Why Am I So Irritable After Teaching?
Sometimes nobody needs to ask how your day at school was. They can tell by your mood when you get home.
"Just give me a few minutes."
"Can we talk about it when I've finished this?"
Perhaps your family have got used to knowing when to leave you alone. They know when it's probably best not to ask another question.
You notice it too, and you don't particularly like it.
Why am I so irritable when I get home?
You've been answering questions all day. Now you're home, someone asks you something perfectly reasonable and you find yourself thinking, can I just have five bloody minutes?
It's not necessarily the person asking that's annoying you. You've just had enough of being needed.
You might find yourself snapping over something small, getting frustrated with the noise or wanting everyone to leave you alone for a while.
But you've still got tomorrow to think about.
There's planning to finish, emails to answer or something you didn't manage to get done at school. You tell yourself you'll just get a few things sorted so tomorrow won't be quite so difficult.
Before you know it, one job has led to another and most of the evening has disappeared.
Sometimes you do finish when you said you would, but by then there's not much left of you.
Your partner might want to tell you about their day. Your children might want to spend time with you. And although you're there, you're shattered and don't really feel like talking.
You know it's happening, and that can feel pretty rubbish.
But tomorrow will be harder if I don't...
That's what makes stopping so difficult.
Getting things sorted tonight helps you feel a bit more prepared for whatever tomorrow throws at you.
And sometimes it really does make a difference.
But perhaps you've noticed that even when you've finished one thing, you're already thinking about what else you could get done.
You want to enjoy your evening, but there's that worry about what tomorrow will be like if you're not prepared.
Something worth thinking about
Next time you're about to open your laptop when you'd rather be doing something else, ask yourself:
Is what I'm doing tonight actually making tomorrow easier, or is it taking more from me than it's giving back?
It might be worth noticing what the answer is for you.
When you want things to be different
Perhaps you've already tried working less in the evenings. You've told yourself you'll finish earlier, but you keep finding yourself back at the laptop because you're worried about tomorrow.
You've noticed you're more irritable at home, and you're not happy with how things have become.
In counselling, we can spend some time understanding what's making stopping so difficult. It might be the workload, what you expect of yourself or the worry about what happens when something doesn't get done.
We can also look at how this is affecting your relationships and what you'd like to change.
If you're fed up with getting home exhausted, feeling irritated with everyone and wondering how things got this way, book a free 20-minute introductory call.
We can talk about what's happening and whether counselling might help.
Still finding it hard to switch off from work?
I've created a free Teacher Task Triage worksheet to help you work out what needs doing now, what can wait and what might need a conversation.
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