The bell rings for break, but Sarah is still kneeling beside Leon, trying to help him through an acute moment of overwhelm. The other children stream into the playground, but Sarah stays, as she so often does. Only when Leon calms down does she notice the tension in her neck and the exhaustion creeping in. Many educational support workers know situations like these all too well. A study by the German Education and Science Union shows that over 60 percent of those working in educational support regularly experience emotional exhaustion [1]. Self-care for educational support workers is therefore not a luxury topic but a fundamental professional requirement. In this article, you'll learn why mental health is so crucial in this field, what challenges are typical, and how you can develop sustainable strategies for your daily work.
For those who want to deepen their knowledge in this area, Diingu offers a practice-oriented course: Self-Care for Educational Support Workers.
What is Self-Care in Educational Support and Why Does it Matter?
Self-care refers to the conscious and systematic maintenance of one's physical, emotional, and mental health. In the context of educational support, this specifically means being mindful of your own resources, recognizing boundaries, and actively regulating stress. It's not about self-optimization or becoming even more efficient. Rather, self-care encompasses all measures that prevent daily emotional labor from leading to chronic overwhelm.
Educational support workers operate in a highly sensitive environment. They accompany children and young people with various support needs through the school day, often in emotionally challenging situations. They stand between different expectations from parents, teachers, their employer, and of course the child themselves. This multiple burden makes self-care a central building block for long-term professional practice.
Without active self-care, the risk of emotional exhaustion, burnout, and psychosomatic complaints increases significantly. The World Health Organization emphasizes that psychological stress in the workplace is one of the main causes of work incapacity in helping professions [2]. For educational support workers, who often work in precarious employment conditions, this problem is further exacerbated.
At the same time, good self-care benefits not only your own health. The quality of support also improves when professionals can work in an emotionally stable and resource-oriented manner. Children sense whether their caregiver is under pressure or can respond calmly. Self-care is thus also a form of professional responsibility toward the children being supported.
Why Self-Care in Educational Support is Essential Today
High Emotional Demands in Daily School Life
The daily work of educational support staff is characterized by intense relationships and emotionally charged situations. They are often the first point of contact for children in crisis, during conflicts, or when overwhelmed. This form of emotional labor requires constant attention, empathy, and quick responsiveness. Unlike many other professions, there are hardly any moments of retreat during support time.
Support can include situations where children display aggressive behavior, self-harm, or react with strong emotions. Educational support workers must remain calm and professional in such moments, even though they themselves are affected by the intensity of the situation. This constant regulation of their own feelings costs energy and can lead to emotional overwhelm in the long term if no conscious balancing strategies are in place.
Additionally, many educational support workers experience a form of secondary traumatization. They take on the stress and worries of the children they support very personally. The boundary between professional closeness and emotional entanglement is often fluid, especially when intense bonds develop. Without regular reflection and relief, this can lead to lasting psychological stress.
Structural Framework Conditions and Their Consequences
Many educational support workers are employed on fixed-term contracts, often paid only for lesson time. Holidays frequently mean loss of income, sick days are financially burdensome. These precarious working conditions create additional stress that goes beyond the actual educational work. Those who constantly worry about their own financial security have less capacity for emotional self-care.
Additionally, many educational support workers operate as lone fighters in schools. They don't belong to the teaching staff, but they're also not part of a permanent organizational structure on site. This structural isolation makes professional exchange and collegial support difficult. Especially in difficult situations, there's often no one available who can provide relief or advice.
The workload is further intensified by unclear responsibilities and lack of preparation time. Educational support workers are expected to respond flexibly to various situations, but often receive little structured onboarding or supervision. This leads many to feel insecure in their role and additionally pressured to do everything right.
Role Conflicts and Boundary Difficulties
A central stress factor for educational support workers is often the unclear role expectation. They should support the child but not take over too much. They should cooperate with teachers without imposing. They should allow closeness but maintain professional distance. These contradictory demands create uncertainty and emotional pressure. Many educational support workers report feeling torn between the expectations of different actors.
It becomes particularly difficult when parents have different ideas about support than the school, or when the child themselves rejects the support. In such situations, educational support workers must mediate and balance without having a clear position of power. This constant balancing act costs energy and not infrequently leads to the feeling of not being able to please anyone.
Boundary-setting with the supported child is another delicate topic. Many educational support workers develop close bonds with the children they care for. While this is conducive to the pedagogical relationship, it can also lead to overstepping one's own boundaries. Those who think about the child's situation even in their free time or feel responsible for their problems risk emotional overload.
Lack of Recognition and Its Impact
Despite the high responsibility and emotional burden, educational support workers often receive little appreciation. Their work is perceived as auxiliary activity, not as specialized educational service. This lack of recognition directly affects self-esteem and increases the risk of exhaustion. Those who don't feel seen in themselves and their work have a harder time mustering the necessary motivation and energy.
In many schools, educational support workers are not included in team meetings or receive no feedback on their work. They provide their contribution in the background without their expertise being actively sought. This can lead to feeling replaceable and unimportant. Such experiences erode mental health in the long term.
The social debate about inclusion often emphasizes children's rights but frequently overlooks the people who practically implement this inclusion in daily life. Educational support workers are the invisible pillars of the inclusive school system, but rarely receive the resources and support they need for this demanding task.
Impact on Support Quality
When educational support workers are permanently overburdened, not only does their own health suffer, but also the quality of support. Exhausted professionals have less patience, react less sensitively, and can perceive children's needs less well. The pedagogical relationship, which is the heart of educational support, becomes fragile.
Children with support needs are often particularly sensitive to the emotional state of their caregivers. They sense when the educational support worker is stressed or annoyed, even if they try to hide it. This can lead to insecurity in the child and further escalate the situation. A vicious cycle develops that is stressful for both sides.
In the long term, lack of self-care leads to high turnover in the field. Many well-trained and committed people leave educational support after just a few years because the burden becomes too great. This harms not only the inclusive school system but especially the children who must repeatedly accept new caregivers. Stable relationships, which are so important for development, become impossible.
Common Challenges and Stumbling Blocks
A central challenge in self-care is the difficulty of recognizing one's own stress limits in time. Many educational support workers are so focused on children's needs that they overlook their own warning signs. Headaches, sleep disorders, constant fatigue, or increasing irritability are dismissed as normal or ignored. Only when exhaustion is already chronic does the extent of the burden become conscious.
Another stumbling block is the widespread attitude that self-care is selfish. Especially in helping professions, there's often the notion that one must put oneself aside to be there for others. This self-sacrifice mentality is sometimes even socially expected and reinforced. But it leads straight to overwhelm. The ability to care for others presupposes that one also cares for oneself.
Many educational support workers also report feelings of guilt when they take breaks or set boundaries. They fear not doing justice to the child or being perceived as unprofessional. These internal conflicts make it difficult to consistently implement necessary self-care steps. The constant self-criticism additionally intensifies the emotional burden.
The lack of institutional support is a structural stumbling block. While supervision and team reflection are standard in other areas of social work, these offerings are often missing for educational support workers. Employers often don't provide regular training on mental health, and schools rarely have resources to support external professionals. Educational support workers must fill this gap themselves, which represents a major hurdle given limited time and financial means.
Finally, the unpredictability of daily work also makes planning self-care measures difficult. Crisis situations cannot be planned, and scheduled breaks often fall through because the supported child needs special assistance right then. This flexibility is necessary on one hand, but on the other makes it difficult to establish binding routines for one's own recovery.
Application in Practice
Martin supports a boy with autism spectrum disorder at a comprehensive school. The morning arrival is often challenging because the journey to school involves many sensory stimuli. Martin has developed a small routine for himself: After the first block, he consciously takes two minutes in the staff room, breathes deeply, and drinks a glass of water in peace. These brief moments help him shake off the tension and gather himself for the rest of the morning. He has learned that it's not selfish to claim these breaks, but necessary for his ability to work.
The way Martin deals with difficult situations has also changed. Previously, he took conflicts or challenging moments home with him and thought them through repeatedly in the evening. Today, he uses his commute home for a conscious closing ritual. He listens to music or a podcast, internally marking the transition from work to leisure. This separation doesn't always work perfectly, but it helps him not to carry the emotional burden permanently.
Jessica works as an educational support worker for a girl with a physical disability. In addition to care support, she often experiences the girl's emotional reactions to exclusion by classmates. These situations burden Jessica greatly because she would like to protect the girl from all hurt. Through an exchange with other educational support workers at a meeting with her employer, she understood that she cannot and must not catch everything. She has learned to acknowledge the girl's feelings without making them her own.
Jessica has also started keeping a brief reflection journal. Once a week, she notes what particularly burdened her and what went well. This helps her recognize patterns and consciously perceive what progress the girl is making. This positive focus counteracts the tendency to see only problems. The Diingu course Self-Care for Educational Support Workers has given her additional impulses on how to take good care of herself even in stressful phases.
Tim is an educational support worker at an elementary school and supports a child with attention deficit disorder. The school day is characterized by constant movement and the need to react flexibly. Tim noticed early that he cannot work sustainably without physical balance. He goes jogging three times a week and consciously uses it as an outlet for pent-up tension. Movement is for him a form of self-care that helps him remain emotionally stable.
Furthermore, Tim has learned to use his body posture in difficult moments. When he notices a situation escalating, he consciously straightens up, breathes deeply into his belly, and relaxes his shoulders. This physical self-regulation gives him a sense of control and prevents him from falling into stress mode. Such small techniques make a big difference in daily life.
How to Get Started
The first step toward more self-care is an honest assessment of your own stress situation. This means consciously taking time to reflect on which situations are particularly exhausting, where your own boundaries lie, and what resources are still available. A simple approach is to take a few minutes at the end of each week and note how you're feeling. This self-observation sharpens awareness of your own needs.
A central competency is the ability to set boundaries. This doesn't mean being less empathetic, but learning to distinguish between the child's feelings and your own. Techniques like inner visualization can help. You imagine that between yourself and the child there's a permeable membrane that allows compassion but doesn't let all emotions pass through unfiltered. Such mental images may sound abstract but can be very effective in daily life.
Equally important is maintaining relationships outside the professional context. Friendships, family, and social networks provide emotional support and help put professional experiences in perspective. Those who only talk and think about work lose access to other life areas that can provide joy and energy. Conscious time with people who are good for you is a form of self-care that's often underestimated.
Exchange with other educational support workers is also valuable. Many employers offer regular meetings, but often there's no time or motivation to participate. Nevertheless, it's worth using these offerings or building informal networks yourself. Exchange with people who know the same challenges is relieving and prevents the feeling of being alone with difficulties.
Mindfulness exercises and relaxation techniques can be integrated into daily life without requiring much time. Breathing exercises, brief body scans, or conscious breaks are methods that can also be applied between two lessons. It's not about meditating perfectly, but about repeatedly creating small moments of calm in which you return to yourself.
Finally, it's helpful to set realistic expectations. No one can always do everything right, and no one can master every situation perfectly. Mistakes and difficult moments are part of daily work. A self-compassionate attitude that also accepts one's own inadequacies protects against excessive self-criticism and the associated emotional burdens.
Those who want to delve deeper into the topic and develop concrete action strategies for their own daily life will find practice-oriented recommendations and reflection prompts tailored precisely to the challenges of the field in the Diingu course Self-Care for Educational Support Workers.
Related Training at Diingu
The topic of self-care is complex and individually different. That's why structured professional development can provide valuable impulses and help develop your own strategies. The course Self-Care for Educational Support Workers at Diingu provides practice-tested recommendations for dealing with stress and overwhelm.
The course addresses typical causes and risk factors for emotional overwhelm in the context of educational support and offers concrete approaches to promoting your own mental health. Great emphasis is placed on ensuring that the presented methods are truly implementable in the often hectic school day. The interactive learning platform allows you to work through the content at your own pace and directly apply it to your own situation. For everyone who takes their self-care seriously and wants to sustainably integrate it into their professional practice, this course is a meaningful investment in their own health and professionalism.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is self-care important for educational support workers?
Self-care is important because educational support workers are exposed to high emotional stress daily. Without conscious strategies for regeneration, the risk of burnout, emotional exhaustion, and psychosomatic complaints increases. Self-care enables long-term continuation in the profession while maintaining good support quality. It's not self-optimization but a necessary professional competency that protects one's own health and the quality of the pedagogical relationship.
What signs indicate overwhelm in educational support workers?
Typical warning signs are chronic fatigue, sleep disorders, frequent headaches, or gastrointestinal complaints. Emotionally, overwhelm often manifests through increased irritability, inner restlessness, or the feeling of no longer being able to meet demands. Many affected individuals also report concentration difficulties and the feeling of constantly having to think about work. When several of these symptoms persist over a longer period, this should be understood as a serious signal for necessary changes.
How can I practice self-care as an educational support worker?
Self-care begins with conscious awareness of your own needs and boundaries. Concrete strategies include regular breaks during the workday, physical balance through movement, exchange with colleagues, and clear separation between work and leisure time. Mindfulness exercises, reflection journals, and maintaining social relationships outside work are also helpful. It's important that self-care is not perceived as an additional burden but integrated as a natural part of daily work.
What helps against stress in educational support?
For acute stress, short-term techniques like conscious breathing, brief movement breaks, or changing rooms when possible help. Long-term, it's important to identify stressors and reduce them where possible. This can happen through improved communication with the team, clearer role agreements, or participation in supervision offerings. Building resources such as social networks, hobbies, and balancing activities also strengthens resilience. Structured training on stress management can additionally provide valuable impulses.
How do I avoid burnout as an educational support worker?
Burnout prevention requires a combination of self-care, structural support, and realistic expectations. It's important to pay attention to warning signs early and counteract them before exhaustion becomes chronic. Regular reflection, exchange with other professionals, and seeking supervision or counseling are preventive measures. Equally crucial is accepting that you cannot solve all problems and that breaks and boundaries are not weakness but professional necessity. Good burnout prevention also means critically examining your own working conditions and pursuing changes when necessary.
Conclusion
Self-care for educational support workers is not an optional extra but a fundamental prerequisite for sustainable and high-quality work in inclusive school life. The emotional demands, structural burdens, and often precarious working conditions make this professional field particularly vulnerable to overwhelm and burnout. Those who know their own boundaries, consciously build resources, and understand self-care as professional competency protect not only their own health but also improve the relationship with the supported child.
It takes courage to take your own needs seriously and stand against the widespread self-sacrifice mentality. But especially in a professional field so strongly based on relationships and emotional presence, it's essential to also care for yourself. The strategies presented are not patent solutions, but they offer starting points to find your own path to more balance and wellbeing. Self-care is an ongoing process that requires attention and practice, but is worthwhile in every respect. Those who start taking small steps today invest in a long-term professional future where commitment and health need not be contradictory.
Sources and Further Reading
[1] German Education and Science Union - Stress in Educational Support - https://www.gew.de/schule/inklusion/schulbegleitung
[2] World Health Organization - Mental Health at Work - https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/mental-health-at-work
[3] German Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health - Psychological Stress in Working Life - https://www.baua.de/DE/Themen/Arbeitswelt-und-Arbeitsschutz-im-Wandel/Arbeitsweltberichterstattung/Psychische-Belastungen/Psychische-Belastungen.html
[4] Federal Centre for Health Education - Stress Management and Self-Care - https://www.bzga.de/presse/pressemitteilungen/2019-11-28-stress-im-alltag-erkennen-und-bewaeltigen