Emotion Management as Key to Mental Health? Teachers’ Emotions and Support Systems

Abstract

In addition to recruiting new staff, retaining qualified teachers and supporting their mental well-being are becoming key priorities in German schools. One crucial factor associated with well-being is the use of emotion management. Given the emotional demands of the teaching profession, this study examines teachers’ strategies to manage their work-related emotions and the role of school-based support in maintaining mental health. The analysis is based on interviews with 51 primary and secondary school teachers in Germany, using thematic analysis following Braun and Clarke. The results indicated that teachers employed various strategies to manage their emotions. In classroom settings, suppression—a response-focused strategy—was frequently used. Outside the classroom, teachers tended to seek emotional relief through attentional shifts and conversations with colleagues or family, which offer reassurance, cognitive reframing, and emotional release. The findings underscore the importance of a supportive school culture characterized by collegial exchange, supervision, counseling, and committed leadership. Such environments can reduce emotional strain and contribute significantly to teachers’ well-being. Implementing opportunities for consultation and collegial case discussion during working hours may represent a valuable investment in teacher retention, particularly in times of teacher shortages.

1. Introduction

Given the nationwide teacher shortage, school systems in Germany are currently facing a major challenge (SWK, 2023). In addition to recruiting new teachers, another major challenge is to retain professional teachers in the workplace and to support their mental health, to prevent absences from work and attrition from the job. Mental health, as defined by the American Psychological Association (2018), refers to “a state of mind characterized by emotional well-being, good behavioral adjustment, relative freedom from anxiety and disabling symptoms, and a capacity to establish constructive relationships and cope with the ordinary demands and stresses of life”.

Poor mental health or diminished emotional well-being among teachers can have far-reaching consequences. Research indicates that teachers experiencing high levels of work-related stress are more likely to consider leaving the profession (Sorensen & Ladd, 2020; Thomson & Hillman, 2020; Beames et al., 2023), report lower job satisfaction, and demonstrate reduced commitment to their job (Travers, 2017). Moreover, studies consistently show that teachers report symptoms such as burnout, psychological distress, anxiety, depression, fatigue, and decreased self-confidence (Thomson & Hillman, 2020; Beames et al., 2023). Thus, research shows that low levels of mental health or emotional well-being are linked to heightened quitting intentions, which may contribute to the globally reported teacher shortages (Cano et al., 2017; Collie, 2023; Dreer, 2023).

In recent years, teacher mental health and well-being have become increasingly relevant topics in educational research (Kurrle & Warwas, 2025), as evidenced by the growing number of systematic reviews (e.g., McCallum et al., 2017; Hascher & Waber, 2021; Berger et al., 2022; Dreer, 2023; Fox et al., 2023). It has also become widely recognized that in people-oriented professions such as teaching (Nerdinger, 2011), managing one’s own emotions and influencing the emotions of others (e.g., students) are closely related to well-being and mental health (Chang, 2013; Keller et al., 2014a; Taxer & Frenzel, 2015; Fried et al., 2015; Hagenauer & Hascher, 2018a; Wang et al., 2023).

Already in 1998, Hargreaves emphasized that “teaching is an emotional practice” (p. 838), highlighting the significant emotional demands inherent in the profession. Similarly, Lee et al. (2016) described teaching as “an emotional effort” (p. 844), underscoring the continuous emotion management required by teachers to meet professional demands. For example, teachers are highly expected to openly display certain positive emotions—such as enthusiasm or enjoyment—to motivate students, while simultaneously suppressing other, mostly negative, emotions. Professional emotion management—whether through emotional labor (Hochschild, 1983) or emotional regulation (Gross, 1998)—is regarded as a central element of teacher professionalism.

Against this background, the following questions arise: How do teachers experience their professional activities emotionally? How do they manage their emotions? Which personal and institutional systems are seen as supportive for their emotion management and the maintenance of their mental health? The aim of the present study was to identify and describe teachers’ emotions, their emotional management strategies, and impacts on mental health and factors that help them to better regulate their emotions and thus enhance their mental health.

2. Theoretical Framework

2.1. Definition of Terms: Emotions

The concept of emotion is not consistently defined across the literature, but there is a consensus that emotions consist of several components:

“Emotions consists of neural circuits […], response systems, and a feeling state/process that motivates and organizes cognition and action. Emotion also provides information to the person experiencing it, and may include antecedent cognitive appraisals and ongoing cognition including an interpretation of its feelings state, expressions or social-communicative signals, and may motivate approach or avoidant behavior, exercise control/regulation of response, and be social or relational in nature.”

(Izard, 2010, p. 367)

As emotions are often regarded as “multi-dimensional phenomena” (Mühlbacher & Hagenauer, 2023, p. 3), five components are usually named: affective, expressive, physiological, motivational, and cognitive components (Scherer, 1984, 2005; Pekrun, 2006). Emotions are frequently classified according to their valence and arousal (Scherer, 2005; Pekrun & Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2014). Emotions with positive valence are experienced as pleasant (e.g., joy), while those with negative valence are perceived as unpleasant (e.g., anger). They can also vary in arousal level, being either physiologically activating (high arousal, e.g., excitement or anger) or deactivating (low arousal, e.g., relaxation or boredom). There is a vast range of emotions and emotional expressions (Mühlbacher & Hagenauer, 2023). A distinction is also made between primary emotions (basic emotions) and secondary emotions. Primary emotions are those that cannot be further reduced (joy, anger, sadness, fear, disgust, and surprise) and that form the basis for secondary emotions (Hascher & Waber, 2020).

2.2. Definition of Terms: Emotional Labor and Emotion Regulation

Under the umbrella term of emotion management, the two constructs of emotion regulation (Gross, 1998) and emotional labor (Hochschild, 1983) are combined. From a theoretical perspective, these two traditions exhibit significant overlap as both state that individuals possess the capacity and willingness to regulate their emotional experiences through the application of various strategies (Taxer & Frenzel, 2015).

Emotional labor is defined as ‘‘the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display’’ (Hochschild, 1983, p. 7) and involves managing one’s feelings in outwardly displaying specific emotions through facial expressions, voice, and gestures, regardless of whether these emotions align with one’s internal feelings (Hochschild, 1990). Within this framework, display rules are conceptualized as either implicit or explicit guidelines that dictate the appropriate expression of emotions in the workplace (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993). For example, teachers are highly expected to explicitly show certain positive emotions, e.g., to motivate students, while suppressing other, mostly negative emotions. Hochschild (1983) distinguishes between two strategies of emotional labor: surface acting, which involves faking emotions that are not truly felt or suppressing genuinely experienced feelings (i.e., regulating expressions), and deep acting, which refers to modifying internal emotional states so that the desired emotions can be authentically experienced and expressed (i.e., regulating feelings). According to this perspective, emotional regulation is achieved through compensatory strategies that involve the deliberate expression of emotions that may not be genuinely felt (Taxer & Frenzel, 2015). Nevertheless, some researchers have proposed a third type of emotional labor strategy: the expression of naturally felt emotions (Diefendorff & Gosserand, 2003; Diefendorff et al., 2005). This expression is characterized as automatic emotion regulation, referring to the spontaneous display of emotions that align with organizational expectations (Zapf, 2002).

Emotion regulation can be defined as “the process by which individuals influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express these emotions” (Gross, 1998, p. 275). The process model of emotion regulation (Gross, 2014) is arguably the most prominent theoretical framework in this field. Two main strategies are typically distinguished: (1) antecedent-focused strategies and (2) response-focused strategies. Antecedent-focused strategies are applied before emotions fully develop. These include various types of strategies, such as situation selection (e.g., approaching or avoiding specific situations), situation modification (e.g., changing aspects of a situation to alter its emotional impact), attentional deployment (e.g., shifting attention to different elements of the situation), and cognitive change (e.g., reappraising the meaning or significance of a situation). Response-focused emotion regulation strategies address emotions that have already been experienced and include response modulation (e.g., adjusting behavioral responses to modify the emotional experience). Teachers have several options for appropriately managing their emotions and their expression. They can authentically express and communicate their emotions, or they may choose to intensify, diminish, suppress, or mask them. In contrast to authentic emotional expression is the artificial display of emotions—commonly referred to as emotional faking—as seen in surface acting within the context of emotional labor (Taxer & Gross, 2018; Hagenauer & Mühlbacher, 2022).

The overlaps between the two concepts become clear as deep acting is suggested to conceptually align with antecedent-focused emotion regulation, with both strategies aiming to modify and internalize desired emotions before they fully develop. Similarly, surface acting parallels response-focused emotion regulation as it involves altering or suppressing emotional expressions (Grandey, 2000, 2015; Grandey & Melloy, 2017; Wang et al., 2023).

According to Gross (2014), four primary goals of emotion regulation—and the corresponding reasons why individuals regulate their emotions—can be distinguished: (1) the enhancement of positive emotions, (2) the reduction in negative emotions, (3) the attenuation of positive emotions, and (4) the amplification of negative emotions. When individuals enhance positive emotions and diminish negative emotions, emotion regulation serves the function of fulfilling “hedonic needs that are aimed at promoting pleasure and preventing pain” (Koole, 2009, p. 14). In addition to hedonistic functions, emotion regulation can also have instrumental function, namely, when individuals dampen their positive emotions or intensify their negative emotions.

In the present study, the process model of emotion regulation (Gross, 1998, 2015) was employed as the conceptual framework for investigating emotional labor, following the recommendation of Grandey (2000, 2015) to comprehensively consider specific emotion regulation strategies within the workplace context.

2.3. State of Research: Teachers’ Experience and Management of Emotions

Teacher emotions and their management have received growing scholarly attention over the last two decades, both nationally and internationally. This is evidenced by numerous publications, including systematic reviews (e.g., Bono & Vey, 2005; Sutton & Wheatley, 2003; Wang et al., 2019; Aldrup et al., 2024; Fayda-Kinik & Kirisci-Sarikaya, 2025), meta-analyses (e.g., Hülsheger & Schewe, 2011; Wang et al., 2019; Yin et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2023), as well as edited volumes (e.g., Hagenauer & Hascher, 2018b).

Empirical findings indicate that teachers experience a wide range of emotional states (e.g., joy, pride, or anger; Sutton & Wheatley, 2003; Frenzel et al., 2009; Keller et al., 2014a), with positive emotions predominating over negative ones (Frenzel et al., 2016; Hagenauer et al., 2015; Hascher & Waber, 2020; Keller et al., 2014b). Emotions constitute a pervasive and integral part of their everyday professional experiences. These emotional experiences are elicited by a variety of situational antecedents, such as teachers’ appraisals of student behavior as more or less congruent with their instructional goals (Becker et al., 2015). Moreover, emotions differ in their intensity, with joy emerging as the most salient and frequently experienced emotion in classroom settings (Keller et al., 2014b), as well as in their temporal patterns, which may vary as a function of contextual factors such as the specific class being taught (Frenzel et al., 2015).

Empirical research has consistently shown that teachers frequently engage in emotion management, underscoring its central role in their daily school experiences. Studies indicate that teachers generally believe they are expected to adhere to specific display rules in the classroom, which involve expressing or up-regulating positive emotions (e.g., enjoyment) and suppressing or down-regulating negative emotions (e.g., anxiety) (Zembylas, 2003; Sutton, 2004; Williams-Johnson et al., 2008; Sutton et al., 2009; Yin & Lee, 2012; Taxer & Frenzel, 2015). To meet these expectations, teachers employ two main strategies: deep acting, where they actively modify internal feelings through attention redirection or cognitive reappraisal, and surface acting, where they alter outward emotional expressions by concealing genuine feelings or displaying feigned emotions (Grandey, 2000; Grandey & Sayre, 2019). Lee and van Vlack (2018) demonstrate that teachers who frequently engage in deep acting in the classroom report higher levels of joy and pride, along with reduced feelings of anger. In contrast, surface acting is associated with increased experiences of anxiety and frustration. Findings suggest that the deliberate display of unfelt emotions can have both positive and negative consequences for teachers.

Teachers’ emotional labor is shaped by both individual factors—such as personality, self-efficacy, and motivation—and contextual factors, including emotional display rules, and has been shown to significantly affect their overall well-being (Wang et al., 2019; Yin et al., 2019). It has been shown many times that emotional labor is associated with increased stress and burnout (e.g., Keller et al., 2014a).

The regulation of emotions in teaching contexts has likewise garnered considerable scholarly attention (e.g., Sutton, 2004; Sutton & Harper, 2009; Brackett et al., 2010; Fried, 2011; Taxer & Frenzel, 2015). Studies show that teachers frequently report suppressing, faking, or masking their emotions. They also use strategies such as deep breathing or physical activity to regulate their emotions (Hülsheger et al., 2010; Nähring et al., 2011; Philipp & Schüpbach, 2010; Sutton, 2004; Taxer & Frenzel, 2015; Yin, 2016). Notably, the management of negative emotional expressions such as the suppression of anger in interactions with students has been extensively studied (e.g., Sutton, 2004; Taxer & Frenzel, 2015; Jiang et al., 2016). Teachers tend to suppress their (negative) emotions (Keller et al., 2014a; Taxer & Frenzel, 2015; Taxer & Gross, 2018). According to Sutton (2004), this requires continuous self-monitoring, which consumes cognitive resources and makes other tasks more difficult. When teachers suppress anger, for example, on the basis of implicit assumptions about (in)appropriate emotions in the classroom without the emotional experience converging accordingly, this is also referred to as emotional labor or surface acting (Morris & Feldman, 1996). In contrast, the regulation of positive emotions has received comparatively limited empirical investigation and remains an underexplored domain within the broader field of teacher emotion research (e.g., Keller & Becker, 2018). Some empirical findings show that teachers intensify the negative emotion of anger in expression; teachers simulate or intensify their anger for disciplinary reasons, for example, to show students the limits of their behavior (Gong et al., 2013).

The relationship between emotion regulation strategies and emotional well-being is inconclusive: Some studies suggest that antecedent-focused emotion regulation is associated with higher teacher well-being, such as greater job satisfaction, lower emotional exhaustion, and reduced depersonalization (e.g., Akın et al., 2014; Basim et al., 2013; Yin et al., 2013; Yin, 2015; I. Burić et al., 2017; Xie et al., 2022). However, other studies report the opposite, finding that antecedent-focused emotion regulation is linked to lower well-being among teachers (Philipp & Schüpbach, 2010; Moè & Katz, 2021). Additionally, several investigations have repeatedly found no significant relationship (e.g., Zhang et al., 2022). Numerous studies indicate that response-focused emotion regulation—particularly the suppression or faking of emotions (surface acting)—is negatively associated with teacher well-being. Teachers who frequently use such strategies report lower job satisfaction and higher emotional exhaustion (e.g., Wang et al., 2019; L. Burić et al., 2021). Especially detrimental are the faking of positive emotions and the hiding of negative ones (Taxer & Frenzel, 2015; Wang et al., 2021), while faking negative or hiding positive emotions has shown no clear association with teacher well-being.

What has hardly been investigated to date is how teachers regulate their emotions outside the classroom context and to what extent they (can) draw on private and institutional support resources.

3. Method

3.1. Participants and Procedures

A total of 51 teachers of all school types from Germany participated in the present interview study. In compliance with ethical standards, participation was voluntary, and all participants were provided with information outlining the nature of the study and had time to reflect on their willingness to be interviewed. As participation was ultimately voluntary, the study was based on a convenience sample.

The sampling was conducted using a snowball sampling method through school networks and student teacher multipliers, who recruited teachers nationwide as interview participants. Inclusion criteria required participants to be currently employed schoolteachers with at least three years of professional experience, actively involved in regular classroom teaching and school-related interactions. Participants were purposefully selected to ensure diversity in terms of school type, sex, and years of teaching experience. This strategy was chosen to allow for a comprehensive exploration of the emotional experiences, regulation strategies, and support systems that teachers employ or encounter in their daily professional practice.

The sample consisted of 38 females and 13 males. The sex distribution is consistent with national statistics showing that the majority of school teachers in Germany are female (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2024). Seventeen of the teachers worked at primary schools and 35 at high schools (Gymnasium, Realschule, Mittelschule, Berufliche Schulen). Teaching experience ranged from 4 to almost 40 years in the jobs—on average, the teachers had professional experience of 17.5 years.

3.2. Data Collection Instrument and Data Collection

The present study followed a qualitative research approach and was methodologically designed as an interview study. To capture teachers’ subjective conception of their emotions, their emotion management, and support systems, expert interviews (Meuser & Nagel, 2009) were conducted, based on “problem-centred interviews” (Witzel & Reiter, 2012) with comprehension questions, confrontations, and reflection. The interviews were designed in such a way that the introductory narrative prompt referred to the personal experience of emotions in teaching and was intended to facilitate a conversation. The enquiry part focused on specific emotions, emotion regulation in and outside the classroom, and supporting resources. Questions were asked in three key areas: (1) How do teachers experience their professional work at school emotionally? (2) What strategies are used to regulate their negative emotions and maintain their mental health? (3) Which personal and institutional resources for strengthening and maintaining mental health can be found? After the interview, participants completed a brief demographic questionnaire, which was stored separately from the interview data. After conducting two pilot interviews, the main data collection phase took place between March 2023 and March 2024. The interviews were conducted via Zoom and were approximately half an hour to one hour in length.

3.3. Analysis

With the permission of the participants, interviews were recorded for transcription purposes. Once the transcript was finished and all references to authentic names or locations were eliminated, the original audio recordings were deleted to ensure anonymity. Each interview transcript was assigned a number.

Analysis of the transcripts was based on thematic analysis according to Braun and Clarke (2022). The analysis process comprised the following five recursive steps: (1) Interview transcripts were read intensively several times and initial notes were made. (2) Relevant sections were identified and coded to capture explicit and implicit meanings. (3) In line with qualitative analytical procedures, preliminary core themes were first developed separately for each interview through the synthesis of related codes. These initial ideas were then further refined through cross-case comparison in order to characterize the specific features of participants’ emotional experiences, their emotion regulation strategies, and the systems of support they identified. (4) In comparison with the interview transcripts, the extent to which the core ideas corresponded to the data was checked, the patterns were refined and revised several times. (5) A synopsis was created for each interview, documenting the key aspects of emotional experiences, emotion regulation, and the evaluation of support systems both within and outside the school.

The process focused on coding the individual interviews, then comparing individual cases and searching for common themes in dealing with emotions across the interviews. To ensure the quality of the analysis process, especially the coding, the interview transcripts were independently coded by a second person apart from the author, and the results were compared consensually.

4. Results

4.1. Teachers’ Emotions

Teachers reported experiencing a wide range of emotions almost every day, including joy, anger, sadness, and sometimes fear. However, most of them experienced emotions with a positive valence, so joy was the emotion most frequently felt. Joy came in especially when students made progress in their learning. Emotions with a negative valence such as sadness came up in connection with significant personal tragedies of their students. Many teachers reported feeling deep empathy and sorrow when students or their parents had passed away or when they learned about difficult conditions their students faced in their families, such as domestic violence. Additionally, several teachers experienced feelings of grief and empathy related to grading tests, student expulsions, or students not being promoted to schools or courses leading to Abitur. While they felt largely helpless in dealing with their students’ personal misfortunes or difficult life circumstances, they found matters of performance assessment and allocation of educational opportunities particularly stressful because they felt responsible for their students’ success and even doubted their own judgement and decisions. This was experienced as quite burdensome.

Some teachers also reported having experienced fear. One teacher described this very vividly when remembering his/her training as a teacher:

“I spent quite some time during my teacher training dreaming at night that I was standing naked in front of the class. And I find that very telling, because it really expresses exactly that emotion, the fear of standing naked in front of the class because you’re not competent enough, because you don’t know how to react, because you overreact. I don’t know. And then you’re alone, and they’re many. And if they laugh at you, you’re the fool. That’s a fear, and it’s something you naturally experience.”

(GS_42_w, line 250–255)

Imposter syndrome, uncertainty in how to respond to students’ behavior, fear of losing control and face, and fear of humiliation and social rejection, as well as a feeling of isolation, are all woven together here, showing a typical rection of many novices in the classroom who feel unprepared and overwhelmed by the complexities of teaching.

According to the interviewees, anger is particularly experienced in cases where there are disciplinary issues and conflicts with the entire class or with individual students and/or parents. This emotional experience is amplified when school leadership or colleagues were perceived as disloyal in these situations. Many teachers reported examples of having been so overwhelmed by discipline problems in the classroom that they felt they had no other way to cope than by shouting at students, which is seen as failure. In this case, the primary emotions of fear and despair often give rise to the secondary emotion of anger, as illustrated in the following excerpt:

“I couldn’t deliver a good lesson because of some very hyperactive students. I was so exhausted that I could only yell. In that moment, I was so angry, sad, and above all, desperate, because I couldn’t calm the kids down. Honestly, after that lesson, I questioned my entire career choice. That desperation, simply because you have no idea how to control those troublemakers, is really the worst. I can definitely say that you get angry most often out of desperation, and then you quickly lose control in front of the children.”

(GS_36_w, line 133–137)

This loss of control is considered as very painful and embarrassing. It is often accompanied by strong self-doubt regarding their own personal abilities and suitability for the profession.

Emotional stress arises from emotional overload and helplessness, which then leads to loss of control and outbreak of anger. Therefore, teachers, especially when talking about the beginning of their careers, reported experiencing the job as emotionally taxing and challenging because the situations were new, they were uncertain about appropriate reactions to students’ behavior, and they questioned themselves strongly but also felt potentially undermined in their authority by the students and, at times, personally attacked. All teachers reported that the intensity of their emotions decreased with increasing years of professional experience. They perceived emotions like fear, sadness, and anger less strongly, because situations repeated themselves, and they had developed a repertoire of classroom strategies that allowed them to see themselves as more confident, competent, and therefore more relaxed. That is, the emotions experienced also varied in terms of arousal level throughout one’s professional career, with emotions being perceived as less intense as professional experience increased.

4.2. Teachers’ Emotion Management

The results indicated that emotion regulation in the classroom was predominantly associated with the strategy of response modulation (Gross, 2015). The teachers reported that they authentically expressed positive emotions, such as joy, to their students without any filter and that managing these emotions came easily to them. Emotional faking, or the expression of positive emotions that did not align with one’s genuine feelings (=surface acting), was perceived as significantly more challenging but was regarded as an essential part of professional behavior.

Negative emotions, such as anger and sadness, on the other hand, they tended to hide, to suppress, or at least to express only in a restrained and appropriate manner. It is important to differentiate between the origins of the emotions here. All teachers reported concealing negative emotions from their private lives while in the classroom and viewed the ability to regulate these emotions through suppression as an integral part of their professional competence. In special cases, such as physical discomfort like exhaustion or headaches, as well as grief due to deaths in the family, teachers acknowledged their emotions to the students with the aim of transparency and authenticity, without acting on them. According to their own statements, most teachers were generally successful in regulating their private emotions in the sense of suppressing them in the school context. What most teachers found more difficult, however, was regulating negative emotions like anger or sadness that arose while in classroom. While most teachers tended to hide or suppress these negative emotions, others verbalized them without acting on them. Only a few, on the other hand, displayed and acted on their negative emotions.

The following sequence illustrates how teachers manage their emotional response in terms of hiding or suppressing emotions and shows that this is closely linked to one’s well-being and mental health:

“A situation that comes to mind spontaneously, which is relatively trivial, happened with a first grader. It was the end of the school day, quite early in the school year, and the children were restless. It had been a long, exhausting day, and the student was just busy chewing on his jacket sleeve, chewing it wet, goofing around. I wanted to wrap up the day, the bus was coming, and the bus kids needed to leave on time. I could feel my frustration and stress levels rising. I told him several times, ‘Stop that, clean up your things, put your chair up,’ but he kept goofing around, didn’t clean up, and kept chewing on his jacket. And then (- - -) I was really about to snap, almost yelled at him, but I held myself back and said, ‘You stay after class, I need to talk to you’. Everyone else left and I asked him, ‘What’s going on?’ He didn’t look at me and said ‘Nothing’ and turned away. So, I took his sweatshirt and the wet, chewed sleeve and said, ‘That’s not nothing... what’s this?’ He looked at me and said, ‘Because I’m hungry.’ […] And in that moment, this little first grader was really a master in my eyes, and I sent up a little prayer in that moment, thinking, ‘Thank God I didn’t yell at this child in my tunnel vision.’ So, I asked, ‘What did you eat today?’ and he said, ‘Two small Knoppers’ and showed me the wrapper. Then I asked, ‘What did you have for breakfast?’ He said, ‘Nothing.’ Then he told me that they never have time at home to have breakfast”

(GS_w, line 51–67)

Initially, the teacher experienced frustration and an urge to act impulsively, but by regulating emotions through suppression, she prevented an emotional outburst and responded with inquiry, and her feelings shifted from frustration to empathy. This enabled her to engage in emotion regulation in the form of cognitive reappraisal (=deep acting). Emotion regulation, particularly through controlling behavioral impulses, is considered beneficial for well-being and mental health.

Most teachers assessed their own management of emotions in the classroom as appropriate and professional. They all reported that with increasing years of experience and self-confidence, it had become much easier for them to remain calm and composed in emotionally challenging situations, no longer feeling overwhelmed, and thus no longer experiencing emotional loss of control.

4.3. Teachers’ Personal and Institutional Support Systems for Emotion Management and Mental Health Maintenance

While teachers reported being able to leave their personal emotions outside the school and classroom context and regulating their emotions in the classroom so that they could express positive ones but hide, suppress, or only show negative emotions in a very controlled manner, they found it much more difficult to not take the emotions experienced during the school day home with them. Many teachers reported that negative emotions from the school day continued to occupy their minds and sometimes caused them distress throughout the rest of the day and night. Teachers used various personal strategies to process their school-related emotions and generally care for their mental health, as well as the support they received and wished to receive from the school institution.

The most important personal strategy for dealing with negative emotions was talking to partners, friends, family, and especially colleagues. These exchanges served several purposes for the teachers; on one hand, it allowed them to unload their emotions or express them freely, while on the other hand, it often provided an opportunity to reflect on them in a safe space and to reassess whether their actions were appropriate or how they could have acted differently. This form of reassurance was considered particularly relevant. A key factor seemed to be a sense of uncertainty regarding one’s own behavior. The need for reassurance was particularly high during early stages of the career, given the generally strong sense of personal uncertainty.

Teachers reported that through discussions with colleagues, they learned to reflect and employ re-framing or reappraisal strategies and a cognitive change. The realization that conflicts and attacks should not be taken too personally was seen as crucial for their own emotion management and the maintenance of their mental health. Most teachers stated that with increasing professional experience, they had developed a level of detachment that helped to regulate the intensity of emotions both in the situation and afterward, contributing to better mental health.

To regulate their own emotions and restore emotional balance or to maintain mental health, moderate physical activities such as yoga, taking a walk, and running were also important strategies for the surveyed teachers. Many of them also described a shift in focus through contact with an animal, particularly a dog, as emotionally relieving and calming. The animal demanded their attention, which helped distract from negative school-related emotions. These forms of distraction were perceived as relieving because they broke the cycle of overthinking, which could sometimes lead to even more negative emotions, and instead generated positive emotions.

On an institutional level, supportive and understanding colleagues, as well as good school leadership, were mentioned as supportive. It was important for the respondents that trusted colleagues, due to shared experience, were able to understand them, the conflicts, and their emotions. Debriefing and reflecting on situations together, offering a different perspective on the situation, and sometimes comforting and relieving each other made conversations with colleagues valuable and necessary. In some cases, school leadership could also take on this role—however, what was needed here was primarily loyalty and support, for example, in conflicts with parents or students from the school leadership.

There was a clear desire among teachers for more opportunities to engage in discussions with colleagues about challenging situations or conflicts within the school day, as well as the possibility for supervision by trained and trustworthy personnel. Most respondents indicated that coaching and supervision would help them with emotion management and their mental health—some had already had positive experiences with this at their schools, while others wished for it to be firmly implemented. Training on how to handle emotions and relaxation techniques was also mentioned as helpful. Some teachers reported that they had a school psychologist or school social worker at their school whom they could turn to, which was also perceived as supportive. The development of a supportive organizational culture that allowed teachers to openly talk about their emotions and receive support when needed was seen by all teachers as very important for their mental health and emotional management. Teachers emphasized the importance of emotionally supportive conversations with colleagues as a means of coping with work-related emotional stress. Regular opportunities for conversations that provided emotional relief contributed to emotional resilience and mental well-being. Many teachers reported having at least three to four colleagues with whom they could speak openly in this way. In emotion management—on both a personal and an institutional level—respondents primarily focused on being able to talk everything off their chest and reassuring themselves about their coping strategies in various stressful situations.

5. Discussion

The aim of the present research was to use the process model of emotion regulation (Gross, 2014) to gain a better understanding of teachers’ emotions and emotion regulation strategies and their support systems. In sum, supporting teachers in managing their emotions is essential not just for their own mental health. Emotions can impair and strengthen mental health, and vice versa, mental health also influences the ability to deal with negative emotions.

The results replicated previous findings to the effect that emotions with positive valence such as joy were experienced most frequently (e.g., Keller et al., 2014b; Hagenauer et al., 2015; Frenzel et al., 2016; Hascher & Waber, 2020). The findings revealed that response-focused strategies (Gross, 2014) of emotion regulation were particularly relevant for most teachers within the classroom setting and during interactions with parents. The results also replicated the fact that teachers tended to suppress their emotions with negative valence, particularly anger (e.g., Sutton, 2004; Taxer & Frenzel, 2015; Jiang et al., 2016). Few of them reported showing or even intensifying their negative emotions in order to have an educational impact on their students (e.g., Gong et al., 2013). As further response-focused strategies, teachers mentioned faking, as well as conscious breathing exercises/meditation and physical activity—findings that are also supported by previous studies by Hülsheger et al. (2010), Nähring et al. (2011), Philipp and Schüpbach (2010), Sutton (2004), Taxer and Frenzel (2015), and Yin (2016).

Outside the classroom context, however, teachers primarily relied on antecedent-focused strategies, particularly cognitive change strategies (Gross, 2014). In this regard, support from colleagues, family members, and trained professionals played a crucial role as these individuals helped provide alternative perspectives. The strategy of attentional deployment (Gross, 2014) was also predominantly employed outside the classroom—especially after the school day—when teachers deliberately sought to shift their focus through active forms of distraction such as engaging in sports, spending time with family, or interacting with pets. This strategy, along with emotional venting in conversations with trusted individuals, which is not listed as a distinct strategy by Gross (2014) but emerges as relevant in the empirical data, has been found to be particularly effective.

Furthermore, a supportive school culture or culture of collaboration—characterized by opportunities for collegial exchange, supervision, counseling, and a loyal and supportive school leadership—appeared to mitigate emotional burden and contribute significantly to the maintenance of teachers’ mental health and well-being. Research by Kinman et al. (2011) as well as Papatraianou and Le Cornu (2014) shows that teachers seek emotional support from colleagues by sharing stressful experiences related to student behavior in order to reduce the emotional demands of their work. These strategies relate to long-term, rather than situational, emotion management aimed at maintaining well-being and health.

A limitation of the present study lies in the use of a convenience sample, which restricted the generalizability of the findings. Additionally, the data were collected through self-reports, which may introduce potential biases due to socially desirable responses or subjective misperceptions. Future research with larger and more diverse samples, as well as the incorporation of standardized instruments, could enhance the validity and generalizability of the results and broaden the applicability of the findings. It also remains unclear to what extent the different school types play a role—this should be investigated separately.

What implications can be drawn from the findings? The results suggest that the teaching profession is perceived by many of the participating teachers as emotionally demanding. At the same time, data indicate that the experience of emotional strain tends to decrease with increasing professional experience. Providing regular opportunities for supervision, consultation, and collegial case discussions during working hours may ultimately represent a valuable investment in sustaining teachers’ health—especially in times of teacher shortages. In this context, Newberry et al. (2018) emphasize the importance of emotional support for the development and professionalization of teachers at various stages of their careers. Since teachers have emotional needs and often have little time for collegial exchange in their daily work, it is especially important to deliberately provide space and time for this, as well as institutionally anchored support systems within schools for professional emotion regulation, to ensure sustainable and meaningful opportunities for collegial exchange and personal growth. Such measures may help reduce the likelihood of teachers leaving the profession due to emotional exhaustion, which is why addressing, sustaining, and protecting teachers’ mental health and well-being should be a top priority for policymakers and school authorities.

Given that the teachers surveyed reported having felt particularly emotionally burdened at the beginning of their careers, the development of emotional competences as a crucial facet of teacher competency should become an integral component of teacher education (see also Newberry & Riley, 2023). For teacher education research, the findings imply—as already noted by Hagenauer and Mühlbacher (2022)—a need for further investigation into professionalization issues, specifically how teacher emotions and their regulation strategies develop throughout teachers’ careers, how these can be effectively fostered, and to what extent various support systems are successful.