Things seem to be slipping into place increasingly since my psychotherapy session last week and the latest appointment with my GP.
I've been enjoying the scrapbooking, and realised today that this is the first occasion in over a year that I have engaged fully with that creative side of me. It has always been the case that my creative side becomes inaccessible to me when I am deeply depressed, and that the return of that urge is a sign that I am recovering.
I've started being able to concentrate more effectively and for longer, and can even contemplate the possiblity of returning to work - I managed to talk about it with someone today. There are still further steps I need to take - like coping with the noise and multiple demands - but I am starting to be able to pull into focus the things I need in order to cope at school.
There are things I need school to put in place for me. Prime among these is the ability for me to work without being disturbed and I have thought about buying some large headphones which I can plug into my laptop - the advantage of large ones is that they will be an obvious signal to others as well as hopefully shutting out noise for me.
A second need I have is for a fault reporting system for ICT which removes the opportunity for confrontation by the technician.
I have a couple of things which may not be possible but which I would like to happen - I would love to have a year or so with no tutor group - there are at least 3 full time staff who do not have a tutor group, so this is not impossible. And I would really like to have my non teaching periods spread out so that ideally I had at least one each day.
I know I need to make sure I slow down and that is possibly the hardest thing for me to achieve. I need to find a way of focusing on one task at a time and not allowing the demands of others (pupils and staff) to cause me to speed up at the cost of my own need for a sensible pace. I have already planned not to run any clubs for the rest of this term and will probably carry that on at least at the start of next term. I need to find a way of filtering demands through my own needs; I tend to put those aside and this has shown me that i need to be aware of them.
I know I will need some quiet space each day and that the staffroom may well not be a good place to find this, especially at lunch times. So I am considering whether it will be best for me to go out of school at lunch and if so, where!
I need to bring some order into the mass of paper that dominates my classroom,a nd it may well be that the best way to do this is just to be ruthless and throw things away.
I also need, long term, to continue to look at aternative sources of income that would possibly enable me to cut down my teaching hours.
It's feeling more settled, more safe at the moment and I hope it continues so.
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5 comments:
All sounds good. You are learning to take care of yourself, and how important it is to get your needs met.
Keep safe,
lvoe Sallyx
Very glad you are feeling safer at the moment - you've done an enormous amount of work there. It makes me tired just reading it. So if you don't feel you can make the next step just yet PLEASE don't feel bad. It is perfectly reasonable. There's a LOT there to be going on with.
Hooray...hang on to the culture of small steps, Caroline. You are covering a huge distance that way, so don't demand too much of yourself too soon.
We're here, cheering you on from the sidelines :-)
It all sounds good and I'm impressed at your insight into yourself and your needs...echoing the others sentiments about small steps, take care, you're doing really well, Katie,x
Thank you all. I am in danger of moving too fast (always, every time!) and the reminders to take it slow, not to feel bad, are very useful ones.
It's hard, this getting better lark.
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