I spent 3.5 years in fortnightly counselling due to struggling in relationships, confidence, boundaries and just an innate sadness.
I wrapped the therapy up in December, partly due to money but also because I was having more and more wins in terms of boundaries plus I started couples therapy with DH which really moved mountains.
I learnt loads while I was in therapy and has lots of life events and perspective shifts.
Events:
•grieving my mum who had died a couple of years before at a young age
•Left a very toxic school full of bullying colleagues which has since been shut down.
•Cut some family members out of my life who were endangering my young daughter and my sense of safety in my home despite other family members hating me for this and mutual friends ghosting me.
•Navigated two whole years of working closely with an angry, unstable woman who treated me appallingly and asked my boss multiple times to move. Eventually moved and much happier.
•Went on and then eventually off anti anxiety medication
•Gained a diagnosis and medication for ADHD
•Repaired my relationship with my sister, understanding that she has some kind of ptsd from our childhood and validating her experience.
•reconnected with beloved family who I’d lost touch with.
•got better at advocating for myself and recognising my needs.
I don’t know what it is or why but I am feeling very very down, lonely, disconnected and just awful at the moment.
I work full-time as a teacher and it is exhausting. Parents boss me around and my boss is incredibly unhelpful in terms of management style. Eg my dept were told in June 24 that 2 of our relatively small dept would be made redundant at Easter 2025 and the head of our dept whenever asked about it just says “ooh I’m not getting involved” Won’t even tell us the protocol, when we will be told etc. it’s infuriating!
My boss is very bad at creating a safe work environment. There’s a bully in the team who has caused several good well-qualified people to leave and my boss does nothing about it.
If my boss needs a duty covering she throws it out to us to organise between us via email who will cover what rather than just tell someone to do it. This adds to our workloads constantly reading the back and forths between team members about covering a simply duty.
She’s very passive aggressive and seems deep down to despise women but with a very syrupy sweet veneer.
Meetings go round and round in circles, she is allergic to change, making decisions and delegating which make the meeting painfully unproductive.
She’s a chronic people-pleaser so will say yes and agree with everyone then contradict behind peoples backs. She often organises meetings with parents without checking whether I am available or not. She teaches me to suck eggs despite never having taught in my year group. She doesn’t even understand simple assessment-teaching cycles.
She refused to ask the finance team for our department to learn to teach Maths in a cohesive way which built upon knowledge year on year and once I showed her some data that showed that one child who couldn’t count beyond 5, despite being 8 years old had got top marks in their end of year 2 tests. I pointed out that this child scored 3% on the same test 6 weeks later and after a full year of extra support with maths only scored 9% on the same test. My boss just told me to go into our shared excel data sheet and decrease the 100% score from the year before!!! I didn’t do this but was shocked that she would ask me to do this and that she did nothing to investigate the inflated grade situation.
I’ve felt uninspired and disappointed by her leadership. At every turn it has frustrated everyone and I miss working for people whom I admire and who get the best out of everyone.
I’ve seen many people burn out or leave due to exasperation.
The teaching assistants seem to rule the place, calling the shots on what they will and will not do, refusing to help teachers who ask for it if they don’t like them, going awol in the middle of lessons to gossip in the staff room and our boss never tells them not to do this. They often threaten our boss that they will leave if they’re asked to help out in a particular class.
I’m working in a very prestigious independent school where literally famous people and landed gentry send their children and I’m deeply depressed at the crapness of the educational provision, combined with the knowledge that the children I teach are going to be ruling the country some day.
I’m struggling with friendships in this school because while I adore my colleagues in work, I just don’t want to see them out of work because they remind me of a place I’m always burnt out from.
Im grieving the chats with my therapist. DH is not very communicative at the best of times and I don’t have a great deal if time to meet friends.
Every school holiday I be one a bit OCD around the house and I feel so enslaved to
Housework.
Im grieving my looks, I’m 40 and just feeling like I’m seen as a grumpy old peri menopausal Karen who looks a bit battered.
My inner critic is so loud. I take everything as a rejection and am paranoid that everyone at work hates me.
My dad and my sister torture each other and this weak ‘family’ saddens me so much on both sides.
Im so sad. Do you think anything would help?!