Saving Our Sanity

The superintendent of our school system in my town has been on my mind.

Here is a man – a lovely, thoughtful, approachable man – who has been our elementary school principal for some years. Curious, patient, analytical, communicative – it was these qualities I’m guessing scored him the plum job of superintendent of our district. He was hired for the job earlier this year and started officially on July 1st.

Cruel Irony

I cannot imagine a more cruel irony than rewarding this dear and dedicated professional with the nightmare that is school policy-making in 2020. I also cannot imagine anyone better to take it on. With my middle child entering his senior year and my third and last child a rising high school sophomore, I’m grateful to have sound leadership through this educational, social and operational chaos. But that’s not what is keeping him on my mind.

The Boston Globe today reported that our state’s education officials “issued new guidelines that tie school reopening plans to local COVID-19 infection rates, a move that could dramatically limit the use of remote learning and potentially throw an 11th hour monkey wrench into re-opening plans days before they are due”. Now – if you’re not a superintendent, principal, teacher, staff member, administrator, parent, guardian, student or employer of any of the aforementioned individuals in Massachusetts, the Boston Globe news may not raise your eyebrow. But it did mine.

Parents of students in my district have been receiving thoughtful, complete, respectfully written communication from our new superintendent over the past month (his very first month in his very new job) that have kept us informed of school re-opening and safety plans. One can scarcely imagine the breadth of concerns, opinions and perspectives he is obligated to address in these missives.

I invite you to put yourself in his shoes for a moment and imagine the hours of analysis, meetings, listening, deciding and responding necessary to even write and send ONE of those emails never mind the hours and energy spent responding to the myriad reactions to the email and the balancing of all that with normal school superintendent to do list items. To put the work into a bit more perspective:

So, seriously. Put yourself in his shoes and let’s take a look what we’re dealing with…

The Tightening of the SCARF

As I’ve written before, Dr. David Rock’s SCARF model helps us to see whether and why we might experience threat response. Remember that when our brain is in threat response our cognitive ability is compromised. Think: “I was scared silly” or “I was so mad I couldn’t think straight”. These adages are true in that when our brain is occupied with a threat, the resources available in the forebrain (neocortex) where thinking, planning and decision making happens get redirected to the mid-brain (amygdala) where fight/flight/freeze happens.

Dr. Rock uses the SCARF model to describe the five circumstances that trigger threat response in humans and we can use it to assess/diagnose threats like so:

I think it’s fair to say that we could expect our superintendent to be experiencing some level of threat response.

How to Loosen the SCARF

One way to “loosen” the SCARF is to simply acknowledge the threat-response-triggering situations by taking a piece of paper and pencil and writing down every single thing you can think of that is pulling the SCARF tight. Writing each entry down reduces their impact on you. This is because the brain goes into threat response in order to compel you to take action. Acknowledging the threats by writing them down is that action. By taking that action, your brain lessens it’s threat response and can return resources back to the neocortex (thinking, planning, decision making). This action also helps to detach shoulders from earlobes.

Emotional Triggers and Needs

As Founder of Motivation Factor™, Helle Bundgaard, has written in “The Motivated Brain”, Needs are our emotional triggers. We all have a need for safety, security and belonging (a la Maslow) but in addition we each have a set of unique and more nuanced needs that, if we are not aware of and able to purposefully manage, can end up tripping us up.

For instance, in Motivation Factor terms, I have a strong need for Freedom (I need creative license and to think outside the box) and Personal Power (if it needs fixing, fix it!). If I were in our superintendent’s shoes I would be chafing at the bit to re-imagine and re-structure education entirely (which is one of the many reasons I wouldn’t make a good superintendent). While we don’t know what our own superintendent’s needs are, we can take a guess that some may be triggered. Needs for success, freedom, personal power, recognition, control, to be heard, to be appreciated….any of these – and more – would likely be threatened to some degree in this situation.

Like SCARF, when our needs are triggered, our brain goes into threat response but Needs are more specific to each individual and they can be extremely powerful. To give you an idea of how powerful, think of a behavior you dislike most in others. It could be interrupting, disrespecting, whining, lying, arrogance or any other behavior that stomps on your nerve. Now think about the last time you encountered that behavior. What did it feel like? How did you react?

Behaving Badly

If you’re like most people, there are at least a few behaviors that send us reeling. We might get flushed, or feel a tightness in our chest, our head might get hot or our hands may tingle. I’m talking about the things people do that just sends you into blind rage or flustered flight. How do you react in those moments? With grace, polish and witty retort? No. Typically, when a Need has been stomped, we react in a way we wouldn’t normally act. We slam cabinet doors or stomp our foot or scream or leave in a huff or…behave in a way we wish we didn’t.

While behaving badly isn’t ok, it is understandable. And the good news is we can do something about it. Knowing more about our needs give us each a more efficient and effective way to identify and address what’s in our way or what’s compromising our ability to perform at our best. Knowing how to anticipate threats to our needs helps us to avoid those threats or at least manage them so that we stay in control and perform at our best.

How to Reduce Threat Response

One way our superintendent could further reduce threat response is to review the SCARF loosening list and find the item that is the most irksome – the one that clangs a need like a ladle against a gong. This item would be what we call an Energy Drainer and this is a tremendously useful exercise to move through and past the energy drainer to highly motivating ways to achieve what you truly want in the situation. And what we truly want in this situation may be quite simply, to be able to sleep at night! Whatever your goal is, the energy drainer exercise is a good one for getting it.

So, yes, our superintendent has been on my mind. A nice, smart man with a super tough job that he didn’t sign up for but did, poor guy. I’ve wished him well. I’ve been one of the parents who has pestered him with questions since, of course I – and all of us – are experiencing our own set of threats with our own sets of Needs. As we continue to navigate this alien time in our lives, two more things I wish for all of us:

Empathy

See fellow humans in as rich relief as you know yourself. You were a child. They were a child. You have known pain. They have known pain. You have made it this far against odds. They have too. Be open, patient, curious and grounded. This conveys empathy for the other and strength for yourself.

Perspective

Know that we will, at some point, be through this. We will, in that future, look back at this time and see how it unfolded. We have done this time and time again in our lives – faced untenable circumstances – and gotten through and looked back. As well, billions of people living and dead have faced untenable circumstances and gotten through and looked back. Perspective provides relief. One thread in the tapestry doesn’t make that much of a difference when the tapestry is taken as a whole. But if that one thread is stretched to breaking, it can compromise the quality of the tapestry. Maintain perspective so that you can contribute your best to your world through your talents and to yourself through self-care.