Hi, I'm Monica Packer, and you're listening to about progress, where we are about progress made practical.

When Brad and I were first married, just like everyone else from the 2007 to maybe 2013 era,

we started a family blog. And I just recently rediscovered it and it had been maybe 10 years and I went down this wormhole and one of the wormholes I went down were these dramatic entries I had from when I was a very stressed out new middle school teacher.

When I entered my first year of teaching, I knew it was going to be very challenging.

I did not know that the prep load my school gave me was a type of schedule that more

experienced in teachers would quit on the spot when given that load. I taught

seventh grade history seventh I taught seventh grade history, seventh grade English, seventh grade

reading, eighth grade history, and eighth grade English, my first year teaching and

only one of those classes repeated.

So that class load coupled with my class sizes

that were well beyond the legal limit

and me struggling to discipline my urban suburban kids who were dealing with far more serious things

and what happened at school including violence and poverty and hunger, I either found myself working

around the clock or staring blankly at blogs on my computer instead of taking on my lesson planning.

I knew I was stressed. I mean I was so exhausted, my hair was falling falling out I wasn't being social I was

Close to tears all the time but honestly I thought it was more due to me not hacking it as a teacher I

sincerely questioned my life choices and if I really should have gone after this teaching profession to begin with. Stress is so tricky. We all think we know what it looks like and feels like, but when it comes down to it, there are actually a million flavors of stress.

So our guest says today. For some of us, we experience it in our brains,

maybe with heightened anxiety, depression, overwhelm, and more.

For the others of us, we experience stress in our bodies

with tense muscles or racing hearts,my issues and also more there too.

And for many of us it's both brain our body or it's absent of brain our body because we

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