Burnout of a principal: Can positive aggression help?

– had left her shortly after her promotion and was living with another woman. “So I threw myself into the new task!”

The first conversations showed how committed and at the same time ruthless Sarah was in dealing with this situation. She founded a private association that raised donations and recruited lay helpers interested in education to give tutoring, help with supervision and support in lessons. “I always enjoyed teaching,” says Sarah. “I would have been happy to have a helper in my class. But then there were conflicts between the full-time workers and the volunteers, they simply forgot about the children and argued about some nonsense about who was more popular and as if that was what mattered! And then they came to me, complained, and demanded that I come to class too to get an idea.”

“You think that’s when your overload started?”

“I’m good with children. But when two adults come and each accuses the other of being to blame, then I feel bad. I didn’t force them, I wanted to help them. And then they argue, and when one says something, I think I understand her. Then the other says something, and I understand her too. I can’t do that. I would have to reconcile them.” Sarah pauses and dabs her eyes with a tissue.

“I was only the teacher’s boss. I had to keep the helper in line; she would earn more at the supermarket checkout than in our club. I could only lose. When the school council said that colleagues were complaining because I was more of a volunteer, it was over. I didn’t know myself like that before. I could only cry.”

“How did the school board react?”

She grins a little, her eyes moist. “He knew me in this state as little as I knew myself. Actually even less. He was shocked. He said I should seek help, take a vacation, recover, that he was completely behind me, that the school was a lighthouse project, just these phrases!”

“Can you imagine going back to your old job?” “Yes and no. I don’t always want to be the bad guy.”

Leaders as evil personified

Sarah feels evil when she takes leadership and tells her rivals in the classroom that they must share the credit and cooperate. She cannot make it clear to her colleague that it is not her job to compete with the school helper, but rather to use her pedagogically. She cannot convince the helper that she should support the children and not involve the teacher in discussions.

I explain that setting boundaries is not evil, but on the contrary it prevents conflicts from escalating. What prevents her from fulfilling her role as principal?

“I’m incredibly sensitive to this,” says Sarah. “I remember, I was once in a memorial to forced labor, and there was a large photograph, a group of workers, skinny women in rags, they were toiling, digging a ditch. There were people in uniform standing around. One of them made such an imperious gesture, reprimanded a worker, reprimanded her. Then I suddenly felt sick and I thought: How many times have I treated a student or a colleague like that?”

I think of the question I once heard in a seminar: Where is there more guilt – in prison or in a monastery? What caused this principal, who needs harmony, to identify with the cruel warden? What comes to mind?

Others become “difficult,” Sarah became well-behaved

Sarah talks about her childhood: As the first of three sisters, she believed for a long time that she was just as strenuous as the younger ones. But her mother later said that she was “always very good” and helped a lot. Firstborns initially grow up like only children, surrounded by adults and oriented towards them. Then come the little siblings. The firstborn must strengthen the latent identification with adults in order to control the anger directed against the competition.

While many firstborns become “difficult” as a result, Sarah became well-behaved. She looked after the little ones and supported the mother. She started school, became a good student and found new role models in her teachers who supported her in her career. Teaching children something and being recognized for it became her new purpose in life – until she found herself in a situation that was similar to her childhood: she had to mediate conflicts between employees under pressure and was just as overwhelmed as she had been when she had to calm her little siblings.

In the course of therapy, the image of the mother’s “good helper” became more differentiated. The concentration camp guard’s fantasy shocked her because it did not fit her self-image. However, she discovered that as a child she had felt gloating at her sisters’ little accidents and a bloody nose from a fight, and she accepted these feelings.

Showing anger is demonized

Sarah gradually understood where the overexertion in her role as principal was rooted: there was no “good aggression” in her inner world. Anyone who showed their anger and threatened consequences could no longer be distinguished from the concentration camp guard. She wanted to please everyone and preferred to work twice herself rather than make clear demands and impose sanctions. She couldn’t imagine that it would be helpful and not evil to represent and enforce conditions as a superior.

The school council didn’t reprimand her at all, but asked about the background. But Sarah felt like the big sister who was reprimanded by her mother when the little ones spilled jam on the sofa while she was away.

We talked about how the role of the firstborn used to be less burdened than it is now in the nuclear family. In traditional cultures, most of the upbringing takes place between houses, on the street, in meadows and forests, in free groups where older children play with the little ones and their mothers don’t breathe down their necks.

“My seminary principal told me that she taught in a village school in which there was only one class. I liked her very much, she was a warm-hearted woman, never raised her voice, and yet everyone did what she said. At first I couldn’t imagine it when a few children could already read and the others had to learn it. But maybe it works well if the older ones help the little ones.”

“I think it’s a lot about the difference between wanting and having to. People want to learn. They have to learn under pressure, the school stands in the way. Principals also feel this: Do they want to lead their school – or do they have to?”

“And can I learn to want here?” she asked, smiling.

“The desire is in you, you can do it,” I said. “But maybe they’ll learn not to take having to so seriously!”