Empowered boundaries for educators

Geri Sumpter

I'm now going to have a great pleasure of introducing you our keynote speaker Dr Rebecca Ray. Rebecca is a clinical psychologist, she's an author, and she does a lot of speaking and we're looking forward to hearing her presentation today. She's got more than 20 years practice and she's one of Australia's most in-demand and authoritative voices in the personal development space. She is also a proud author of 6 books, some titles in there are absolutely fabulous she's got: Be Happy, The Art of Self-kindness, The Universe Listens To The Brave, Setting Boundaries which is what she's going to be talking to us today about, and Small Habits For A Big Life, and she's got a new book that’s released in May this year called, Difficult People. So, I'm sure there's going to be a lot that we can learn from Rebecca and her experiences.

 

We know that educators tend to go above and beyond in their jobs and they're so passionate about what they do. So, it's important to recognise where boundaries need communicated and to develop a self-compassion based plan for thriving personally and professionally. And I’m now delighted to hand over to Dr. Rebecca Ray who's going to be taking us through this very conversation, so over to you Rebecca.

 

Dr Rebecca Ray

 

Hello and thanks for joining us today for this session on empowered boundaries for educators. My name is Dr. Rebecca Ray and I’m Clinical Psychologist and bestselling author. I've been a Clinical Psychologist for 20 years and am about to release my sixth book later this month. As you just heard that’s titled, Difficult People. This session has been created for educators and explores the gift that boundaries are for your professional and personal lives. We’ll explore how to identify your boundaries, how to know when they are crossed, and what you can do about it to help you thrive as you shape the next generation.

 

I’d like to acknowledge that I'm coming to you from Meanjin Land of the Yuggera and Turrbal People here in Brisbane. Also, this presentation was written on the Lands of the Jinibara People in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland. I pay my deepest respects to their Elders past, present and emerging. Today we have people joining us from all over the country so please feel free to put your own acknowledgement in the chat by telling us the name of the Country you are on.

 

In our session today we will be covering what boundaries are and why they are an educator’s best friend. Might sound scary now but I promise you they are. Understanding your giving tanks, assessing what's available in your giving tanks, boundary challenges for educators and how to navigate them, and strengthening your boundaries where it counts.

 

Let’s start first with why boundaries are an educator’s best friend. It's because you’re shaping the future you. You, yes you are so incredibly vital. As educators you’re shaping the next generation. Your wellbeing is critical to the younger generations in your spaces because if you're not ok, then they're not ok and trust me as parents then we're not ok. We really need you to be ok. The hard truth is though that your boundaries are your responsibility, and you don't always have the benefit of operating in environments that support your boundaries. The heart truth is that boundaries are the kindest things that we can offer each other to thrive both personally and professionally. Boundaries are your circles of self-preservation and empowerment. They are how you can keep doing what you do for the humans who's world's you help define and for us as the parents of those humans.

 

The B word. As educators you are renowned for having a giving nature it's why you're so incredibly gifted at what you do. The vast majority of your workdays and perhaps even your personal time too, sees you operating with the expectation that you must make yourself and your energy available to others. That you must give outwardly because it's expected of you. When this is your natural way of moving through the world, it can seem like boundaries are unkind and as such the act of setting boundaries has achieved a fairly unfair reputation as being mean, selfish, rude and you can even end up in the state when you become fearful that you'll be judged as being hard work if you dare set a boundary. The thing is that boundaries are actually a relational gift. They act as your personal instruction manual for how to respect and care for you. They take away the guesswork for everyone you interact with and it's the same for people setting boundaries with you. They take away the guess work for you for how to care and respect for them. This is how boundaries act as circles of empowerment and self-preservation in both your professional and personal lives. They ensure that you are not giving away your choices about how you live your life to someone who is not you. I’m going to say that again because it's so incredibly important. I don't want you to give away your choices about how you live your life to someone who's not you because that's what happens when you don't have boundaries. Other people get to make the choice about how you're going to spend your personal resources. And the thing is many educators naturally give in an unboundaried and unfiltered way and therefore experience a deep sense of depletion in doing so. I want to fix that with you.

 

This is why we need to talk about your giving tanks. Boundaries are your best friend because they protect your personal and professional resources. Your personal resources are stored in your metaphorical giving tanks. So, I want you to imagine that inside you are these giving tanks and they hold your personal resources. Things like time, energy, attention, care, money, knowledge, skills, and space and I wish I could tell you that these giving tanks were an infinite wellspring that you can draw on at any given time but unfortunately, it's not that easy. Your giving tanks are finite, what they can hold is finite and they need to be constantly replenished. Boundaries help you continuously check in to see what you have available in your giving tanks to give to others and then to make informed choices about how you distribute your resources accordingly. If you give an unboundaried way or you continue trying to give beyond your limits, you run the risk of rusting your tanks and burning out and I don't want that for you. This is why boundaries are your best friend as an educator. They protect you when no one else can or in some cases will.

 

I want to tell you about two teachers that I treated in my time in clinical work, Ashley and Dave, because I think that their stories will be relatable for many of you. Ashley came to see me around about two years after she started to feel not her fullest self. By the time she got to me, she was feeling anxious, she was feeling chronically stressed and she said that the last straw before she actually, she actually came to see me the thing that broke the camel's back so just speak, was that she'd had an interaction with a parent that didn't go all that well. The parent made a complaint and Ashley didn't feel like she was supported by leadership in backing her up in the way that she handled that. As a result, she started to feel self-doubting, she started to feel not good enough in fact I think her words me were, ‘I'm completely unworthy, I can't do this job and if I can't do this job then I'm not going to be in the classroom anymore.’ She was teaching Prep at the time. Now this is not a small statement because Ashley loved her job and she came to me in tears wanting to fix it. She didn't want to walk away. I was hoping that we could work on Ashley's emotional resilience, boundaries that we’d of course treat her anxiety and her stress. And things looked up for a while, I was actually feeling really positive about where we were headed. She took a term off but then when she returned to work after that term her stress came back, and her anxiety came back more severely and at that point Ashley decided she couldn't do it anymore. She now runs a creative studio, and she loves that work. And now look I'm not saying that you can't change careers I'm just saying that if you ever do, I want it to be on your own terms. I don't want burnout to make the decision for you.

 

Dave came to see me a little earlier than Ashley did. He came to see me when he was definitely chronically anxious, but he was in a state where he was generally functioning OK. You might have heard it called high functioning anxiety. So Dave was going to the workplace generally fairly overwhelmed with this blurred line between admin work and teaching tasks. So, he felt like more and more of his teaching time was taken away through admin. Again, I worked with Dave on being able to treat his anxiety. He also had some mild depressive symptoms we worked on those as well and we were able to build his emotional fitness up to a point where when he returned to work, he was able to do so with a different mindset. He was not so perfectionistic, he didn't, didn't listen to his imposter syndrome quite as much and certainly was more gentle on himself, more self-compassionate.

 

The thing is though these two different stories have different outcomes what I would love for you, is for you to have boundaries so that you can dictate your own outcomes. I want your own career to be in your hands. But it’s not that easy right. Oh my goodness I wish it was easy, I really do but it's easier said than done. I swear the most common comment I get on Instagram is, but that's easier said than done, and it's true it really is.

 

So, we need to talk about the challenges that you’ll face and the first challenge that I want to talk about is when fear becomes loud. Setting boundaries is often perceived as difficult for educators, and humans in general I promise it's not you. Because our minds run a series of worst-case scenarios about how our boundaries will be received and obviously then the first challenge is fear. Now the fear around boundaries and communicating them is actually very real and can be initially very uncomfortable but I promise it’s both possible and empowering to overcome it and I'm going to work with you on some tools that you can use after you walk away from this presentation today to start working on it.

 

If your fear is loud enough it may trigger your fight, flight, freeze, fawn response. You might have heard of the fight, flight response. It’s our survival instinct that helps us to manage our response, responses to real or imagined threat. So, when I walk out onto a road and there’s a car coming towards me there are a whole series of physiological and psychological changes that happen within my body and within in my psyche to enable me to get out of the way of that car, without running a cost-benefit analysis on the spreadsheet it just happens automatically so that I can move now. Now the thing is the brain is not very good at being able to tell the difference between real and imagined threat. So, in doing so what it does is it decides that when you go to set a boundary with a co-worker, and that interaction feels very confronting, your brain can slip into SOS mode and start that same survival response. It can send your energy in one of four directions. You could fight, which means that you go into the interaction prepared for an argument. You might feel driven by anger. You might flee, in other words you avoid the situation altogether or you run away, or you just sweep it under the carpet pretending like it doesn't exist. You could freeze, now I’m not necessarily talking about freezing on the spot like a statue although that can happen in some cases. It's not so common in interpersonal interactions though unless you're with someone who’s standing over you and very much frightening you but I am talking about a psychological freezing response. And how you’ll experience that is that you'll feel like you've got brain fog, like you can't think clearly and you might experience a sense of emotional numbness. So, you can't access your emotions the way you normally would be able to. And then there's also the final response here which is known as the fawn response also called people-pleasing. Now fawning is also, it's probably better described as a behavioural adaptation rather than a survival response that's wired into our DNA and it can be a relational strength. So, if you're sitting there thinking, I'm the people pleaser, don't worry I am too, sometimes. The thing is that we learn these really amazing relational strategies like negotiation and mediation and being able to anticipate other people's needs and these are incredibly valuable things. However, if you fawn when your own needs aren't met this is where it gets dangerous for your giving tanks and your personal resources.

 

Fear also shows up around what you might anticipate other people are going to react like and normally that's a negative anticipation. You think someone's not gonna take it well. You can also fear being judged negatively, especially for women. So, the problem with some of our social conditioning is that when women set boundaries in the workplace we can be labelled hysterical, diva-like, high maintenance, hard work. Whereas the people pleasers get labelled, the nice one, easy to work with, she's a dream she doesn't rock the boat. And yet when men set boundaries they're often labelled confident, ambitious, knows where he’s going that one. So, it can be much harder for us to be heard and understandably we can have fear around that as well.

 

You can also fear being unsupported by leadership when you set your boundaries. You can fear creating conflict and or triggering a difficult person to become even more difficult. Now some of these fears occur from what we learnt growing up from reactions to our boundaries from the adults around us. Whether that be your parents, or your caregivers, or significant people adults in your life when you're a child. Now if you had parents who honoured your emotional needs, parents who allowed you to have an opinion, parents who allowed you to have a say and then allowed you to actually speak up and express your feelings and your needs then you might land in adulthood and feel pretty good about your boundaries. However, if you weren't so lucky and you had parents or caregivers who stomped all over your boundaries, or who dismissed your needs, or who punished you, or humiliated you, or shamed you in some way for having those needs then you might find that setting boundaries feels incredibly uncomfortable. Because ultimately for your brain it feels unsafe.

 

Now some of these fears occur because of past negative experiences trying to set boundaries with difficult people. You might land in adulthood feeling ok about boundaries until you have a relationship with a difficult partner, or you end up at a workplace with a difficult boss, or you’re supervised by a difficult mentor, and you spend enough time with this person that they end up shaking your confidence with boundaries entirely and you start to feel, to feel interpersonally unsafe. And finally some of these fears occur because our personality style is conflict avoidant. Again I'm not saying that being conflict avoidant is bad I'm not saying, please don't please, please don't misinterpret this. I'm not saying that boundaries must result in conflict no, no not at all. I'm just saying that when you're conflict avoidant, and you do everything that you can to turn yourself inside out and upside down to meet other people's needs without checking in with your own needs first then you run the risk of ending up depleted. And that's not where I want you to be because that's not a place of thriving.

 

The next challenge that I want to talk about is when the environment itself is challenging. Sometimes boundaries feel big and unwieldy because the professional environment is not flexible or conducive to educators needs. And this can show up in a lot of complex ways, some of which include managing the time between teaching and admin tasks because that line gets blurred, managing demanding parents or other stakeholders in your students’ worlds, a fear of triggering a difficult person who may then become more difficult, or having to continuously work alongside a difficult personality, having the environment itself lack psychological safety. So psychological safety is the characteristic of an organisational culture and work environment where you feel like you're able to speak up for yourself, you feel like you're able to contribute, offer ideas and offer feedback without fear of retribution, without fear of being humiliated, or punished, or shamed. Instead, you're welcomed to contribute, your place in the organisational culture is valued. Now if you find that you're working in an organisational culture that doesn't have psychological safety, then that can often occur alongside a lack of support from the leadership. And therefore, it can feel like the task of setting boundaries is almost impossible when the environment is not receptive. This is where focusing on what you can control is essential and I’m going to talk more about that in a moment.

 

The next challenge that I want to address is when putting yourself first is unfamiliar. Boundaries are especially challenging when it feels foreign or unfamiliar to put yourself first, or you interpret that putting yourself first is selfish, mean, or unkind. I promise you it's not. But for educators this shows up in so many different ways. It can initially show up as blurred lines between work and home because of your workload and we need to talk about this because it's super important. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that you can leave all your work at work. There are some tasks that I'm sure you have that you must address from home. Things like marking, reporting, preparing that's fine that's fine. However, when this results in you actually spending more time, more of your personal time, working than not then this line gets blurred and the effect is that this overwhelms your nervous system and you actually lose connection to the skill of relaxing.

 

So, psychologists call this hyperarousal, you can end up in a state of chronic hyperarousal because you convince yourself, if only I do more work from home then my time at work will feel smoother and easier. And yes, that might be true to a certain extent. If you do that at the beginning of the year, or the beginning of the term, or mid-semester or between semesters sorry go for it, go for it, preparation big fan. However, if you end up convincing yourself of this all the time what's going to happen is one of two things. You'll go on holidays and you'll finally take some of your holidays for yourself, which I hope you do, but during that time if you've been functioning at level of chronic hyperarousal you're nervous system’s not gonna love it. First of all, you may find that you get sick. The minute you go on holidays your immune system screams then collapses and says I've been asking for your attention for so long. The second thing is if you don't get sick, you try to relax and then it feels like you’ve got ants in your pants. It feels like you must be doing something. You've got it clean house, you can't possibly relax until the house is clean, or until you’ve prepared everything for next term, or until everybody else’s needs are met. You might want to go down and go camping and just watch a river and yet nervous system says no. We don't do that because time spent being, is not valid time. I must keep doing. And around and around it goes, and your giving tanks go from this, to this and you end up depleted.

 

Now this challenge also shows up as a natural tendency to put everyone else first, probably the most common trait that I see in educators. Because you're so good at what you do and honestly, we need this trait. It makes you fantastic at connecting with the students that you're teaching. However, it needs to be balanced with the skill to be able to address your own needs. It can also show up as values misalignment. This is where you stop taking care of yourself because you're giving tanks are perpetually empty, leading to physical and mental health values being ignored and your desired way of being to be out of alignment with the way you currently are. That's all a big lot of words to say. There's a version of you that you want to be and you’re not being it. You want to show up for yourself physically, and mentally, and emotionally, and spiritually and yet you’re way down the end of the to-do list. It also shows up as people pleasing. Again, not a problem as long as your needs are met. Except when it becomes a habit of self-sabotage. And I see this show up with people that psyche themselves up to set a boundary, approach the situation and then all of a sudden immediately give in, immediately, because it feels familiar, it feels safe. And it also shows up as stress mismanagement. Like I said with your nervous, nervous system being chronically hyperactive, and then loss of resilience because you lose the skills of taking care of yourself and then ultimately burnout. And this is what we want to stay away from because I want the choices to remain in your hands.

 

You know when I was in clinical practise the most common industries, I saw with inflated stress levels were police - constantly traumatised, nurses - constantly traumatised and under resourced, educators. You may not be constantly traumatised, you are under resourced but this is the level of your stress. We must acknowledge it because it's systemic, it’s industry wide. But I need to empower you with the capability to put yourself first, so that you can then move through and do your job to the level that you want to. When putting yourself first is not your default way of being though, the risk is that of burnout and the answer to this is boundaries.

 

And the final challenge is, I don't know how to say it. The fear around how to communicate your boundaries can be a huge stumbling block. You can fear that your impulsive brain is going to take over, start the SOS response and push your left prefrontal cortex offline. Your left prefrontal cortex is your smart brain, the part of your brain that does all the smart things. Logical rational thinking, problem solving, planning. It's the filter to make sure your actions are socially appropriate. However, if your SOS response kicks in when it comes to setting boundaries, you can end up in a state where you become anxious about messing it up. You flee, you become dysregulated and end up arguing or fighting. You fight, you fear sorry you have a fear of becoming overwhelmed and therefore you freeze or shut down. Or you just give in in a fawn because it's a habitual. What we want to do is to equip you with the skills to be able to calm yourself down at just enough, so that you can think clearly to get into the practise of setting your boundaries so that it becomes familiar to make sure that your giving tanks are replenished and don't get to the point of rusting.

 

So, I'm wondering which has been the biggest challenge for you in setting boundaries in your learning settings? Is it the fear of being judged? Causing conflict or other people reacting badly? Is it feeling like your workload is so overwhelming that setting boundaries around it will only put you behind? Is it a lack of support from leadership and or other staff? Is it a natural tendency to put everyone else first so making yourself a priority feels uncomfortable? Is it that you're not sure how to communicate your boundaries? Or is it something else? I'd love to know. Ok so B seems like our biggest answer at the moment with 30%, actually it's equal to the fear of being judged causing conflict or other people reacting badly. Fear is a, ok ok no the workload’s winning. I love having real time data. 39% for your workload feeling so overwhelmed. You know I saw something on Instagram the other day, it just came up in my explore feed. And it was a small cartoon that indicated, you might have had the phrase that the company doesn't come to your funeral. And I often think about this busyness, this raciness that we get into serving everyone else. But then at the end of the day are we actually living in alignment with our 80-year-old selves.

 

You know the work that you do is so incredibly meaningful. I have a 5-year-old and his prep teacher is, I don't have words. I don't have words for how she's setting him up for the rest of his life better than I can. His day care teachers are responsible for the fact that he rocked into prep like he’d been there for 3 years already. You are so incredibly important. You are vital to the next generation. Now I’ll try not to get ranty, you can probably tell I'm slightly passionate about this topic because I want you to be ok. And boundaries are the way that we make sure that you have the best chance possible.

 

Alright so how do we build your boundaries. The first thing that I want you to think about when we're building boundaries is, are your boundaries actually necessary? You know if you're comfortable in your learning settings and your professional and personal needs are met, your boundaries are probably working, great good. I want you to feel comfortable. But if you notice any of these signs then it's probably an indication that your boundaries are absent or need defending and strengthening. You feel resentful, or you regret saying yes to a commitment. You feel, irritated, frustrated or angry. You feel trapped by a commitment that you've previously said yes to. You were once inspired and now you feel exhausted, unmotivated and or burnt out. And you feel like you're out of and or, doesn't have to be all of these things. You feel like you are out of integrity with yourself. If these signs are present, then your feelings are sending you a message. Feelings are incredibly powerful messages and the message that they’re sending you was that your boundaries need attention.

 

And if that’s the case the first tool that I want to use is a mindful ‘yes’ and a protective ‘no’. I want you to say yes and no with consideration for what's available in your giving tanks. Now white space is a precious resource. So, I don't want you to say yes and no based on your calendar, might sound weird I know. But so many of us automatically go to our calendars, see white space and think, ‘oh I can say yes’, I'm automatically available. No, that’s not how we’re doing this ok. No, no, no, no. Instead, I don't want you to offer up your white space before you consider what's available for yourself in your giving tanks ok. So, I want you to look inward first. What do you actually have available for this? What is within you to give this? And then I don't want you to offer it up before you consider what you need available for the rest of the day, the rest of the week, the rest of the month, even the rest of the year because if you commit now and you haven't actually considered what you need in the future then it might lead you straight to a little town that I like to call resentment-ville. And I don't want you to buy real estate there because it's super uncomfortable, rates are really high. I know I’m a total comedian. Now the things is if you decide that you don't want to say yes now, you don't have enough in your giving thanks then yes, it's time to say no. Sorry that was a random sentence. It's time to say no. But for the people pleasers in the room, then please know that saying no right now doesn't mean that you're saying no permanently. It just means that you've acknowledged what you've got to give right now and it's a no go today. But it might mean that you'll be disappointing yourself because it was something that you really wanted to do, or someone that you really wanted to show up for. And it also might mean disappointing someone else, if they were very invested in having access to you and your resources or really wanted you to be part of a certain opportunity. The thing is it will always mean, protecting your giving tanks which your future self will thank you for. This is what we're trying to do here, is operate with an acknowledgement of the fact that your future self has needs. Your today self has needs, your yesterday self had needs and did you listen to them? We can't do anything about then but we can do it something about now and moving forward.

 

The next tool that I want you to think about is what you can control. Honestly, oh my goodness, how I wish I could tell you that you can control other people. For my fellow control freaks, hi, I am one absolutely. And I really wish that other people would just do what we wanted them to do. Really, honestly, why do people have to be so hard? I wish the world would always go our own way but alas no. We are humans, dealing with humans who are fallible. So, I want you to focus on what's within your direct control because this is the only place that you can send your energy that really matters. You can focus on your actions. What you do or don't do, don't do. Whether or not someone continues to be allowed access to you and I mean that as a consequence for them not respecting your boundaries. So, one of the consequences you might consider is reducing access to you. How you communicate your boundaries. Your mindset, so who you approach boundaries especially from a place that your needs and your wants are valid and you have every right to express them. Your self-care, how you look after yourself professionally and personally through all of this. And your support system, who's in it and how often you access it. The other thing that I’ve really noticed in teachers, especially my time in clinical work, is that sometimes asking for help is so difficult because you are so used to being the helper, not the helpee. So help, asking for help feels foreign and it can often make you feel like you're failing. You're not. You don't have to be an island.

 

And then finally, not what but how. How you say it is more important than saying it perfectly. You know what you say matters sure but it doesn't matter as much as how you say it. And you know anyone that’s ever been on the receiving end of a passive-aggressive, ‘oh don't worry, it's fine’, you know this right. How you say it matters and practise counts for so much here. The more evidence you offer your brain that you can state your boundaries and have them accepted, the more your brain is more likely to mark boundaries as worth the effort. Brains need evidence, it's how we build new neural pathways for things or habits that we want to introduce especially habits of self-care. So, what you need to do is repeat, the brain needs repetition. It needs practise, it needs practise to say that, sorry, it's practise to see that you can set boundaries and you don't die. I mean I know that sounds traumatic but honestly that's what your impulsive brain is doing your limbic system is activating your SOS response because it can't tell the difference between that car coming towards me, that's going to hit me, and someone that might take my ‘no’, as such a disappointing thing that they then reject and abandon me. Your brain gives you the same response. So, in response to that, we practise with trusted people first. Build up your language around boundaries, build up how it feels and how it feels in your mouth to actually state your needs and then take action, refine and repeat. Now to give you some language to start off, I want to give you this formula. You don't need to remember every single word of this, I just want you to remember these steps, steps because it can make boundaries feel much nicer in your mouth. And oftentimes, especially for educators when you're used to being the ones that placate, and negotiate, and mediate then you always start off with language that's collaborative rather than language that feels confrontational.

 

So, step one I've noticed, step two I'm wondering if, and step three is it possible for… It might sound like, let’s say you're a teacher and you're talking to a co-worker in another class. ‘I've noticed that we seem to have different expectations around our approaches to homework. I'm wondering if we could get together and have a discussion about how we could collaborate on homework moving forward? Is it possible for us to come up with a plan where we could have a way of introducing homework in our classes that's based on consistency and fairness?’ See how that language is much softer than, ‘I want you to do it this way because it would make me feel better.’ So, this why boundaries get a bad rap, it’s because people assume you have to say it like that, no you don't.

 

So, we want your giving tanks to have strong foundations. To cement these foundations, I want you to take these reminders with you as you step forward as the most empowered version of yourself for the next generation that you are shaping for the world. I'm going to go through these slowly in case you’d like to write them down. You are not less important than your work. Your work is important, your non-negotiable as far as I'm concerned but you are not less important than the work itself. Your students need the thriving version of you. You count. You do not have to earn permission to count. You are the boss of how your resources are distributed from your giving tanks. You get to say who has access, how much they get from you, and when. You are responsible for replenishing your giving tanks. That one’s hard I know, hard to look in the mirror sometimes. And your boundaries help you do all of the above without burning yourself out.

 

Here are some reflection questions that I'd love you to, ah use as you look back on this session. And the first question is, what advice would you give a student teacher about boundaries that you don't follow yourself and why? Why is that advice still incredibly important and yet you’ve stopped doing it for yourself? And how, now that we've been through boundaries, now that we've looked at your giving tanks. Perhaps throughout the session you've heard some things that are hard to hear and maybe, hopefully some things that make you feel a little bit better. How can you use boundaries to protect your wellbeing as you shape the next generation.

 

What next? If you'd like to explore more of my work, you can go to Rebeccaray.com.au. If you want to explore more in-depth about boundaries, I have an entire book on it, Setting Boundaries, which is available at all good book stores and online retailers. And if you're thinking by the end of this session, you know my boundaries are pretty good, great. I love it, I love it. But if that extends to but hold on they just don't work with this one person who seems determined to make my life very difficult. You know that one person, I hope you don't have more than one but sometimes we have more than one. Then my next book, Difficult People, released on May 30 is for you. You can pre-order it now just jump over to my socials @Dr Rebecca Ray.

 

To learn more about Be You, we encourage you to continue to engage with Be You, learn more and keep up to date. If your learning community isn’t yet implementing the Be You whole learning community approach, we encourage you to register online and get started with support from a Be You Consultant. If you're looking for resources to support you with a specific need visit beyou.edu.au, and finally keep up to date with Be You resources, events, tools, and tips on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Also subscribe to the Be You YouTube channel to receive updates on new videos from Be You.

 

Thank you, it's my privilege to sit here and talk to you as educators because you’re shaping the entire life of my son to come. I don't take that lightly. As far as I'm concerned, your boundaries and non-negotiable. I hope this session was of great benefit for you and I want you to remember how important you are. You matter, we see you and we support you. And I have a little bit of time remaining, and I'd love to chat. So, if you have any questions please feel free to pop them in the chat and I'll answer them right now.

 

Geri Sumpter

Thank you so much Rebecca that was absolutely fantastic and I've got some of these questions.

 

Dr Rebecca Ray

Just yet. Hi.

 

Geri Sumpter

Hello. That was absolutely fantastic.

 

Dr Rebecca Ray

I can’t hear you though. Do we have some volume?

 

Geri Sumpter

Can you hear me now?

 

Dr Rebecca Ray

Standby Mel, you’re just a face with no volume right now.

 

Geri Sumpter

With no volume. How about now?

 

Dr Rebecca Ray

Ok try again.

 

 

Geri Sumpter

Can you hear me now?

 

Dr Rebecca Ray

Yes I can!

 

Geri Sumpter

Yeah, fantastic! Excellent, well they absolutely loved that session Rebecca that was brilliant and, and I love the fact that you were talking about be the version of you that you want to be. And I think that's really important for us all to remember because you can lose sight of, you can lose sight of that for yourself. I also was, was having a little giggle to myself because I actually read a feed on LinkedIn yesterday that was talking about pity city. So, about your resentment-ville that you mentioned. And it was saying about pity city, it said you can visit but you can't live there. So, the same as your resentment-ville, you are not allowed to buy the real estate, it's not a great place to be.

 

Dr Rebecca Ray

Don’t buy real estate, no.

 

Geri Sumpter

Don't buy the real estate. And I think it's really a good message I’d really taken that one on board yesterday. Now we do have a few questions and the first one is from Maria and she's asking, what do you do as a leader when you get burnt out from ensuring your team is supported?

 

Dr Rebecca Ray

Yep. Thanks Maree. I think that's a really great, great question and it speaks to the hierarchy of helpers. So sometimes once you end up in a position of leadership you can start to forget about yourself even more because you are so focused on the wellbeing of your team. So, what I’d like you to think about is that once you reach those levels of manage management or leadership your wellbeing becomes even more important. So, in terms of what you do, it's kind of like setting boundaries on crack. You need to get to a point where you understand that if you're not ok, your team’s not ok. So, it becomes even more important for you to value yourself. Even more important for you to speak up for your needs. Now in terms of the tool that you can use. The first thing that I would encourage you to do is have a safe person that you can go to. This could be someone in the same team, it could be someone like on your same level, or it could be someone outside the organisation all together. Sometimes that's, that can be especially safe because it means that you can share freely. I mean obviously confidentiality considered. And then I want you to think about making sure that you utilise that connection in a way that you are constantly supported. So, I have a team in, in my business. I don't go to my team, that I'm managing, who are doing all the stuff behind the scenes for me with my emotional problems. If I'm having a bad day I go elsewhere, to what I would consider like a, an entrepreneurial circle of security. People that I can go to that I can tell it how it is and then I can return back to leading my team from a position of groundedness. So what I would encourage you to do is to create that support system for yourself and make sure it feels safe for you.

 

Geri Sumpter

I think that's a great answer and it is really important around, and that’s another boundary that you’re setting for yourself isn’t it. Where do you go to get the support that you need at times that are appropriate for you. We’ve got another question from Lindsay and she's asking around, would you say that boundary setting is an appropriate topic to discuss with employees or educators during the employee performance development process?

 

Dr Rebecca Ray

Lindsay, I actually think it would be crucial but it depends on what perspective you're coming from. So, like anything I don't think people like to be told what to do. I just don't think humans respond well to that. If you’re, if you’re focusing on their wellbeing and you are discussing tools that they can use to help find, what I referred to as a work-life rhythm. I really don't like the word balance. I'm against work-life balance because I feel like that sets us up for something that's just lives in some kind of imaginary land, it’s rubbish really. And that's because you know there are chapters of your work life that demand more from you, there are weeks in your work like that always demand more from you, then there's weeks that are easier. And it's the same for your personal life. I have a five-year-old that's fairly dependant right now, he won't be like that when he's 15 and so, I hope, depends on my parenting I guess. And so, one of the things that you need to think about is that going for work-life balance ends up in a place where you're trying to achieve the impossible. If you're approaching in this performance review, thinking of, getting the person to consider their work-life rhythm then absolutely, absolutely. If you're going to sit down with them and come at it from this perspective of, your boundaries aren't great. Then that may not go down well. So I guess it depends on if you're actually doing performance management, where you're talking about their behaviour, behaviours that are actually violating boundaries that's a different, different discussion with a different tone to a wellbeing discussion. Both are valid but the way that you would do them is different.

 

Geri Sumpter

Yeah fantastic, that's really great points and unfortunately Rebecca we’ve run out of time to ask questions now, but I’d really just like to thank you on behalf of us all for an absolutely fantastic session. I think that's given us all a lot to think about and, and a lot of really great practical strategies that we can enact when we are thinking about our own boundaries. I've certainly taken a lot from that and will be reflecting. And I think one thing that I'm going to reflect on is around thinking about what's actually in that giving tank because when you went through the sort of, all the points that are in there, there's actually you know from, from your time, your energy, your attention and care right through to sort the skills and the space that you've got. There's plenty to, to be thinking about in that space. So, thank you very much for everything and I’m sure everybody’s enjoyed it as much as I did.

 

Dr Rebecca Ray

Thank you so much for having me, it’s been my privilege. My absolute privilege.

 

Geri Sumpter

No, fantastic thank you. Now I just want to go over a bit of information about the rest of the session and where people are going to go to next. So, we do have now a ten minute break coming up. Our next sessions will start at 2:40 AEST. We do have two of our concurrent sessions that are going to run. And we are going to be thinking about, one session is on educator wellbeing of early learning services. We've got some of our fantastic learning communities representatives that are joining us here. We've got Alisha Kelly from the Acacia Ridge Early Learning Centre and Kindergarten, and we've got Elvia Downs from C&K Acacia Ridge Community Kindergarten and they're going to be joined by Shona Doyle who's one of our fabulous Be You Consultants from Early Childhood Australia. They're going to be talking in a panel about nurturing educator resilience to support a thriving learning community. We’ve also got a session for schools that again is on educator wellbeing and it's again a panel. And we've got Consultants from our Be You headspace representatives here. So we’ve got Jen Berthold and Ashleigh Burn who will be joining you there and they’ll be talking about overcoming challenges to educator wellbeing and they’ll be discussing trends in ongoing and emerging challenges to educator wellbeing and whole school approaches that can empower flourishing educator wellbeing across learning communities.

 

So, I’d like to thank you for joining us in this session. Take your break, have your stretch, get your cup of tea, get your little snack, and we look forward to seeing you all at 12:40 sorry, 2:40 AEST for our next sessions. And remember to click on those through the white banners in your timetable. Thank you.

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