In this episode, we talk to Dr. Debbie Joffe Ellis about her work with Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy.  Dr. Ellis discusses how to identify healthy and unhealthy positive and negative emotions with tips for taking control of our emotions.  We also discuss specific applications to education and teacher burnout. This episode was originally released under Teaching and Learning: Theory vs Practice Season 1 Episode 35.

Referenced in this podcast:

• Dr. Debbie Joffe Ellis - Dr Debbie Joffe Ellis is a licensed psychologist (Australia) and mental health counselor (New York), adjunct professor at Columbia University TC, and is affiliated with several major psychological associations and societies − including being a Member of the Australian Psychological Society, and an International Affiliate Member of the American Psychological Association. She has a doctorate in alternative medicine (MDAM) from the Indian Board of Alternative Medicine in affiliation with the World Health Organization, from whom she also received a gold medal (1993) in recognition of her service to the field of alternative and holistic medicine.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

rebt, healthy, emotions, life, work, create, attitudes, unhealthy, irrational, people, stand, teachers, talking, irrational beliefs, person, joy, educators, approach, amy, rational emotive behavior

SPEAKERS

Amy Vujaklija, Joi Patterson, Debbie Joffe Ellis

One of the many gifts of berry Beatty is that it distinguishes between healthy negative emotions and unhealthy negative emotions.

This episode was originally released under the podcast titled teaching and learning theory versus practice. This rebooted episode has been migrated to teaching and leading with Dr. Amy and Dr. Joy. I am Dr. Amy Vujaklija, Director of educator preparation.

And I am Dr. Joy Patterson, Chief Diversity Officer. Our podcast addresses issues through the lens of diversity, equity and inclusion, along with solutions for us to grow as educators.

So join us on our journey to become better teachers and leaders. So let's get into it.

Good morning, Dr. Amy.

Good morning, Dr. Joy. How are you today? I'm

good. How are you?

Well, I have been really interested lately in different psychological, sociological impacts in the classroom, and different kinds of ways to engage students with addressing emotions. I think this this applies to teachers. And I know

I was educated. I was going to say the exact same thing as you were thinking about that I was thinking about all professional educators. Do you recall a few months ago, we were reading a Padlet, which had contributions of hundreds of teachers, most of the teachers were discussing their frustration and the lack of support. We know we can be honest, in our profession, we have one of the highest burnout rates, we know that because it's a hard it is a hard job. It's a very hard job. We're so used to bringing those emotions home with us. You know, you've talked about that, how whatever is impacting your students, it impacts you, and we bring that home with us. So often we have these unhealthy thoughts and practices that we really don't know what to do with and they bother us. And the new word I learned is that they disturb us.

When it makes you wonder, too, if what we are feeling is a healthy emotion, or if it's an unhealthy and unproductive emotion. So

I'm looking forward to today's discussion so we can talk about healthy emotions, how I can have more healthy emotions. So today we're going to talk to Dr. Debbie Joffrey Ellis about some healthy practices that we can implement in our personal lives and in our professional practices.

Yes, Dr. Debbie Jaffe Ellis was born and raised in Melbourne, Australia, New York City has been her home base for the past two decades. She is a licensed psychologist, licensed mental health counselor, presenter, writer, adjunct professor at Columbia University in New York City, where she teaches Rational Emotive behavior therapy and comparative psycho therapies. She wrote the second edition of the book Rational Emotive behavior therapy. It was published in 2019. The original she wrote with her husband in its first edition, and she has written chapters for various textbooks, articles and has reviewed publications for APA as site critiques journal. In 2014. She was named legend in counseling at the American Counseling Association Annual Conference, and has received various other awards and acknowledgments for her work. She joyfully and passionately continues her mission of informing as many people as possible that each one of us has the power to create our emotional destinies despite well and including challenging circumstances. Welcome to our podcast, Dr. Debbie Jaffe, Ella. Hi,

Dr. Amy. Hi, Dr. Joy and listeners or watchers, it's great to be with you.

Hello, beautiful. How are you?

I'm doing very well grateful Grateful for many blessings.

Yes, you are my ray of sunshine. Dr. Ellis. You and your late husband, Dr. Albert Ellis are rock stars. Oh, I like that photo. He's a handsome gentleman. Handsome, very handsome. But you guys are rock stars. In the field of psychology. Dr. Albert Ellis was often described As one of the most important thinkers of the past century, he was the founder of cognitive behavioral therapy. And he developed a groundbreaking approach to psychotherapy known as Rational Emotive behavior therapy, as Dr. Amy said, better known as REBT, you now continue this great work. Can you tell us more about what is REBT?

With pleasure? Thank you. Yeah, so our EBT Rational Emotive behavior therapy is the pioneering cognitive approach that heralded in the cognitive revolution in psychotherapy, and really changed attitudes and thinking not just in the world of therapy and psychology, surely, that that also attitudes, outdated attitudes, and civil attitudes. In society. You know, my late husband, was one of the very few, who was very loud and vocal in the 1940s and 50s, about the importance of equal rights for women, gay rights, the end to the legality of interracial marriage, in some states, in the United States of America, at that time. And so he was the voice of reason. He was the voice of rationality, imbued with compassion. And that is the flavor of the psychotherapeutic approach of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, which, by the way, isn't only an effective scientific evidence based approach, but it's also a way of life for those people who want to apply this such. So just to conclude this longer reply to your question, Dr. Joy, prior to my husband coming out with his approach, Zigmund, Roy, Dr. Freud and psychoanalysis dominated the world of psychotherapy. And that approach, and I'm not in any way saying there aren't positive genius elements within it. But there also our elements that my late husband said, we're just not efficient. It's long term. It's not active directive, it doesn't teach people that we are responsible for creating our emotions, a lot of dwelling in the past and free association, which can provide some insights. And it doesn't help a person learn how to help themselves experience, greater emotional, and mental health and well being and pleasure in life. And so my husband was the first one, if I may say with are the main one with the depths to vocally come up with an approach that disagreed with Freud. Of course, Jung and Adler and others disagreed with him. But our EBT was the first major psychotherapy that came along. And then the well known cognitive behavior therapy CBT. Came 15 years later, Dr. Aaron Beck is known as the father of that, and he acknowledges that our EBT contains the shoulders on which CBT stands I mean, the principles of CBT, there is not one in which our EBT isn't pulsing. And yet our EBT includes some elements that are emphasized that are not so much done in CBT. So long reply to your question.

I love it. And you talk about these outdated attitudes, we are really addressing these attitudes and making some great strides in our society today. But it's often been said, and you allude to this, that we cannot control what happens to us, but we can control our response. Does our EBT or this way of life, you say it's a way of life? So can you tell us more about the kind of control or maybe it's not the right word that our EBT can help us have?

Sure with pleasure? Great question. So there are some things in our lives that we can control we often can control what we eat, whether we choose healthy food or not. We might be able to control the temperature in our own apartment or house there are certain things that there are a whole lot of things in life. I Ever, which we don't have control. And if we don't accept that, and if we spend time ruminating on I should, I should be able to change this and control this. If in fact one can't again, some things we can, some things we can't, I wish right now I could end poverty all over the world, I can do my big, I can find out organizations, I can tribute, whatever I can afford, you know that if I am able to I could go to a country and see what I can do in physical practical terms. But in all probability is the one human I am right now, this week, I probably can't end world poverty. And so it doesn't get me anywhere to demand that I should, it's very healthy to desire to and do what I can. And now what you are getting at Dr. Amy is what can we control, we can control we do create our emotional destiny, if we know that we can and if we know how to and that's what our EBT are one of the many things our EBT teaches us that it's not events that create emotions that follow are what we tell ourselves about the events that creates our emotions. And so when we choose to think in healthy, rational ways, in particular about things in life that are difficult, painful, traumatic or challenging, when we choose a healthy attitude, then we will create healthy emotions. Healthy doesn't necessarily mean happy, but they're healthy, they're enriching, they can be motivating, and they're part of the tapestry of emotional life. The privilege are one of the privileges of being a human is that unless we're impaired or disturbed, we can experience a variety of emotions. And it's a wondrous thing. And so we can choose to adopt attitudes not airy fairy romantic time, the state's also the past when things are tragic, no, but rational, realistic, optimistic attitudes that increase their resilience and our well being and minimize unnecessary suffering and maximize joy and meaningful life. When we think in irrational ways in response to bad things that happen then we create it's not the circumstances, we create our misery.

Okay, so you were talking about healthy, but that doesn't necessarily mean happy, rational versus irrational. Let's dig a little deeper into some of these words where we're using

I'd love to I'd love to and distinguishes between healthy negative emotions and unhealthy negative emotions. Now, in this context, negative doesn't mean bad. It means not so pleasant. You know, a lot of psychotherapeutic approaches, including some very effective ones, tend to bundle the positive, happier, pleasant emotions into one basket and the unpleasant, less pleasant negative ones into another. And REBT gets out its magnifying glass and looks into that so called negative basket and distinguishes between the healthy enriching, negative meaning unpleasant emotions and the unhealthy ones that debilitate as so, what's one what's the other? When we think in an healthy irrational ways which I have a hunch? You may ask me to describe what's an irrational belief later, or sooner but firstly, emotion. So when we think in irrational ways, the unhealthy negative emotions that we can tend to create include anxiety, panic, extreme fear, hopelessness, despondency, depression, rage, shame, and guilt. As I describe those words, I hope that your listeners can contemplate whether they experienced those emotions and whether they actually enhance their lives or have a negative effect. And then the healthy so called negative again, not pleasant, but they're healthy emotions include concern, instead of anxiety, panic and fear. You know, our EBT isn't about us feeling sort of namby pamby some neutral emotional zone No. REBT encourages us to create an intense enriching life and that includes feeling our emotions and encourages us to thereby Create the healthy emotions. So the healthy ones can motivate us concern. If someone has a paper view and they're a student, and they're concerned, oh my gosh, it's how it's doing in two days, I better get up off my tushy and do more work. You know, that's healthy, but anxiety and panic that can paralyze the person, leading to them either avoiding doing the job making up some excuse for the teacher, or doing a really lousy job, you know, not relaxed and clear in the mind. So, the healthy, negative emotions can be motivating and at the very least, enriching such as healthy briefs, sadness, and disappointment, instead of hopelessness despondency, and depression. Grief is healthy. When anyone or a pet or euro, any living thing dear to us has passed away or moved away. If a chapter in our lives is over, for one reason or another, grief is healthy, it's married to the love of that which we're now going to be deprived or not. And, certainly in the role, stages of grief, it's extremely painful for most of us. But with time with healthy attitudes, that transforms from agonizing pain into just the tenderizing of the heart and healthy sadness when we miss those or that which we loved, and now don't have any physical form. And then moving on to the next, healthy emotion that we create when we think in healthy ways. Instead of unhealthy rage, which does more harm than good. I can't think of an instance where Rage has contributed to good. Instead of that, when we think in healthy ways we experience what's called Healthy anger, what's healthy anger, REBT is that unless the person is just good in one way or another, that they're likely and that up to make a choice, guided by a moral, ethical compass, that we prefer to do no harm and do more good. And so in REBT, the healthy anger is that adrenaline fuel kind of know, if we're either receiving or observing, immoral, unethical, brutal behavior. And what makes it healthy is, first of all, it's motivating. Because, in all likelihood, if we can remember, if we can, then we'll do our best to take action to change it, we better except sometimes we may not be able to, but many times, we may be able to start. And the other healthy thing about it is that we choose when possible to pause and reflect what might be the most pragmatic thing to do now, speak to the person run for the hills call 911. You do a workout to meditate, we have time to choose our behavior, both in relation to what stimulated the anger and in terms of for our well being and enabling us to make better choices. So that's healthy anger. I hope as I'm continuing

Yes, I'm thinking through and and I'm thinking of times that withdraw us to protests, that that would be a healthy anger, something that had such an emotional impact on you that made you angry that you had to react, but to strategize about how you would react and thought about how your contribution could impact the outcome. I'm getting this and this is like therapy for me. And because sometimes it's just easier said than done, right? When we have these emotions and when things happen to us, or we perceive that they are happening to us, right, but we have a lot of power more than we think that we do. So you offer this like the self help sheet, which I think is dynamic. And I like using it I don't know if I'm using it properly. So let's kind of test that and in the self help sheet, perfect for educators it has like the ABCs following the self help sheet. And first it talks about disturbing of describing what you are disturbed about before we go any further I just want to Explore that word again, when we talk about what's disturbing you?

Well, a person just herbs themselves according to the way they, in terms of that ABCD of our EBT. It's the self help form. For any of us who want to stop disturbing ourselves in

what we're disturbed about. Yes, yes. Yeah,

who realized that they're creating unhealthy emotions, and realize the negative impact that's having on their lives and make the choice? It's a choice to work on changing the common or habitual thoughts or beliefs that lead to the unhealthy emotion or disturbance? Because it's not what happened? And can I just put in the final, healthy emotion that we create when we Yes, yes. Instead of unhealthy shame and guilt, we experience regret. Because, again, connected to our moral compass, it's important that we take responsibility if we've done things that were wrong or bad, and taking responsibility and regression, without putting ourselves and our work down, can help us to not repeat those things. So in terms of the ABCD, for, for example, a person who might have been experiencing a abysmal guilt and shame because they did a crime, and it not only led to bad consequences for them, but their family suffered. And so they're feeling worthless, and unforgivable and hopeless and, and shame and guilt, you know, that would be a stimulus for a person who first of all knew that they had a choice. See, if we don't know if we're not aware, we have a choice about creating our emotions, and we don't know the tools we can hardly be blamed for reacting in old habitual ways that we learned from observing others in our childhood and growing up act in those ways. Yeah. So in the ABC, D, you know, way what can kick it off, you know, establish is recognizing they have this tendency to create an unhealthy emotion, a disturbance such as shame, guilt, rage to hopelessness thing, so, and then the A stands for activating event or adversity. The thing that seemed too though it didn't really that seems to create the unhealthy disturbance that we want to change. Yes.

And I was describing maybe some what disturbed me. I wanted to talk about my feelings about teaching in a remote setting. And the frustration that I felt some anger that I felt uselessness that I felt, because students were didn't have their cameras on. They were not engaged. And it was just really depressing. I felt an entire time that an entire semester was being wasted. And it was disturbing. So I was trying to use the self help to kind of guide me through that. And because I was feeling a sense of lack of purpose. And you know, that I should have been good enough. I should have been creative enough. You know, I think that I'm creative. I know how to use technology. I know how to motivate people. Why? Why wasn't I able to do that? Why wasn't I able to navigate and flip the script quick enough to motivate them and to activate them into wanting to turn your cameras on and wanting wanting to be engaged?

So as you were describing those things, I heard a lot of irrational beliefs. And remember, REBT teaches us it's not the event. It's not those noncooperative students that created Wow, a few unhealthy emotions for you, Dr. Joy, which we definitely want you to get rid of. It wasn't that it was what you were telling yourself and I heard a lot of futile and unnecessary and invalid self blame. But ABS now would be a good time for me to describe what makes the belief irrational. Yes, because it's the irrational beliefs that create the unhealthy emotion right, not working and rational beliefs will create a healthy emotion. So you know, thank you for being so open to bring an instance in your life and hopefully This, this will shed light on different choices in attitudes that you can make going forward. So you know, if you describe the healthy rational beliefs in all probability about the situation that you've described, you would feel healthfully sad and disappointed. I mean, if you felt happy or glad or you didn't care, you would indicate the lack of devotion to your work. And, oh, boy, is that not the fact for you? Like your huge heart, I mean, the fact that you even bring this up shows how dedicated you are to doing the most for the good of your students. And I would think other people too. It's really helpful to know how to distinguish whether we're thinking irrationally or rationally. Here we got when we think in irrational ways, we have should, I heard you should on yourself, we have surance, we have masks, we have audits, we have demands. We're very rigid in our thinking, with very damning of ourselves or others or life, if things don't go the way we think they should be going. We lack humor, we blow things out of perspective, we take life way too seriously, including serious events. Yeah, we have low frustration, tolerance, meaning, we must have what we want, when we want it, we tell ourselves, we can't stand it when it isn't the way we think it should be right now. We can think in absolute artistic ways, and overgeneralize and thinking stereotyping ways. And any and all of these tendencies contribute to creating those unhealthy emotions. And when we think in healthy rational ways, which would create healthy emotions. We don't demand we have preferences. As I said, people are EBTs and about some neutral zone and being namby pamby Now it's important to have passionate goals and wishes and desires. That in all likelihood, if we really, really want something or we don't get it, we'll probably make ourselves feel sad, disappointed. It's healthy, that's healthy, it's motivating. But it could be this way and it doesn't, we'll either end up feeling enraged or put ourselves down like you indicated you were or, or feel frustrated and not life enhancing no helpful ways. So when we think in rational ways, it's the opposite to everything I described as irrational, we have preferences once. High frustration tolerance, we can stand what we don't like we just don't like it. You better accept that. We have humor often we keep things in perspective. We don't catastrophize we don't authorize I forgot to mention that when we think in irrational ways. We make things worse, in our mind the worst they could possibly be catastrophizing worthless, that's irrational. So back to rational, we don't do that we don't over generalize or thinking of statistic ways or do stereotyping thinking and a very, very important element of REBT that is not so much emphasized in other cognitive approaches, when we think in rational ways, we make the effort to have the attitude of unconditional self acceptance, where a person owns that each individual has worked simply because we exist, we may do good things we may do bad things. I read Beatty reminds us we are our work is not defined by doing good or doing bad. We have worked because we exist whether strive to do more good, of course. So unconditional self acceptance, unconditional other acceptance. And this can be an effort, certainly, especially if we're working on unconditionally accepting someone who has acted in brutal ways. But it's possible there are enough examples of people who have done that and practice forgiveness. I can give an example in a few moments, if you like and if there's time, so it's doable. You know, if we don't do that, we create and hang on to hatred and rage and bitterness, which, by the way, the slides of the mind, emotion body connection is irrefutable. And when we experience on a regular basis, rage and any of the other unhealthy emotions, it weakens our immune system, and impacts our cardiovascular system and so much more. I'm talking about physically medically. So if for no other reason, if we want to live a longer, healthier life, we'd better watch our thinking and the emotions that we create. Anyway, and finally, unconditional life acceptance where it's healthy not to like tragic happenings in life. But we refuse to say all of life is excuse me, I'm gonna swear all of life is shit, because of this decision is because when we do that with forgiving one, another of the essential reminders, the very beachy every day, let's remember what we can be grateful for. That's not to deny the bad stuff. We can do both. And this is very bad, what's going on, but I'm grateful I can still see and hear and taste and touch and move and do my best a day at a time. So anyway, I hope I've clarified well enough between irrational and rational and it's the irrational thoughts that are getting you in trouble getting any one of us in trouble if our goal is not to create disturbing emotions and a few of the things Dr. Joy I remember that occurred to me as you spoke as you're putting yourself down, you're blaming you for the inactivity of others. And the implications of you're not good, nothing you should be doing better and a lot of self blame a lot of self put down if you don't mind me observing that. And maybe some low frustration tolerance. I can't stand when people don't act the way they should, instead of it's pretty bad. And they're denying themselves an opportunity I wish they would do what would be better, but in life, there are certain things I can't control. So anyway, I'll pause and let you speak.

We are talking to Dr. Debbie Jaffe Ella's about Rational Emotive behavior therapy and its applications to educators and education. What fascinates me is just how much this feels applicable to educators. Educators often feel helpless, working in systems that just like Joi described, that might not function fairly. Or they might not be able to meet students where they are. Maybe students aren't meeting us where we are. How might an educator keep from catastrophizing? The situation as you were talking about? Yeah,

well, one of the things is to go through this ABC, D process. And so so far, we've spoken about the ABC. So the activating event, the things that you've mentioned, and the things that joy brought up, and then the consequences, whatever unhealthy emotion frustration, feeling inadequate and unworthy, despondent, hopeless. So the important detective work comes from, and that's where I was going to before identifying the irrational beliefs. And so to answer your question, Amy, so what an educator can do to prevent catastrophizing, and authorizing any other unhelpful tendencies is to write down specific irrational beliefs that they recognize that they're telling themselves. It shouldn't be this way, I can't stand it life should be fair, I shouldn't have to deal with this. But after that, and then the next important step is the dean, which stands for dispersion. And so if we want to stop believing something since talking to very intelligent listeners, I have no doubt, the effective thing to do is to not only replace an unhelpful belief with a helpful and of course, that's a good thing. But to really get to the roots of things, to dispute all credibility out of the irrational belief, because we're less likely to repeat it if we don't believe it anymore. Instead of just no this is negative, let me think a positive thought. Right? Well, REBT teaches us how to do that to question every rational belief, Socratic Klee logically and pragmatically such as, where is it getting me to believe this isn't helping or hurting? Where is the evidence for this? Doesn't really follow that even if it isn't there, but I really can't stand it and except that in life bad things sometimes happen. And so we dispute by question and then finally, we come up with E Bective. New rational beliefs are effective new philosophies. And they are follows from the D I can stand what I don't like I just don't like it. I'm an individual doing the best shoe or he can moment to moment. And if I make a mistake, it doesn't make me a mistake or failure, I can learn to move on. And so we come up with these realistic, optimistic, encouraging statements. And then finally, what REBT reminds us is to create and maintain lasting change. In other words, changing old unhealthy ways of thinking. And getting into the habit of healthy ways of thinking, requires ongoing work and practice work.

It's like exercise, it's like physical exercise. Exactly.

And so REBT recommends that for at least 30 days, we do some homework. And in the case of the example, we're looking at, if someone's done the ABCDE, to write down the A's, for example, and repeat them 50 times a day for the next 30 days, why 30 days, research, neuroplasticity research shows that the amount of time it takes to create new neural pathways, new habits in the brain. And so to do that, or the homework could be an ABCD form, it's so helpful when you fill in every day, the next 30 days. And there are many other tools and techniques, which was I don't have time to go into now. But that's the ABCDE F n, it's extremely F stands for ongoing effort, even though it doesn't really start with two IPs in there. You got

Dr. Debbie, my mother lives with us. So I'm already thinking about how to practice my new philosophies. You get through here, let me tell you to get through what I hope is another 2030 years with my mother. Right? Great new philosophy. Bigger before before we started talking, Amy and I before you entered Amy and I we were talking about the educator burnout rate. And we know that is the highest in our profession. Because it's just hard teaching is hard. Being a professional educator, you know, being a school psychologist, being a school counselor. It's hard work. And so a lot of professional educators, they burn out, they leave the profession. And that's why we wanted to talk to you today because I think what you have to offer up changing, you know, these healthy beliefs and these healthy thoughts can really be instrumental in the long haul of keeping teachers in the classroom and changing their perspective. Because we were talking about a pamphlet that we had read a few months ago, and it had hundreds of teachers on this Padlet. And they were all saying how frustrated they were, how miserable they were, how unsupported and we have to see the word quit hundreds of time. And I'm just wondering how your response to some of the reactions when we have these feelings. When teachers have these feelings like the administration, they make me upset. The students can't learn, right? These students are so bad. The parents are not helping me. It's just too hard. And I can't do this. What's your reaction to some of those emotions?

Yeah, those attitudes are really self defeating. You know, a person and individual had better decide whether they want to be right or healthy. And the fact of the matter is, if those statements that you shared, those teachers spoke or wrote, if they were desires and preferences, they would be healthy. But because their demands on expressions of I can't stand it, so it shouldn't be the way it is. It's futile, futile. It's destructive. My husband came up with an expression which actually is very well known, I believe, but a lot of people don't know he created it and it's hanging on to hatred, rage, frustration. Bitterness is like eating poison and waiting for the other person to die. Dang gonna die the you kill yourself, right? And so what I would say to those teachers is first of all, grieve and give yourself a break and credit for choosing one of the most novel and challenging professions in humanity, you know, doing our best to contribute to the learning and knowledge of the young ones. Deliver The next generation who will give life to the next generation. It's such an important profession. And it has many challenges in demand. So for those teachers who are putting themselves down because they think I should be able to change it and do more, it's not about not trying, but to accept that at the moment that they're contemplating this. It is the way it is. And then to to face their low frustration tolerance, even though it's very valid to not like inefficiency, and lack of justice. It's a moral imperative for those of us who want to be humans with matching integrity. And yet again, facing that, there are some things I can change and some things I can't and if I whine about what I can't change, and I create this frustration, what kind of an example Am I being to my students? How about thinking about modeling healthy behavior to students, authentically how authentically the working on oneself in ways that include reminding oneself, many things in life aren't fair, let me do what I can to change what isn't fair and accept, what for the moment I haven't been able to change that we do the best I can know, I can stand what I don't like, I just don't like it sure would be better if more students turned on the cameras and so on. But the fact that they don't, there's nothing about my worth or ability as a teacher, yet this self blank, it says everything about their attitudes. And maybe, unfortunately, they don't have people around them to encourage them to act in ways that would help them more as students, you know, and so one of the voices that you mentioned, I hear a lot of imbalance, self blame, I'm not a good enough teacher, if I can't make them do what I think they should and what certainly would be to their benefit. So not making what others don't do or do be your fault. Only earning what one can change, which is one's own behavior and attitude, and accepting what one can modeling healthy behavior for others authentically through applying it to oneself. As some of my suggestions,

we certainly can choose to be models of healthy thinking, and behaviors for our students, you have provided such insight and such hope, actually, for all of us as we go into the classroom, we can validate that we have emotions that are negative, but it's okay. And they can be channeled in healthy ways to spur us on. And it has been so inspiring to listen to you talk about our EBT. And I'm just thinking about all the ways that we can apply it as educators in our classroom.

I'm excited, Dr. Debbie, you have dedicated yourself to sharing the life enhancing inspiration approach to our EBT with so many people, I'm happy that we've crossed path. I'm happy that you've shared your husband with us. And your work will be forever part of my life. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Dr. Joi. Dr. Amy, my pleasure my privilege and you know my thanks and respect to you not only for the work you do in your regular jobs, so your irregular regulars, but but that you take the time and effort to create this podcast to help other people both in and outside of your profession. What noble work you do, and I take my figurative hat off to you in appreciation and respect. And thank you for inviting me to join you today.

Thank you so much and we hope to have future conversations with you. I know our podcast listeners will love the resources that you have provided and they will be also available on our podcast notes.

Because if I were to leave a final message for your listeners and you and me it's let's remember daily gratitude. It just is invaluable in giving us a healthy perspective, especially when times are tough as they are for many of us right now for lots of reasons. That list Enjoy the fact that we're only way out to create our inner climate, you know how our own emotions. Let's do it and cherish this this life.

Thank you for listening to teaching and leading was Dr. Amy and Dr. Joi. Visit our website at govst.edu/teaching and leading podcast to see the show notes from this episode.

We appreciate Governor State University's work behind the things to make publishing possible. Stay tuned for more episodes with Dr. Amy and Dr. Joy