Teachers as Wounded Healers

When I started this blog in August, I said I was going to post once per week.  That was the intent, but as always, life has other intentions.  I realize now that posting every week was a little too ambitious for me, but even more than that, I have been away for so long to address some of my own personal struggles with mental health, a journey that is not yet over. Yet, this journey is precisely what brings me to my reflections on education today.

In schools across the country (no doubt, around the world), schools and students are experiencing a significant mental health crisis.  I recognize that this term can be thrown around with hyperbole, but I mean every bit of it.  I’ve read the statistics and I’ve seen it firsthand.  Since COVID-19 closures, many students have struggled to deal with their own sense of loss, both personal and academic.  They’ve struggled even more to regain footing in a world that prioritizes individualism and independence over community—a world that all but collapsed when closures shut down the only forms of community that many had.  As a rite of developmental passage, students have always struggled with forming their identities, but that identity formation is now sometimes more handicapped as they struggle with reversing the malformation that occurred over two years of increased social media and technology immersion, aggravated and angry political discourse, compounding traumatic experiences, and a lack of truly interpersonal interactions and guidance.  I see the results of these struggles in attention-seeking and risky behaviors, increases in depression and anxiety, and severe academic losses.

As much as it may seem otherwise, the point of this post is not to belabor the point that today’s students are struggling, but rather to think through one particular way that teachers and other educators can serve as a presence of hope and growth in the midst of these struggles.  That way is simple but profound—vulnerability.  It may come as a shock to their students, but teachers and administrators have their own profound loss and disruption from during the pandemic, as well as before and since.  In fact, adults in any profession often carry around tremendous trauma and grief, with many not expressing their deepest hurts to those around them.  What I’m not advocating for is a vulnerability free-for-all, but rather a measured attempt by educators to reveal more of themselves for the sake of their students and themselves.  This revelation has humanizing qualities, showing students that adults struggle too.  It also enables the practice of empathy and compassion, two traits that are often missing in today’s society and in fact form the basis for much of the social-emotional learning that many districts are currently pushing. 

More than anything, however, educators have the ability to be “wounded healers”—a term coined by late theologian Henri Nouwen to describe how individuals that work through pain to heal their own wounds can then become a healer to someone else, helping them through their own grief and trauma.  There are many ways to engage in the practice of healing, but basic vulnerability is one, and such a practice has immense potential for fostering community in schools and classrooms where it may be sorely lacking.  The details of what is appropriate to share and not share must of course be worked through, but let us not miss the key point—vulnerability can make a difference in the healing process of others and ourselves.

If I am to advocate for vulnerability, I have learned over my life that I must lead by example, and to that end I want to end with sharing some of my own story.  Some people know, but many others do not, that I have struggled with my own mental health issues for several years, being placed on medication for anxiety and depression and receiving counseling for much of that time period.  In the last 7 years, I have come off of my medication three times, with each resulting in a relapse of severe symptoms a month later.  When I’m healthy, I’m productive and love interacting with others, sharing life, and constantly being on the go.  When I’m going through a crisis, I literally struggle to function and to get out of the spiraling thoughts in my head. 

One of these crises started happening again in late August, shortly after my last post, and after finally getting in for two different psychiatric evaluations, I was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder, a diagnosis that explained years of struggle.  OCD is a lot more severe than the typical displays of it on TV shows, and in fact has a suicide rate that is 10X the normal average (thankfully, that wasn’t me).  It manifests in many different ways and latches onto many different areas for different people, and can take the form of outward compulsions or just inward ruminating thoughts.  The latter is how it is for me—I struggle less with physically doing repetitive behaviors and more with repetitive thoughts that are fear-based and feel like I’m stuck in quick sand and can’t get out. 

I’ll save further details of my OCD for another time, but it’s important to note that I’m still on my own journey.  But even while I’m on my journey, and you are on yours, we can still both be healing agents for our students and others by inviting them into our own vulnerable story, thus giving them permission to share theirs.  And in the sharing of stories is where compassion awakens and healing begins, even if for the simple fact that now, our students know they are not alone.