Author: ADMIN

Alone With My Anxiety: The Isolation of Doing a PhD Whilst Suffering With Anxiety by Isabelle Berrow 

ADMIN

I believe that I have spent my whole life anxious. As long as I can remember, I have worried about things that other children did not. I was scared of getting hurt, getting muddy, trying new things out, of a fear of failure. I always felt different from the others. 

Whenever I voiced these concerns I was told ‘Don’t be silly’ or ‘You’re no fun to be around’. As a little girl, these comments were extremely damaging to how I viewed the anxiety within me. I was ashamed, appalled and determined to not let anyone know how I was truly feeling. 

So I spent my whole childhood, my teenage years and even into my 20s pretending I was somebody else. 

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My Academic Career with Psychosis and Depression by Anonymous

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I’m on the train to France, where I’m working as a postdoc in mathematics. We are in the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and masks are mandatory, as well as filling out forms in French for every journey. My thoughts are racing. I have the feeling that I cannot finish my thoughts, similar to when one is trying to tell a story, but loses oneself in subordinate clauses and never finishes the original sentence or plot line.

As my thoughts speed up, I feel like I’m suffocating in my mask. 

Wait – people with severe COVID have that feeling too – maybe it’s that? Then I have to find a hospital here in France, and I only speak very little French – when I’m home I will immediately do a COVID test – but it’s also very likely that this is because of the upcoming psychosis – I haven’t been able to sleep normally for a week now.

Now I see there are police on the train. I panic. 

They are certainly here for me. I’ve probably made a mistake in the forms I filled out with help of Google Translate. They are going to arrest me and put me in jail – only to transfer me to a psychiatric hospital where they will force me to take Haldol (or just give me a jab with it), which will make my head hazy – doing math will be impossible for many months, my career will be over, my life will be over – and make me move like in an advanced stage of Parkinson’s. 

At this point I can only cry. They are walking by once again. I message a friend back home that I’m going to be arrested and my worst nightmare will come true.

When I arrive at my apartment in France, I immediately take a rapid test. Negative. That means the tightness in my chest is panic, not Covid. I take a Lorazepam tablet and slowly the tightness dissolves. I lie on my bed for 20 minutes, and I stop crying. Then I have to go to the meeting with my postdoc supervisor. I do my best to survive the meeting… my head is still racing yet numbed by the Lorazepam at the same time… I didn’t make any progress on my project (already for weeks now)… 

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Completing a PhD whilst Getting Diagnosed with a Serious Mental Illness by Jack Birch

ADMIN

TW: Suicidal ideation

Completing a PhD is often a time of academic and personal discovery. In spending so much time thinking about your subject, it seems only natural that people think about who they are as a person and if this has changed over time. 

What did this look like for me? 

Well, there’s things like my accent changing, and feeling a loss of ‘who am I?’. This was a natural occurrence during my PhD due to living in a different region, but in my earlier university education, I’d deliberately softened my accent due to being made to feel like an outsider. There’s also new cultures, hobbies, foods, and music that I’ve had the privilege of exploring and enjoying. But the biggest thing I look back on is that, whilst completing my PhD, I was also going through the process of having been diagnosed with – and subsequently managing – a serious mental illness. 

I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder halfway through my PhD. It’s an illness that has a wide range of symptoms and presentations. For me, it presents as extremely intense emotions and frequent suicidal thoughts and ideation, which is quite a lot to deal with alongside doing a PhD! With the huge benefit of hindsight, in this blog I’ll reflect on how the stages of me being diagnosed with, and managing, a serious mental illness interacted with completing a PhD. 

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Addressing lone working for PhD students by Chrissie Thwaites 

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It is relatively well-known both within and beyond academia that doing a PhD can be an isolating and lonely experience. Mental health in academia is now an increasingly prominent area of discussion, and many are working hard to cultivate an environment in which wellbeing is prioritised. In this blog I will discuss one area that could benefit from receiving more attention, especially in relation to PhD student isolation, namely the reality of lone-working. 

PhD students: Going it alone

Given the central role of conducting independent research, it is unsurprising that much of PhD life is characterised by working in solitude. There may be opportunities for networking, such as reading groups, research seminars, writing groups, and the occasional conference – but ultimately the task of researching and writing a thesis can only be completed by the researcher themselves. This will usually be done from home, a library, perhaps sometimes a coffee shop, or (for those who are lucky) a designated desk or departmental study space. 

This means that for many students, accepting a PhD place also means committing to 3-4 years (if full-time) of predominantly lone working. Often, this is a commitment made unknowingly. As a postgraduate research degree, a PhD is the first long-term academic research project students will undertake. Although they will have (presumably) a background in academic study, and may have submitted a short thesis as part of a previous degree, the day-to-day realities of PhD working will be somewhat unfamiliar. Those pursuing the industry expectation for research with ‘impact’ could be especially isolated – stuck in the predicament of producing unique research (and maybe receiving funding for it) partly because no one else is really doing it. Such research could feel isolating at times. The researcher may be the only one at their university, in their region, or even their country working in that particular area.  

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Yoga – Off the mat, into the Lab by Dr Lorna Young

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I feel if you know someone who regularly practices yoga, you may have heard how yoga has changed their life. For years I had heard the same thing from other “Yogis” – I never thought I would become that person, but here I am! Yoga has – quite truly – changed my life. From an academic myself to (in all likelihood) an academic yourself reading this, in my opinion, it is one of the best and most useful investments you can make in yourself.  

I am so grateful to have yoga with me now and for the rest of my life. Yoga is often suggested at academic institutes to help with mental wellbeing of staff and students. I believe the use of yoga is under-utilised here; a yoga practice (and meditation) is an effective way of helping stress management and general well-being, an improvement in both of which can lead to increased focus and productivity.

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Growth, Healing, and Understanding: The Importance of Humanity in Academia by Sydney Conroy

ADMIN

There is often talk in the media about healing your inner child, but far less talk about healing your inner teenager. When it comes to my time in academia as a doctoral student, I have found attending to the wounds of my inner teenager has allowed me to experience something else that is seldom spoken about: healing during a PhD. 

For me, my teenage years were the years that solidified some painful stories I told about my self-worth and value, particularly around education. I often felt like I needed to provide ‘value’ to my peers by doing the most work on group assignments; I thought it would mean more people would like me or want to be my friend. I realised consciously about that time that the adults in my world were only interested in what I accomplished, what my grades were, and the topics I was learning about; I began internalising that what I was doing was more important than who I was being as what I was curious about or confused about. My entire interior world, including my mental health and wellbeing, was less of a topic of conversation than school. Grades mattered, and because I was encouraged for ‘my best’ to be the same as ‘the best’ (as in the actual highest score), I felt like I failed other people for not being the smartest or the top-performing student in the room.  

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It’s Not Your Fault That Academic Life is Getting Harder by Glen O’Hara

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Universities are in trouble, and it’s not just money we’re talking about. They are living through something of a crisis of confidence, even of trust and faith. More and more, I find myself, and my colleagues, unsure of what we’re supposed to be doing any more, and certainly unclear on why we’re doing it. 

There’s no doubt that many academics are feeling very pressured, highly anxious, and deeply insecure about their profession and its prospects. For some, suffering perhaps worse than others, a feeling of desperation, of being cornered, is setting in. Why is this happening, and what can we do about it? 

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PhD Work-life Balance in Hindsight: Lessons from Parenting by Lauren Saunders

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I’m writing this blog post while my toddler watches a cartoon in the background, and I feel drained by the constant need to multitask. This morning, I peeled clementines for her while leading a Zoom meeting, trying to keep my hands out of frame and appease her without needing to mute my audio. I’m currently five years post-PhD graduation, and have worked remotely ever since: through my husband’s process of immigrating to the U.S., COVID-19, and parenthood. I think often about the lessons I’ve learned since finishing my doctorate about work-life balance. Because my life was so much less complicated during graduate school, I had the luxury of “winging it” when it came to work-life balance, and I didn’t achieve it very effectively. Now that I have to actively grapple for work-life balance as I change diapers while returning phone calls, I have a much different appreciation for what I could have done differently during graduate school.

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Learning to Manage Anxiety and Impostor Syndrome by Kehinde Adepetun   

ADMIN

I have been thinking about my struggles as an undergraduate student recently and this article marks a significant moment, as it is the first time I am opening up to share my deeply personal journey of mental health challenges to wellness. I am an undergraduate of microbiology and just like many of you, I have faced my own battles with impostor syndrome and anxiety in my academic career. In this article, I will take you through my journey and explain how I have made impostor syndrome and anxiety work for me by turning them into my allies. When I say turning them into my allies I mean that rather than allowing them to hinder my progress, I have channelled their energy into becoming a self-aware and resilient student. 

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5 Things You Might Lose When Leaving Academia – and What You Might Gain by Dr John Ankers

ADMIN

Recently I wrote about coaching academics at crossroads in their careers. I focussed on the practicalities – but the emotions involved in such forks in the road also play a huge part in our decisions, and challenge our mental health. I agonized over the decision to leave for the last three years of my time in academia. I was torn between a job I used to love but had grown to dread, loyalties to the research, and to a young family that I was helping to support.  Privately, I suffered panic attacks, night sweats – I ended up in hospital with heart issues. And still, I couldn’t see the wood for the trees. Looking back, I was seeking permission – and while my family gave it without question, over and over again, I was denying it to myself.

As individuals, PhDs choose widely different paths – some stay in academia (facing the stress of fierce competition), others switch roles or leave academia for something new. While every candidate, and every position, is different, career crossroads are common and frequent – life-changing decisions that happen regularly! It’s no wonder that wellbeing can suffer – especially when trying to weigh up different factors in work and life. 

Here are some issues that gave me and some of my academic clients pause for thought before a leap to new career paths. Some may be obvious, others maybe not. The hope is that, forewarned and forearmed, you can choose what you take from where you are now as you progress, and ultimately feel better about your decisions, whatever they may be. 

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