The moment I realized that my body was responding long before my mind understood why.
I think I started taking anxiety medication not long after I became an administrator.
At the time, it didn’t feel like a big deal. I had moved into a new, “big girl” role as an assistant principal in an elementary school. It was a role with significantly more responsibility than I had carried when I was a classroom teacher. The medication was just there to help make sure I stayed grounded, ready to perform at my very best. It felt practical to take the medication.
Responsible, even.
What I didn’t notice right away was something else was shifting.
The Promotion that Changed More Than my Title
Not exactly my personality – that's not quite right – but something like it. Something nearby. My friends noticed before I did. They would gently comment that I seemed different. More tense. Less like myself. I brushed it off. I told them it was stress. Of course I was stressed out – I had a stressful job now. A full plate with lots of responsibilities. A brain that never stopped moving and problem-solving.
All of that was true. I just didn’t realize it was also incomplete.
Around that time, I began to notice a constant companion during the school year – a heavy brick that seemed to take up permanent residence in my stomach. I didn’t have the language for it, and if I’m being honest, I don’t even know that I could’ve described the feeling. It just became something that I became accustomed to.
Every morning, I drove to work with my music turned up as loud as my ears could handle. I told myself that I was hyping myself up for the day, making sure I had the energy to smile as I walked into classrooms, to cajole upset parents into understanding my side, to talk upset children through their feelings. Looking back now, I think I was trying to drown out something else – the questions, the doubts, the uneasy sense that something wasn’t quite right.
The closer I would get to the school, the more my pulse would rise. I never knew what I was walking into.
Not the Only Problem - But the Loudest One
In a post-Covid world, unpredictability became the norm. Student absenteeism was high, but so was teacher absenteeism – because teachers are human beings, too. They get sick. Their families get sick. And after Covid, there never seemed to be enough substitutes to help buffer.
One of my responsibilities as an administrator was to arrange coverage within the school. Coverage wasn’t the only pressure point in the job, but it was the piece that made all the other pressures impossible to ignore. Before Covid, this was mostly manageable – scheduled meetings, occasional emergencies. After Covid, it seemed to become a daily crisis. On any given day, seven or eight teachers might be out. There simply weren’t enough subs to cover.
When coverage wasn’t available, I had to ask others to step in – interventionists, paraprofessionals, counselors. And when that still wasn’t enough, I did it myself. During that first year after Covid, I found myself covering within classrooms when teachers had meetings or shorter absences during the day. I covered most of the grade levels in my elementary school.
On a side note – I allowed myself to have fun with it. My love of reading came out, and I would ignore what was on the teacher’s substitute lesson plans in favor of reading. I’d read my favorite picture books or parts of my favorite classroom chapter books. The kids would have something to do while I read – a task to sketch out a scene that they had heard or to write out an alternate ending to a story. If I was going to be in a classroom again, I was going to be reading.
But when I did step in, my work didn’t disappear. It just piled up to be done later.
When the Coping Strategies Stopped Working
I started trying to arrive earlier, attempting to get ahead before the day’s crises could begin. I stayed later on days when my own kids didn’t have something they needed me to do after school. And somewhere in that stretch of time, my sleep began to change.
I had always been a champion sleeper. Falling asleep had never been an issue for me. Suddenly, though, my brain refused to slow down. I tried writing down what I needed to do, hoping it would give those thoughts permission to leave my brain. Instead, it was visual confirmation of just how much I had to do.
I started waking up in the middle of the night. Lying awake, staring at the darkened ceiling, thoughts about work would swirl through my head – a hard conversation I needed to have, a parent I needed to call, a student I needed to check in on. Sleep became lighter and more fragmented, and more of my mornings began with exhaustion instead of feeling rested.
For most of my adult life, exercise had been my anchor. I would wake at 4:30 in the morning and go to a boot camp class – intense cardio, heavy weights – five days a week. On the sixth day (usually Saturday), I’d wake early and go for a run, either by myself or with friends. In the first couple of years of administration, I kept to that schedule with gritted teeth, talking myself through it.
Didn’t sleep well? Exercise helps with stress – get it done.
Feeling overwhelmed? Exercise is a great distraction – get it done.
Tired? Sore? Run down? The world doesn’t stop just because you aren’t at your peak, so suck it up, buttercup, and get it done anyway.
But after a couple of years, even that began to unravel.
I was still waking up in the middle of the night, but I no longer had the physical energy to get up and work out. My weekly workouts dwindled. At first, I told myself this was healthy and to be expected – a natural shift as a woman moving through her late thirties and early forties.
But while my body was quietly asking me to slow down, my brain was busily, desperately, searching for dopamine wherever it could be found.
Searching for Relief Anywhere I Could Find It
Cupcakes in the front office? Yes, please.
Inhaling a bag of chips while walking to a behavior call? Carbs always help.
A glass of wine – or two or three – at night because it had been a long day? Pop that cork, baby.
And that’s when the vicious cycle began.
The wine disrupted my sleep. Poor sleep left me exhausted the next day. Physical depletion made exercise harder. And without movement to regulate me, my need for quick comfort and quick relief only grew stronger.
At the time, I thought it was a personal failure – a lack of discipline, a lack of willpower.
Now I know better.
At the time, I thought that the pressure would ease each day when I left work and traveled back home.
I was wrong.
This is Part 3 of the Unhustled Life education series. Part 1 describes what education used to be like. Part 2 describes the gradual shift from a career I loved into one that was quietly asking more of me than I realized I was giving. It examines how the work changed - not all at once, but subtly, over time. Part 4 will explore what happened when the weight I carried at work followed me home - and how an unregulated nervous system began shaping my relationships, my reactions, and my sense of safety outside the school building.
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Disclaimer: The reflections in this series are based entirely on my personal experience as an educator in a single school district. I cannot speak for every district, every school, every teacher. Education is vast and varied, and the journey I have experienced may or may not match what other educators have lived. My intent is not to generalize education or to critique individuals, schools, or districts, but rather to offer an honest look at how my own relationship with education has evolved over the last 23 years. It’s an honest reflection on how that evolution has impacted my career, my physical and mental well-being, and my future paths.
I share my story with respect, with care, and with such a deep appreciation for the educators who continue to do this critical work in every corner of the world.
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