Stress, Anxiety, Depression and the Modern Maths Teacher

Lots of people get uncomfortable when someone they work with is going through a tough time or has a mental health problem. We go through life and often we never find out the extent to which, the things we say or do affect other people. Mostly we assume that it makes “not a jot” of difference but we are considering it from our own perspective and we need to sometimes be reminded that we all cope with stress in different ways at different times which is why this guest blog post is very dear to my heart.

But it doesn’t change a thing … I still value his opinion. Someone once told me that people are in your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime and little did I know when I spoke to this teacher at a maths “thing” that I would be sat here in tears at this very brave and honest post. I am proud to call this person a friend – he is up there with my heroes.

I want to say one thing and get it off my chest. I suffer from mental health issues. There done it, it’s out of the way, move on.

We all have our own battles with stress, but when it gets too much the whole world just caves in, and what happens to the teacher? Often this is the start of the end their career, many leave teaching all together, or worse.

I teach a subject that is very black and white, but my days are very different, they have many shades of grey. At the moment the days are a very dark grey, and that has little to do with the weather. The stress of a departmental review over a whole week and at 6 days’ notice doesn’t help. Lesson observations, work scrutiny, planning checks, copies of lesson plans and planners, staff questionnaire, student voice questionnaire, student interviews with the head and someone from outside coming in to help do this also. Next it’s whole school work scrutiny! We’ll get an email on our designated day of the week asking for certain students books. Oh and let’s not forget it is Y11 parents evening too this week.

Each morning I go to school, I smile and say ‘Good Morning’ in the most cheery manner. Disguising the turmoil that lurks below the calm exterior. I don’t go to the staff room at break and lunch, being around people on these dark grey days is really, really hard. Instead I prefer the sanctuary of my class room. There’s little chance that someone will come in and ask how I am and I will break down in tears or have a meltdown.

That fear feeds the stress and anxiety and the battle is now truly on. It doesn’t just affect me though. It also impacts on my wife and children. It affects mine and our social lives. Going to the theatre takes a plan of military precision to negotiate successfully. Being in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people is like lighting the blue touch paper to your flight instincts, and then the panic attacks can start to add to what is already a dark grey day.

At my lowest point, when I was going to counselling, I nearly quit teaching. But, I’m not a quitter. The counselling helped me develop strategies to cope with the dark grey days, it’s tough, really tough (did I say that already?). Then my eldest son showed me Twitter on my shiny new phone. I learnt slowly how to follow people, listened to what they were talking about. Eventually I plucked up the courage to join a conversation. Boom, suddenly I had new group of like-minded ‘friends’. Their support and generosity to someone completely unknown to them was the tonic I needed. It convinced me I was doing the right thing and to carry on teaching. None of them knew what I was dealing with professionally and personally. They didn’t know I suffered from stress, anxiety, panic attacks and depression. They didn’t know they saved my career. But they did, and for that I will always be eternally grateful. They had made me welcome in a supportive online community, my wife would say they were my ‘virtual’ friends. I’ve met some of them at Maths Conference and other mathsey events. It was by sheer good fortune that I met Mel, and it was so difficult to just to say hello to @Just_Maths. But I’m glad I did. You won’t find me at the tweet up, I still can’t handle the situation. You won’t find me at the social bits that go on around these events for the same reason.

So what’s the point in writing this? It’s not so you can feel sorry for me, some of you may think I should ‘get a grip and stop whinging’. But there are more teachers out there like me. You probably work with one and don’t even know it. Mental health has a stigma about it, it’s brushed underneath the carpet. Yet every day a teacher is suffering in silence. It’s often the teacher you would least expect, hardworking, strong, well respected by students and staff. You won’t know unless they want you to know. When they come to terms with it themselves, then support them. We can’t afford to lose good teachers, but we are. Please don’t judge us. Please don’t pity us. Just be aware. Truly listen if we come to talk to you and ask for your support.

I will never be cured, it will never go away – I just deal with it every day – whatever that day throws at me. Some days are good, occasionally they are very dark grey, mostly they are somewhere in between. But I never want to go back to the day when I got up, sat on my bed and cried for two hours, when my wife didn’t know how to help and didn’t even know things were that bad. She had never seen me cry before, not even a tear slipped at either of my parents funerals, imagine her reaction.

If you’ve managed to get this far, thank you. If you’re sitting there and think this is you, then please, please don’t feel alone, you’re not. If you aren’t already getting help, then get help. The first step is the hardest, and that step is the most important, the one when you realise you’re ill and admit it to yourself