How to protect your emotional wellbeing in 5 minutes a day or less

Summary

Ever get to Friday and feel like your emotional battery’s is fried? You’re not alone. Working in education — especially when supporting pupils with SEMH needs — means carrying other people’s emotions all day long. By the end of the week, you’re not just tired, you’re emotionally done.

In this shorter half-term quickfire episode, we dive into the emotional side of teaching — and how to protect your emotional wellbeing in just five minutes a day. You’ll learn simple, practical steps to help your nervous system switch off after a long day of teaching, so you can recharge and stop carrying classroom stress home with you.

And there’s a twist — because this isn’t just about personal wellbeing. We’ll explore why this is an essential leadership priority too. Because calm adults create calm classrooms — and when we ignore teacher wellbeing, we undermine every other behaviour strategy we’re using in school.

Along the way, expect honesty, practical advice, and a strong opinion about smoked kippers (you’ve been warned).

Important links:

Get our FREE SEND Behaviour Handbook: https://beaconschoolsupport.co.uk/send-handbook

Download other FREE behaviour resources for use in school: https://beaconschoolsupport.co.uk/resources

Show notes / transcription

Ever get to Friday and feel like you've been hit by an emotional freight train? Not because of the workload, but because of everything you've carried all week. The shouting, the meltdowns, the endless suck and adjust moments.

That's not weakness. That's emotional work on your part. And if you don't manage it, it manages you. That's why in today's quickfire episode, I'm sharing how to protect your emotional well-being in just five minutes a day. And why this isn't just a personal issue. It's a school leadership issue too. Keep listening to find out more.

Hi there, welcome to School Behaviour Secrets. My name's Simon Currigan, and I'm the kind of man who can't stand the smell of smoked kippers. I can't stand them in the house. I can't stand the smell of them frying in a pan. It's like literally turning my stomach just thinking about it. It makes me want to puke. And for the love of God, why would you even put that thing in your mouth?

The stench is a warning. Sorry. Sorry. It's a thing. But if you're going to write me an email saying this is subjective and people have different opinions on food, you're wrong. I'm right. That's all I'm saying.

Here's the point. We all have things that set us off instantly. They hit us on a sensory or an emotional level and boom, we're gone. But that's exactly what's happening to teachers every single day when we don't protect ourselves emotionally. It's not the big things that do it. It's the build up often of small triggers, the interruptions, the raised voices, the unresolved conflicts, feeling like you're on high alert all day long. And by the end of the week, we're fried - unfortunately, like those kippers. And this is going to be the focus of this week's shorter half-term quickfire episode of School Behaviour Secrets. I'm going to keep this short, sweet and practical. You see, when you work with dysregulated pupils, you don't just help kids handle their emotions, it's like you kind of absorb them all day long. You walk into one class with frustrated kids, you teach another student who feels anxious and by lunchtime, you've kind of carried everyone's nervous system in your own. You've soaked it all up like a sponge. And that's real emotional work when you look at it from a neurological perspective or a biological perspective.

And that's real. And as adults, we can't ignore that. We need to regulate it. So here's how to protect your emotional well-being in five minutes a day. Step one, at the end of every day, make sure that you have a shutdown ritual. And that means whenever the end of the day is for you. So that might be at the end of the day at school or it might be in the evening at home when you finish the marking or paperwork or whatever it is.

We need to send a signal to our brain saying, right, work is done. It's over. And that ritual doesn't have to be fancy. When you close your laptop, don't rush off.

Stop for a moment. Think of three things that went right today or that you were proud of, even if those things are tiny. That student smiled at my joke. The other student put up a hand and joined in for the first time in my classroom. Or I didn't lose it when the glue sticks disappeared again. Or when the home ed class next door started cooking smoked kippers in the room next door. They know how I feel about that.

You know what pushes your buttons just like I know what pushes mine. So lock in the successes.

Look for them. It helps your brain close the loop on the day on a positive note and highlight some good because look, it's human nature for us to naturally focus on the bad. Before I get to step two, if you're finding these quickfire episodes helpful, do me a favour, hit subscribe on your podcast app and leave me a quick review. It helps more teachers. and school leaders find the show. I know it's something podcasters always bang on about, but we bang on about it for a reason, because it makes a real difference. And if you could spend just 10, 20 seconds doing that, you'd really be helping me grow the show.

I personally appreciate it. OK, so we've had step one. Let's move on to step two. Change your state, your emotional state before you go home or if you're at home already, before you move to the next activity. So that might mean a short, and I mean short, walk around the block and getting some fresh air. It might mean listening to some music that lifts you up or listening to a funny podcast for just a minute or two. It could mean three minutes of stretching or like physically going and changing your clothes.

So there's a visual reset for your brain that you move from work mode to relaxation mode. You're telling your nervous system, school is done, human mode, switch on. It doesn't really matter what that is as long as it works for you and it sends that transitional message to your brain. And then step three, if something bad did happen today or it knocked you off balance or your mind is stuck on an issue that you can't kind of drop, don't carry that alone. Talk it out with someone who gets it. That could be a colleague, a partner or a friend, because if you don't, all those little unprocessed emotions just sit there waiting to be triggered by something as ridiculous as, you know, the smell of smoked kippers, which are wrong on every level. But, and there's a new quote that I love from John Dewey, which is we don't learn from experience.

We learn from reflecting on experience. And if we don't speak to someone about what happened, we can't reflect on that effectively. We can't take on multiple points of view. And if you can't find someone to speak to, there are now even AI chatbots that can help you reflect on what happened, help you process it and make sense of it. So talking here is powerful. Now, here's where I want to pivot, because this isn't just about you as an individual coping with emotional stress. This is also a.

If our schools rely on staff constantly self-regulating without structural support, then the system is broken. You can't tell teachers to stay calm in chaos if we, as leaders, are not giving them the space, the culture, or the permission as management to breathe and reset when crises hit. Because the truth is, calm adults create calm leaders. Calm classrooms. And that means staff well-being isn't a perk. It's actually an effective whole school behavior strategy. It's a strategy that affects every adult and student in school.

Now, that doesn't mean that schools should be investing in token items like we'll give stress balls to all the staff or daily massages at lunchtime. It means that we need to be thinking systematically. Yeah, that's my favorite word, about how we can help pressured staff decompress. And that comes from an entirely selfish point of view as a manager, because when they do that, they work more effectively for us, the senior leaders. The behavior in school is better. The kids are calmer. Classrooms are more productive.

And that makes us look good. It's in our self-interest to create those systems and approaches. So as you rest over half term, a well-earned half term, I'm sure, take five minutes a day to protect your emotional well-being.And, you know, it's easy when you're off for the holidays because the time pressure isn't there. But when you go back to work, look bigger. Ask, what do I personally need to do to disconnect at the end of the day? And if you're a school leader, ask, what could we change in our school to make that a part of our policies and systems too? How do we support that?

Because as human beings and teachers, the goal isn't to feel nothing about our work. It's to stop carrying everything. Thanks for listening today to this quickfire half term episode. If you've enjoyed the episode today, make sure you subscribe to the School Behavior Secrets podcast and leave me a short review. Again, it really does make a difference. And it helps us keep supporting more educators just like you. If you are off, I hope you have a great half term.

And I can't wait to see you next time on School Behavior Secrets.

(This automated transcript may not be 100% accurate.)