[The following blog contains mentions of bullying and other abuse.] One of the first things you learn in therapy is that painful memories never really go away. If something painful sticks in your head for any reason, it’s practically impossible to get it unstuck. Often times, the most effective coping skill is to develop mental mechanisms to soften the relived traumas of those past memories: Remembering better times, or recalling that you have people who care about you in the present, or just recognizing that…

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One of the things that made last year so rough on me was the fact that I experienced the first significant burnout of my teaching career. As our spring semester was drawing to a close in mid-May, and I got through the last of my regular class sessions before finals week started, I started feeling the kind of exhaustion that normally doesn’t happen to me until after I’ve finished reviewing all my students’ final papers and submitting grades. That post-semester crash happens to me every…

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