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Struggling With Prac Teaching, Anxiety And The Feelings Of Badness

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ms spock

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I am so anxious. I am so reactive.

I am scared I am not good enough to teach meanings of the poems and also complex sentences. This really is ridiculous on some levels but it feels really real to me. I feel am such a failure that I have this crazy idea in my head that I should kill myself which is way over the top for such a thing. I want to die to prevent failure and the failure could happen, but is I prepare it is unlikely. But I have wicked anxiety. I feel like going to sleep which is avoidance.

I struggle on a daily basis at the moment - I suspect my rational mind doesn't even get a look in.

I didn't realise how ungrounded and not present that I am in class. I tried to be more present in class this week and I was much more there. On Thursday I had a student suspended for swearing at me - last Friday he got right in my face and was threatening. It did trigger me but I didn't really get how much that effected me. A teacher of 28 years experience couldn't manage them the other day.

I feel like a failure and part of it could be self sabotage.

Yesterday I went in to the school, told them I wasn't well, gave them the lesson resources and went home. I came home and slept four hours - the thing is that I have Wednesdays off - so I was at the school for one day and took another day off. I was barely able to stay awake most of yesterday. I really needed a break though. I was so exhausted.

Many other prac teachers are struggling as well.

My anxiety is pretty high and I have suicidal ideation.

The difficult class has been triggering me in a few ways.

I have a supervising teacher who is an alcoholic and is often hungover and is not so helpful a lot of the time. He apologised for not getting on top of the kid who behaved inappropriately towards me - he has sworn at me a few times now. He was giving me an appraisal whilst doing live gambling on his mobile phone, which I did not find helpful or feel he took me seriously - and he is not really safe for me to be around.

The other supervising teacher is good but I haven't done so well over there as all my energy went into managing this other situation.

I had a pretty bad experience on Thursday afternoon with my difficult class. They are great kids, just their behaviours are very difficult at times.

My challenged supervising teacher said I was too hard on the class but I thought I was being assertive. So I feel unconfident in how to manage things.

On top of that a lot of badness feelings have come up.

There were kids terribly bullied at the schools that I went to and I was terribly bullied as well at school, and a woman was raped by four police officers near one of my schools, and how hard school was for me has come up a bit. But I think about it too much.

I am rumination to avoid feeling feelings I think. Or it is just a default way of being. I am also having intrusive thoughts come in as well.

A much deeper level of distorted cognitions is coming up below the ones I worked on for with the David Burns book.

I walked for a hour this morning. I listened to "The Mindful Way Through Anxiety", I am trying to breathe, I am doing small bits of self compassion and radical acceptance but I am not doing so well at all. I am a bit of a mess. I want to run away but that won't help. I need to do work today. I keep crying.

I am really struggling to be here.

My sister said to keep it all in perspective and separate it from the past, that this is a new start. To do some self care and that I am inherently good what happened in the family was not my fault.

I can kind of hold on to that for a few seconds or a minute, then I lose it again.

A few times I have stopped to look after myself.
 
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You have quite a lot wrapped up into one big ball. You do share, many other practicum teachers are struggling as well. Yet I'd opt for sleep rather than stay in suicidal ideation. By the sound of things that's not likely very possible. Practical's are for learning and I expect your doing that, likely more than you bargained for going in to it.

This is where aptitude and knowledge trumps personal stuff. It's not easy and I wish you relief.
 
@Ms Spock, don't know if this will help you or not, but you know things get super large right before we conquer it. It fights hard to stay a part of us... it really is a battle. You have conquered all you have gone after. Yes, you may have to take some time off. This does not mean failure in any way shape or form.. It means that you are fighting for your life in a way that they do not understand... but we do. This is large... but you are larger. This is tough, but you are tougher.... sleep is not always a bad thing. it's not always avoidance. Sometimes it is exhaustion... and you have put so much pressure on yourself thru all this... you mind, body and spirit are tired... not defeated, just tired..
Please be a bit kinder to yourself.. tell yourself what you would tell one of us... ya, it's only words and they are not bigger than the issue at hand... but they are more powerful than the thoughts going thru your head.. The words are truth, the thoughts are liars.....
Sending you extra energy to win this battle... it's what it is, a battle... and you are more armed and ready than you are giving yourself credit for.... slow down.... get some rest... get some sleep.... sending you lots and lots of hugs...
 
Emotional regulation... you were already off balance with the student who acted out, and distracted by your teacher with the alcohol problem... before you took the half day or so and got the critique about the last class. Overload. The thing about it is that each one stands alone... each incidence. You are feeling anxiety because it is difficult, and you have no sense of competency. If you endeavor to pursue it to the end, you will have experience to draw on. That is what practicums are for. They are learning experiences. If everyone opted to consider suicide because they thought they were falling short on their practicums, guess what? We'd have no teachers, or medical professionals, or first responders, or... ad infinitum.
 
I do not have any brilliant advice, I wish I did?

I have a deep admiration of your tenacity, your courage, your optimism, your determination in the face of trying circumstances. This isn't easy, but you are still pushing for your dreams.
...:notworthy::notworthy::notworthy:

I think about offing myself all the time too.
I will tell you what other people tell me: It's a bad idea.
They are probably right, even though I am having to take their word for it right now...
I feel horrible and my life feels TOTALLY overwhelming and utterly unmanageable.
This is probably why you're thinking about doing yourself in too?

:hug: It never stays looking and feeling that way...not forever.
 
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@Ms Spock - I'll tell you something that helped me, when I started teaching and was pretty sure that I wasn't being good at it.

A more seasoned teacher said - "every new teacher has a very hard time of it for the first few years. You'll make more mistakes than you even thought were possible. Just make sure you stay patient with yourself and remember, that even bad teaching from an inexperienced person who cares about doing a good job is far better than passable teaching from a seasoned person who hates to teach."

After I got past panic about never wanting to be a bad teacher, I grasped his point - caring about doing a good job means that you really can't mess up the students. Because when you care, you are able to look critically at your own work and try and make it better.

I've mentored a good number of teachers since then, and I've seen it over and over and over again.

You're in teaching because you want to be doing it. You need to think of these courses as exactly what they are - a continuation of your own education.

Something that helped me, personally: I learned that doing my lecture, or talking through the main discussion points, out loud, a good four times before I taught that class was enormously helpful in terms of coming in with a belief in my preparation. It also always reminded me about what I'm really excited about - which was the content. The more into the content I was, the less self-aware I was.

Hope this helps.

Every teacher believes they are a terrible teacher for at least 2 years. I haven't met one that ever said otherwise.
 
Something that helped me, personally: I learned that doing my lecture, or talking through the main discussion points, out loud, a good four times before I taught that class was enormously helpful in terms of coming in with a belief in my preparation. It also always reminded me about what I'm really excited about - which was the content. The more into the content I was, the less self-aware I was.
I didn't get to do this on my prac but I will keep this in mind for the next one. I have to practice my content - I had major insecurity issues over my content. I just didn't believe myself.
 
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