Worried About a Tough Conversation? Here’s How to Stay Calm and Confident

Have you ever felt that tightness in your chest before a tough conversation? Maybe your thoughts are running a mile a minute, your stomach’s in a twist, and avoiding it feels way safer than facing it.

Fear has a way of taking over, convincing us that discomfort means danger. But here’s the truth. Fear isn’t the enemy. It’s a signal. And when you learn how to respond to it instead of running from it, everything changes.

In this episode, we’re diving into overcoming fear and how you can use self-regulation techniques to stay calm and confident, even in high-pressure situations. I’ll walk you through ways to manage anxiety using nervous system regulation techniques that help shift your body from a state of stress to a state of safety. When you understand how to work with your fear instead of fighting against it, you build emotional resilience, allowing you to handle difficult conversations with clarity and confidence.

I’ll also share stress relief methods and practical ways of handling stress that you can use anytime, anywhere, whether you’re preparing for a challenging meeting or just trying to navigate the daily demands of teaching. Because the truth is, fear doesn’t mean stop. It means pay attention. And once you learn how to regulate your emotions, you can step into any situation feeling strong, capable, and in control.

Stay empowered,
Jen

Let’s keep the conversation going! Find me at:

empowerededucator.com/resources

Instagram: @jenrafferty_

Facebook: Empowered Educator Faculty Room

Empowered Educator Card Deck

Stay empowered,
Jen

Let’s keep the conversation going! Find me at:

empowerededucator.com/resources

Instagram: @jenrafferty_

Facebook: Empowered Educator Faculty Room

Empowered Educator Card Deck

Transcript

Are you feeling exhausted by the constant demands of teaching? Do you find yourself wondering if there's a way to balance both your career and your well being without burning out? Welcome, to Unlock Your Teaching Potential, your permission slip, to hit the brakes, recharge, and reignite your joy for teaching and living. I'm Dr. Jen Rafferty, former music teacher, author, TEDx speaker, and founder of Empowered Educator. And I've been where you are exhausted, overwhelmed, and just trying to get through the day, making it all work. So each week, I'll bring you short, powerful episodes with actionable tools to help you reclaim your energy, set boundaries, and step into your full potential, both in and out of your role as an educator. So take a breath and let's dive in. It's time to unlock your teaching potential, because the world needs you at your best. 

Hello! It's so good to be back here on episode three of Unlock Your Teaching Potential. You know, March can sometimes feel like the longest month of the year, so what gets me through is making sure that I make time to do the things that I love. And one of the things that I love doing most, especially when it's a little chilly out, is read a really good book. So right now, I am almost done, actually, with my friend Matthew Zakreski's book, The Neuro Diversity Playbook. And if you haven't gotten your copy of this book, do yourself a favor and get one. Everyone needs to read this. Whether you are neurodiverse yourself, or you are a parent of a neurodiverse child, or you are a teacher who teaches everyone. And the truth is, the more that we understand each other, the more that we understand ourselves, the better we can connect and really make the impact that we want to make in this world, especially as teachers. Matt does a great job of making some really complicated concepts really accessible and easy to read. It's like sitting down with him, and having a cup of coffee, and learning about all of the nerdy things about your brain. So highly recommend grab yourself a copy of that book. I am enjoying it thoroughly, and he was actually on my podcast last season. I'm going to stick that link to that episode if you haven't listened to it already. It's a great episode. We had a great time talking to each other, and I'm going to be on his podcast soon also. So stay tuned for that too. 

So I'm going to dive right into the question for this week, which comes from Erica in Montecito, California. And she says, ”how do I turn off my fear? I'm a first year teacher, and I need to have a difficult conversation with a parent about their child in class. I don't like confrontation, and I'm nervous about how this is going to go. How do I stop being afraid?” Ooh, Erica, love this question. So good news and bad news. The good news is you can't shut off your fear and the bad news is the same. You can't shut off your fear. Fear is biological, and we need fear to survive. That's what kept the human race alive for so long. It is fear, and that's a good thing. We needed to be afraid of the saber tooth tigers and the grizzly bears that were going to eat us so that we could stay safe and alive. But what's true is that part of our brain hasn't evolved much since those days, and what seems really scary like a conversation with a parent, it feels almost as if you're going to die. And so fearlessness is not a thing. There's no such thing as being fearless. And you know, you see a lot of things all over the internet of like, you know, be fearless. Fearless is what we need to accomplish things, and fear is the enemy. Fear is not the enemy. Fear loves you, and he wants you to sit with that for a second and really hear that, receive that. Fear loves you. Fear is doing its job and keeping you safe and alive, and the good news is you are not your fear. So there's more good news here. You are not your fear. Fear is a part of you. Fear is a biological function, not if you, as the person who has the brain can recognize, oh, this is so interesting. My fear is creeping up right now. My fear is sending me down this rabbit hole. My fear is creating all of these intrusive thoughts to keep me distracted from me not having this conversation. Well, your brain thinks that if you're going to have this conversation, you're going to die. So if it feeds you all sorts of distracting thoughts, and intrusive thoughts, and disempowering thoughts, and maybe you won't have that conversation, and you'll stay alive. But what's true is you're not going to die from having a difficult conversation, but your brain doesn't know that. So creating safety for yourself is essential. 

So the first thing is, stop hating on your fear it's going to happen to you anyway, and the more you lean in and recognize it for what it is, the better off you're going to be, because you're going to establish a relationship with it. As soon as it comes knocking at your door, which it will, you're going to say, hey, that's so interesting. I'm feeling afraid right now. I know this consciously, and I'm aware of it, so now I can make a different choice. You can't change something you don't notice. So the more that you recognize when fear is coming into play, the easier it is going to be for you to navigate through it. So now that you recognize, okay, I'm feeling fearful, or my brain is trying to get me to be afraid of this conversation. And don't forget, it's drawing from all of your past experiences. It's drawing from all of the things you've seen on TV about conflict and confrontation. It's drawing from your ego about what if you're wrong in this situation, and what if this person says this thing, and it makes you feel a certain way. All of these thoughts play into your fear in an effort to stop you from doing the thing. But we know, not only do we have to do the thing, we get to do the thing because our job as educators is to create an environment for kids to do their best to thrive, and sometimes that requires having a conversation with a parent so the child knows that we're all on the same team here. We all want what's best for the child. We all want them to do their best and create the most conducive learning environment. So this conversation gets to happen because this is part of your job. How exciting is that? And if you're not there yet, that's okay too. It's not, it's not exciting, Jen, it's still, it still feels a little scary, and that's okay. 

So in previous episodes, I talked a little bit about some exercises you can do to regulate your nervous system so it no longer feels a sense of threat, so that you are actively creating a sense of safety for yourself. So that can be a variety of breathing exercises. In Episode One, we covered the box breath. I'll give you another one right now. This is a really great cleansing breath. Inhale for two and then a really long exhale. So inhale for two and then exhale for as long as you can, and when your exhale becomes longer than your inhale, that's another way for you to activate your parasympathetic nervous system, which is that place of safety, of rest, of performance, instead of stress and fear and protection. So now that you're feeling safe and you can do that as many times as you want, if that exercise doesn't work for you, there's another one you can do that I really like also, because it's, it includes some sort of kinesthetic element. You can take your one hand and make a five, as if you're going to give someone a high five. And take your index finger on your left hand, your other hand, I'm using my right and so on my left hand, I'm taking my next finger. I'm just gently moving my finger up and down my high five with my hands. And every time I go up a finger, I'm taking an inhale in, and every time I move my finger down, I'm exhaling out, and this is also really good to get into your body. So you're not only breathing, but you're doing something more physical, because the idea of getting into your safety state has to do with getting into your body and out of your head. So once you've regulated your nervous system to a place where you feel more calm, more regulated, then you can start pumping yourself up and being your own cheerleader. Really get honest with yourself about why this is important. Connect this conversation to what your role is as an educator. Connect this conversation to why you do what you do. There has to be some bigger reason as an anchor for you to feel motivated to do this thing. So we need to create a situation where we're actually able to feel empowered by the thing that we need to do. Because wouldn't it be great to be that educator that feels confident in these parent conversations? Because this is part of the job. And it's not always the most pleasant part of the job, but having that conversation is essential, and going into it feeling confident can be a game changer. 

So what do you need to tell yourself? What do you need to think? How do you want to feel going into this conversation, and if you want to feel things like confidence, sure of yourself, empowered, those are all wonderful. And what we know is that our thoughts inform our feelings. So if we're thinking, oh my gosh, how is this going to go, I'm going to say the wrong thing, it's going to be so difficult. You're going to start to feel disempowered. You're going to doubt yourself, you're going to start to feel insecure, you're going to have imposter syndrome, and none of that is going to give you the results that you want of having a productive conversation. So if we want to feel a certain kind of way, empowered, and confident, and sure of yourself, what thoughts do you need to think in order to feel that? This is part of my job, and I'm really good at my job. When I have a conversation with a parent, I know that I'm able to reach out for help and support, which is exactly what this child needs. 

Perhaps, I know that as a great teacher, I can also ask for help from the other teachers that are around me who have been doing this for a lot longer, and glean some insight from them. I know that, because I'm a great teacher, I can ask this child's teacher from last year and find out what their strategies were, and now all of a sudden, I'm feeling great and ready to make this phone call. Are you with me with this? So you get to lead the way through your fear. You don't have the option to turn off your fear, and you wouldn't want to turn off your fear anyway. This is how we navigate through some of those things. And then there's two other steps to this. So we recognize it. We regulated. We are feeding ourselves thoughts that we want to think in order to feel how we want to feel. And then you're going to do the thing, and then after you do the thing, you're going to regulate your nervous system again, because fear is going to kick in soon afterwards. Oh, I shouldn't have said that. Did I say the right thing for the same reasons, it's just trying to keep you safe. It's just trying to keep you alive. So you as the person who has the brain, you as the person who has fear, as a part of you get to be in the driver's seat. So you're going to regulate. You're going to remind yourself you're safe. You're going to remind yourself that you were doing a great job. You were going to remind yourself that you did something that felt scary, but you survived. 

And then the last step is, celebrate. You need to celebrate every time you do something that feels scary, because that's going to give your brain lots of dopamine to get you to want to do it again. It's going to help create that safety, because your brain wants to do things that feel good, and so when you are celebrating, you do a little dance in your office. You can just smile really big for a couple seconds, which will get all of those neuro chemicals going, or call a friend, call your teacher, bestie down the hall, and celebrate with them too, because this is going to be a way for you to create a new habit, not of fear when difficult conversation might be happening, but one of confidence, one of empowerment, of okay, here's a thing, here's a challenge. I know what I need to do, and the more you practice, the more it becomes permanent. What you practice becomes permanent. You either practice the fear or you practice the new navigation to create new neural pathways in your brain to consistently make different choices. So thank you, Erica, so much for that question. Let me know how it goes. Make sure you follow up with hello@empowerededucator.com with a subject line “Podcast” and what came up for you? How did this work out? And if you have a question that you want answered on the show, also go ahead and write that email to hello@empowerededucator.com, make sure you put “Podcast” in the subject line. 

So now I'm going to pick a card from the Empowered Educator card deck, which, if you're interested in getting your own deck, you can find that at empowerededucator.com/resources, and today, oh, look at this. It's so interesting. The card is always having to do with something that we talk about during the show. It's so interesting. This card says “you become what you believe”. Mm, that is juicy. You become what you believe. Your beliefs create your identity. Your beliefs create your identity. And so much of what we believe stays in the subconscious. We're not even aware of it, which is why we work to raise our level of consciousness, raise our awareness. Because when we become more aware, then we can create intentional choices about how we want to live our lives, how we want to show up in the classroom, how we want to show up at home. Because you are either living your life by design or by default. There is no gray there. So you become what you believe, and I think that really goes along with what I said earlier, with what you practice becomes permanent. It's hand in hand right there. And if you haven't already, join us on Facebook at Empowered Educator Faculty Room there, you're going to find a beautiful community of other empowered educators who are doing this work, sharing their stories and truly making transformational generational change in their school communities.

Remember, the most generous thing that you can do for your students is take care of yourself. So if you found today's episode helpful, be sure to subscribe so you never miss a moment of inspiration. And if you're loving the show, I'd love for you to leave a review. This helps more educators like you find the space to unlock their teaching potential too. Until next time, please remember that you are a gift to this world, so act accordingly. See you soon.