Episode 4: Rachel

A teacher who resents her co-teacher figures out how to adjust the relationship for the better.

Transcript

Rachel is a high school social studies teacher who really values her subject matter – she considers it to be central to good citizenship. Not surprisingly, she also really values the social-emotional aspects of her classroom. Cuz emotional intelligence, she knows, is also central to good citizenship. Rachel’s teaching is both personal and political, reflecting a deep commitment to seeing and knowing her students and encouraging them to see and know themselves and their power in the world.

It might not be difficult to imagine that Rachel is intense.

And it might not be difficult to imagine that, given this intensity, Rachel has found her first co-teaching experience to be challenging. Her co-teacher, Edmund, is an “old-school” English teacher. Their planning and teaching styles are different: Rachel prefers interactive, student-centered classes while Edmund tends towards lecturing; Rachel prefers collaborating on creative lesson plans while Edmund, who has been teaching for years and knows his subject matter inside and out, tends to fly by the seat of his pants.

This “opposites attract” teamwork is not working for Rachel. She cannot tolerate Edmund’s laid-back approach to teaching. It panics her. So she ends up doing it all: planning for both of them, filling in where Edmund’s lectures leave gaps, and doing the lion’s share of the grading.

All this and Edmund, who is senior to Rachel, is probably getting paid more than she is!

Doing it all definitely helps with Rachel’s panic, her spiking anxiety. But it also leads to resentment. Which simmers and bubbles and threatens to erupt in sarcasm and even anger. Which Rachel cannot afford to let slip with her senior colleague.

Rachel is feeling trapped. And she’s swimming in resentment. She has no idea what to do.

[break]

Team-teaching. A common enough experience, I guess. How often is the experience a good one? How often is it a bad one? How do co-teachers approach the task of collaborating? Who even knows how to talk about it?

This is a weird coincidence, but I have worked recently with a few teachers who have had really difficult times co-teaching. They entered into the collaborative project with the best of intentions. And, within a few weeks, they had broken up.

In these cases, the teachers I worked with cited “different teaching styles” as the reason for the breakup. Ha! The teaching version of “irreconcilable differences.”

But I, being the psycho-nerd that I am, think of it a little differently. More fundamentally, dare-I-say.

I think of team-teaching in terms of “fitting together.”

Fitting together. The ways people plug into each other to get any relationship going. The ways we dance together. Sure, fitting together includes matching teaching styles. But it’s more than that. Fitting together encompasses what we believe about ourselves, what we expect from relationships, how we interpret other people and their actions, how we grab onto data that reinforces our negative self-beliefs and biased expectations and interpretations, when and how we regress to our worst selves and become defensive and immovable, what emotions come up and blind – or blindside – us, how we push each other’s buttons without even trying.

Every co-teacher has to manage these possible pitfalls of fitting together. Some manage them without thinking about it. They fit together well emotionally, relationally, and in terms of teaching style. They work out their differences and tensions flexibly and effectively. They’re the lucky ones. Yay for them!!!

The ones who break up, I suspect, are the ones who fall into a relational hole. A pitfall. That is, they settle into a maladaptive relational pattern, a bad fit, that makes them both miserable.

Maladaptive relational patterns. What are those? Specifically, what maladaptive relational patterns might co-teachers fall into?

Ah! Great questions! I’m so glad you asked!

Relational patterns are familiar ways of fitting together in relationship. They are the ways we learned to be in relationship, from infancy onward. The roles that worked for us. The know-it-all role. The appeaser role. The passive role. The peace-keeper role. The caretaker role. The cared-for role.

Because these roles work for us over time, they solidify into patterns. Into behaviors and responses that reflect a few important elements: Our beliefs about ourselves, our expectations of the world, our perceptions, how we interpret those perceptions. All of this coming together in patterned roles and behaviors that we don’t even notice we’re enacting. They’re like our psycho-autopilot.

What are maladaptive relational patterns? They are the entrenched ways of being that we snap into when the going gets tough. When we’re stressed or overwhelmed. When our buttons are pushed. They’re familiar ways of being that worked for us when we were younger – when we were interacting with primary caregivers like mothers or fathers or guardians or grandmothers – but that don’t work right now, when we’re older and interacting with colleagues or bosses or students. Or spouses or children.

OK. Got it. Maladaptive relational patterns. The ways we fit with other people that are actually bad for us because they’re irrelevant now and even damaging.

So: What maladaptive relational patterns might co-teachers fall into?

Ah. Let me count the patterns. Right off the top of my head I can think of four. (That’s not to say there aren’t more!) The one-up/one-down pattern, where one teacher is the boss and the other is always subordinate. The envy pattern where one teacher undermines the other or actively tears her down because, dontcha know, “If I can’t have this great thing you have – organizational skill, for example, or deep content knowledge, or a good relationship with students. Or a sense of personal authority. Or self-confidence. Or that really nice dress – if I can’t have that great thing, then by god you won’t have it either.”

The resistance pattern, where one teacher prevents the other teacher from making any headway. Like when one teacher makes a suggestion: “How ‘bout this?” And the other teacher says, “Nah.” And the first teacher says, “OK then. How ‘bout this?” And the other teacher says, “Nah.” And so forth. And so on. A fascinating relational pattern.

But these are for another day.

The fourth pattern, the one we’re gonna talk about today, is the one Rachel is mired in. In the psychodynamic world, this pattern is called enabling.

In my own private little world, it’s called filling the void. Here’s how this relational pattern works:

You get someone who has their way of doing – or, in many cases, not doing – things. That way works for them, but it doesn’t work for their partner or co-teacher. By not doing things, or not doing them in a certain way, that someone unconsciously creates a void, a vacuum, a space where stuff is not getting done or isn’t up to someone else’s snuff. 

Love it: the void is where stuff is not up to snuff.

This void is ANATHEMA to the enabler. It is INTOLERABLE. Things must be done, and they must be done right. The void for an enabler is the most magnetic, seductive hole you can imagine. They – we, cuz I have spent most of my life doing this – walk right into it. With self-righteousness. And, ultimately, with resentment. But, really, we walk right into voids because they make us so anxious.

Because voids promise chaos. They mean all hell might break loose. They mean someone is going to have to clean things up, make things right again. And, if cleaning things up is inevitable, you might as well jump in right now. Prevent the mess from happening in the first place.

Filling voids makes enablers feel great! Because order is re-asserted, the job gets done, and the enablers are above reproach. They might even get praised for their over-the-top effort.

In short, filling voids makes enablers feel pumped.

But here’s the rub. By filling the void – by doing what hasn’t been done, or redoing what wasn’t done right the first time – I actually reinforce my partner’s incompetence – or, more charitably, their inactivity, or their lower standards. I teach them through my hyper-competence – one, that they are incompetent and, two, that they can keep on being incompetent because I’ll fill in for them. Oh! and three: basically, that they do not exist. Because what they do – or don’t do – doesn’t count and is easily over-written by what I do.

Not hard to see how this little dance can harden fairly quickly into a relational pattern. A maladaptive relational pattern where one person’s competence and power and self-regard depend on another person’s incompetence and powerlessness and, possibly, self-loathing. Because void fillers can’t get pumped without a void to fill. And that’s not good. That’s why it’s maladaptive.

So! We’ve touched on a number of maladaptive relational patterns, or pitfalls, or holes, that co-teachers can fall into: one-up/one-down, envy, resistance, and the one we’ve spent a little extra time on, filling the void. Lovely! Let’s move on to see what happens with Rachel.

[break]

When you think about it, co-teaching is perilous!! And how many teachers actually do think about it? I mean, in these terms? I mean, sit down and do some serious planning about how they’re going to manage their relationship?

Ha. Ha. Ha.

Forgive me. Perhaps I’m wrong about this. But I can tell you that Rachel, who knew her relationship with her co-teacher was not working, did not approach him with the suggestion that they talk about how to fit together better.

Instead, she brought this difficult relationship to her Teacher Support Group. Which was an excellent alternative. Knowing, of course, that the group members were not going to trash her co-teacher, who was also their colleague. No. She knew the group members would help her understand the dynamics – the maladaptive relational pattern – she was experiencing and support her in crafting a plan for dealing with it.

I gotta say this particular Teacher Support Group meeting began tellingly. One of Rachel’s colleagues in the TSG, Sabrina, mentioned during her check-in that her personal life was a little fraught just then. Rachel asked a question about it and Sabrina, in answering the question, began to cry.

Of course, all emotions are welcome in a Teacher Support Group – after all, the work we do in a TSG is called “emotion work”!! – so we kept the space open for Sabrina to feel what she was feeling. Then we continued with check-in. 

Right after the group decided to focus on Rachel’s co-teaching issue, Rachel had to get something cleared up. “Sabrina,” she said, “I feel as though I made you cry earlier.” Sabrina assured Rachel that her crying was not Rachel’s fault. But my ears perked up.

The group asked Rachel a ton of questions and we eventually hypothesized that Rachel was indeed engaged in an enabling relationship with Edmund. He either did nothing or what he did was sub-par according to Rachel. (Not according to him, mind you. Just according to Rachel.) She readily admitted to feeling the pull towards this void – the vast gap between her standards and Edmund’s – which she regularly filled competently but exhaustingly.

Grandiosely.

It was at this moment that I brought up Rachel’s concern about Sabrina during check-in. Her assumption that she had made Sabrina cry. It reminded me of an amazing moment in my therapist training, one that has shaped not just my thinking about enabling but my slow slog out of that mode of behaving myself.

It happened when I was an intern working as a therapist for children and adolescents who had experienced sexual abuse or domestic violence. I had had a session with a teenager that had not, I felt, gone well. I hadn’t succeeded in making my client feel any better by the end of our session. 

Coincidentally, my supervisor – the therapist who did for me what I do for teachers – was meeting with me that day. I told him about how bad I felt about this session with this young woman.

He said two words: “negative grandiosity.”

That is, the inclination to blame oneself when things don’t go well for other people.

Grandiosity? When you expect yourself to get everything done. When you stave off chaos by exerting sometimes super-human control. When you fill the void. When you’re a savior.

Negative grandiosity? When you blame yourself for failing to control other people or circumstances. For failing to be a savior.

Either way, negative grandiosity or can we call it positive grandiosity? Kinda weird, cuz grandiosity is never positive – either way, grandiosity amounts to supersized responsibility and – as I said earlier – the successful erasure of another person. 

Because when it’s my job to save the day by doing someone else’s job – so-called “positive” grandiosity, though that’s a terrible term – or it’s my fault that I couldn’t control another person’s experience – negative grandiosity – where is that person again? Here’s where: nowhere. That person is out of the picture. Cuz I and my competence or incompetence – doesn’t really matter which – are filling the entire frame.

I pointed this out to Rachel – gently, I think, but directly. The data , I said, indicated a tendency in her to manage her anxiety by taking control. By basically wiping everybody off the table to clear the way for her to make sure everything and everybody would be all right.

By doing for Edmund what he didn’t do automatically by himself – that was Rachel’s grandiosity. By assuming she was responsible for Sabrina’s tears – that was her negative grandiosity.

By believing that, if she didn’t do all this, no one else would. And all hell would break loose.

No wonder Rachel is intense.

Of course, there is no blame here. Just observation of a pattern. A pattern that worked for Rachel when she was little – when, I wager, she was surrounded by too much actual incompetence – but that doesn’t work for her now that she’s an adult.

You know, Rachel was not alone on this. Most of us in the TSG – including me, of course – could relate directly to her grandiosity. So she had a lot of support in coming up with her plan of action, which was to step back from the void when she wanted to rush forward and giving Edmund a chance to step up. Which meant asking for what she needed. Which meant having a talk with Edmund about balancing out the workload. Which she did do. And Edmund immediately and willingly divided their responsibilities right down the middle. 

Now for the real test. Because then Rachel had to live with this solution. Without crowding Edmund out of the way so she could work harder and better than he did. Without condemning his work as sub-par but, rather, living with it, accepting it because it was his work, not hers. Without succumbing to her anxiety, which she could have continued to believe was about Edmund’s teaching but was more about her fear of chaos and her distrust of others. Without gaining elusive comfort in omnipotent control, in grandiosity.

“It’s hard,” Rachel told us.

Yes. It is.

[break]

Hoo! This was a tough one. Co-teaching. Grandiosity and enabling, filling the void, managing overwhelming anxiety by taking complete control, then feeling frustrated and corrosively resentful because you’re alone on it. UHHH. It’s like there’s no escape. And that’s how Rachel felt at the beginning of this TSG. As if she were trapped.

The way out was to figure out how Rachel was working together with Edmund to build the trap in the first place. The trap being the maladaptive relational pattern. Right? How were Rachel and Edmund fitting together? How were they helping each other co-create this way of being together that Rachel – thank god!! – found so frustrating and unsatisfying? Even painful?

It takes courage and honesty and will power – and kind, caring, non-judgmental help and companionship – to work one’s way out of these traps, these relational pitfalls, these holes. But it is possible. And so worth it!!

So what’s the axiom for the day? The big, overarching axiom is this: Look for the fit. That is, the maladaptive relational pattern.

The sub-axiom, which gives you a concrete fit to look for, is this: Avoid voids.

How the heck do you avoid voids? Especially when you’re drawn to them like a moth to a spotlight?

Try this: Start with resentment. It’s a fantastic sign that you have been filling voids. To me – and for Rachel – resentment arises when you are doing more than you should and – flip side – someone else is doing less. Definition of a void. Yes? If you can notice your resentment while it’s happening – and, in my vast experience, it’s fairly easy to do this because resentment is one of those emotions that simmers and stews, feeding itself with self-righteousness – then you can wonder where the void is.

Who’s not doing what? 

Then you can look at what you’re doing or what you’ve done. And wonder whom you’re trying to save. From what. Are you trying to protect yourself from some mess, some chaos, that you suspect could happen down the road? Some discomfort you, personally, do not want to feel?

Are you protecting someone else from experiencing the natural consequences of their own inaction or incompetence? 

What would it be like for you to let this mess happen? To let the natural consequences fall on the people who should be experiencing those natural consequences in the first place? (One could argue this is a valuable path to learning and change.) Can you survive letting go of grandiose control? Can you let things be and trust they will work out?

OR what would it be like for you to ask for what you need? Like Rachel did? And then survive that? Survive getting what you asked for? Without resorting to old grandiose habits that make you feel pumped but exhausted and resentful?

Hoooo!!! Hard work. Every step of the way it’s hard work. But so worth doing. Because, by avoiding voids, you are disassembling a nasty maladaptive relational pattern. And making yourself a much healthier developmental partner. Which is really great work. For co-teachers. And for everyone else.