school, I want to spend my timebeing in the room with the
people I serve, and that meansgetting out behind this
microphone and getting intorooms with you.
(12:09):
So this new format will replacethis podcast temporarily, and,
while I might return to thisformat in the future, this is
another example of how Icontinue to walk the walk.
I practice everything that Ishare with you, and when
something doesn't feel alignedwith me anymore, when there's
something tugging at my heartthat's different than what I'm
(12:31):
doing right now, I get to chooseto follow it, and sometimes
that means saying goodbye tosomething.
Sometimes it means changingyour mind from something you
thought you wanted not so longago.
But I am so excited about thiswebinar series and you are the
first to hear about it, so makesure you sign up for our mailing
(12:53):
list at empowerededucatorcom soyou get to know when those
sessions will be.
I can't wait to see you there.
Thanks for listening and I'llsee you soon.
Thanks for listening and I'llsee you soon.
Remember, the most generousthing that you can do for your
students is take care ofyourself.
So if you found today's episodehelpful, be sure to subscribe
so you never miss a moment ofinspiration.
(13:15):
And if you're loving the show,I'd love for you to leave a
review.
This helps more educators likeyou find the space to unlock
their teaching potential too.
Until next time, pleaseremember that you are a gift to
this world, so act accordingly.
See you soon.
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