Embracing Emotion: The Philosophy PhD and BPD by Alexandra Gustafson

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CW: Suicide, self-harm

I’m Alexandra, a philosophy PhD candidate at the University of Toronto. I am the co-founder and former co-chair of the department’s Mental Health & Disability Caucus (MH&D), an initiative that promotes mental health and disability visibility in academia. Currently, I co-organize the Mental Health & Disability Network, an expansion of MH&D that connects philosophy graduate students internationally. And last year – nearly 4 years into my PhD, at nearly 30 years old – I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. In this blog, I will talk about my experiences and how it has shaped me as a PhD student to date.

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Jumping into the Deep: Insecurities as a Foreign PhD Candidate during Times of COVID by Janne Punski-Hoogervorst

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It’s February 2022: the world has been in a pandemic for almost two years and my life – like that of many others – has been characterized by strict lockdowns, absolute travel restrictions and general anxiety about the coronavirus. On top of this, halfway through my PhD my life couldn’t have looked more different from just before: I had switched from being a physician to being a full-time student, spending most of my days working behind a computer in the lab instead of running around a busy mental health hospital. I no longer lived in the country where I was born and raised (The Netherlands) but somewhere (Israel) where I didn’t even speak the language.

Although I am highly passionate about the topic of my PhD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and love doing my research projects, being a PhD student – especially in a foreign country – comes with many challenges. Some expected, some less so. Some are overwhelming, others somewhat minor. It’s a process of introspection and accepting strengths and weaknesses; of showing vulnerability and accepting help, while also being self-reliant and independent. It’s a journey, and although beautiful it’s for sure far from easy.

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On My First Job in Academia: The Challenges, Mental Health, and Coping Mechanisms by Ritika Mahajan

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As far as I remember, I always wanted to be a teacher. Initially, for some years, I wanted to run a dance school, but soon I shifted to a safer ‘dream’ of being a teacher. Growing up in the 1990s in India, economic security was essential for a middle-class family. One could dream of breaking the norms but within boundaries, as contradictory as it sounds!

I was told that I was a good student because I followed all the instructions and scored the highest in examinations. A student who came on time, obeyed without asking questions, learned things by heart, and gave the expected answers was the best student. When I look back, I realise the message was clear – compliance is excellence. So, my most significant learning after years of education was neither analytical ability nor innovative thinking; it was compliant behaviour. With this conditioning, I entered the world of academia, only to realise that I had no training for this field.

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Beyond Academic Stress and Burnout: Nurturing a Healthier Academia by Déborah Rupert

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December 2013. I’m a 3rd year PhD student in biological physics and I just came home from another night in the lab. It’s 2 am, my experiment failed… again. My plans for the weekend? Sleep 6 hours and go back to the lab to try again. Nothing very special here, this is what PhD students in the sciences feel obliged to do – spend their life in the lab. The project I focused on for the past two years wasn’t fruitful, so we decided to change strategy and start from scratch, adding stress on to an already stressful PhD. New project, new unknowns. To produce results and catch up with publications, I’ve been working close to 80 hours per week for the last 6 months.

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Ripping Off the Band-Aid: The Struggle of Asking for Help by Lauren Cuthbert

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Content warning: Depression, pet death

I’m a solitary person by nature. I prefer to spend my time in my own company, watching a film or a TV show, or crocheting to keep my hands busy. I don’t mind being in my own head – in fact, for the most part, I prefer it. I wasn’t fazed by lockdown: being told to stay indoors didn’t substantially alter my daily routine, and I figured I wouldn’t have much trouble adjusting to the state of the world if I was already used to spending the majority of my time in my room. Back in April of 2020, I was chatting with a friend who asked me how I was coping with lockdown. At the time, I’d been unemployed since graduating from my MA five months previously; I was in the process of applying for jobs, but also considering undertaking a PhD. I said, and I remember it exactly, “My life literally has not changed at all, so I’m fine.”

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Natural Highs and Crushing Lows on my way up the Academic Ladder by Anonymous

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TW: Suicide

One afternoon in the summer of 2008: Boom! I found myself flat on the grass after being tackled by a friend during an outdoor student party. For a couple of days, I hadn’t been myself, and this day I was going sky high! I barged into conversations expecting everyone to listen to me, made many inappropriate jokes and jumped on stage to claim the mic from an unsuspecting artist. “What the hell are you doing?!”, my friend said to me. He helped me by (physically) getting me back on the ground.

The Long Road to a First Diagnosis

I have been dealing with having bipolar disorder ever since. I experienced quite the mental crash that year and spent a few weeks at my parents’ house resting, seeing my first psychologists and preparing for a return to university. After changing university course, I was a physics student and besides pushing myself through the degree, I was enjoying the social part of being a student. I was a member of a student association and this typically meant lots of fun activities. As I already had friends from all these activities, I skipped all the social introduction activities when starting physics. Because of this I became a student who did most of my studying alone. This carried on into my personal life too. I don’t share my feelings much and almost never ask for help.

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Obsessing about the Academy: Finding Life with OCD by Zachary G. Smith

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My body knew there was a problem before my brain. During my doctoral program, I began to suffer full-fledged panic attacks several times a day accompanied by sensory issues. Loud noises were piercing triggers, and a passing siren would leave me in a fetal position. I had never experienced anything like it, and I felt like I was spiraling out of control. There were other problems too. Opening a Word document to write or cracking the spine of a book sent waves of anxiety and panic through my body that came to rest in the back of my throat. I constantly replayed conversations with colleagues and faculty in my mind, highlighting my every fault. I needed hours before and after classes to work myself up and calm myself back down from these interactions. But the panic attacks were my primary concern: I couldn’t control them the way I could adjust my schedule to satisfy these mental rituals by which I got through the day. 

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Chin Up! Cheerleading and Bias in Academia by Jennifer Lynn Sarai Kriegel

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TW: Sexual assault

A Pragmatic Pollyanna

Fear. Denial. Avoidance. Guilt. Self-blame. Wavering or low confidence. Self-judgment. Self-punishment. For weeks, I have been avoiding these entities which I keep in my shadows. Generally, I pretend they have vanished. Mostly, they have. In their place have grown or returned: strength, courage, and resilience. These are coupled with strategic planning, tenacity, and optimism. Such attitudes have allowed neurobiology to work primarily in my favor with each new positive experience, and regeneration of new cells that have only understood fear as a residual, rather than direct impact, a balance that has taken years to achieve.

Those who have been affected with mental health issues in any walk of life have at least once encountered the phrase “chin up!” suggesting that the affliction is, in fact, their own fault. Consistently, on my journey I have encountered both such stigmas, as well as resounding cheerleaders championing my success. Because of the stigmas, I generally refer to my condition as “recovered.” Also, maybe, because it’s also hard to admit to myself.

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Rethinking Our Compulsion to Comparison by Emily Beswick

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I am a third-year PhD researcher at the University of Edinburgh. Throughout school, university and postgraduate studies I have often been my own harshest critic when it comes to defining academic success. 

Completing my PhD during a global pandemic made me step back and try be more realistic in my goal-setting, and more adaptable to managing change. I wrote this blog in the hope of reminding myself, and others, that productivity is fluid and highly impacted by factors outside of our control. A reminder for self-compassion and accepting that whilst social comparison is often inevitable, remember every destination has many routes.  

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Finding a Friend In Failure by Victor Mosconi

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Failure: IT’S OVER.

That’s how we often see it.

Failure is so often seen as the end of something. And not the end in a good way, but in a disappointing, tragic way, often ending in anguish, and sometimes with tears. 

“Failure” is a powerful word that creates all sorts of negative thoughts in the mind. Even just seeing the word creates anxiety and stress in some people. And if you experience the imposter phenomenon as I do, then not only do you worry about failing, but you internalize it as well and you see yourself as a failure. The imposter phenomenon, also known as imposter syndrome, is the inability to recognize internalized successes and achievements. It’s the constant fear of being seen a fraud for not being good enough. With my imposter phenomenon mindset, I saw myself as someone who always made mistakes and could never truly succeed. I not only failed in all I did and worked on, but in who I was as a person. The problem we often run into with the word “failure” is that we only look at the end result. And if that end result is not what you or others expected, then it’s deemed a failure. You didn’t achieve your goal, so it is determined to be a poor result, a mistake, and problem, maybe even a tragic end.  With the imposter phenomenon, you also see yourself as having not achieved what others expected, wanted or desired in a you. So, you see yourself as a failure.

In academia, there is often a lot of undefined end goals and you are continually adjusting as you go. Failure can seem like a weekly occurrence. You can be given a particular end goal in your first phase of a project or writing assignment, and once you’ve achieved it, your professor then will tell you how you need to change the focus of your project based on the first phase developments. But you also have to go back and change what was written in the first phase to align better with the new end goal. Being continually informed you have more changes and more alterations to make creates ever-growing thoughts that you’re failing at writing this project. You have the thoughts, if you weren’t failing at each step, you wouldn’t have all these changes. Working on my PhD dissertation has been exactly like this. I completed the first step, was told it was good, but I had to make all the changes. Okay, in my imposter mindset my first thought was, “so then it wasn’t good.” I’d rewrite it, turn it in, and she liked the changes, but, now I need to make these new alterations and drop this one variable, but maybe add this new variable. Each step there’s more changes, the end goal is not in sight. I’m not even sure what the end goal is besides earning my degree. And honestly, after the third rewrite, my imposter thought was “Oh, wow, I’m so bad at this, I’m going to fail out of my PhD.” 

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