June 9, 2025

It’s Summer! So Why Can’t School Counselors Actually Relax?

It’s Summer! So Why Can’t School Counselors Actually Relax?

You turned in your keys, packed up your office, and told yourself this summer would be a reset. But instead of relaxing, you feel… off. Either you can’t sit still, or you’ve completely shut down.

Sound familiar?

In this episode, we’re talking about what’s really going on when school counselors can’t seem to rest after the school year ends.

We’ll explore the biological stress cycle, the emotional aftermath of constant crisis response, and why your body might still be on high alert... even if your calendar is empty.

You’ll learn:

  • Why some counselors feel antsy and others feel emotionally flatlined
  • What the stress cycle actually is (and why school counselors rarely complete it)
  • What to do instead of trying to “fix” yourself with productivity
  • Real strategies to help you downshift: without guilt, pressure, or a color-coded plan
  • How parenting, performance pressure, and public education expectations all collide in the summer

This isn’t just about feeling better . It’s about reclaiming your nervous system, your peace, and your ability to start the school year as yourself... not the burned-out version you’ve been trying to push through.


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00:00 - Summer Blues: Can't Relax or Flatlined?

04:13 - Understanding the Stress Cycle

09:50 - Why Your Body Won't Relax

11:20 - Supporting Not Fixing Your System

16:08 - Permission to Rest Without Guilt

WEBVTT

00:00:00.260 --> 00:00:09.294
So it's summer, you've turned in your keys, you've packed up your office and probably dodged a few last-minute requests on your way out the door.

00:00:09.294 --> 00:00:16.213
And now, for the first time in months, you're not in crisis response mode.

00:00:16.213 --> 00:00:21.365
But, instead of just relaxing, you might be feeling a little off.

00:00:21.365 --> 00:00:23.969
You might be feeling a little off.

00:00:23.969 --> 00:00:26.974
You can't seem to settle down.

00:00:26.974 --> 00:00:39.768
You keep checking your email, you're reorganizing your closet or starting unnecessary home projects, or maybe you're on the flip side You're feeling guilty for not doing anything.

00:00:39.768 --> 00:00:40.929
You've hit a wall.

00:00:40.929 --> 00:00:54.313
It's like you've emotionally flatlined, you're napping too much, you're avoiding people and you're kind of coming down on yourself, thinking man, I'm awfully lazy now that I'm not at work.

00:00:54.313 --> 00:01:03.490
Either way, if you're feeling uneasy with either one of those scenarios, now that summer is here, you are not alone.

00:01:03.490 --> 00:01:04.831
That summer is here, you are not alone.

00:01:04.831 --> 00:01:20.873
You might think that you're just tired or burned out, but what you're feeling right now when you can't relax, you have that weird flatness or restless energy might actually be something a little bit deeper.

00:01:20.873 --> 00:01:27.802
It might be something that your nervous system has been trying to tell you for a while now.

00:01:27.802 --> 00:01:30.230
Hey, my friend, welcome back.

00:01:30.230 --> 00:01:36.349
I'm Steph Johnson, a licensed professional counselor and full-time school counselor just like you.

00:01:36.349 --> 00:01:44.248
If you're tired of school counseling advice that sounds like it came from Pinterest, you're in the right place.

00:01:44.248 --> 00:01:57.072
Around here, we're keeping it real, we're keeping it grounded and I'm giving you tools and ideas that actually work, because you deserve more than pretty graphics and empty promises.

00:01:59.641 --> 00:02:03.466
So before I was a school counselor, I was a teacher.

00:02:03.466 --> 00:02:08.615
I taught elementary fine arts and never failed.

00:02:08.615 --> 00:02:14.312
Every time we had a big performance I would get super sick.

00:02:14.312 --> 00:02:20.472
Now our performances, to be fair, were pretty big extravagances.

00:02:20.472 --> 00:02:24.774
They weren't like your typical school concerts or music programs where the kids stand on the risers and sing a few songs.

00:02:24.774 --> 00:02:28.503
They weren't like your typical school concerts or music programs where the kids stand on the risers and sing a few songs.

00:02:28.503 --> 00:02:29.967
They weren't like that at all.

00:02:29.967 --> 00:02:47.112
Our performances consisted of three to four hundred students at one time, with multiple scene changes, people moving while others were performing, an absolutely zero percent downtime for the entire performance.

00:02:47.112 --> 00:03:06.831
It was more like a junior Broadway style show than your typical school program, and once those curtains closed and we put all the props away, I knew I was going to be on the couch with a sore throat or a terrible cough or a cold within the next 24 hours.

00:03:06.831 --> 00:03:14.881
It was almost like my body was waiting for all of that stress to be taken care of before it just fell apart.

00:03:14.881 --> 00:03:27.219
And the really weird thing about it and this is kind of embarrassing to admit, but I was grateful for that I was like, hey, thanks, body, thanks for holding it together.

00:03:27.400 --> 00:03:31.973
When things were tough and you know, that's happened to me at other times too.

00:03:31.973 --> 00:03:42.862
When I finished each of my degrees, when I would complete big projects, I would dip into something that kind of felt like depression.

00:03:42.862 --> 00:03:44.967
But I knew I wasn't depressed.

00:03:44.967 --> 00:03:50.206
My energy would crash and I would think, why am I not bouncing back?

00:03:50.206 --> 00:03:51.209
I want to.

00:03:51.209 --> 00:03:53.913
But now I understand why.

00:03:53.913 --> 00:04:00.769
Because it wasn't just mental exhaustion, it was biological.

00:04:00.769 --> 00:04:11.709
And while I know that, you also know that we can experience that biological exhaustion and that stress lives in our body.

00:04:11.709 --> 00:04:18.848
It's a whole different thing when we actually allow ourselves to feel that and have conversations about it.

00:04:20.151 --> 00:04:27.211
Maybe that happened to you too, where the school year ended and all of a sudden you felt like you were coming down with something.

00:04:27.211 --> 00:04:28.781
It's not uncommon.

00:04:28.781 --> 00:04:31.524
I know a lot of school counselors that have done that this year.

00:04:31.524 --> 00:04:36.495
So let's walk through what's happening.

00:04:36.495 --> 00:04:45.853
If you're either just way too amped up and you just can't calm it down, or you feel like a slug and you absolutely can't move.

00:04:45.853 --> 00:04:49.119
These may both be stress reactions.

00:04:49.119 --> 00:04:52.512
But stress is not only emotional.

00:04:52.512 --> 00:05:02.052
It becomes a biological process and the only way that we can resolve these symptoms is to complete the stress cycle.

00:05:02.052 --> 00:05:25.295
The unfortunate part is that most school counselors never complete that cycle, because we're responding to one student concern, then we respond to another, then we debrief with the principal while we're grabbing our papers for a meeting and we go from fire to fire to fire and we never really get a big resolution in our day.

00:05:25.295 --> 00:05:35.156
And so when summer hits, yes, those stressors stop, but your body remains in that stress cycle.

00:05:35.156 --> 00:05:40.795
It's not gotten the signal that that stress is resolved.

00:05:41.817 --> 00:05:52.709
The stress cycle is something that I talk about a lot in in-person workshops and speeches and when I'm providing master classes for my mastermind members.

00:05:52.709 --> 00:05:57.959
It's so important and something that you don't often hear people talk about.

00:05:57.959 --> 00:06:05.139
In the stress cycle I'm going to paraphrase very roughly but we perceive a threat.

00:06:05.139 --> 00:06:08.353
Our body goes into high alert, right.

00:06:08.353 --> 00:06:15.571
We tense, our pupils dilate, we breathe faster, our heart starts beating you know all the fight or flight responses, right.

00:06:15.571 --> 00:06:21.639
And then somehow we overcome whatever it is that's posed that danger to us.

00:06:22.345 --> 00:06:32.057
Ideally, what would happen next is some sort of signal to your body that the threat has passed and it is now time to relax.

00:06:32.057 --> 00:06:43.475
If we were villagers that were out hunting for food or maybe fighting a wild animal, once that stress was over, we would drag the animal home right.

00:06:43.475 --> 00:06:51.396
We would have a big celebration and there would be music and feasting, and that would be a signal to our bodies that the threat had been resolved.

00:06:51.396 --> 00:07:00.516
But in the modern world it doesn't work that way, and so often in school counseling we go from one crisis right into the next.

00:07:00.516 --> 00:07:26.742
We're not allowing our bodies the resolution of the stress cycle, and so we just keep amping it up with all of this stress hype and we never, ever come back down and eventually our nervous system becomes so elevated that not only does that start to feel normal to us, but when our bodies start to de-escalate, it almost feels wrong.

00:07:27.846 --> 00:07:31.255
This is the reason why you feel like you need to stay busy.

00:07:31.255 --> 00:07:34.975
It's like a nervous person that can't stop talking.

00:07:34.975 --> 00:07:36.571
Have you ever been around one of those?

00:07:36.571 --> 00:07:42.447
They are super nervous and they just go yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck and they just cannot help themselves.

00:07:42.447 --> 00:07:48.819
They fill all the space with noise to compensate for their nervousness.

00:07:48.819 --> 00:07:52.649
Your body is kind of doing the same thing.

00:07:52.649 --> 00:08:00.120
It's also scrambling to fill that silence because that's what you have trained it to do all school year long.

00:08:01.505 --> 00:08:10.358
And then, if you're one of the folks that is the opposite and you feel completely checked out, that could be part of the same kind of response.

00:08:10.358 --> 00:08:13.492
Believe it or not, it's called functional freeze.

00:08:13.492 --> 00:08:22.307
That's when you have been on high alert for way too long and your body kind of shuts down to protect you.

00:08:22.307 --> 00:08:28.319
So it's not that you're lazy, it's that you have just been maxed out.

00:08:28.319 --> 00:08:38.960
And, my friend, I think that either one of these situations calls for a whole lot more grace than we usually give ourselves.

00:08:40.586 --> 00:08:44.475
We are so quick to try to fix ourselves when these things happen.

00:08:44.475 --> 00:08:53.869
Right, we are trying to make new routines, we're trying to force ourselves out of the slump, or we're trying to minimize our discomfort with movement and activity.

00:08:53.869 --> 00:09:09.586
Or we guilt ourselves into being productive with movement and activity, or we guilt ourselves into being productive, but, according to the research on the burnout cycle, sometimes we need to stop trying to fix things and just allow your body to reset.

00:09:09.586 --> 00:09:14.953
That could be one of the most important things that you do all summer.

00:09:14.953 --> 00:09:22.227
So what do you do if your body is still on high alert or it's completely shut down?

00:09:22.227 --> 00:09:27.360
You don't fix it, like I said, but you can support it.

00:09:27.360 --> 00:09:36.014
So here are a few things you can do to try to support yourself through this, without trying to fix it all through this, without trying to fix it all.

00:09:36.014 --> 00:09:38.798
The first is developing some safety signals.

00:09:47.585 --> 00:09:50.591
Your nervous system needs help realizing that the perceived danger, the chaos, the adrenaline rushes.

00:09:50.591 --> 00:09:51.953
They're over for a little while.

00:09:51.953 --> 00:09:52.274
You're safe now.

00:09:52.274 --> 00:09:56.750
For me, that means you can find me sitting on my back porch most mornings.

00:09:56.750 --> 00:10:06.346
I love to sit back there and listen to the birds and watch the trees, drink my morning coffee and just let myself be for a little while.

00:10:06.346 --> 00:10:16.969
There is a lot of research behind that how nature exposure helps reduce cortisol and helps re-regulate your nervous system.

00:10:16.969 --> 00:10:19.677
But maybe that's not your thing.

00:10:19.677 --> 00:10:23.840
Could you go for a walk in the park while it's still cool in the mornings.

00:10:23.840 --> 00:10:26.368
Or maybe you don't have an outdoor space.

00:10:26.368 --> 00:10:39.547
Could you sit by a window with a view, or could you find that super cozy chair or that wonderful spot somewhere in your home that makes you feel safe and grounded and just spend some time there.

00:10:39.547 --> 00:10:59.668
You don't have to disappear into a forest, you don't have to go on a spa retreat or anything like that, but you do need a space that can help your body breathe, and maybe, if you spend some time outdoors, you'll go back to school in August or September with a really awesome tan.

00:10:59.668 --> 00:11:07.000
Right, you can also choose one intentional moment.

00:11:08.062 --> 00:11:18.100
I love the work of Emily Nagoski, who talks a lot about burnout and the stress cycle, and so much of it is directly applicable to the work that we do every day.

00:11:18.100 --> 00:11:24.758
She says that our society cultivates kind of two different categories of people.

00:11:24.758 --> 00:11:30.394
There are the human doers and there are the human beings.

00:11:30.394 --> 00:11:36.171
Now, the human doers are prized for their ability to get things done.

00:11:36.171 --> 00:11:38.035
People rely on them.

00:11:38.035 --> 00:11:39.169
They make things go.

00:11:39.169 --> 00:11:43.193
They're the busy little bees in society that make all the things happen.

00:11:43.193 --> 00:11:53.690
And then we have the human beings who, for the most part, believe that the value that they bring to the world is just in being themselves.

00:11:53.690 --> 00:12:03.669
They rely on the human doers to handle a lot of the things that they don't want to handle because they are so busy being amazing.

00:12:03.669 --> 00:12:16.270
Now, that is a very oversimplified version of this, but when you think about it, I'll bet that you related more with the role of the human doer than the human being.

00:12:18.235 --> 00:12:30.548
The thing is, when you're constantly performing, planning, pivoting or trying to prove yourself, we forget that we too were meant to be human beings.

00:12:30.548 --> 00:12:39.643
So can you find one intentional thing to do every day just to enjoy being you?

00:12:39.643 --> 00:12:50.878
Lighting a candle, stretching, dancing in the kitchen, listening to your favorite songs, sitting in silence after everybody's gone to bed, laughing with a friend?

00:12:50.878 --> 00:13:07.345
Do those things, not because they're self-care, as everybody likes to talk about, but because it allows you to return to yourself, so important in trying to complete this stress cycle, so that your body can finally relax.

00:13:07.345 --> 00:13:20.278
And then I think sometimes we underestimate the power of saying things out loud, being able to talk about this kind of stuff with friends or colleagues or a partner.

00:13:20.278 --> 00:13:25.808
As a matter of fact, that's where this podcast episode came from.

00:13:25.808 --> 00:13:35.349
We've had multiple members in our School for School Counselors, mastermind, talking about this very thing over the past week.

00:13:35.509 --> 00:13:44.697
The moment that these folks started talking about this, powerful things started happening, because others showed up and they were like yeah, me too, me too.

00:13:44.697 --> 00:13:53.182
And then just knowing that we weren't alone in this kind of dissipated the weirdness a little bit right.

00:13:53.182 --> 00:14:02.509
It made it a little bit easier to manage, because sometimes when we say those things out loud, that gives us more of a reset than anything.

00:14:02.509 --> 00:14:15.211
So find someone that you can say it out loud to, who will understand what you're talking about and who gets the level of stress that you work with day in and day out.

00:14:15.211 --> 00:14:24.955
Now some of you may be listening and thinking yeah, this is great stuff and it would be wonderful if I could just, you know, take a moment to myself and light a candle and sit in silence.

00:14:25.075 --> 00:14:31.859
But you've got to be kidding me, me, because summer is not a time of relaxation for my family or for me.

00:14:31.859 --> 00:14:44.308
Summer is a time of running to camps, trying to make baseball games, running to the grocery store a hundred times a week and refereeing between my kids.

00:14:44.308 --> 00:14:48.501
I remember those days.

00:14:48.501 --> 00:14:54.558
Now I still have kids at home, but they're not quite as hands-on time intensive as they used to be.

00:14:54.558 --> 00:15:02.870
But I do remember those summer days where I felt like I was drowning and so overwhelmed with all the things that were going on.

00:15:02.870 --> 00:15:22.706
If that's your reality this summer, you might try to give your nervous system some smaller, shorter signals in the time that you have Deep breaths in the car, stepping outside to look at the sky after everybody's gone to bed, taking a minute to close your eyes while everybody's napping, those kinds of things.

00:15:24.216 --> 00:15:31.308
I think, too, you have to remember to let go of the guilt that you're not creating the perfect summer.

00:15:31.308 --> 00:15:41.408
Social media is so hard on parents and convinces us that every child deserves these Pinterest-worthy experiences.

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Each and every day.

00:15:42.370 --> 00:15:49.804
I'll tell you if we have popsicles at my house, that's a big event, so I'll set the bar real low for you.

00:15:49.804 --> 00:15:56.107
I'm not about chasing all of the likes and comments and accolades on my social media.

00:15:56.107 --> 00:16:00.774
As a matter of fact, I don't even post my kids on my social media, and that's for a reason.

00:16:00.774 --> 00:16:07.208
But all that to say, you don't have to strive for some level of achievement in your summer.

00:16:07.208 --> 00:16:08.919
Just let it go and let it be.

00:16:10.264 --> 00:16:23.327
Beyond everything, what I really want you to remember is that you do not have to earn your rest, despite what the public education world would have you believe about being a school counselor.

00:16:23.327 --> 00:16:37.850
You are allowed to slow down, and that may mean that you feel a little strange when things get quiet, because you have carried so much on your shoulders this year.

00:16:37.850 --> 00:16:54.200
Some of it you may not have even realized you are carrying until the end of the school year forced you to put it down, and so this extra space in your day, the stillness or the moments of quiet, probably feel really weird.

00:16:54.200 --> 00:17:05.545
But if you can be patient through this, your body, little by little, will start to complete the stress cycle and remember how to be okay again.

00:17:05.545 --> 00:17:09.902
So don't force it, just stay with it.

00:17:09.902 --> 00:17:27.848
And then, if you can do that, when the fall semester gets here you'll be ready to go back, and it won't be because you planned or outlined or to-do'd yourself to death, but it's because you gave yourself the dignity of achieving a real reset.

00:17:27.848 --> 00:17:35.757
Dignity of achieving a real reset.

00:17:35.778 --> 00:17:46.903
Hey, if you need the space to say these things out loud or to hear somebody say me too, that's totally me you need to come join us in the Mastermind Because, like I said, that's where this episode came from the counselors in the mastermind.

00:17:46.903 --> 00:17:50.730
Get it Head to schoolforschoolcounselorscom.

00:17:50.730 --> 00:17:53.201
Slash mastermind if you're interested in that.

00:17:53.201 --> 00:18:00.021
But until then, take care of yourself and maybe just go sit on the porch for a while.

00:18:00.021 --> 00:18:03.270
I'll be back soon with another episode, take care.