Why coping is not the same as being well and why resilience is not the problem.
When I notice, it is already late
By the time I notice I am struggling, I am not at the beginning of struggling. I am usually a long way past the point where things were manageable.
I have got myself into this position because I am an expert masker, and I’ve only just realised what has been going on. As a late-diagnosed triple-threat neurodivergent (autism and both inattentive and hyperactive ADHD), I now know that this lack of awareness about dysregulation is not what many people experience. It is poor interoceptive awareness, which means I do not notice internal body signals very well.
This does not stop me teaching well, although I can get to 3pm and realise I have drunk no water. No one would necessarily notice I am struggling, and no one sees the collapse when I get home. I am seen as what we would once have called “high functioning”.
This matters in schools because teaching rewards visible competence. If you are calm, articulate, organised and still turning up, people assume you are fine. But for some neurodivergent teachers, looking fine is not evidence of wellbeing. It is evidence of masking.
Teaching is not the problem
The difficult thing to get across is that it is not usually the teaching itself that drains me most. Teaching has structure, purpose and immediacy. I know what I am doing in the classroom.
The harder part is everything around it: the corridor conversations, the informal social demands , the meetings, the relentless emails, the switching between tasks, the lack of quiet, and the expectation that I can keep absorbing more because I appear to be managing.
That is the load people often do not see. It is not one big dramatic problem. It is hundreds of small demands, all asking for attention, response, tone, timing and social judgement.
I have started to think of this as an invisible load. Not workload exactly, but the extra processing around work: interpreting tone, finding information, switching tasks, responding quickly, absorbing changes, being socially available and finding nowhere quiet to reset. For some teachers this is manageable. For others, it is the part that makes the job unsustainable.
The hidden cost of coping
Getting reasonable adjustments was easy. I have a very supportive head of department. But even she said, “You coped well with full time when you did your training here.”
Yes, I coped well on the outside. But as soon as I got home, I lay on the sofa too exhausted to cry. I was often unable to cook, certainly unable to clean, and at weekends I had no energy for socialising. There was a very grim back story to the calm, competent teacher.
This is where masking becomes difficult to talk about. I do not want people to see behind the scenes. It is not pretty. I want to be the superstar who gets great results from tricky children and knows what she is doing. My private collapse is not my public identity.
But I do want the cost to be acknowledged. If a teacher is performing well while burning through all their energy, that still matters. It should be taken into consideration before they are asked to do more, stay later, absorb chaos, attend another meeting, cover another gap, or prove again that they are coping.
That is the personal bit over. I do not need sympathy or symbolic wellbeing gestures. What I need is a reduction in unnecessary load, and that does not have to be dramatic. Naming this as invisible load helps move the conversation away from individual weakness and towards system design.
What actually helps
The adjustments that help me are usually small, practical and unglamorous. They are not about lowering expectations. They are about reducing unnecessary load so I can use my energy where it matters most: teaching.
Make communication easy to process
Tell me what you need, when you need it, and where to find it. If it’s lots of things, please prioritise.Short emails, direct links to files and written follow-ups after conversations save a lot of unnecessary searching, guessing and remembering. Tell me the thing plainly. I will not think you are rude. I will be grateful that I do not have to read between the lines.
Give advance notice
Changes happen in schools, but advance notice makes a difference. A room change, cover change or meeting change may look small, but it can knock me off balance. If everything is urgent, tell me what matters most.
Respect quiet recovery
In school, solitude can be almost impossible. If I am sitting quietly eating my lunch, I am not being unfriendly. I am recharging so I can go back into the afternoon and teach well.
Better systems help everyone
None of this is special treatment. It is basic accessibility.
It helps neurodivergent teachers, but it also helps teachers who are tired, anxious, grieving, menopausal, new, exhausted, unwell, caring for other people, overwhelmed, or just private. The list goes on, and I suspect it contains most teachers at some point.
Not everyone wants to explain what is going on behind the scenes. Some people do not have a diagnosis. Some do not want to disclose one. Some simply do not want to lay out their whole inner life at work before things are made a bit easier.
What I have learned to put in place for myself
I realised that I cannot wait until I notice I am struggling, because by then I am usually already past the useful point. So I try to putthings in place before I need them.
Some of this is very ordinary. I do basic meal prep at the weekend so there is food for lunches and for when I get home. I try to have a protein snack at school, because that helps me pace my energy. I plan what snack to eat when I get home so that I feel refuelled but still have room for a meal later.
I plan quiet time as if it is a real commitment, because it is. I am also much less scared to cancel social things outside school if I know I do not have the capacity. That is not being flaky. It is how I stay functional.
Other things help too: keeping routines simple, reducing decisions, getting clothes or bags ready the night before, writing things down instead of expecting myself to hold everything in my head, and protecting some parts of the week from extra demands.
Not all of this will be possible or useful for everyone. But some of it might help someone. The point is that support works better when it is built in early, not saved until someone is already overwhelmed.
Better systems mean people do not have to prove they are struggling before the load is reduced.
Masking is not thriving. Coping is not the same as being well. If schools want good teachers to stay, they need to stop waiting until people fall apart before anything changes. Clearer, calmer systems help people do their work without spending all their energy making it look manageable.
Alison Cole is a Food Technology teacher, Now Teach participant and late-diagnosed AuDHD educator. She writes about neurodivergent lived experience, sensory-aware practical teaching and inclusive classroom systems.