The other day, I had a minor “The summer is going too fast!” panic moment when a colleague referenced a training coming up in less than three weeks. I hadn’t realized that was all I had left before I would be pulled back into the institutional pressures and frustrations that I have so needed to detox from this summer. A moment before, I had been happy and free: still on a high from a ten-day trip to England with my mom, enjoying time with my kids, just come back from their three-week adventure in Senegal and New York, luxuriating in slow, quiet mornings filled with reading and writing.
And all of a sudden I realized that I was not ok. Not ready to go back into full institution mode. I love my colleagues and my work, but in the past academic year, I had been burned out by systemic frustrations, the slow pace of change, and bureaucratic processes. I know that all the people that make up a system, including the one I work in, are good, well-intentioned people like myself. But together we create systems that paint everything with too broad of a brush, and systems always have the tendency to mute the colors, smooth over the differences, and look for the universal in the face of diversity.
Plain and simple, I was not yet in the mindset I needed to be in before starting the school year. That momentary panic reminded me that I need some better strategies for managing the institutional malaise that strikes me more often than I’d like. So I poured a small glass of wine, took my journal and phone outside, and called my best friend.
“Sarah,” I pleaded. “I have to figure this out before the school year starts because I can’t get myself constantly tied in knots by oppressive systems again. I need some strategies. Help!”
We talked for a few minutes to get my mind going, and when we hung up, I sat down to write. I wrote about all the things I need to do, and then I tried to work them into a process, a heuristic that I could remember and repeat whenever that clenching feeling in my chest arrives. And as much as I hate acronyms, I knew that an acronym would help me remember it and give myself the intervention I would need the next time institutional malaise, frustration, or rage crept in.
So here it is: FOCUS. Feel it, Outlet, Channel it, Unearth it, Say it. Here are some questions I’ll ask myself, along with an example of how it helped me work through my moment of panic about the fast-approaching end-of-summer. True, I don’t like cutesy names, and I promise I will never profit off this, roll it out as a mandatory initiative, or trademark it in anyway. It’s just for me to have something to hold onto to call me back to myself.
Feel it.
That clenching sensation is back in my chest. What am I feeling? What is the feeling this time? Is it fear, anger, disappointment, helplessness, confusion, jealousy, overwhelmingness, disillusionment? Something else? What does it feel like in my body right now? What happened or was said right before this feeling started? How is it similar or different from other feelings in these situations? Breathe, Kate.
When I started panicking about the end of summer, I felt frantic, confused, disoriented. Surely I had more time… Surely, I would be able to live in this relaxed summer state for longer, before I would have to fit myself into a system again? My heart raced, my eyes darted, I looked for the calendar on my phone, and frantically fired off several short, panicky texts to my colleague, attempting to clarify and justify why he must be wrong, why we must have more time. Right before this feeling happened, I was enjoying summer, feeling happy and relaxed. This feeling told me clearly that I was not ready to re-enter the daily emotional demands of working in a large educational institution.
Outlet: Find one, NOW.
What will bring me back to myself? How can I remove myself from this situation now, so that I don’t get stuck and dwell in my negativity, now that I’ve allowed myself to feel it, interrogate it, and name it? A cup of tea and a book? A walk, alone or with a friend? A glass of wine while writing? Going to barre class and shutting down my cerebral brain? Doing something fun with my kids?
Although my FOCUS acronym doesn’t have to be linear, and in my initial drafts of what I need, finding an outlet was more at the end of my process, I really appreciate the serendipity of the way the word FOCUS forces me to re-center myself by finding an outlet right away.
With my end-of-summer panic, my outlet this time was the small glass of wine, going to sit outside, calling my friend, and then writing in my journal. Those things restored me to my breathing, brought me back to all the things I love about summer: sitting at the table in my yard with a glass of wine, writing whenever I want or need, and connecting with friends who see me.
Channel it.
How can I take this awful feeling and do something productive within my own sphere of influence? In my own work, in my own relationships, what can I do to be part of creating a better system, more enriched by research and reciprocity? What actions can I take and relationships can I build or invest in?
Well, this time, my outlet of talking and writing helped me channel my feeling into this thought process, this heuristic that I can use moving forward. I also think it’s something I can share with teachers when we’re working together, with colleagues in my research collective, if it seems like it might benefit others, either as an example of how they might create their own heuristics for thinking through trigger moments or as an example of one way toward dealing with the daily challenge of remaining whole and human and heard in complex systems.
I also need to allow and create time for myself to actually engage in this kind of reflective process throughout my work day. I need to schedule my work day and my work week so that I have regular time for reflection, both in small daily doses and in a couple of larger thinking-time blocks that allow me to process rather than swallow institutional frustrations.
Unearth it.
What is really going on here? What is at the root of these emotions, that feeling that took hold of me? What’s it all about, beyond the immediate situation? What does it reveal about me? About my relationships? About the systems I’m part of?
In my initial writing about potential steps for my heuristic, I also included a “vent it” step, but once I realized that all the other pieces of my reflective puzzle spelled focus, I decided to ditch the vent—both because of the serendipitous acronym and because I realized through writing that what I often call venting isn’t truly about letting out the steam. Here’s what I wrote in my journal as I was unearthing:
“This is really about my need to get into a healthy, balanced mindspace and soulspace before the first training sessions. This is about my need to shake up my mental and emotional patterns, and my tendency to vent in anger when I feel this feeling in my chest. Theoretically, the benefit of venting, of verbalizing is that I can get it out and then move on. But now I’m realizing that my normal vent pattern doesn’t actually include an outlet to let out the steam. I don’t always stop the spiral…and venting becomes stewing and dwelling in the muck. What is the outlet I need to let out the pressure to keep me from becoming a powder keg? That’s what I need…strategies for the outlet, and my silly FOCUS acronym has both the focus on the outlet and how I can channel that power in my work.”
Say it.
Put it all together, Kate, and “hold fast to the thing as [you] see it without shrinking,” as Virginia Woolf said in A Room of One’s Own. This is not just a vent, a complaint, or a self-righteous fix. This is when I tie together my feelings with my actions and my values and name the thing that causes me to feel paralyzed, dehumanized, helpless, and alone in the face of oppressive institutions. An action-oriented thesis statement, if you will.
Here’s what I wrote in my end-of-summer panic journal entry:
“Say it: I’m afraid of falling apart again in the face of all the institutional roadblocks that frustrate me, that get in the way of progress, that make me feel less than a whole human. I’m afraid I’m going to start the cycle over again. But. I’m going to try this, this process, this FOCUS heuristic, cheesy acronym though it is, because I I like that makes me start with my feelings and finding an outlet right away.”
Here’s to hoping I can bring this into my daily life. Starting now. FOCUS, Kate.
Kate Lechtenberg, PhD 