Teacher Burnout, Stress & Mental Health: 17 Red Flags

In this episode of the Teacher Self-Care and Life Balance Podcast, we’re diving deep into a topic every educator needs to hear: the warning signs that you need stronger, healthier boundaries.

If you’ve been feeling exhausted, resentful, or like teaching is bleeding into every corner of your life, this episode is your wake-up call. 🚨

Inside, I’ll share 17 red flags—10 from your personal life and 7 from your school life—that reveal when your boundaries are slipping. Plus, I’ll walk you through a mindset shift that will change how you see boundaries forever.

💡 Remember: boundaries aren’t selfish. They’re what allow you to protect your time, energy, and joy—so you can show up fully for yourself, your family, and your students.

🎯 What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• 🔟 10 private-life warning signs you’re neglecting your needs (like constant fatigue, guilt when resting, or short tempers at home)
• 7️⃣ school-life symptoms of burnout (from always saying yes ➡️ to losing your joy in teaching)
• 🧠 The #1 mindset shift that makes setting boundaries feel less scary and more loving
• 📚 Which past podcast episodes to binge next if you want practical scripts and strategies
• 🛑 Why “pushing through” doesn’t make you a better teacher—it makes you a burned-out one

💬 Final Takeaway

Boundaries don’t mean you care less. They mean you’re building a teaching life you can actually sustain. 🌱 Start with one small change this week—like not checking email after dinner—and notice how much lighter you feel.

Need a proven roadmap to help you set healthier teacher boundaries? Check out the Beat Teacher Burnout with Better Boundaries course at www.gracestevens.com/lifeback

➡️ To get your FREE 🎁 PDF Guide The Professional Teacher's Guide to Saying "No" visit: www.gracestevens.com/sayno

Want to truly thrive in teaching without sacrificing your personal life?   
Check out my signature on-demand self-study course, Balance Your Teacher Life.  Complete details here: www.gracestevens.com/balance

📘 My latest (and greatest!) book:
The Empowered Teacher Toolkit
Check out the best-selling Positive Mindset Habits for Teachers book here
Beat Teacher Burnout with Better Boundaries book here

My TPT Store: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/store/grace-stevens-happy-classrooms

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Transcript

 Welcome back educator, friends. Listen wherever you are listening from, whether you are commuting right now or it's your prep period, or you got your earbuds in or you're going for a walk. I just wanna thank you and really congratulate you for choosing this podcast, choosing to invest a little time in learning some skills to make your experience.

As an educator, as a parent, as a friend, as everything a little bit better, easier, more joyful, you know that that's the best thing you can do for yourself, for your family, and for your students, is to show up as your best self. And I wanna help you get there. So congratulations on making this smart choice.

I'm sure that listening, you know, to some true crime or something might be more compelling, but it's not, doesn't have the capacity to change your life like investing in yourself does. So yay you. Thanks for making the smart choice and wanting to be a, a better version of yourself and a. Better teacher.

That's what makes the world go round. So thank you for listening in. Thank you for everything you do for other people's children. And let's get started. So this week, here's where we're at. Listen, I am neither a trained therapist nor a doctor. I do not play one on you know, on the internet. But I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna give you 17 symptoms today, 17 symptoms.

We're gonna run through 'em quick, and I want you to keep just like this, you know, informal tally just in your head. Are you going, huh? Hmm. Yeah. That lands, yeah. That tracks more than you're going. Like, no, that isn't me. That's all you're gonna need to do. Because these 17 symptoms are all part of the same problem.

And something I see people don't do is really connect the dots right? They're not connecting their current, you know, exhaustion or resentment or anxiety or anger, frustration, what, just, it's all part of the same problem. So we're gonna run through the list, the symptoms. I'm gonna tell you what the solution is and then how you can fix it.

Now, I know that sounds overly simplistic, but you know recognizing something with awareness. Comes choice. That's what my first ever real mentor told me. With awareness comes choice. If you become aware that these are all symptoms of the same problem, then you have a choice. What are you gonna do about it?

So that's it. Hang on. Listen to the intro. I will see you on the inside in, get ready to learn something. Welcome to the Teacher Self-Care and Life Balance podcast. Where we focus all things personal development to help teachers feel empowered to thrive inside and outside of the classroom. If you are passionate about education, but tired of it taking over your whole life, you have found your new home in the podcast universe, you'll love it here.

I'm Grace Stevens, your host, and let's get going with today's show. All right, here we go. We're getting right into it. Let's talk about these 17 symptoms. First, I'm gonna talk about 10 in your private life. Okay? So in your head, just kind of, huh? Yeah, that sounds like me. Or like, no way. And just informal. If you're sitting at your desk, yeah, keep tallies, but you're gonna know if more of these sound true than not.

Okay. So. Hand signs in your private life, okay? Are you constantly tired even after sleep, right? Do you wake up exhausted because you know your mind never shuts off from school? Two. Do you hear your family and friends complain that you are always working loved ones. Notice you're mentally checked out or you're always on your laptop even when it's family time.

You're sitting there kind of the TV's on, but you're still cranking away at something, right? So that's two. Does that sound like you? Number three, do you cancel plans regularly because of schoolwork? Do you skip social events, workouts? Oh, that's a tough one, right? Ooh. All those times we told ourselves we would be sure we would at least go for a walk after work, right?

Or do you find yourself canceling, you know, appointments that you have with yourself to do hobbies so that you can catch up on grading or, or get a head start on the next day? All right, so that's three. Number four, do you feel guilty resting or having fun? So even when you do sit down to watch tv, do you feel like, oh, there's so many things I should be doing.

I should be lesson planning. I should be filling out those questionnaires for the kid who's struggling, doing all those things, right? That's four. Number five, do you feel like your phone and your email control your life? You find yourself checking emails at the dinner table, scrolling through messages, even before bed.

Oh no. How's that gonna help you sleep? Okay, so does that resonate with you? Six? Have you let hobbies slide away? Things that once brought you joy, reading, crafting, running? Are they just like, oh, school's back in, you know, I'll pick that up at winter break. Or right, like that's what we do, right? You start a book and then school starts and you're like, oh, I'll finish it at spring break.

Oh my goodness. Right? So at six, you've let hobbies slide away. Seven. Are you sure? Tempered at home. Oh. Do you find your. Self snapping at your partner or kids because of school stress that you've carried home. You're just so wound up. Eight. Eight. Do you let your health habits slip? Are you living off caffeine?

Are you having more wine than usual? Just a, ugh, relax. You come home, you need that beer. Are you skipping meals and you know, eating junk food? Just eating whatever's around. Okay, so that's eight. Are your health habits slipping? Number nine, do you feel resentful of loved one's requests? Come on, be honest with yourself here.

Even if it's a simple ask, like helping your child with homework. Does even that feel overwhelming, right? Do you have that dread when you own kid? Comes home and like, mom, mom or dad. Dad, I got a science project. You help me. And you, instead of being like, oh wow, how fun that we can learn something together, you're just like, one more thing you don't have time to do.

Right. Ugh. Okay. And number 10. Now, this one might be painful. Just take a breath here before I ask, and you don't, there's no score sheet. You, you, you don't have to fess up to me or anybody else, but just ask yourself this question. Do you ever fantasize about escaping everything? Right? Do you daydream about quitting teaching, moving away?

You know, when, when COVID was going through the schools, we did it sound like, you know what, if I got it. Or if I got exposed and I had to quarantine for two weeks, would that be the worst thing? At least I could relax. Yeah, sure. You'd have to lesson plan, but okay. All right. So those are the 10 symptoms outside of school, being constantly tired even after sleep.

Having your family's complain. You always work canceling plans because of schoolwork. Feeling guilty. If you have fun feeling that your phone and emails control your life. You've let hobbies slip away. You're more short tempered than you wanna be, right? You feel like the kids at school get the best of you, and by the time you got home, ugh, you've got nothing left to give to the people who you love, who should get the best of you, right?

Have you let your healthy habits slip? Do you feel resentful when there's requests at home? Just find it overwhelming, and do you. Fantasize about just getting some rest, no matter what it takes, even if it means getting sick. I used to call that syndrome, leave town at midnight. I would just fantasize about getting in my car and just leaving town at midnight.

All right, so those are the 10 symptoms at home. Now, here are seven symptoms at school. Do you have these symptoms? Number one, are you always saying yes? Right. You agree to cover that next teacher's? Yeah. You need to cover that prep. You use your prep time to cover for that teacher again, right? Do you say yes to things you know you don't wanna do, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'll do that extra committee. You know you don't wanna do it, so you always saying yes. Two, does your work bleed into all hours? Do you take it home with you even if you leave school on time? Do you. Emotionally mentally bring that stress home. Number three, do you feel constantly overwhelmed or irritable?

You know, that snapping that you have at home at, at your own family? Do you find yourself snapping at students or colleagues? Do you wish you'd be, could be more patient? Number four, do you avoid taking breaks or time off? You feel guilty for calling in sick even if you need to, right? You know how that's kind of toxic school culture that glorifies powering through instead of modeling self-care?

Do you subscribe to that? Do you even joke about how little sleep you got, but you're still there? Right. Number five. Do you find yourself getting resentful when students, parents or admin ask you to do something like you just, it's one more thing that you feel you cannot take on. You feel you are stretched beyond your limits.

And even though that one thing, maybe a student wants a letter of recommendation or something, it's something that is a normal request, but you just, you do it. 'cause you always say yes, but you are resentful about it. Okay. You are just spread too thin. Six, do you feel like you have lost joy in your classroom?

Right? Remember when we got our, how hard we worked to get that teaching credential? Maybe, hopefully there was a time where, oh my gosh, teaching was everything to you. You loved it. You loved being in that room. You loved the lessons you created, and now. That joy has been sucked out like a vacuum, right? You starting to dread going to work every day.

O sorry, that's painful. But again, you're not handing this in. This is only for yourself. And number seven, is your health suffering? Do you have headaches, you know, insomnia, you got a nervous stomach? Just. Constant, you know, anxiety, all the things, not even just on Sundays. We used to call it the Sunday night Scaries.

Right. But now it's like I find a lot of teachers carrying around all the time. Okay. So there were 17 symptoms if you have all of them, I am so sorry. That sounds awful. What a way to live your life. Oh my goodness. But you know what, they are all symptoms of the same problem. And I'm gonna tell you what that problem is, and the reason I'm putting you through this exercise is when I talk about this one thing, and you know, here it is.

Needing to set healthier boundaries. I see a lot of people chew me out and like, yeah, you know, I don't even know what that means. Okay. What that means is having needs, preferences, desires, articulating those and protecting your time, your energy, your peace. It's a skillset. It's known as setting. Boundaries, and I know that sounds like a buzzword and people don't always understand what that means, but when you don't learn and you do have to learn to do it, it doesn't come instinctively to anybody.

When you do learn how to set healthier boundaries, all of those symptoms. Will get better. They're not gonna magically disappear overnight. It sounds so simple and it is very simple. That doesn't mean that it's easy, but it does mean that it's simple. And the problem is when we don't recognize it's. All related to the same issue, which is our inability to set healthy boundaries.

And two, we have very few role models in it and we are not trained. It's like this kind of conditioning that we've all had to just keep giving and giving and giving. We are people pleasers. We are, you know, a lot of times conflict avoidant. We have been trained. And Culturized to be accommodating to everybody, especially teachers fall, you know, pray to this because we are helpers by nature.

We are givers by nature. We feel that in a lot of cases, teaching is something we will called to do because in certain ways we're, you know, idealistic, we feel like, you know what, if we can fix the education system, if we can give students. Good skills. Good. You know, values as far as understanding their role in the world and having critical thinking skills that, you know, we can fix a lot of the world's problems, which is true, right?

It all starts with education, but at the same time, self-sacrificing at the altar. Is not helping anybody. I've said it many times. The world has enough martyrs. You being a martyr at school does not help anything. You suffer. Your health suffers. And really it just doesn't deliver for kids. So if, if you've gotta think if, even if taking care of yourself isn't a big enough.

Motivation for you, knowing that it doesn't deliver for kids and anybody else in your life should be the thing that helps you here. So, okay, let me talk about real briefly now, what can you do about it? Okay. First off, lots of free resources here. First, I'm gonna tell you some episodes you could go listen to just three.

Don't wanna overwhelm you. Then I'm going to give you a new mindset, a new way of looking at boundaries that maybe you haven't thought about before. And then I'll also tell you another resource if you really feel you need some handholding. Okay? So three episodes that can help you. And I just went back and looked through.

I talk about boundaries so much, right? I just went and looked through the last 35 episodes I did, but you know, there's more than a hundred and something here. You can go back right to the beginning. There will be plenty of episodes, but here are three that would really get you on a good start. Episode 100 was your complete boundary plan for back to school.

It covered, all the areas you should think about and talk to you through setting that up. So if you haven't done that yet, if you went back to school without kind of giving a thought to your boundary plan, it is not too late at all. You can make decision to do things differently. At any time. You don't need to wait till the first of the year, the first of the school year, the first of the month.

You don't wait. Need to wait till you know a Monday to do it. You could make a decision now and do things differently, so. Episode 100, complete Boundary Plan episode 76. How to handle Push Back when you start setting healthy Boundaries. I feel that, I feel, I know that one of the things that holds people back from investing in learning how to set healthier boundaries is they fear pushback.

They fear that they will be perceived as inflexible. That they might be perceived as difficult, not a team player, and that is not necessarily true. So episode 76 is all about how to handle pushback when you start setting healthier boundaries. And spoiler alert, let me just tell you this, the people who push back the most when you set healthy boundaries, what the people who benefited the most from you having no boundaries.

Okay, let that sink in for a minute. Somebody's real upset that you start advocating for your own needs, wants preferences and desires. It's because they really benefited from you bending over backwards to please everybody, specifically them. Okay. And then the last episode I would recommend is episode 71 12 Rules for Setting Healthy Boundaries.

There is a kind of playbook on how you can do this and 12 rules for setting yourself up for success. So those three episodes, 176 and 71 will give you an excellent start if you are feeling powered up right now to go binge listen now. Let me give you just one quick mindset shift and then another resource.

So the quick mindset shift is this, is that when you think of boundaries, people often think of it as a line in the sand. Don't cross this line or as a wall. As a barrier. Now, boundaries are something that keep you safe, but here's how I like to look at it. B, setting boundaries is actually a loving thing to do.

Okay? It's not fair for people to have to guess what's on your mind. One of the things that people do when they're not. Good at setting boundaries is they have this kind of passive aggressive behavior where they drop hints and then they expect people to know better. And a classic example would be, you know, mom, what do you wanna do for your birthday?

Oh, don't make a big fuss. You know, no big deal. I don't really need anything. And then lo and behold, your birthday comes and nobody threw your party or got your gift or made you a cake or did anything, and you're really hurt and upset about it because in your mind, they should have known. I didn't mean that.

They should know. They should see all the things that I do for them for their birthdays, and they should have just known. To take care of me that way. Well, people aren't mind readers. Okay, so Sandy, not setting boundaries is not only unhelpful, it's like it's not really fair to other people. So here's how I look at setting boundaries.

I like to think of a freeway, right? A freeway, a highway, wherever you call it. A road with lots of lanes. Now I know if you live in Europe you know, maybe. Two or three lanes may be where you live, but you know, here in America some huge highways, you know, five lanes. Okay? So think about boundaries. Keep you safe, okay?

So think about that guardrail at the side of the freeway that stops you. Going over the side or in the middle, it stops you from veering over into oncoming traffic. Okay? Those are definitely hard boundaries, okay? Those will be your non-negotiables. Even that rumble strip, if you know what that is, when you're starting to get too close to the side of the road and it makes your car shift, okay?

Those are all. Warning signs. But think about this, you also, other than just hard boundaries, like I won't work weekends and I don't check work emails after 4:00 PM or wherever boundaries you set for yourself are you still have needs, preferences, and desires, and those would be the lane markers. Okay?

Imagine if there were five. Lanes of traffic and there were not, there were only, you know, your, your barriers at the, in the middle and at the side, but if there weren't lane markers, it would be chaos. If people didn't know where the lanes were, they would be veering into each other's lanes. They would be cutting people off without even knowing it would be.

Chaos. Those are your needs, preferences, and desires, and it is okay to let people know where those are. Okay? It makes for safe passage for everybody. Okay? So hopefully that's the mindset that you need, that actually. Having, asserting, keeping healthy boundaries is a loving thing to do. It protects your peace, it protects your energy.

It sets a very positive role model for others, and you know, life and everything goes smoother. Okay, so get rid of this idea that setting boundaries is aggressive and inflexible. 'cause it doesn't need to be there is a way of doing it that is teachable. It's a skill that can be learned like anything else, when people tell me, oh, it's just not in my nature.

Yes, 'cause you've been conditioned otherwise, but it is a skill. Like anything else, you learn it. There is a formula you can apply. There are scripts. You can use. Okay, so that's it. Get better at setting healthy boundaries, setting limits, and. Listen to those episodes and if you really need some handholding and some help and you'll wanna knock this whole thing out in a couple of hours, follow a proven path, then I'm gonna recommend you go look at, I do have a complete course, it is called.

Teacher burnout with better boundaries, and it has 25 short video lessons, but it has a complete workbook, exercises, scripts. You get lifetime access to it so you can kind of binge it and then go back to check on things that when you feel things are slipping again or looking at specific areas, it will give you the clarity you need to be crystal clear.

On how to say no guilt free to administrators, pushy parents, and you know other people in your life who benefit from you not having boundaries. And it will also give you the confidence. There are proven scripts with, you know, a little pinch of secret sauce there to help you. Protect yourself your time, your energy from draining colleagues and all those things, until you learn your own way of saying things.

These scripts can be, you know, a starting point. You don't all talk like me. I, I understand that. But anyway, it is an excellent course. It goes through a mindset. It starts with an inventory of you looking for your, boundary blind spots like where it will help diagnose, like where are you, where do you need to start with setting boundaries.

And then it will help you set boundaries on your time, on your space, boundaries with toxic people, how to maintain momentum or those things. Anyway, so if you're interested in looking at that, go to grace stevens.com/. Life back or one word like you want your life back. So grace stevens.com/life back.

Depending on when you are listening to this, there might have been a promo offer. With a discount before? If not, you know, don't worry. It's very it's very affordable and there is a, a happiness guarantee as we like to call it. But honestly in all the years I have been offering it, nobody has ever exercised that.

Apparently everybody's been real happy with it. All right, so that's it. Those were your 17 signs. Hopefully they didn't all hit home with like a Yep, that's me. I want to wish you joy this week. I hope that, you know, may your coffee be strong and your students compliant, and may there be some great, you know, moments where kids do make that sound.

My favorite sound was like, oh, now I get it. Right. Isn't that what we live for? When a kid says, ah, ah, now I got it. So I hope you have plenty of those moments this week. In the meantime, create your own path, bring your own sunshine, and I will talk to you soon.