Stop the Shame Spiral

In today's episode, we have Signet's Director of Operations and Academic Coach, Andrea West discuss how to stop the shame spiral—breaking free from negative thought patterns and embracing a more productive mindset. Tune in to discover how you can boost your productivity while nurturing a healthier, more positive approach to your work and studies!

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Transcript

Andrea Signet Education: 0:00

Will I know we should be doing this differently. I want to do this differently. I want to see you do this differently. What would happen if we approach that problem with enough curiosity to work with it? You know? What assumptions can we challenge, right?

Sheila Akbar: 0:27

Hey folks, welcome back to the podcast. It is now past November 1, so everybody on my team I know is breathing a whole lot more easily now that our students have submitted their early applications, if they were going to be submitting any at all. And one of the things that I've been thinking about in the run up to this deadline, when everybody's emotions are a bit high, a bit scrambled, you know, we're feeling so many different things, and they are big feelings like, oh my gosh, my whole life is riding on this application, which it's not, but that's how it feels to teenagers or parents feeling like so frustrated they saw this coming. They wanted their kid to work early, and for whatever reason, the kid didn't. And you know, they're really frustrated and dealing with maybe their own feelings about being a parent, about what their experience applying to college was, you know, their own fears about what's going to happen to my kid when they leave home. There's a lot tied up in that whole college process. And so today, I wanted to share with you a conversation that I had with Signet's Director of Operations, Andrea West, who is also one of our more senior academic coaches. She's the person I turn to when I'm feeling those kinds of emotions, and she really helps me get grounded and find clarity, and she's really got some special talents in that regard. But today we're talking about the emotions that underlie a lot of the challenges that our students are facing, which might be, you know, procrastination or disorganization, or just the pressure of school, the pressure to achieve. And I think she has a really great way of thinking about this and talking to students and families about this, or really wanted to make sure you all got a chance to hear it. So take a listen, and I'll see you on the other side. Tonight. I have with me Andrea West, who is our Director of Operations, and she's one of our most senior academic coaches on staff. She'll tell you a little bit about what that means, but just so you know who you're talking to, we've been doing this a long time. We've, I think, seen every situation under the sun, and one of the things that we know from our years and years of experience is that there are a lot of emotions underlying the behaviors that we see in teenagers. I mean, they're underlying everybody's behaviors, even yours and mine right now. And if we can attune to those emotions, we will have an easier time not only communicating about the challenge, but actually starting to resolve it and move forward from there. So Andrea, I think, speaks so eloquently on this topic. And every time I'm, you know, in my feelings about something, she really helps me get some clarity. So I'm really excited to introduce her to you tonight. And with that, I will just pass the mic to you. Andrea.

Andrea Signet Education: 3:20

Oh, thank you, Sheila. Yeah, great. Well, what I get the privilege of also doing alongside the business you work that I do is some academic coaching and some direct work with our students. It has been over seven years of doing that, which Sheila reflected with me, and I was like, holy crap, where does time go? It's amazing. So I've gotten the opportunity to meet a lot of different kinds of kids, see a lot of different things, and work with my colleagues to watch things unfold over time with their students too. So what academic coaching is really, is this kind of way of zooming out with our students to reflect on their academic life, right? Versus if they're working with a math or an English tutor. They're working on assignments, they're working on content. They're preparing for tests. When students work with me, they're talking about their habits overall. They're talking about some friction points in their life. We're talking and touching on grades sometimes, but it's really about this more habit based, reflection based practice. So I'm pulling from that experience to share some things with you today. I believe school is a very emotional process. Now, I know I don't have to tell most parents this, right? Because their kid gets a grade that they don't like. It's a big emotional event. They're up stressed in the middle of the night working on something a big emotional event. There is a fight between parents and students on what should be happening in the home. It's a big emotional event, and there are big highs, right? Good grades, great results, college acceptances, oh my gosh, right. Our students are on this big emotional roller coaster all the time. And I think when students come to me for coaching. They're really in this mindset of, like, the things I have to do are very structural. I need to follow this certain thing. I need to, like, just study for this test. And sometimes my job is to say, let's back up a little bit and understand what else is going on in your brain that might be kind of getting in your way from the kind of success that you want, and what even does that success look like? Because it's different for everyone. Oh my gosh, my like, school life isn't going the way that I want. And I say, Okay, well, what? What changes do you want to make? Well, I should be going to bed earlier, and I should be studying differently, and I should be going to my teachers and, like, talking to them about this thing, but I'm not, and I should be responding to my emails and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? And it's all coming out in that language. Now, in reality, should they be doing those things? Probably right. But when that's all a student can see and talk from that place of should all I hear from them is that we are starting from a place of shame, when you are in that mode of all these things that should be going differently, the emotional experience is quite negative. I am ashamed of what I'm doing. I'm hearing, I'm getting all this input on how things should be going differently. What is wrong with me, right? Why can't I make these changes? And I think even as adults like we can relate to this feeling, right? You get that input that should input all the time. It's and it's very rigid. It assumes there's one right way to do something, and if you're not doing it that way, the way that everybody else is supposedly doing it, there's something wrong with you. It doesn't consider the context of your of your life, about what else is going on, about other ways that your brain might work, or other things that you're balancing, or other pieces to the puzzle, and it can always change.

Sheila Akbar: 6:50

So I like that language a lot, because I think it's very descriptive and evocative of all this whole chain of things that come out of just thinking I should be doing this differently.

Andrea Signet Education: 7:02

Yeah. So then, how do we move from this place of should to a more productive, in my opinion, place? The first thing that I have students do, and that I encourage parents to do with their students, is really reflect on what's going on. Don't take anything that that you've been hearing or that you've been saying for years to your student as truth and as that it's granted right what? What can you learn by stopping and reflecting about what your kid is is doing right now? And one of my favorite things to explain to students and to parents is that the habits that they have now are serving them in some way, even if you as a parent don't see it, even if you know that if they were doing the opposite thing, they would get this opposite result. That isn't that much better, but change won't happen until we understand why we or our students are doing what they're doing. An example I like to share is that like, yeah, a student might not be trying as hard as they could. They're not studying as much as they could. Their grades are fine. They're not taking honors classes. Parents are like, Why you are so smart? Why are you not pushing yourself? We should be doing more than what we're doing. Well, what that student is getting is some kind of low expectations that are pretty easy to meet if, well, I'm not going to expect a is for my student anymore, because they're not trying that hard, you know, then they're always going to meet that bar. They are getting the relief of that pressure that they might have otherwise felt if they were constantly stepping up to the plate. So, so this is a place where I'm digging in with students, right? You're doing this habit that you don't want to be doing. Why not? And that's why I say, if it were easy as just doing it, they would have done it right? That the cost benefit analysis to whatever they're doing now and whatever you're suggesting, or that they even think that they want to do something in the equation isn't working out right? I think also about when students, you know they stay up too late and you know that they're going to be tired in the morning. Why is my won't my kid just go to bed like what they know that they're going to feel crappy in the morning? Why are they staying up? For some students who have a really overbooked schedule and that they're planned out all day, and people are asking things of them all day, that couple hours that they're staying up is the only time where they get to really feel like themselves. They're getting an opportunity to be them. They're getting an opportunity not to have any pressure. They're getting an opportunity to maybe do something fun for themselves, like, you know, play video games or stay up doing whatever. So the trade off for them isn't worth it yet, and there's some balance there of being like, will it ever be worth it or and is this just something that we're gonna we'll get into in my next slide, we'll work with, not against, but before we get there, I like to also throw out this reflection I encourage around my kid is in pain. They're stressed. They're suffering whatever. And really digging into is this suffering because this habit, you know, we're going to talk my example is we'll talk about procrastination in a second. But whatever this habit is, they're in pain when they do it. So they should change this habit. Some reflection on, is it that habit causing the pain, or is it all of the should and the shame in the fight you guys have every single week, and the oh my gosh, I know I shouldn't be doing this. Oh my gosh. I feel so guilty and so bad about what I'm doing, and that's causing the pain and not if we just accepted things are going the way they're going, right? We can kind of pull apart and debate all sorts of things about like, well, what if this? What if that? But if you've never sat down and had that conversation or approach with curiosity, your students, quote, bad habits, this is a place to start. Is a thought experiment that I like to encourage people to have Sheila, any comments on this before we get into the example next?

Sheila Akbar: 11:03

No, but again, I just, I love what you're saying here. If we can tease apart the emotions from the actual behavior, we might come up with a different solution. I think that's worth repeating.

Andrea Signet Education: 11:16

So, I have this image here of a salmon swimming upstream, because often that is what I feel as when I talk to parents. That's what I hear, right? That they're like, oh my gosh, I'm fighting a losing battle constantly, and I'm very tired of doing that with my kid. And again, the first thing that I might start with a parent or with a student who's fighting that upstream battle within themselves is, what if, instead of fighting to change a bad habit that's you've been fighting for years, continuing to press on the same Well, I know we should be doing this differently. I want to do this differently. I want to see you do this differently. What would happen if we approach that problem with enough curiosity to work with it? You know, what assumptions can we challenge, right? And I'll use this example of procrastination, and I'm a little bit nervous about it, right? Because I don't want any parent to hear from me that I'm saying procrastination is great, and like, prostration is not a problem, and like, let's just let kids do whatever they want. That is not what I'm saying, but it's something that I know all parents can relate to. So it's a good place for me to kind of get my point across that, yeah, don't take this as indisputable. But in some students, right? They've been procrastinating for years and years and years. They always study the night before a test. Their parents for years and years and years have been like that is bad. You should not do that. I know you're going to get a better grade if you start earlier. You're going to feel much better if you just prepared earlier for the test. I encourage if that's you to think about. Is that actually true? Does your student actually feel better when they prepare earlier, when they are reviewing at the whatever cadence that you think is best for them, or do they actually learn really well under some pressure? Is that the knowing that the test is coming really soon? Is that really motivating for them? Did they get a little bit of adrenaline? Does their brain work better the night before the test, and are they just feeling better, preparing ahead of time, because they're doing what you're saying, because they're getting external praise from you, because you're saying, like I finally did what my mom said. But if that really, really worked all the time, and it worked with no resistance for them, that's already what they would be doing, right? So I'm kind of treading the line here between being like, well, your kid do whatever, and like, Yes, I know procrastination causes a lot of pain. But what if, instead of just saying, Well, this is the this is the way the research says people learn, we said, Let's research within our own child, right? What works for them, and how can we work with the current maybe, instead of saying, I hate when my student studies the day before, every single time we say, Hey kid, we know you're going to study the day before, let's plan for it. Let's make sure that we don't have anything else going on. Let's make sure you don't go out with your friends. Let's make sure I don't pull you into some sort of family thing, because we know you're going to study this day, and what if our goal is you just don't stay up all night that you get a good night's sleep. How can we lean with what we know you're already doing and just make it less painful? Let's take out the shame. Let's take out the should, and just see what happens. And that experiment might still lead you to the same conclusion that this didn't really work for my kid, and the test was really hard, but you'd be surprised by just pulling out what you think is gonna work and learning from what is already happening within your kid. A little bit of creativity can really add some smoothness into the process. Right? So I say here, like, what new understanding can you arrive to? What happens when you put down your assumptions of, like, this is exactly the way it should go because of X, Y or Z, reason. So, Sheila, I would love your thoughts on this one, because I don't think you've heard me do this before.

Sheila Akbar: 15:16

I haven't, no, and I love the disclaimer. We are not saying procrastination is like, always good. But even as you walked us through that example, I felt my shoulders drop a little bit when you said, Well, we know you're just gonna study the night before. Let's make sure we do it right. And I think so much, and even me, when I'm thinking about, Oh my gosh, this kid's not studying until the night before, my fear is, if you rush it, you're going to miss something. You're not going to learn it well, you're not going to have enough time to organize your notes. But if you are like all right, they're not going to do it till the night before. But maybe we can make that study session the most effective thing possible. A lot of my anxiety about that just went out the window, and definitely will reduce this, the stress in the household, the tension in the relationship, and that's, you know, a step in the right direction, so.

Andrea Signet Education: 16:09

Yeah, yeah, to add to that, too, when we're talking about students who have ADHD and neuro divergence, there's a term that goes around. Sometimes it's like, ADHD paralysis, right? That it's like, so overwhelmed with this feeling of, oh my gosh, I did something wrong. I am the problem. I am shamed. I shouldn't have procrastinated. My mom has told me all and like, not being able to even do anything, because there has been so they have been talking all week about my mom just told me I should have been studying, and I haven't been, and now I'm here and I haven't started. And in my experience, and talking to a lot of students, that's what takes up the time. That's what slows them down. It's not necessarily caveat that there's a whole spectrum, right? It's not necessarily that they are so far behind that they can't possibly keep up. It's that the the shame and the angst and the fighting takes up so much room that they could probably get their work done pretty quickly. And in my experience, a lot of students with ADHD, once they can get past that, they can get stuff done a lot faster than a lot of other students. They are very good at being efficient. And so, you know, I'm just, I say all this, just to say, what if we thought about this differently, right? And if the conclusion, again, is we try this experiment and the test still went horribly, and she was still very stressed, and it was still not a great day in the household, then that's not the solution. There's something in the middle there. But I like to say, I don't default, vilify any habits, right? Well, within reason, any academic habits, I don't default vilify, right? There's no morality to them. Where can we find some creativity? I've got a couple more examples that I would like to share. I call this like the should versus Strategy comparison that I do with my students. They come in with a problem, I hear the should, shoulds coming out of their mouth, and then where do we end up? What actually works for the student? So have this example of student, Dylan, who struggles with writer's block, always sitting down to to do work really, really hates writing. Can't stand it, sits down, has that kind of paralysis moment and just can't write. Just can't write at all. And I say, okay, Dylan, what what's this? What are we going to do? Like, what? How are we going to kind of get through this? And Dylan says, Well, I think what I should do is just try harder. Like sit there and think and force myself to stare at the computer. My teacher says I gotta start with an introduction and write an outline, and I just have to sit and just grip my teeth until that happens, and I say to Dylan, sounds like you've been doing that your whole life. How has that worked for you so far? Well, it is stressful, it is anxiety provoking. It makes me want to walk away from the computer and not look back. And then I'm always rushing to get these papers done, because I have this I panic every time I sit down. So okay, we're not doing that. Then we're going to try something different. And I arrived at this strategy with Dylan, which was, if what scares you, if what triggers this, like panic feeling, is sitting down and seeing a blank google doc open. How could we make that Google doc not blank? I say, you know, sit down and write something. Don't doesn't even have to be relevant. Write about how you're feeling. Write a journal entry. Write about what you did today, and just keep going until you are ready to transition into talking about what this paper is actually about, right? And it is really impressive to me to see that that actually works once the typing has just begun and the page is not blank and there are sentences on the screen and Dylan doesn't feel like he has to. Pull everything out of his brain all at once. The emotions have kind of passed, and we can get some work done. You, of course, got to go back and delete it later and make sure that that's a step in your process, which is so much more effective than saying Dylan, sit down and write your paper. So much angst in that, right? And this is a good place to insert, you know, something that I noticed too is especially with our kind of anxious students, and students who tend to overwork and are kind of, we think, more at risk for burnout, this feeling that like, the harder it is, the harder I'm working. Work is struggle and pain and strife. If I am sitting here pulling my hair out for hours, then I can say, Oh yeah, I studied for for three hours. Did you really, or did you just have a spiral for two and a half hours and you did maybe 30 minutes of work? But I think about students, especially at hyper competitive high schools, which I know a lot of your students come from, that Whirlpool. Man of saying that student who panics doing three hours of work would never admit she only needed to study for half an hour, because she's that smart, because everybody else is saying, I study for three hours, so I study for four hours, so you should be studying for that many hours, right? I like to say it's not better studying because it's more painful or more grueling. And if we can get this stuff to be as efficient and easy as possible, if you can look at your work for 30 minutes and get a grade that you're happy with, Heck, yeah, I'm gonna tell you to do that. So, Sheila, I know that's something that you and I like to talk about in terms of, you know, adult working too.

Sheila Akbar: 21:38

Yeah. I mean, you know, I like to think about, like, where did these attitudes come from? And I know, as a child of the 80s, I was, you know, raised on the American dream and no pain, no gain and all of these things. And yeah, there are times where I'm like, Wait, did I really do a full day's work? Because I'm not exhausted. I'm not like, picking myself up off the floor. But isn't that the goal? We want things to be easy, not that we're not reaching our potential or exerting ourselves or learning, but rather, it doesn't have to feel like a battle to the death in order to get something done, you know, in order to feel like, okay, yeah, I learned that. Well, I did what I'm supposed to do. I did enough to get, like you said the grade that I want. And I think calibrating that is really important.

Andrea Signet Education: 22:30

Great. Got one more example here that I like, and it comes up in webinars all the time, so some of you might have heard this. So we tell the story lot about a student who could not wake up on time, like waking up in the morning was the thing that she and her coach were working on, right? Everything else trickled out from it. She couldn't wake up on time. She was late for school, she was flustered, she'd forget things. So much falls out from that. So, you know, there was an understanding that, like, yes, this was something that really needed to change in order for her academic life to feel easier. Talk to the student about what could we do to to work on this, this habit or this problem? And we could think about things like, well, let's have your mom come in and crash symbols and rip your covers off of you so you can't possibly fall back asleep. Let's buy you the most annoying alarm clock in the entire world you can, you know, look that up on Amazon. There's 100,000 different options. And you can force yourself, if you just force yourself, to go to bed earlier, maybe waking up would be so hard, right? You can hear in all those solutions that might first come to mind, so much shame, so much angst, you know, starting the day with a fight with mom, right, pulling the covers off of you, these things were not going to work for the student, so it took a while to kind of troubleshoot and understand what's something that might work. And I love this. This wasn't my student, but I love this solution that they came up with that like the student was struggling, like, not really having much to, like, look forward to in the day and in life and school was very stressful, and everything was very stressful. And how could you possibly wake up all tripper in the morning when you knew you had a lot kind of going on? So she and her coach came up with the agreement. She was like, let's make the morning as special and exciting as possible. The student really like benefited from new and exciting, like novelty, things to look forward to, not uncommon with students with ADHD. So they ultimately decided to get an automatic coffee maker that she could put by her bed, and it went off on a timer, and so then she woke up earlier than she needed to so she could smell the coffee and drink coffee in bed before getting up, right? She needed something exciting in her life, and then all of a sudden, mornings became that for her. So I that's such a classic Signet example, but it's so perfect. It is so good to to consider how. All the first instinct or the things that they've tried, or the stuff based in shame, did nothing for this student, and it just pushed that habit deeper into the brain, I feel like, versus kind of shaking it up and doing something different really helped. So there's lots more examples like this, but I encourage you, if there's a particular thing that your student is struggling with, or a conversation you've had a bazillion times, or anything like that. What would it be like for you as a parent to go through this process, right? To move from should to a strategy, to try something different and to learn from your kid, because they are an expert in them, right? I say a lot when folks might get caught up in the research, or when I read this study, and this is what they say, it's like, yes, that is true on the population. But have you done as much research into the person, into your kid, into what their experience is, into their internal life, and that is such a much more enriching thing for a parent and student to do instead of, did you do your homework? Did you do homework? Did I know you got to do your homework right? Which I know none of you like to do. There's, of course, a balance. I don't think this is a I'm not advocating for a pendulum to swing all the way, but just experimenting with what it's like to pull back a little bit into that mode, I think, unlocks a lot of things, both for students within themselves. This is the internal work that I do with my kids, my senior kids, and what can happen in the relationship between parent and student. The last thing, kind of top concept that that I think relates here, is that this kind of reflective process is certainly not a one and done. It might be for like certain problems or habits or things we experiment with, but this whole skill set of learning oneself, trying things, getting feedback, trial and error, pushing past the shame, I think, for most students, has to happen at many levels. Right? It happens on the kind of daily basis. It happens in the study session that they're having themselves. That's kind of like what we're talking about. But I also like to encourage that reflection on the week, on the semester, sometimes even on the year. If you want to get existential, we can talk about the lifetime, but I think all students benefit from learning this skill, at at least these lenses here semester, weekly, daily, within the session, right? Some students might be way more comfortable in the moment. They really know how to write. They really know how to study for an exam. You pull them out of that onto the semester and say, What are your goals for the semester, and they have no idea. Some students are really good at dreaming, being creative, having some hopes for themselves, coming up with all of these things they want to do. And then you get into the daily to do list and the execution, and that's really hard for them. So I'm saying all this to say this, this skill has to happen at these different levels to really get a sense of of a kind of a healthy and smooth academic life. I think about, you know, the lenses on a camera right when, when you're zooming in, is that zooming in and out process really smooth and comfortable? Does it get stuck? Are you clunky? Where are we finding those stopping points and at those different levels? Is where the concept of like a routine or a structure or a follow, a process that you can follow might come into place, right? I have reflection processes with my students on how to wrap up and start a semester, on how to plan out and reflect on a week, on how to clear out the to do's of a day and how to kind of structure a study session itself. So then, you know what I like to say? I like this word academic health, right? It's a little like, I don't know if you will, but like feeling healthy, strong, confident in academics, is, is a combination of this reflection skill that we've been talking about this whole time and the systems in place to keep that reflection running throughout a year, right? And I know we're going to be sending around some examples of some of these tools and structures that students and parents can run on these different levels, but I like to kind of send all of those off for the caveat that they are examples, right? If you take anything away from what I've talked about today, is that the solution, I believe, is, my philosophy, is not just in here's this worksheet that you're going to do every week, and your problems are going to be solved. It is what, what do you, individual human being need to do every week in order to feel in control, smooth and confident.

Sheila Akbar: 29:45

Well, I hope you found that helpful. I know I always love to talk with Andrea about this stuff. I'm sure you can sense us getting really excited and going off on a little bit of tangents here and there. But if a conversation resonated with you, I definitely want to hear from you about this. Yes, and if you're looking for some help, please get in touch. We love talking about this stuff, and I would love to chat with you about your situation, or what's happening in your school and how you might be able to address this with the people that you you work with and that you interact with. And then, before I sign off, I want to make a little bit of an announcement here that I'm super excited about. In the new year, we are going to be playing around with the format of this podcast a little bit in trying some episodes focused on live coaching, in which me or a member of my team will actually work with a student for about an hour on an issue that they're facing. It might be building a college list or dealing with procrastination or choosing an essay topic, it could be any number of things, deciding whether they want to take the SAT or the ACT. And there's so many other challenges that our students face and really need someone to talk to, and so we're going to open that up and you can check the show notes for the links if you want to apply. There is a link if you are a student and you want to be live coached on the podcast, and there is a separate link if you are a parent or other adult, even if you are a person who maybe is a high school counselor and you're seeing something in your school that you want to talk through or shed some light on. We'll do some live coaching together with those sorts of people as well. So there are two different links, one for students, one for parents or other adults. And I hope that even if you aren't a person who wants to be life coach, you will share that widely. I'm really excited about this because it means there are different situations we can navigate together and help more people with it means that, you know, we can highlight a number of different backgrounds, ambitions, goals, types of colleges that students might be focused on, or types of challenges they might be facing. And I'm really excited about that because I know that it becomes easier to to feel like something is possible when you hear that somebody else is facing the same challenge, or you hear how they navigate it, or even if there's something in the coaching that helps you figure out how to get through a challenge that you're facing. So I'm really, really excited about that. We plan to start that in January, and we are taking applications now, so please do spread the word, and I hope you'll volunteer for a coaching session as well. All right, folks, that's it. We'll see you next time. Thanks.