Somewhere in your contract, you are obliged to deliver pastoral care to your students.  It’s likely that in your job you’ll be obliged to interact with studies as part of your duties.  But what does that mean for you in terms of boundaries with those students and boundaries with the other things that occupy your time? If you are attached to your students, it can be very easy to slip into a way of thinking that gets you answering emails and trying to sort out problems at weekends and evenings, which might get you involved in student challenges that [...]

Embracing challenge sounds like an oxymoron.  When challenging situations rear their heads, it can be easier to default to some of the following thinking styles: Catastrophizing: “This is going to be a disaster!” Interestingly – if we look at the medical effects of catastrophizing– patients who catastrophize a higher pain expectation have worse pre-operative pain than non-catastrophizers.  However, after the procedure, pain for both is similar.  The implication here then is through magnification, rumination and a sense of helplessness, we can tend to make the situation worse for ourselves. [...]