A Year Full of “Yeses”… and a Lot of Regret

The Doorway Crisis Scenario

It's late in the school year, and a teacher comes flying through your doorway, and you can tell by their energy that whatever this is, it has been building for a minute. They start shouting out all of the details. This has been going on all year, they say. And then they start to tell you about an emergency that's not an emergency. So you smile and you nod. But inside, there are two thoughts running through your head at the exact same time. One, why am I just now hearing about this? And two, if this has been going on all year and you've been handling it all year, what changed today? What changed? I will tell you is that it got inconvenient. And situations that are inconvenient in a school have a very predictable destination. It's your office. Sound familiar? Because this is a year full of yeses and a lot of regret. Hey, school counselor, welcome back. In this episode, we're talking about that moment. The one where somebody brings you something to handle that you know is not your responsibility, but you take it anyway. Aw, and before you blame yourself, stop. Because you didn't say yes because you didn't know what your job was supposed to be. You said yes because you're in a building that was designed to make you feel like yes is the only reasonable answer. And my friend, boundaries don't fix that. But understanding it does. So if you're ready for some straight talk, my friend, some clarity on your work and maybe a little bit of rebellion. Hi, you're in the right place. I'm Steph Johnson, and this is the School for School Counselors podcast. All right, let's put this in context because the time of year makes a big difference here. Teachers are already working more hours than most professions, and they're carrying around higher stress loads than other working adults. And by the end of the school year in April or May, their decision-making capacity is genuinely worn down to a nub, right? It is not completely gone yet, but it has almost left the building. And in a building full of worn down people, when something requires a little bit of extra effort to figure it out, that responsibility tends to default to whoever still has the bandwidth to handle it. And in a school building, there is a very predictable place for all those things to go. You. Here is the reason why that happens. There is probably a very specific perception of you in your school building. And you're probably seen as the helper, the one who's good with kids, the one that's approachable, and sometimes even the one who won't make it weird if adults ask you for advice, right? And that perception in a lot of ways is a professional asset for you. However, it also makes you a magnet for everything that doesn't have an obvious home anywhere else. Because the assumption that's embedded in the perception of you, whether or not anybody will tell you, is that your job is to absorb what everybody else can handle. And by this point in the year, as we're nearing the end of the school year, that assumption has been reinforced hundreds of times. Now, all of this is going on, but even worse, the same sort of depletion is happening to you. Which means you're absorbing more of the campus goings on and you're making worse decisions about what you should take on, all at the exact same time, because that is cognitive overload. Now, I'd be willing to bet at some point, if you have ever voiced these kinds of feelings at the end of the school year in maybe a workshop with a supervisor or in like a district counseling meeting, someone somewhere said something about this being a boundaries problem, right? That if you just got firmer or clearer or more comfortable saying no, then this would stop happening. And we see this on social media this time of year as well. Here's what I want to tell you about that. If it were that simple, you would have already had it fixed by now, right? There's no reason to prolong this situation if it was just as easy as setting a hard and fast boundary and not stepping over it. You are saying yes to things because your brain is trying to solve a very specific problem very quickly, and it's actually extraordinarily good at it. It's just solving the wrong problem. So let's slow it down so you can see what I mean. Let's say a request for intervention comes in. Your brain probably doesn't initially ask, is this my job? That thought tends to show up later based on what I have learned from working with hundreds of school counselors over the years. And really, you don't even reflect on that piece until you've probably already said yes, after you've already agreed, and while you're trying to figure out how to fit this thing into all the other things you were planning to do that day. Daniel Kahneman's research on decision making under cognitive load tells us that when our brains are overwhelmed, they don't prioritize accuracy. They prioritize efficiency. And what is the most efficient resolution to an incoming request? Saying yes, because it feels like there's less friction, the conversation closes out faster, and everybody's able to move on. Think about it this way: if you have ever been watching what you eat, and then you walked past a platter of cupcakes at the staff meeting, you know that willpower is a finite resource, right? And the more decisions that you've made that day, the less capacity you have to resist the path of least resistance. So if you've had a rough day, you've made a million decisions, and you're overwhelmed, when you walk past that platter of cupcakes, odds are you're gonna grab one. Saying yes to something that isn't technically your responsibility works exactly the same way. It's due to depletion. It is not weakness. But then to add another layer on top of this, it's not even just that cognitive load, it's also relational. Mark Leary's work on impression management shows that people constantly adjust their behavior based on how they expect it will be perceived. So in that split second, when you're asked to take something on, you're not just thinking, is this my responsibility? If you're even thinking of it at all. You're thinking, what does this say about me if I don't agree? Are they going to think I'm helpful or difficult? Are they going to think I'm supportive or unavailable? Will I be seen as a team player or someone who makes things way harder than they have to be? And then over all of that is a layer of authority. Because even when your principal is not standing in your doorway telling you to handle something, their expectations are present. Because you know what your principal values, you know what gets noticed, and you know what keeps things running smoothly in that building. You also know the look, right? You know the pause, and you know the small little comments that get launched at staff meetings. Your brain is reading all of that as social signals, and it's going to respond accordingly. Amy Edmondson's research on psychological safety adds even another layer that when interpersonal risk feels unclear, people default to keeping things smooth. You can see why saying no does not feel neutral. It feels like disruption, doesn't it? Like if you say no, you're gonna break something. So when you put all of this together, you're in a situation where you're managing overwhelm and cognitive load. You're managing social perception, you're trying to handle authority pressure all at once in about three milliseconds. So of course, you're saying yes, that is entirely predictable. And what it means is your brain is working exactly as it's designed. It's just optimizing for the wrong outcomes. But really, this is more than just a personal problem. Because every time you say yes to something that isn't technically in your purview, three things happen. And none of them are without consequences. First, the person that brings the situation to you learns, oh, this is where it goes. Their brain is running the same efficiency calculations that yours is. And they have just found a path that works, right? Where there's no friction for them, no redirection, instant resolution on their side. So that becomes their path. And the next time they don't have an obvious solution for something, their brain already knows where to get the intervention. It's you. Secondly, you learn that worked. And over time, your perception of what really is within your scope starts to shift and starts to include things that really aren't appropriate for a school counselor. You didn't sit down one day and decide to expand the definition of your role. I'll take a little of this, a little of that, I'll take some of that off their plate. You never did that. But the pattern that you established through your responses expanded your scope for you. And then, third, every time you give a yes as a knee-jerk response, the real solution is never given time to develop. That teacher who really needs to examine their classroom management, hey, they don't have to now because you handled the disruptive student. The administrator that needs to build the streamlined referral system, yeah, they don't have to do that anymore because you absorbed the overflow. And the student that needed to sit with some difficulty and work through it never gets that chance because an adult, you stepped in before the struggle could do its work. So we're stabilizing the system in the moment or so it feels. But that stabilization weakens the ecosystem over time. We're prioritizing short-term relief over long-term gains. And eventually that starts to catch up with you and you really start to feel it. Look over your career, you will not just be handling isolated situations. As you respond in work, you are writing your job description. It's not a formal process, but every time that you take on something that really shouldn't belong to you, you are teaching your building and yourself what school counseling on your campus is for. And if that pattern continues, your role starts to look really weird and really demoralizing. And again, it's not because you decided you wanted to take things on, but it was because nobody decided that you shouldn't take those things on. That's a high-stakes training loop that your entire campus is in. And most of you don't even realize that you're in it, which is exactly why you need a good decision system, not better willpower. So what does work then? Having already decided. When someone brings a request for intervention to you, there are three moves that you can make, and only three. Step in, step back, or redirect. Step in is for your real school counseling work. This is safety concerns, mental health needs, a student whose behavior or functioning has changed really suddenly and significantly. Y'all, those are your zones of expertise. That is where you shine. So when you are presented with those situations, step in without hesitation because that is exactly where you belong. Second option is step back. Now, in my experience, this is the one most school counselors never use. And so it's one that I really want to spend some time talking about. Step back does not mean that you don't care. It means that you are making a professional judgment that stepping in would actually get in the way. Here's a scenario for you. Two students have a conflict at lunch. There's no physical altercation, no threats, anything like that. Just two kids who are extremely angry at each other. And so the teacher sends them to you. Your first instinct is probably to bring them in your office, mediate, resolve it, and close this contentious loop, right? But ask yourself, if you do that immediately, what does the student learn? They learn that when things get hard, an adult appears and they manage the situation for them. Step back looks like you checking in briefly to make sure there's no safety concern. And then you let it play out. Maybe you give the teacher some language to use in the classroom. Maybe you tell the students that you're available if they want to talk, but you don't take it over. So this isn't neglecting the situation. And this is hard to convince school counselors of because we assume this role of fixer so often. But really, what we're doing is we're making a professional decision about what actually builds capacity. DC and Ryan's research on self-determination theory tells us that when support becomes too directive, when it's too fast or too complete, people don't build skills. They build dependence. So step back isn't withholding help. It's a more sophisticated kind of help. And then your third option, redirect, is for the things that should not belong to you: classroom management, missing assignments, the kid who won't stop talking in third period. I am sure you get these situations brought to you constantly. But let's be honest about why they're coming to you. It's not just because you're friendly and accessible, though you are. It's because coming to you is genuinely easier for the other adult in the situation than the alternative. Because the alternative for them might require looking in the mirror. It may require them to change something, but coming to you avoids that entirely. So redirect isn't about refusing, it's about reorienting. And this is exactly where a solution-focused approach is dynamite. So instead of just immediately absorbing the problem and handling it, you turn it back into a question. What's worked even a little bit with this student? If things got just 5% better, what would that look like? Or what have you already tried? And what's your read on what's actually driving this? You're not closing the door. You're activating the expertise that's already in that room. And you're positioning yourself as a consultant rather than the building catch-all. Those solution-focused questions are your gold mine. The only problem is there's another layer of conversation that you need that's a little bit different. And these are going to help you stop the automatic yes before it ever comes out of your mouth. Now, thinking about end-of-year exhaustion, and I know all about it because I am a full-time school counselor, just like you. I'm on a campus every day. I'm carrying a crazy caseload, and I know exactly what the end of the year feels like. And the thing about that feeling is when you are this depleted and run down, you don't start inventing new ways to approach situations. You don't start thinking about new ways to say things. You just keep reaching for whatever's automatic. Which means the phrases I'm about to give you, you need to make them automatic before you need them. You need to say these out loud right now, and hopefully a couple times throughout this week so you can get used to them. I am serious about this. Let me give you some. First, let's see if we can support this in your classroom first. I do not want to undermine your authority. Okay. What about the second one? I'm happy to step in if this is a school counseling concern. So help me understand what you're seeing. Or third, I want to make sure that I don't have to keep bouncing into your classroom over and over again without a plan. So let's see if we can build something more sustainable. Three great options, practice them until they feel like they belong to you. Because in the moment when someone is in your face asking you for something you know you probably shouldn't do, you won't have the bandwidth to come up with the phrasing in the moment on your own. You'll need the words to already be there. So practice these. And the last part of this, which is pretty urgent, and I mean that in all sincerity, is that you have the data right now that you will not have at the beginning of the school year. I'm not talking about spreadsheets or use of time data. I'm talking about pattern data. The same kinds of referrals that show up multiple times a week. The teacher who sends 110 billion kids to your office throughout the year, the same category of situations that keep eating up your afternoons. You already know those. You can see them in your mind clearly. And so I need you to write it down because if you do not, it will be gone. I know that sounds dramatic, but here's what's going to happen. You're going to get to the end of the school year in May or June. You're going to pause for a minute. You're going to be able to take a breath. You're going to have an amazing summer. And you're going to come back in August or September with a feeling that, yeah, last year was hard, but it's going to be really hard to remember the specifics of why. And the patterns that feel completely obvious to you right now, like there is no way I'm ever going to forget this, they'll be gone. I promise. So we need to be proactive here. The research on memory encoding is very clear. Writing something down, even quickly or informally, creates a different kind of mental consolidation than just noticing. So your beginning of school yourself can access what your end of school yourself wrote down. But they cannot reliably access what your end-of-school self only thought about. So before the school year ends, start a note. Call it whatever you want. Bologna that didn't belong to me. Things I got pulled into. That third bucket of needs a system, that is your leadership agenda for next year. That is where you are going to stop reacting and you are going to start designing systems that support your school counseling program better. So, really, here's what I want you to take away from all of this. The end of the school year is not just something to survive. It's it's Information, right? It's showing you exactly what happens when everybody at your school is worn down and depleted and start making decisions on autopilot, including you. And the thing about instant yeses is you don't need better boundaries. You just need to understand the mechanism, preload the language in your brain, and build a decision system that works before you are standing in this moment with no bandwidth left. Pay attention to the situations people keep bringing to you. Notice which of the three moves, step in, step back, or redirect, you're typically making and which are the ones you're defaulting to out of habit. And then start deciding now deliberately what you are carrying into the next school year and what you are leaving behind. Hey, if this episode hit close to home and I think it did, I want to make sure that you know about the School for School Counselor's mastermind. So let me tell you what I know about you. You're still here. You didn't tune out when the conversation got uncomfortable. You're still here at minute 23 because some part of you already knows that what you've been doing isn't working the way you want it to. And the mastermind was built for exactly that school counselor. You, the one who wants clinical depth, not another workshop that makes you feel busy without actually making you any better. Inside the mastermind, we do live clinical consultation every single week with real cases, real dynamics, and real decisions about what should be your responsibility and what should not. This is not some sort of course that you buy and forget to watch. And it's not generic professional development that's wrapped up with pretty PDFs. This is a true community of school counselors who are tired of being the building's catch-all and are done apologizing for it. So if that's you, and I think it is, the link is in the show notes. Hey, I'm Steph Johnson. I'll be back soon with another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast. In the meantime, when someone comes flying through your doorway with that emergency that's not an emergency, you'll know exactly what to do. Be discerning, write it down, and take care.