Unlock Your Teaching Potential

When Colleagues Drain You: Emotional Boundaries for Educators Who Care

• Jen Rafferty • Season 4 • Episode 6

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In this episode of Unlock Your Teaching Potential, we dive into a powerful and often overlooked topic in education: how to extend compassion to adult colleagues while maintaining healthy boundaries and protecting your own emotional energy.

Educators are natural nurturers, but many of us find ourselves overextending—especially when dealing with emotionally dysregulated adults. This episode unpacks how you can stay grounded, uphold your values, and practice true compassion without slipping into self-abandonment.

What You’ll Learn:

  • How adult dysregulation impacts school culture, student outcomes, and educator morale
  • Why we offer more grace to students than to fellow adults—and how to shift that perspective
  • The connection between emotional regulation, unprocessed trauma, and adult behavior in schools
  • Why grace without boundaries isn’t compassion—it’s self-sacrifice
  • How to set boundaries over expectations and release the need to control others
  • Tips for practicing neutral observation and reducing emotional reactivity
  • The balance between compassion and accountability—how to hold space without enabling
  • Tools to protect your energy and focus on what’s within your control
  • Why educator self-care is one of the most generous things you can do for your students

If you’re an educator looking to create a healthier, more emotionally sustainable professional life, this episode will leave you feeling seen, empowered, and reconnected to your purpose.

✨ Remember: You are a gift to this world. Treat yourself accordingly. ✨




Stay empowered,
Jen


Let’s keep the conversation going! Find me at:

empowerededucator.com/resources

Instagram: @jenrafferty_

Facebook: Empowered Educator Faculty Room

Empowered Educator Card Deck

Speaker 1:

Are you feeling exhausted by the constant demands of teaching? Do you find yourself wondering if there's a way to balance both your career and your well-being without burning out? Welcome to Unlock your Teaching Potential, your permission slip to hit the brakes, recharge and reignite your joy for teaching and living. I'm Dr Jen Rafferty, former music teacher, author, tedx speaker and founder of Empowered Educator, and I've been where you are exhausted, overwhelmed and just trying to get through the day, making it all work. So each week, I'll bring you short, powerful episodes with actionable tools to help you reclaim your energy, set boundaries and step into your full potential, both in and out of your role as an educator. So take a breath and let's dive in. It's time to unlock your teaching potential, because the world needs you at your best.

Speaker 1:

Today's episode is about something that I know so many of us feel but don't always talk about why is it so much harder to have compassion for adults than it is for our students? Now, this question came up recently and I knew it was one that we needed to sit with here in the podcast, so here's how it was framed Self-regulation Helpful, noticing. Helpful. Self-regulation Helpful, noticing. Helpful. Responding with kindness and curiosity Also helpful. But I don't work in a vacuum when other adults are dysregulated, whether it's out of anger or shutting down or avoiding accountability, it affects my students, it affects me and it affects the work that we're trying to do together and that is frustrating. We've talked about compassion for adults before in your Empowered Educator classes, but I still struggle with that. At the same time, I have almost unwavering compassion and belief in my students. Why is it so much harder to have that for adults? Ooh, okay, so if you're nodding along already, I see you and this is real, so let's talk about it. So why do we give more grace to students than adults? A lot of the time? I think the first step is just acknowledging this simple truth. We naturally extend more patience, belief and grace to children and our teenagers or students than we do to our adult colleagues and supervisors, because they are still growing, right. I mean that makes sense. Our students are still developing and we understand that their brains are still a work in progress. Their brains don't actually develop fully until they're about 24 years old, and their ability to regulate their emotions and behavior is also a work in progress.

Speaker 1:

When a student lashes out or gets frustrated or avoids responsibility, we can instinctively shift into a teaching mindset. How can I help the student grow through this? What skills do they need? What support can I give them? But when adults act in that similar way, our instincts are very different. It's not what do they need to learn here, what are they struggling with? Instead, it's you should know better and, honestly, that expectation isn't necessarily wrong, but it assumes a lot and there's judgment there.

Speaker 1:

When we make judgments, it sounds something like you should have a more developed self-regulation skill. You should be able to take accountability and communicate effectively and work collaboratively. And when you're in that judgmental mindset, when they don't behave or act in a way that you feel that they should, it can feel deeply frustrating because their struggles don't just affect them, they affect you and, more importantly, they affect your students. But notice, when you are thinking that word should, you are immediately in judgment and that is a time for you to notice hey, that's so interesting, I just should on this person or on this situation. I need to take a step back here and really see what's going on. So the first thing I want to validate here is your frustration is completely normal. It's not out of a lack of kindness or an unwillingness to be compassionate. It's your response or reaction, if you will, to a very real impact that another person's dysregulation has on your ability to do your job well and, potentially, your student's ability to do their part well also.

Speaker 1:

So here's where things get a little tricky. Just because in your mind in that moment you have a judgmental moment of you should know better, it doesn't mean that they do. You know, we grow up and all of a sudden, one day we're just expected to know how to regulate our emotions and to adult in this world. But until we have training about this, we never were actually taught or told or even modeled a lot of these skills, which, frankly, is why Empowered Educator exists in the first place. Because so many adults, including me too I'm not immune to this we're walking around with unprocessed trauma, unprocessed pain, around with unprocessed trauma, unprocessed pain, unprocessed wounds, deeply ingrained subconscious patterns and a lack of emotional tools, because sometimes we've never had the opportunity to develop them. Most of the time, especially now, so many of us are in survival mode.

Speaker 1:

Some of you listening might feel as if you're barely holding it together, and you're. People's behavior reflects how they're feeling, and so I know what some of you might be thinking at this point like, okay, fine, but I still have to show up and do my job every day. I don't just get to check out because I'm struggling and you're. You're totally right. And the fact that someone is struggling does not mean that their actions don't get to have consequences. Compassion does not mean making excuses, but what it does mean is that we can start to see these behaviors as a pattern for understanding and get curious instead of having some sort of personal attack.

Speaker 1:

And you know, personally I also used to think that giving grace meant being endlessly patient. I used to think it meant I needed to absorb other people's stress. I would make up for their shortcomings, or even make excuses for their shortcomings, because I would understand they were going through a hard time and I would end up bearing the weight of their emotional baggage. And that's truly what I thought being a compassionate person meant. But I remember when a lot of that changed for me.

Speaker 1:

There was a time when I was working really closely with a colleague who was just constantly overwhelmed. They were always behind on the things they needed to do at some deadlines that were coming up, missed meetings often and frequently projected their stress onto everyone around them, including me, and at first I would keep telling myself well, they're struggling, they just need support. I understand where they're coming from, I can be patient, and so I would pick up the slack and I adjusted my expectations and I told myself that I was being kind. But then I started to notice something that the more that I accommodated, the less accountability they took and the more resentful I started to feel. So, instead of helping them grow, or allow them to make mistakes and have natural consequences, or helping what I thought would be making things easier for the both of us my quote unquote grace was enabling the very behavior that was draining me, and it was truly draining.

Speaker 1:

And the turning point came when something we were both working on together fell through, not because of anything that I did, but because I had allowed their lack of follow through to become the norm. I had been so focused on being understanding that I had neglected to set clear expectations for me, and that moment taught me something really important that grace without boundaries is not compassion at all, it's self abandonment. And so I did something I had never done before. I sat down with this person and they said look, I see that you're going through it right now and I want to. I had never done before. I sat down with this person and they said look, I see that you're going through it right now and I want to be able to support you, but here's what I need in order for this working relationship to work.

Speaker 1:

I named my boundaries very clearly and very calmly as a way to ensure that we could both be successful and that ultimately, I could feel good and I didn't want to show up feeling resentful anymore. And so the thing is at first there was a little bit of pushback, but they actually responded really well. Once I made things clear that I wasn't judging them, I was just setting healthy limits for me, our dynamic completely changed and I learned that compassion and accountability are not opposites, they're actually partners. And so from then on, I really started approaching these situations differently. I still offer grace Grace is so important but I no longer confuse grace with taking on someone else's emotional labor, and that shift has been completely freeing.

Speaker 1:

So when an adult in your professional space is dysregulated whether that's through anger or avoidance or shutting down or maybe refusing that accountability it's really easy again to get stuck in that loop of frustration. And it is valid, but it is also exhausting. So I need you to think about how much mental energy it takes to replay that interaction in your head, to analyze what you think someone should have done differently and hold on to that anger and irritation. That emotional load for you now is heavy and, more often than not, the person who was the cause of it they're not carrying it anymore. You are. So the real question becomes how do we then shift from being drained by these moments into navigating them with more ease? So I told you that story, but I really want to walk through some practical strategies for you to incorporate into your daily practices.

Speaker 1:

So, instead of expecting another adult to be different, shift the focus to what you are and are not available for. These are boundaries. We're going to set boundaries over expectation. So, for example, if a colleague constantly shuts down and refuses to communicate, you can choose to communicate clearly yourself, but you don't have to keep overextending to fill in their gaps. Or if an administrator responds to concerns with defensiveness, you can document your efforts, set clear expectations and disengage from unproductive conversations. Boundaries are not just about saying no to something. They're about deciding what's yours, that you want to carry and what's not.

Speaker 1:

The second piece of this, besides boundaries and over expectations, is the power of observation. We can't change something we don't notice, and so, instead of immediately reacting to another person's dysregulation, notice how you are feeling in that moment, and that self-compassion allows the space for you to extend compassion to somebody else. So, instead of like, oh, rolling your eyes, like, why are they being like this? Again, start to notice I'm feeling activated right now. That's so interesting. Take a breath, huh, I'm noticing that this person shuts down when they're confronted. Huh, that's, that's also so interesting. And then you can get curious. Instead of, oh, my gosh, rolling your eyes again they are so difficult, they're always so difficult Notice what your body is doing, regulate yourself and step into a place of questioning and curiosity. This person really seems to struggle with accountability, with this curiosity, this person really seems to struggle with accountability.

Speaker 1:

With this, this very small shift can move you out of that emotional reactivity space and into a place of neutral awareness. That neutral awareness place is very, very powerful. And again, it's not about excusing their behavior, it's about freeing yourself from that emotional spiral that can come with it. And remember, compassion and accountability can co exist. It doesn't mean you have to accept their behavior, but you can hold both truths at the same time. I understand this person is struggling and I need them to follow through on their responsibilities. You can care about someone's struggles, but you don't have to be their solution.

Speaker 1:

And, at the end of the day, when an adult's dysregulation is consistently affecting you, the most powerful thing that you can do is protect your ability to show up. We say this all the time here and in all empowered educator spaces the most generous thing you can do for the people in your life is take care of yourself. So make sure that you're consistently checking in with yourself. Take a deep breath when you need it, take a short walk, even if it's just those breathing breaks throughout the day, to have a check-in, to recenter yourself. This will make a huge difference, recognizing where am I placing my energy right now, where your attention goes, your energy flows. So asking is this worth my emotional investment right here? That's a really important question, and if the answer is no, well then make a different decision and then, at the end of the day, you can only focus on what you can control. You cannot change other people. The only person you have any agency in changing is yourself.

Speaker 1:

So, coming back to that original question, why is it so much harder to have compassion for adults? Because we naturally expect more from them, and when they don't meet those expectations sometimes even unspoken expectations it can feel frustrating, especially when their behavior impacts students. But here's what I want you to leave with. This is the big takeaway Compassion for adults does not mean to have endless patience, self-sacrifice or excusing harmful behavior. What it means is recognizing that, while their struggles exist, you get to decide what you are and are not available for. You can choose to protect your energy so that you can keep showing up for what truly matters, which is your students, your work and your own well-being. So now, just like at the end of every episode, I'm going to pull a card from the empowered educator card deck and, oh, this is a good one.

Speaker 1:

Nothing changes if nothing changes. Yes, and as I said earlier, you are the only one that has any agency in changing anything for yourself. That is the only thing that is in your control. That's your empowerment, that is your complete personal responsibility. You are 100% responsible for how you show up.

Speaker 1:

And it's nice to have some wishful thinking, and I just I wish things could be different, or I want to be able to show up better, or I want to be able to show up more aligned, and that's truly up to you. But until you start making different choices, until you start taking that responsibility for how you show up, nothing's ever going to change for you. So nothing changes if nothing changes and I think with that too, remembering you can't change what you don't notice. So make sure you're placing your attention on yourself, the messages that your body is sending you, and that's going to inform the new choices and then changes that you make.

Speaker 1:

Remember the most generous thing that you can do for your students is take care of yourself. So if you found today's episode helpful, be sure to subscribe so you never miss a moment of inspiration. And if you're loving the show, I'd love for you to leave a review. This helps more educators like you find the space to unlock their teaching potential too. Until next time, please remember that you are a gift to this world, so act accordingly. See you soon.