I had one of those weeks. The kind where people forget fairness and compassion, and you feel it in your chest before your mind has a chance to catch up.
My first instinct wasn't the healthy one. I replayed the moment on an endless loop, built my case, and wrote the comeback I never said out loud, several times over. Two days later my mind was still spinning and my body hadn't moved an inch.
Then I caught myself.
You've felt this too. A learner walks in exhausted or withdrawn, and gets labelled "difficult" before anyone stops to ask why. You feel the sting on their behalf before you can even explain it.
What helped me get unstuck is simple: you can't think your way out of a felt reaction. You have to feel your way through it first.
It doesn't need a quiet room, or a spare hour you don't have between periods and marking. It needs sixty seconds.
Name the feeling first
Before you get stuck in the overthinking loop, name the feeling. "My chest is tight" comes before "that was unfair."
Sit with it a moment, right there in the class, the car, or the staffroom. Let it move through you the way a wave moves through water. Then, and only then, ask what it's protecting.
Mine, this week: fairness and compassion. Two things I hold on purpose, not by accident, because I value them deeply.
It's rewiring, not a one-time fix
Every time you replay a hurt without processing it, you carve that neural groove a little deeper. Every time you feel it and let it go, on the good days and the messy ones, you build a new connection instead.
That's rewiring, and it isn't a one-time fix. Mine wasn't either. Some weeks you catch it in the first sixty seconds. Other weeks it takes you two days, like it took me. Both count. Just keep at it.
Feelings like disappointment prove what you value. They don't prove that people, including you, are broken.
So if you had a hard week too: you don't need a programme, and you don't need energy to spare. Just sixty seconds, wherever you are. Your nervous system already knows what to do.
If it helps to have something to follow while you do it, there is a minute waiting for you here.