Bonni Stachowiak [00:00:00]:

Today on episode number 519 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, how to foster self compassion as a professor with Danielle Dave La Mar.

Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, Maximizing Human Potential.

Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I’m Bonni Stachowiak, and this is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our productivity approaches so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students.

Once a tenured professor stuck in the academic overwork burnout cycle, doctor Danielle De La Mare found herself confused, scared, and hopeless about the future of her career. Her imposter feelings, including shame and fear, drove her to intense levels of overwork, often debilitating anxiety and exhaustion. She often hustled to prove her worth, and much of the hustle was around her teaching, which eventually led to burnout.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:01:23]:

Dave, as a career wellness coach, Danielle facilitates deep study for academics who are stuck in their own academic overwork burnout cycle. She’s also the creator of the self compassionate professor podcast, featuring guests who have paved creative and self compassionate career paths after struggle. Danielle De La Mare, welcome to Teaching in Higher Ed.

Danielle De La Mare [00:01:49]:

Oh, thank you for having me, Bonni. It’s so nice to be here.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:01:53]:

I get so many random messages associated with being somebody who’s podcasted for a long time, And I will tell you when the message from from you came in, it was like, oh, let’s stop everything. This this this is a very, very important message, and I’m so grateful for your work and even just the short time I’ve known about you and what you do. And so I I wanna say again, I guess, so glad you’re here. So glad that that your work exists in this and so many of us need this so much.

Danielle De La Mare [00:02:25]:

That’s so nice to hear. Thank you for saying that. I and I know. And I whatever I say, I thank you for saying that. Often people are like, well, I’m not just saying that. And I just want you to know that I don’t hear that you’re just saying that. I appreciate the you letting me know. That feels good.

Danielle De La Mare [00:02:40]:

I have this sense that we’re all I I have my perspective is that we all have a purpose, that we all have sort of something that we’re supposed to do in the world, and our strengths and our limitations and the things that we offer are here for a reason. And so you saying that just I don’t know. It offers me confirmation that I’m on the track I wanna be on. Yeah. So thank you.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:03:04]:

I suspect that I’m not alone in the part of the bio that I just read from you, this idea of the hustle to especially the hustle as it relates to feeling a sense that we need to prove our worth by working harder and harder. And rather than me talk about what that looks like in my life, I’m far more interested in what that looks like for you or what you’ve seen it look like in other people.

Danielle De La Mare [00:03:33]:

Yeah. Oh, wow. Okay. So I I first I think I first heard it in that context from Brene Brown, the hustling for your work. And when I read it, I was like, oh my gosh. That’s like the story of my life, hustling for my worth. I I started out as a 1st gen college student. And so I never I never felt like I I belonged.

Danielle De La Mare [00:04:00]:

I never felt like I knew what I was doing. And I and, actually, the older I get, the more I realize nobody knows what they’re doing. Mhmm. But I what I noticed was that I had gotten caught up in this overwork cycle. And I will I have an example of spending an entire 8 hour day just on one class period, planning for one class period, an entire 8 hours. And I did it because I wanted it to be perfect. I wanted them to connect to it. I wanted them to feel it.

Danielle De La Mare [00:04:35]:

I wanted them to walk out of my classroom that day totally transformed. And I had all of these perfectionistic ideas that took me to places that weren’t healthy. And I worked way, way, way, way, way harder than I should have because I thought that if I didn’t work hard, people would see that I wasn’t worthy of being their teacher. And I also felt it a little bit with colleagues as well. If I don’t work hard enough, they’ll see that I really shouldn’t be in this department. I really shouldn’t be a colleague. So, yeah, that’s the hustle, I guess, is in that way is sort of hustling to it’s almost like I’m lying to people, and I’m trying to show them, like, the used car salesman kinda like I’m trying to show them that I actually have what I don’t actually have. So it shows up in that way.

Danielle De La Mare [00:05:31]:

But secondly, the hustle shows up in just a hustle culture in terms of just we are always working. We’re always busy. We’re always doing, doing, doing, going, going, going. And so hustling in both ways has been a huge, huge part of my sort of healing in my life.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:05:55]:

As you were sharing those stories, and thank you so much for that, that I mean, I suspect there will be people listening who can really relate to an 8 hour Dave on a on a single that’s because I I think about the questions that I’ve gotten over all these years, and it’s, you know, how do we know when it’s enough? And I think sometimes we can get our minds wrapped around that we’re supposed to then if if this does if this is resonating for anyone listening, and I suspect for many listening, it will. I find that sometimes it’s, oh, then I just need to be more like this other person who has a totally different personality than me. I’m not a mellow person, but I’m also like so I wanna remind myself, it’s okay to find joy in your work. It’s okay to work in differing rhythms that other people don’t work in. You are not an 8 to 5 person, and to try to make yourself into a mold that has predictable, relaxed, mellowed hours would be to lose some huge parts of who I am and what brings me joy. And I have to share, this is going to be family friendly, the way that I describe this, but it wasn’t family friendly when I read it. There was some meme out there that said something about and I’m not gonna get it right. If I can find it, I will I will put a link in the show notes, but it was something like, I’m just trying to find, like, I I have 2 sometimes I give too many f’s, and sometimes I don’t give enough F’s.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:07:21]:

And I’m just trying to find the proper F distribution. But it was a curse word in place of the letter F there. And I was just, I spelled that, by the way, e f f s. Yes. That’s the proper spelling for that. And that, ever since I saw it, it was probably 6 months ago, it keeps resonating because it’s like, yeah, the too many, the spending 8 hours to plan for 1 class session, that’s probably too many f’s. But to me, the opposite is not going to heal me. Right? So I guess one one thing we could start with is just just how important in your work have you found it for yourself and for those that you work with that we’re able to name some of these emotions that you you talked about, you know, with terms of this hustle that needing to have the sense of worth from that, the fear, the shame, the attachment to what’s gonna happen to us.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:08:14]:

What like, how important is the naming process and all of that?

Danielle De La Mare [00:08:20]:

That’s a good question. I used to when I taught college students. I would, every day, ask them to name how they were feeling when I took role. So I would ask them to give me an emotion word. And I got that from a colleague who who did something like that, but I, like, modified it. It made it about emotions specifically. And I found that when they named their emotions and when I named mine, because I would always do it too, it brought me down a notch. I felt less anxious.

Danielle De La Mare [00:08:59]:

I felt more connected to myself. I felt more connected to them. There’s something about naming what’s happening to you that allows you to, yeah. It’s like it takes off the the foggy glasses almost, and you can actually see a little bit more clearly what your experience actually is. And that then allows you to connect more deeply to your own inner wisdom, and it allows you to connect more deeply to the other to the people around you. But I think there’s also moments when you don’t need to name it. You just need to feel it. You might be feeling an emotion, and you don’t need to go to your head to, like, figure out what the name of that emotion is.

Danielle De La Mare [00:09:47]:

You can just feel it. I have a morning practice where I just sit there and I feel the emotions that I’m having. Right? I am a human being in this human Bonni, and I have these emotions. And I like to just sit there and be in the emotions and feel them fully because I it allows me to release them. And sometimes I name them and sometimes I don’t. So I think it’s really important to name them, and there are times when you don’t necessarily need to name them. You just need to feel them.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:10:21]:

More of what I’m hearing with what you just shared is really the importance of that pause. In fact, before we started recording, you you started to pause yourself, and I thought, well, I’m gonna join her in this pause. And how much can happen when we do take those pauses? I have a similar practice in my teaching where I’ll every time we get together, it’ll be what’s one thing since we last gathered together that has brought you life, brought you joy, and what’s one thing that has taken life away, taken the joy away? And I will occasionally forget to do it, and you’ll miss things like someone’s getting married or someone just had a baby or it’s someone’s birthday or even I mean, to find out a loss of a family member, all the things. And if I don’t slow myself down, then I’ll miss really vital information to know both for that moment of attempting to foster community, but also that story that gets told as we we join others in community for any length of time. I do this, by the way, with meetings at work too. It’s a really cool by the way, it’s a it is I did not invent this. It is a variation of an ancient Ignatian prayer that that those two questions of, what brought you life and what took life away.

Danielle De La Mare [00:11:41]:

I well, what I like about it when I hear it is just this it’s the sense that you belong here. And I think that when you’re unable when you’re you’re bringing whatever it is you’re bringing to the classroom and it doesn’t get acknowledged and nobody knows about it, you feel like you’re shrinking. You don’t feel like you’re part of the group. You you don’t feel seen. I think that’s what I love about that. That’s a great practice. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:12:11]:

Talk about a time of either for you or someone that you you’ve worked alongside where what does it look like when we lack self compassion? What’s what’s a snapshot of what that might look like?

Danielle De La Mare [00:12:25]:

Well, for me, it was pushing myself to be something I wasn’t. And that that could show up in the classroom as, like, this I always have these moments where I need to slow down and I need to pause as we were talking about, and I wouldn’t let myself, for example. Like, I need to sit here and digest what I just said, and I need you to all sit here and digest what I just said. And we need to sort of, like, leave this moment that we just had and transition into a new moment, and we need a little bit of space to do that. And I think that I think that not having those moments, not giving myself those moments, not letting myself have those moments was lack of self compassion. Lack of self compassion showed up as like, I don’t have time to take care of myself. I don’t have time to eat healthy. I don’t have time to connect with my best friend.

Danielle De La Mare [00:13:33]:

I don’t you know, it was it’s this, like, you don’t matter that it was lack of self compassion. You don’t matter. What you do need to do though is show up for the world around you, for all the expectations, for all the to dos you need to oh, I guess we come back to hustle again. You need to hustle to show everyone else that you belong. And meanwhile, you’re not even belonging to yourself. Right? You just belong to them, not you. And it hurts, and it’s painful, and you eventually, at least that’s what happened to me, burn out.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:14:08]:

Yeah. And there’s so much thank you for sharing that. There’s so much in that around ableism. There’s so much around that of expecting people to not have bodies. I I’m thinking as you were sharing, a a former colleague who sadly passed away that would, be sipping the ginger ale between classes as she was going through chemo. And, I mean, I just we’re not supposed to vomit when we’re on chemo or when we’re pregnant or for for whatever is going on in our bodies. Yeah. And that there’s so much that gets ingrained in that.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:14:39]:

And and you said the word belonging earlier, the belonging and the mattering. You belong, but you also matter. You matter, and and you matter not just your brain, but you matter. Your body matters, and your body is going to have needs that if we don’t, you know, leave room for our own bodily needs, how could we possibly ever expect that someone else might be able to have room for their own bodily needs? Yeah.

Danielle De La Mare [00:15:06]:

And I I would also go beyond the body piece too and say, you know, lack of self compassion is also about, like, not paying attention to what your bigger sort of desires are in in your life. Right? I remember being at a faculty meeting once and I I had a a colleague who she and I were, like, really close, and we talked a lot about how how much our sort of personal desires and identity shaped who we were as teachers. And we wanted and we wanted the whole group of faculty in our department to sort of think about that question. And so our chair gave us a few minutes, and he didn’t love it. But he gave us a few minutes to see, and to talk and and sort of talk about this idea and then have each person say what it is they actually really would love to have happen in their lives. You know, beyond all the regular stuff that you talk about in the faculty meeting, we wanted something sort of deeper. And one of the one of our colleagues has said something like, I wanna write a children’s book. And we were like, what? We had no idea.

Danielle De La Mare [00:16:21]:

We had no idea. This was a quantitative researcher. She was she’s not the kind of person you would have thought would have wanted to do that, and that’s what she wanted. But she pushed it down because she was like, I don’t have time for that. Maybe when I get to full professor, I’ll do that. And so lack of self compassion, I believe, is pushing those those, like, deeper desires down and not letting them out and not giving yourself space to process how they might happen in your life, how you might, you know, bring them into fruition. Yeah. So there’s like a a sort of a psychological spiritual element to it, but there’s also sort of a body element to it.

Danielle De La Mare [00:17:02]:

I guess, mind, body, spirit. There’s the self compassionate way, and there’s the non self compassionate way. In one way you exist and the other way you don’t, basically.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:17:11]:

You’ve started to touch on this a bit, but tell us a little bit more. Why do we need self compassion?

Danielle De La Mare [00:17:18]:

Well, I want to first say that we all deserve to take up space in the world. It is our right. It is our birthright. And if we don’t take up space in the world, at self compassion allows us to take up space in the world. Right? When we give our when we actually open up space for ourselves, we open up space for our own gifts to to change other people, to impact the world in positive ways. But if we don’t let ourselves do that, if we don’t let ourselves exist, Right? If we don’t let ourselves be who we are, the world suffers a little bit because our gifts are not there. Right? They’re missing.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:18:11]:

And tell us a bit what are some ways we can have more self compassion.

Danielle De La Mare [00:18:15]:

One of the first things that comes up for me is I just I I just had a client that I was talking to this morning, and she’s talking about something that’s really difficult that she’s been going through. And she talked about it for a good, I don’t know, 15 minutes or so. And at the end of that, I said, let’s just take a second and really feel all the pain that you’ve been feeling. And put your hands over your heart. Like, I’m a huge fan of Kristen Neff. So if you if you’re into self compassion, Kristin Neff is the the person to go to, her research. And I I and so I was doing the Kristen Neff stuff. Right? Put your hands over your heart.

Danielle De La Mare [00:18:57]:

Let’s really let yourself surrender all of these feelings into your own hands. Right? And almost like your your hands are holding you up, and you get to just fully surrender. Your hands get to be your refuge. And then language. Right? What is some language? Like, this is so, so freaking hard. I can’t of course, I’m feeling this way. Of course, it’s been a hard few days or it’s been a hard couple weeks. Of course.

Danielle De La Mare [00:19:28]:

Right? Like, giving ourselves some language that allows us also to surrender. That’s a that’s a good way to just acknowledge and honor your own humanity. And it’s also it it’s also super, super, super useful for shame. So if you’re I used to get really, for lack of a better word, shamey. I would feel shame when I would walk out of the classroom and it didn’t go well. And it would be really intense shame, really, really, really intense to the to the point that I would it would be almost debilitating. And I would try to shove it away, and I remember coming home one day and having a drink, like, pouring vodka and cranberry juice and just, like, trying to get rid of it. If you’re feeling shame, that process of just sort of turning into the feelings, holding yourself, giving yourself words that you can surrender into, that entire process is gonna be so much more effective than having the drink or trying to, you know, binge watch something and try to get rid of it because shame is this really powerful, terrible, terribly, terrible feeling emotion that that that hangs over you.

Danielle De La Mare [00:20:44]:

And until you fully feel it, you are not going to be able to release it fully. It’s gonna keep coming back. It’s always gonna be in the background, and it’s always gonna feel kinda gross. So that process, if you’re dealing with shame, is a really, really, really, really effective process.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:21:01]:

My sense is, as you’re describing this, it’s really resonating with me just the importance of that. I I mean, I haven’t done the lay my heart on my hands, but I’m going to, you know, just just the that seems helpful. And I’m thinking about what you shared about shame, and I’m thinking about the times when either I have or when I’ve heard stories or read about other people’s reflections on where that sharing of the shame may be misplaced. So I’m thinking about women. Sometimes I’m thinking about people of color, those who are disabled, and I’m thinking about the hustle. Like, it it it it would be hard enough to heal thyself when it comes to the hustle mindset, and then there’s the systemic things that, my gosh, if we tried to get healing from a system that says you’re not good enough unless you’re hustling constantly and proving your worth constantly, I I guess so so so I think there’s some less helpful places probably to process all of this with and to share it before it was safe to do so or if it was ever safe to do. So this is am I making any sense? I feel like I just asked 27 questions possibly. But

Danielle De La Mare [00:22:15]:

Well, so what’s resonating with me is I’m I’m thinking about the system, and I’m thinking about how the system exists to create certain things. Right? Like, you’ve got your higher ed institution that needs classes to be taught. It needs grades to be submitted. It needs advisers. It needs blah blah blah. It needs your publications. It needs all the all of those things. And so for me, the way that lands is if you are doing all of the things that the system is requiring of you, then you are putting your time and energy into supporting the system, not yourself.

Danielle De La Mare [00:22:57]:

And so there’s this, and it doesn’t mean those two things can’t exist simultaneously. Like, maybe you’re supporting the system and yourself at the same time, but you’ve gotta find ways that are aligned to your own values. Right? Like, you don’t you don’t say yes to a service committee, or if you have a choice to teach a particular class or whatever, you don’t say yes if it’s not something that really speaks to you, if it’s not really a deeper sort of desire of yours. Because if it’s not, you’re you’re not you’re just supporting the system. You’re not supporting yourself. And when you’re just supporting the system, you don’t have as much strength. You don’t have as much bandwidth. You don’t have as much capacity.

Danielle De La Mare [00:23:42]:

You just don’t have the energy to do it all when it’s not aligned to your own I what’s the word I’m looking for when it’s not aligned to sort of your own desires Mhmm. To your own values, that kind of thing.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:23:58]:

Yeah. And I as you’re sharing it, certainly, parts of that system can feed us well, but not the whole beast of it. Right. The whole beast will eat us right up.

Danielle De La Mare [00:24:09]:

Right. And I think that I I think that part of self compassion is not just being able to say no to something, but but being able to sort of feel all the pain that comes with having to say no. Like, oh my god. I’m gonna let down. I’m gonna let people down, and they’re gonna think I’m incompetent. And they’re whatever. All the feelings that come up, like, feel the feelings and then say no. Right? And then draw the line and say, you know what? In the end, this is my why.

Danielle De La Mare [00:24:46]:

My why is that I need to take care of myself so that I can show up for my students, my colleagues, my children, my whatever it is. Right? I need to be a whole person. And if I’m just doing the the sort of working to uphold the system, I’m very much fragmented. I’m doing this thing that they want me to do and that thing that they want me to do and that thing, And I need my wholeness so that I can sustain my energy.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:25:15]:

That’s so beautiful. I don’t want to stop this conversation, which is I don’t have to, but we’re gonna go to the recommendations. But I just thank you for these such powerful things. I have a sense that when I listen to this, you know, when after our editor does his magic with it, I’m gonna need to hear this multiple times. It’s gonna be on repeat. So thank you for all these reflections and and helpful tools, and I know you’ll be sharing a little bit more in the recommendation segment. This time, I wanted to share a recommendation from a prior guest. Tolu Noa has been on a couple of times now, and so anytime I see her put something out, I’m almost like, oh, I gotta go see this.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:25:55]:

It’s gonna be good. And so she gave a workshop, and the title of it was behind the curtain, tip to make virtual facilitation of faculty development workshops easier. But I do wanna say, even if you’re not in development, if you ever facilitate, which is to say all of us are facilitators in one way, shape, or form, this is a wonderful resource. So it’s a workshop that she gave to an organization. There’s a video of her giving it, and she does such a tremendous job of providing lots of resources. And I would just suggest if you do go check it out, just pick one thing. And the one thing that I picked out of the many, many resources that she has there is I didn’t realize that Padlet I like making use of Padlet. It’s a virtual corkboard, and I enjoy that as a collaborative tool in different kinds of learning and work collaboration, but I didn’t realize that you can link just to a specific section of a Padlet.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:26:49]:

So she had her workshop broken up into something like 3 or 4 sections, and she’d stop. And then, oh, and then if you could just add to that section of the Padlet, here’s the link to do that. Oh, and then this is the second exercise. Now you could just go and add, and I thought, I had no idea you could do that, and so I do suggest that you go. And it’s also just so fun to get to see her, speaking of people who are able to do things that they clearly are so good and that bring them joy. I mean, she’s definitely one of those people. I would suggest just going to Look. She has her whole setup there.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:27:24]:

If any of you ever do any virtual meetings, virtual facilitation, it’s so fun to get to see a photograph of how her setup is, and she explains everything. This is where I have this, and this is where I have that. So I was very much enjoying it, but I did have to shrink it down for me because I just wanted to follow all of the things she was saying. But I was like, what is the one thing you could do? And the one thing I could do that I already know how to use, but I could just level it up a little bit is that Padlet trick where there’s so much else that she has in this workshop. I’d I’d strongly recommend it. By the way, you don’t even have to watch the video. She’s got all of her slides, and then she’s got links to the things that she talked about and then this Padlet board that lots of people shared ideas on as well. So I am now, Danielle, gonna pass it over to you for whatever you would like to recommend.

Danielle De La Mare [00:28:10]:

I guess my recommendation is gosh. There are a couple, but

Bonni Stachowiak [00:28:15]:

Please. You got time.

Danielle De La Mare [00:28:17]:

Okay. So I’m just imagining the higher ed environment. And, you know, you’re teaching at different times. You have meetings at different times. For some of us who are adjuncts, I did that for a long time myself. We’re going from one institution to the next institution, and it really feels like a whirlwind. Like, we never have the same schedule every day. We’re not even in the same place every day.

Danielle De La Mare [00:28:48]:

And so finding moments to ground yourself is absolutely essential because you can have your energy over there at that institution and over there at that institution. Or, you know, if you’re, like, at one institution, maybe you have your energy over there on that service committee, and then you have some of your energy over there on, you know, your classroom. You got to have moments where you come back to yourself and you gather all of your energy and you bring it back to you, and you allow yourself to just be present, and you feel yourself ground. A lot of people who talk about grounding, they talk about, like, imagine yourself brow growing roots from your feet down to the center of the earth or imagine a cord or whatever it is. Right? Like, finding time to ground, like, regularly before every class probably, before every meeting is essential, especially in that environment where you’re constantly moving and everything’s changing all the time. And I think that as faculty, we love the freedom and the flexibility, and we like to just kinda we we like that we have a different schedule every Dave, but it can it can create some problems in terms of, like I remember I was just telling you before the recording. I had a a colleague who was an adjunct, and she was teaching 7 classes at different institutions at across, like, 3 institutions. And she said sometimes she would walk into her class and be like, oh my gosh.

Danielle De La Mare [00:30:26]:

What class am I teaching right now? It’s like, I don’t even I don’t even know. And when you get to that point, like, burnout is so close. Right? Your burnout is so so close. So find times to ground. Find times to feel yourself again. Find and I’m talking like and when I say find times, I don’t mean, like, once a week. Do it multiple times a day. Like, okay.

Danielle De La Mare [00:30:50]:

I’m gonna collect all my energy, and I’m gonna feel myself right here and now. So that is the one recommendation. And stop stop working, you can’t stop planning your classes. I remember going to a movie and planning my class while I was sitting in the movie theater kind of thing. If you are attached at that level, that is going to cause suffering. And so practicing the grounding, practicing the pausing, practicing detaching yourself is so, so, so important if you want to do this work in a sustainable way. So, yeah, I guess that’s my recommendation.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:31:42]:

What is a small practice about detaching yourself?

Danielle De La Mare [00:31:46]:

So it can come in a few different ways. You could just say, every day before I eat lunch, I’m gonna sit down and imagine myself growing roots into the center of the earth. Or I am going to sit down and write a few things I’m grateful for. Or I’m going to sit down and just breathe and feel what it feels like to be me. What is it like to be me? Do I even know right now? Often, you know, after we’ve taught a few classes and we get back to our office, we don’t even know what we’re doing anymore. We don’t know who we are. We’re just we’re so spread thin. And so it’s just whatever practice feels good to you to to sort of gather yourself and bring yourself back to wholeness.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:32:32]:

Before we close our time together, I realized that you just sort of talked us through that from a hypothetical practice. Would you just lead us through one? Like, people, if they’re if they are in a place where they could do this, or press pause, and if you can find a place where you can do this, would you just guide us through 1 before we close?

Danielle De La Mare [00:32:51]:

Yes. Of course. Let’s, let’s go ahead and just take a second and pause. Notice what it feels like to be in the silence. Notice what’s going on with you. What are your energies? Do you have a frenetic energy going on? Is there a sadness like a like a sad energy, a down energy? Notice your emotions. Just take some time to welcome everything that’s with you. Really just let everything be here.

Danielle De La Mare [00:33:25]:

You don’t have to shove anything away. You don’t have to push anything away. You get to be exactly as you are. And notice what it feels like to be you right now. Go ahead and take a breath. And when you exhale, imagine growing roots from your feet into the ground. So it’s gonna go through the floor all the way into the ground. So inhale and then exhale and feel your roots grow a little bit more.

Danielle De La Mare [00:33:56]:

Inhale again, and feel your roots grow a little bit more. You know, a couple more times here. And hopefully at this point, you can feel a little more grounded. And that grounding can support all the things you have going on, all the things you’re trying to hold right now. And then maybe just little by little, let let some things go and let them just sort of float away. And then just one last breath here. So I tried to do that a little quicker than I normally would, but hopefully, something like that, a practice like that is helpful. Oh, the other thing I really like doing is writing down one thing that you appreciate about yourself.

Danielle De La Mare [00:34:39]:

Like, I really love the way I interacted with this student Dave, or I really love the way I showed up for so and so today or whatever it is. I really love the way I think about this one thing. That’s also a really nice grounding practice. I think that when we’re sort of floating out there in the world and not grounded, we forget our worth. So so that’s another way to do it.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:35:04]:

I am so grateful that you reached out and or someone reached out on your behalf, and I’m so glad to have been connected. And I’m so glad that I asked at the end if you would be willing to do that. That was unplanned friends who are listening. I’m like, are you feeling frenetic? Why, yes. I am. I was I I was wonderful for me. I hope it was wonderful for the many people listening around the world too. So, yeah, I know that Danielle and I would love to hear from anyone if that was at all transformative.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:35:31]:

Just jot me a note if you’re subscribed to the emails or whatever. You know? Send us a note. I know we’d love to both know that that meant something to you too. Yeah. But it was worth it, Danielle, just for me if if it’s nothing else for anyone else, selfishly speaking. Boy, I didn’t know I needed grounding, and now I have a a different kind of practice. Yeah. That’s so wonderful.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:35:51]:

So glad. I’m so glad.

Danielle De La Mare [00:35:51]:

I’m so glad. Good. Good. Good. So glad. Fast to me. It sounds glad it felt good to you.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:35:56]:

Oh, it’s funny

Danielle De La Mare [00:35:57]:

because it felt felt good to you.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:35:59]:

Oh, it’s funny because it felt fast to me too because you started talking. I was like, oh, we’re back now. Like, I was fully into it. So funny. Oh, well, thank you so much for this conversation, and I’m looking and we’ll have all the links to how to get in touch with you. If anyone’s interested to learn more about you and your work, that’ll all be in, and also your podcast. If you appreciated today’s conversation, there’s an entire podcast, the self compassionate professor podcast, and that link will be there in the show notes and on Danielle’s profile as well. So thank you so much again.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:36:27]:

Yes. And I wanna also say my I have, career

Danielle De La Mare [00:36:30]:

wellness, chats, like, coffee chats once a month. So if anybody wants to come to those, you can just go to my website, self compassionateprofessor.com, and click on coffee chats and sign up. We’re gonna actually be offering 2 in May. But, yeah, I try to do them once a month, and it’s just a place where we can really honor and respect career wellness and what that means. So they’re free. Come if you like. It would be great to have you. Yeah.

Danielle De La Mare [00:37:01]:

And thank you. Thank you, Bonni.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:37:02]:

Oh, thanks so much. You know, you’re there I have at least one colleague who is really interested in wellness, so I’m really glad that you mentioned that last thing. I’m now I have even more something more tangible to pass on to someone who is interested in that area. And yeah. So so that’s that’s such a great resource. Thank you so much.

Danielle De La Mare [00:37:20]:

Thank you. And thank you so much for having me. Bonni, you’re so easy to talk to. I really appreciated it.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:37:25]:

Oh, I’m glad. Well, you helped settle my frenetic energy. It was a mutual thing. Thanks once again to Danielle Della Mar for joining me on today’s episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. Today’s episode was produced by me, Bonni Stachowiak. It was edited by Andrew Kroeger. Podcast production support was provided by Sierra Priest. I so appreciate you for listening and being a part of the teaching and higher ed community.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:37:56]:

If you would like to extend that, I invite you to sign up for the weekly update. You’ll receive the most recent episodes show notes as well as some other resources that don’t show up in those same show notes. Head over to teachinginhighered.com/subscribe to sign up. Thanks so much for listening, and I’ll see you next time on Teaching in Higher Ed.

Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts are created using a combination of an automated transcription service and human beings. This text likely will not represent the precise, word-for-word conversation that was had. The accuracy of the transcripts will vary. The authoritative record of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts is contained in the audio file.