Why Do I Feel Guilty When I’m Not Working as a Teacher?
It’s Sunday.
You said you weren’t going to work today.
You meant it.
Then you sit down and remember something you haven’t done.
An email.
A lesson.
Something for Monday.
You tell yourself you’ll feel better if you just get one thing out of the way.
So you open the laptop.
And sometimes you do feel better.
A bit.
The thing is done.
Monday feels slightly less horrible.
You can stop thinking about it.
Then you remember something else.
“I’ll relax when I’ve caught up”
That sounds sensible.
Get everything done, then stop.
The problem is that teaching does not really work like that.
There is always something else.
Something you could plan better.
Something you could check.
Something you could reply to.
If you only let yourself stop when everything is done, when do you ever stop?
And sometimes the problem is not even the amount of work.
Sometimes it is what happens when you are not doing it.
You sit down.
And instead of relaxing, you feel guilty.
Or anxious.
They’re probably more prepared than you.
They seem to be managing.
And now you’re wondering whether you should be doing more.
So the laptop comes back out.
Why does doing the work make you feel better?
Not because you love working on a Sunday.
Not because you secretly want more to do.
You get something done and the worry settles down a bit.
The lesson is planned.
The email is sent.
You are not falling behind.
At least, that is how it can feel.
Then somebody else seems more organised.
Or you get some criticism.
Or something goes wrong.
And suddenly it feels much bigger than one lesson or one mistake.
It can feel like:
“I’ve failed.”
That is a very different thing from:
“That didn’t go well.”
When work starts to feel personal
Sometimes how things are going at work starts affecting how you feel about yourself.
A good lesson can feel like more than a good lesson.
And a bad one can feel like more than a bad lesson.
Praise can feel reassuring.
You feel like you are doing a good job.
Then something happens.
A difficult lesson.
A comment from someone.
Or you notice another teacher who seems much calmer and more prepared than you feel.
You do not know what their Sunday looked like.
You do not know what they were worrying about at 2am.
But that does not always stop you comparing yourself.
“Just switch off”
This is where advice about boundaries can start to feel a bit thin.
Close the laptop.
Turn your emails off.
Do not work on Sunday.
Fine.
But that does not account for what happens inside you when you do stop.
The anxiety.
The fear that you have forgotten something.
The worry that somebody will criticise you.
The feeling that you should be doing more.
The guilt.
You can set a boundary and still spend the whole evening feeling bad about it.
There might be more going on than time management.
So what does therapy have to do with it?
Therapy cannot make an unreasonable workload reasonable.
It cannot change what your school expects from you.
And it is not about fixing you so you can cope with more.
But therapy can give you somewhere to look at what happens when you stop.
Maybe the guilt is not really about the unfinished lesson.
Maybe getting it done gives you some reassurance that you are not failing.
And maybe that is worth being curious about.
Because there will always be another thing you could do.
So what happens when you decide you have done enough anyway?
If this feels familiar, I offer online therapy for teachers across the UK.
You can book a free introductory call to see whether working together feels right.