Please give me resources on CPTSD (YNM mental health professional)
October 2, 2018 2:44 PM Subscribe
It's been a pretty shitty few weeks, not least because I've been confronting the... strong possibility that I have some form of CPTSD. Trouble is, I'm having a hard time finding resources and wrapping my head around things, especially because my trauma is neither sexual nor military. Please help me find in-depth materials that talk about what this is like to experience and, if possible, what the hell I can do about it.
I have broached the subject with my mental health professionals, but I think both of them are used to me taking the lead with crazy shit, because most of the time I do that. And I'm totally out of my depth on this.
I can provide more detail on why I think this is going on with me if people would like it, but I'm currently warring with the desire to not overwhelm people who might help with a massive info dump and also the desire to explain absolutely everything about me in case people want to judge. I am fragile right now. I have been fragile for a long time, and I don't know how to stop.
One big thing for me is that I have slowly and surely begun to associate my work with terror and a pervading sense of failure, to the point that I woke up with nightmares on three separate occasions last night--before I'd set today aside to work on my current manuscript in progress. Complicating things, my PI has (correctly) noticed I am struggling and will not stop nudging me to graduate--he explicitly wants me to succeed and has verbally assured me that he thinks I can do it, but he also wants to see forward progress and my sense is that I am on thin ice.
I am in the seventh year of my PhD. (I have been grappling with the sense that I am on thin ice with respect to my work since my third year, when my department very publicly announced that they wanted all graduate students to graduate in five years.) I want to finish it, and I'm a mixture of enthusiastic and absolutely convinced that my science is boring, untrustworthy, and terrible--and my terror at dealing with it is making me rush through it and spend a ton of time procrastinating, neither of which is exactly a good professional look. It's hard to think straight when your mind is screaming while you try to perform a cognitive task. At the same time, looking at my work just reminds me of previous committee meetings, which have consistently been terrifying and upsetting for me. It's not so bad, as long as I don't need to present it--that seems to be the consistent issue.
How do I work on this specific thing? My boss is convinced that by just writing up this project, I will magically conquer my "nervousness" about it. I am cautiously in agreement, but he won't let me work on anything except writing this manuscript and another project I have some worries about (re: learning a new technique) while I punch through it, and I am having a really hard time with my work right now. I would appreciate any and all techniques for dealing with this problem, because right now I'm tired and scared and concerned that it is a matter of time before my personal and professional colleagues give up on me.
P.S.--I present the rough draft of the manuscript to my colleagues in two weeks.
I have broached the subject with my mental health professionals, but I think both of them are used to me taking the lead with crazy shit, because most of the time I do that. And I'm totally out of my depth on this.
I can provide more detail on why I think this is going on with me if people would like it, but I'm currently warring with the desire to not overwhelm people who might help with a massive info dump and also the desire to explain absolutely everything about me in case people want to judge. I am fragile right now. I have been fragile for a long time, and I don't know how to stop.
One big thing for me is that I have slowly and surely begun to associate my work with terror and a pervading sense of failure, to the point that I woke up with nightmares on three separate occasions last night--before I'd set today aside to work on my current manuscript in progress. Complicating things, my PI has (correctly) noticed I am struggling and will not stop nudging me to graduate--he explicitly wants me to succeed and has verbally assured me that he thinks I can do it, but he also wants to see forward progress and my sense is that I am on thin ice.
I am in the seventh year of my PhD. (I have been grappling with the sense that I am on thin ice with respect to my work since my third year, when my department very publicly announced that they wanted all graduate students to graduate in five years.) I want to finish it, and I'm a mixture of enthusiastic and absolutely convinced that my science is boring, untrustworthy, and terrible--and my terror at dealing with it is making me rush through it and spend a ton of time procrastinating, neither of which is exactly a good professional look. It's hard to think straight when your mind is screaming while you try to perform a cognitive task. At the same time, looking at my work just reminds me of previous committee meetings, which have consistently been terrifying and upsetting for me. It's not so bad, as long as I don't need to present it--that seems to be the consistent issue.
How do I work on this specific thing? My boss is convinced that by just writing up this project, I will magically conquer my "nervousness" about it. I am cautiously in agreement, but he won't let me work on anything except writing this manuscript and another project I have some worries about (re: learning a new technique) while I punch through it, and I am having a really hard time with my work right now. I would appreciate any and all techniques for dealing with this problem, because right now I'm tired and scared and concerned that it is a matter of time before my personal and professional colleagues give up on me.
P.S.--I present the rough draft of the manuscript to my colleagues in two weeks.
Best answer: Tell the folks on your mental health team, today, that you're out of your depth (it's unusual, so your disclosure should resonate), and that they need to take the lead. If they're out of their depth, they should refer you to the appropriate professional. Professionals well-versed in CPTSD are your resources right now; digging into research studies and literature on your own is far too much at this stage.
As for work, would the presence of a body double in your writing sessions help you over the next two weeks? This is someone non-aggravating, who will just sit in the same room with you, working on their own thing, while you work on the write-up. It's not so bad, as long as I don't need to present it - would a short-acting anxiety drug help in this instance? Are there any accommodations available to make the process easier?
Your work isn't boring, untrustworthy, and terrible - from what you've shared here, it's fascinating. You're nearly finished with your degree, and fear of the future can be its own beast. Best wishes.
posted by Iris Gambol at 3:55 PM on October 2, 2018 [3 favorites]
As for work, would the presence of a body double in your writing sessions help you over the next two weeks? This is someone non-aggravating, who will just sit in the same room with you, working on their own thing, while you work on the write-up. It's not so bad, as long as I don't need to present it - would a short-acting anxiety drug help in this instance? Are there any accommodations available to make the process easier?
Your work isn't boring, untrustworthy, and terrible - from what you've shared here, it's fascinating. You're nearly finished with your degree, and fear of the future can be its own beast. Best wishes.
posted by Iris Gambol at 3:55 PM on October 2, 2018 [3 favorites]
I don’t think this is a case where diagnosing yourself is something that will help. If it leads to you obsessing about your diagnosis as a way to distract from what you’re actually scared of, it’s not going to make you feel better. You have a team, let them know you are struggling and need help and rely on them. Really lean on them. Don’t point your big science brain at this one. (And I mean that in the kindest way)
posted by bleep at 5:00 PM on October 2, 2018 [13 favorites]
posted by bleep at 5:00 PM on October 2, 2018 [13 favorites]
Best answer: I have self-diagnosed CPTSD that is neither sexual nor military. I have gotten a lot of help from pete-walker.com. He is very compassionate and definitely understands. Two of my favorite articles there are Shrinking the Inner Critic and Flashback Management, but there’s a lot of good material.
Recovery is hard work, but it is possible. I wish you peace.
posted by probably not that Karen Blair at 5:02 PM on October 2, 2018 [5 favorites]
Recovery is hard work, but it is possible. I wish you peace.
posted by probably not that Karen Blair at 5:02 PM on October 2, 2018 [5 favorites]
Best answer: I am self-diagnosed with CPTSD and live on the Reddit forum for sufferers of CPTSD. It is not a typical Reddit forum, folks there have been very nice and understanding, and it's been a good place for me to Yell Into The Void when I've needed to. My trauma doesn't all come from the 'usual sources' either.
That said, I am detecting a perfectionist mindset (which is typical of CPTSD sufferers to have!) where you might feel that your brain problems must be sorted out NOW NOW NOW.
Your CPTSD does not have to be solved NOW NOW NOW. This is a long journey. With mental health professionals, I would triage your work situation and address how your mental health may be impacting that. And that can be your focus for a while until you're on more solid ground to address the trauma as a whole. Good luck.
posted by coffeeand at 5:16 PM on October 2, 2018 [8 favorites]
That said, I am detecting a perfectionist mindset (which is typical of CPTSD sufferers to have!) where you might feel that your brain problems must be sorted out NOW NOW NOW.
Your CPTSD does not have to be solved NOW NOW NOW. This is a long journey. With mental health professionals, I would triage your work situation and address how your mental health may be impacting that. And that can be your focus for a while until you're on more solid ground to address the trauma as a whole. Good luck.
posted by coffeeand at 5:16 PM on October 2, 2018 [8 favorites]
Best answer: Hi sciatrix! So sorry to be hearing you’ve been having a tough time — I’ve long enjoyed many of your posts and comments here. I have a few thoughts that are hopefully useful.
CPTSD:
I am by no means an expert, but have had an amateur interest in this and the Reddit community r/cptsd looks to be pretty helpful both in terms of support and in terms of resources. One of the books that’s recommended frequently (which I haven’t read) is The Body Keeps the Score. I agree, though, that this is something that will go a lot better with a competent therapist who knows about complex trauma. Note that there are not a lot of these and you might need to go searching around; a well-intentioned but clueless one can be damaging. [On preview, I see earlier folks are recommending the same things].
PhD:
Here I have more expertise because I’m a professor who both managed to finish my own PhD and routinely advises students who are in your position. Your situation may be a little more complex than usual but it is not at all abnormal. I say this not to minimise what you’re feeling, but to reassure: many -- I might even say most -- people at your stage of the PhD are feeling very much like you are. It is a natural consequence of being incredibly sick of your specific project and topic, but also finally knowing enough to know how very little you know in the grand scheme of things and how many tiny decisions all of your results depend on and how fragile they really are (which is where the imposter syndrome comes from, in part). The six months to a year before finishing my PhD were hands-down the time where I felt worst about my own abilities and most ambivalent about science in general.
As a professor, I’m pretty darn sure you are not on “thin ice” with your advisor. They might be concerned about how you are holding up but if they have invested seven years of their life and their valuable time in you that means they are confident you have what it takes to succeed and they will do whatever they can to see you succeed.
Your advisor is probably thinking that many of your problems will be solved by writing it up and just finishing because that is most of the time exactly how it works. A little distance from your topic and some perspective about how it all fits in and what other people are doing is what you really need, but the only way to get that distance is to power through. (If you took time off, you’d both be very much decreasing the odds of ever getting back into it, but also when you got back into it you’d probably feel similar). Once you get through and get something submitted, you can take several months off (which I highly recommend) and I’m sure you will feel a LOT better about everything in your field; and even if you don’t, you’ll have it done and the letters behind your name and an accomplishment to be proud of.
The question is, how do you power through? I completely understand that simultaneous feeling of dread and panic that comes whenever you sit down to do your work. Again, it’s common. You basically have to pick whatever mind hacks work to get past the feeling and just get stuff down on paper. Things that helped me and seem to help many of my students:
1. Do not worry about quality. You are an amazing writer, sciatrix, and I’m sure that even a 50% effort will be good enough to get a PhD (which is your goal - not “the best thesis ever”). The worst mistake I see students make is them feeling like they’re in a hole and they have to be even better to make up for it. This of course just feeds the panic and dread and makes it even harder to get anything accomplished and makes the procrastination worse. TAKE ALL OF THAT PRESSURE OFF. It does not need to be perfect, it does not even need to be close to perfect, it just needs to be done. So your goal is ENTIRELY to get stuff written. Writing horrible crappy stuff is an accomplishment.
2. Along those lines, do whatever you can to write stuff down. I find informal writing far easier in general so a favourite trick of mine is to pretend that I’m writing about it in an email or a Metafilter blog post. The words just fly down. I might need to go through it again and formal it up a bit and add citations, but it’s WAY easier to do that than to do the first draft. Other people find it useful to record themselves talking about it and transcribe the recording, or use voice software to do that directly.
3. Give yourself lots of bribes and breaks. Slow and steady progress is much better than spurty progress (which you can’t sustain for long enough). Figure out how many words you need per day and just do that. Let yourself take frequent breaks during which you go for short walks, play with the dog, whatever, and then get back to things. I myself gained about 15 pounds and spent a bit too much money when I wrote my PhD because after every little chunk of writing I let myself walk around the corner and buy some ice cream. It was completely worth it.
The main thing I can say to you is that you can totally do this.
posted by forza at 5:18 PM on October 2, 2018 [17 favorites]
CPTSD:
I am by no means an expert, but have had an amateur interest in this and the Reddit community r/cptsd looks to be pretty helpful both in terms of support and in terms of resources. One of the books that’s recommended frequently (which I haven’t read) is The Body Keeps the Score. I agree, though, that this is something that will go a lot better with a competent therapist who knows about complex trauma. Note that there are not a lot of these and you might need to go searching around; a well-intentioned but clueless one can be damaging. [On preview, I see earlier folks are recommending the same things].
PhD:
Here I have more expertise because I’m a professor who both managed to finish my own PhD and routinely advises students who are in your position. Your situation may be a little more complex than usual but it is not at all abnormal. I say this not to minimise what you’re feeling, but to reassure: many -- I might even say most -- people at your stage of the PhD are feeling very much like you are. It is a natural consequence of being incredibly sick of your specific project and topic, but also finally knowing enough to know how very little you know in the grand scheme of things and how many tiny decisions all of your results depend on and how fragile they really are (which is where the imposter syndrome comes from, in part). The six months to a year before finishing my PhD were hands-down the time where I felt worst about my own abilities and most ambivalent about science in general.
As a professor, I’m pretty darn sure you are not on “thin ice” with your advisor. They might be concerned about how you are holding up but if they have invested seven years of their life and their valuable time in you that means they are confident you have what it takes to succeed and they will do whatever they can to see you succeed.
Your advisor is probably thinking that many of your problems will be solved by writing it up and just finishing because that is most of the time exactly how it works. A little distance from your topic and some perspective about how it all fits in and what other people are doing is what you really need, but the only way to get that distance is to power through. (If you took time off, you’d both be very much decreasing the odds of ever getting back into it, but also when you got back into it you’d probably feel similar). Once you get through and get something submitted, you can take several months off (which I highly recommend) and I’m sure you will feel a LOT better about everything in your field; and even if you don’t, you’ll have it done and the letters behind your name and an accomplishment to be proud of.
The question is, how do you power through? I completely understand that simultaneous feeling of dread and panic that comes whenever you sit down to do your work. Again, it’s common. You basically have to pick whatever mind hacks work to get past the feeling and just get stuff down on paper. Things that helped me and seem to help many of my students:
1. Do not worry about quality. You are an amazing writer, sciatrix, and I’m sure that even a 50% effort will be good enough to get a PhD (which is your goal - not “the best thesis ever”). The worst mistake I see students make is them feeling like they’re in a hole and they have to be even better to make up for it. This of course just feeds the panic and dread and makes it even harder to get anything accomplished and makes the procrastination worse. TAKE ALL OF THAT PRESSURE OFF. It does not need to be perfect, it does not even need to be close to perfect, it just needs to be done. So your goal is ENTIRELY to get stuff written. Writing horrible crappy stuff is an accomplishment.
2. Along those lines, do whatever you can to write stuff down. I find informal writing far easier in general so a favourite trick of mine is to pretend that I’m writing about it in an email or a Metafilter blog post. The words just fly down. I might need to go through it again and formal it up a bit and add citations, but it’s WAY easier to do that than to do the first draft. Other people find it useful to record themselves talking about it and transcribe the recording, or use voice software to do that directly.
3. Give yourself lots of bribes and breaks. Slow and steady progress is much better than spurty progress (which you can’t sustain for long enough). Figure out how many words you need per day and just do that. Let yourself take frequent breaks during which you go for short walks, play with the dog, whatever, and then get back to things. I myself gained about 15 pounds and spent a bit too much money when I wrote my PhD because after every little chunk of writing I let myself walk around the corner and buy some ice cream. It was completely worth it.
The main thing I can say to you is that you can totally do this.
posted by forza at 5:18 PM on October 2, 2018 [17 favorites]
Best answer: I hope it isn't invalidating to say that these kinds of feelings seem to be very common in PhD students who are close to finishing. I've been there, it was awful, and a large part of why I didn't go for a post-doc. I felt very fragile for months after graduating but it got so much better after working in a real job for a little while where e.g. success could be achieved by hard work and cleverness instead of the fickle whims of the science gods. A PhD can be so hard and yes, traumatic.
I got sucked into the same hole of self-diagnosis as a way to explain and avoid my huge feelings of anxiety, but it only prolonged the process (it took nearly 7 years for me as well, in large part because of extreme avoidance). Be kind to yourself and take time to decompress when you can, but keep working towards finishing,even just a tiny bit every day.
The only way out is through. I've read enough of your posts to know you are smart and hardworking and you can do it.
posted by randomnity at 5:19 PM on October 2, 2018 [6 favorites]
I got sucked into the same hole of self-diagnosis as a way to explain and avoid my huge feelings of anxiety, but it only prolonged the process (it took nearly 7 years for me as well, in large part because of extreme avoidance). Be kind to yourself and take time to decompress when you can, but keep working towards finishing,even just a tiny bit every day.
The only way out is through. I've read enough of your posts to know you are smart and hardworking and you can do it.
posted by randomnity at 5:19 PM on October 2, 2018 [6 favorites]
Response by poster: Oh--to be clear, I am definitely bringing these up with my treatment team, and have already broached the topic with both of them (and they are in contact with one another). The psychiatrist settled back and went "yes, of course," and the meds I'm on work pretty well for both anyway (esp the cloninidine, which we tried specifically because I thought they might be useful for this reason, but didn't frame in terms of trauma exactly). The therapist went "oh, that... hm, yes," and proceeded to talk trauma with me in future sessions.
My experience is that me trying not to self diagnose tends to lead to me leaving out information that, uh, may or may not be diagnostically relevant, because I don't want to bias people. Which is how it took my psychiatrist four years to find out that I was diagnosed with autism at age twelve...
The current "Sci, tell your health workers" issue that has my spouse exasperated is the dawning realization this week that perhaps it is not normal to remember zero non-nightmare dreams for the past, oh, ten years or so. I'm working up to sharing that one. It never seemed unusual to me, so it never came up!
I'm not intending to browse the primary literature with this request, though--I'm actually looking for therapy-ish books that will let me tap into a more lay human ish approach. I want to understand this in my gut, not just in my head. For me, that's the hard part.
posted by sciatrix at 5:42 PM on October 2, 2018
My experience is that me trying not to self diagnose tends to lead to me leaving out information that, uh, may or may not be diagnostically relevant, because I don't want to bias people. Which is how it took my psychiatrist four years to find out that I was diagnosed with autism at age twelve...
The current "Sci, tell your health workers" issue that has my spouse exasperated is the dawning realization this week that perhaps it is not normal to remember zero non-nightmare dreams for the past, oh, ten years or so. I'm working up to sharing that one. It never seemed unusual to me, so it never came up!
I'm not intending to browse the primary literature with this request, though--I'm actually looking for therapy-ish books that will let me tap into a more lay human ish approach. I want to understand this in my gut, not just in my head. For me, that's the hard part.
posted by sciatrix at 5:42 PM on October 2, 2018
Best answer: Have you tried EMDR? I've begun that recently. It's great for trauma and can help stabilize (though it's really tiring to do). You can look up a provider on Psychology Today's website to see if you want to be screened to do it, and feel free to mail me with any questions.
I also have a trauma that doesn't fit under a usual umbrella. Well, I do have a lot of traumas that are more typical, but the one that's given me the biggest roadblock is also a rogue situation. TBH I haven't gotten a lot out of PTSD communities because the situations and the needs vary so much. But I'm not saying that communities and forums can't help.
Just putting that out there as a fellow weird trauma sufferer. It sucks, doesn't it? Because not only are you traumatized but then there's no language to talk about it or community to tell it to. It's rough. I'm sorry.
posted by mermaidcafe at 7:50 PM on October 2, 2018
I also have a trauma that doesn't fit under a usual umbrella. Well, I do have a lot of traumas that are more typical, but the one that's given me the biggest roadblock is also a rogue situation. TBH I haven't gotten a lot out of PTSD communities because the situations and the needs vary so much. But I'm not saying that communities and forums can't help.
Just putting that out there as a fellow weird trauma sufferer. It sucks, doesn't it? Because not only are you traumatized but then there's no language to talk about it or community to tell it to. It's rough. I'm sorry.
posted by mermaidcafe at 7:50 PM on October 2, 2018
Best answer: It's hard to think straight when your mind is screaming while you try to perform a cognitive task
Ugh, I know exactly this feeling. What I tried then was to open another document where I dumped all that screaming. It maybe helped a little? Agreed that you have to take as much pressure off as you can. My current best trick is to pick small things that need done and do them (often using the most boring thing - like adding footnotes to yesterday's work - as an ice breaker to get myself to start working) or what I think of as Opposite Day, described here.
posted by salvia at 9:51 PM on October 2, 2018 [4 favorites]
Ugh, I know exactly this feeling. What I tried then was to open another document where I dumped all that screaming. It maybe helped a little? Agreed that you have to take as much pressure off as you can. My current best trick is to pick small things that need done and do them (often using the most boring thing - like adding footnotes to yesterday's work - as an ice breaker to get myself to start working) or what I think of as Opposite Day, described here.
posted by salvia at 9:51 PM on October 2, 2018 [4 favorites]
I'm in my 5th year of a PhD, which is due to be completed mid next year. I don't have the words to say what I want to say, apart from that over the last five years I have lived with a general, pervading feeling of paralysis and guilt. If I'd known 5 years ago what I know now, I might not have decided to do this, and the only reason I am continuing is that it would be ridiculous to stop at this stage.
I don't think I have real trauma about this - my supervisors are very gentle and I am at a very supportive New Zealand university - but it is also no surprise to me that I started having panic attacks in my second year and have been medicated for anxiety since then.
I don't have advice, just solidarity. I hope you get through. The process is much tougher emotionally than intellectually, in my opinion.
posted by thereader at 1:24 PM on October 3, 2018 [4 favorites]
I don't think I have real trauma about this - my supervisors are very gentle and I am at a very supportive New Zealand university - but it is also no surprise to me that I started having panic attacks in my second year and have been medicated for anxiety since then.
I don't have advice, just solidarity. I hope you get through. The process is much tougher emotionally than intellectually, in my opinion.
posted by thereader at 1:24 PM on October 3, 2018 [4 favorites]
Best answer: Forza has great advice. Mine follows below.
I want to finish it, and I'm a mixture of enthusiastic and absolutely convinced that my science is boring, untrustworthy, and terrible
So my response isn't CPTSD-specific but I have been to grad school in the sciences (where my PhD took 7 years and I did a year-long postdoc at the same place) and I can maybe speak to this a little bit. Based on what you've shared with us on the site, I think of you as a person with very high personal integrity. I think this can sometimes make it difficult to accept the idea of publishing something that might turn out later to be flawed. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that all scientific work inevitably has shortcomings and blind spots: as the saying goes, projects are never "done," they are merely abandoned at some point. But I think you may need to watch out for unfairly holding yourself to an impossible standard. You can be a person with integrity, and yet still decide something is ready for publication without pre-emptively addressing every possible criticism that might be levied at it. You retain your integrity more by doing due diligence by the standards of (work you respect in) your field, and by being willing to accept and learn from any flaws in your work that you later discover. (I don't know your main research or your field but again, based on your contributions to this site, I am not worried that slightly lowering your standards would lead you to produce untrustworthy science.)
I think this perfectionism can get reinforced in a couple of different ways. Sometimes graduate journal clubs contribute, if every week is about ripping a different paper to shreds (and in my experience evolution- and ecology-adjacent departments can be particularly vociferous). Committee meetings absolutely contribute, again, particularly in certain fields. Not that this isn't good training in some ways, but it is only part of the picture. One thing I noticed from my postdoc is that people have completely different pet peeves about the literature in different departments, because they were trained differently -- which means there's always going to be someone who fundamentally disagrees with decisions made in good faith in a piece of research. It's inescapable. Moreover, another observation that is easy to miss is that these people whose mildly-flawed papers get torn apart in journal club do not, in general, suffer career-ending consequences because their work is critiqued. The first authors defend and get PhDs and go on to get jobs, and the last authors continue to have jobs where they conduct and publish research. And often even just thinking about the work itself, flawed work often ends up moving a field forward in some way.
I'm not sure if I have the right read without more detail, but -- if your committee meetings were anything like mine, they may have been stressful in part because they were dominated by big personalities and you felt powerless to steer the ship. A practical piece of advice here, if this does actually apply to you and is possible, is to find an excuse to bring another member onto your thesis committee. One thing I semi-accidentally discovered is that big personalities can sometimes balance one another out. When faculty start arguing with each other about your work, that opens up some space for you to be the deciding vote in the room. So if you have one committee member or advisor who tends to steamroll people, find an advocate in the department who you know is not going to be intimidated by them.
If you can't do this, another thing that can help now that you're pretty close to graduating is to basically channel your inner project manager ("Making The Right Moves" has some science-specific project management advice). For example, when you're wrapping up your presentation you can have a proposed timeline you can keep referring to, where you explicitly state that in order to graduate by such and such a time, we need to submit the paper by this date, so I need to have this analysis done by this date, etc. This can help to keep people tethered in the realm of "things you can reasonably accomplish in the remaining time" and gives you something to point at when they inevitably propose you do lots of extra work to address something peripheral. This kind of self-advocacy/assertiveness is super hard for a lot of people, myself included, and I don't know how exactly it interfaces with mental health stuff in your case, but it is fortunately also the kind of thing you can practice in therapy and with self-help (my boss really likes "Your Perfect Right," but I haven't read it personally; I have taken leaves out of the books "Feeling Good" and "When I Say No, I Feel Guilty", though).
The other thing I wanted to tell you is that I completely recognize these feelings. I have my own mental health challenges, but I actually now kind of suspect that it would be more exceptional not to feel exactly that mixture of excitement and impostor syndrome, and to feel it most acutely when you are mostly writing. When I was last going through this type of emotional rollercoaster (writing a research statement), I talked to my advisor about it and without even hesitating or blinking she was like, "totally normal." It doesn't mean anything about your fitness for a career in science; this kind of stuff is just inherently psychologically taxing. I'm not sure how much that helps but I wanted to at least validate those emotions.
posted by en forme de poire at 3:30 PM on October 6, 2018 [5 favorites]
I want to finish it, and I'm a mixture of enthusiastic and absolutely convinced that my science is boring, untrustworthy, and terrible
So my response isn't CPTSD-specific but I have been to grad school in the sciences (where my PhD took 7 years and I did a year-long postdoc at the same place) and I can maybe speak to this a little bit. Based on what you've shared with us on the site, I think of you as a person with very high personal integrity. I think this can sometimes make it difficult to accept the idea of publishing something that might turn out later to be flawed. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that all scientific work inevitably has shortcomings and blind spots: as the saying goes, projects are never "done," they are merely abandoned at some point. But I think you may need to watch out for unfairly holding yourself to an impossible standard. You can be a person with integrity, and yet still decide something is ready for publication without pre-emptively addressing every possible criticism that might be levied at it. You retain your integrity more by doing due diligence by the standards of (work you respect in) your field, and by being willing to accept and learn from any flaws in your work that you later discover. (I don't know your main research or your field but again, based on your contributions to this site, I am not worried that slightly lowering your standards would lead you to produce untrustworthy science.)
I think this perfectionism can get reinforced in a couple of different ways. Sometimes graduate journal clubs contribute, if every week is about ripping a different paper to shreds (and in my experience evolution- and ecology-adjacent departments can be particularly vociferous). Committee meetings absolutely contribute, again, particularly in certain fields. Not that this isn't good training in some ways, but it is only part of the picture. One thing I noticed from my postdoc is that people have completely different pet peeves about the literature in different departments, because they were trained differently -- which means there's always going to be someone who fundamentally disagrees with decisions made in good faith in a piece of research. It's inescapable. Moreover, another observation that is easy to miss is that these people whose mildly-flawed papers get torn apart in journal club do not, in general, suffer career-ending consequences because their work is critiqued. The first authors defend and get PhDs and go on to get jobs, and the last authors continue to have jobs where they conduct and publish research. And often even just thinking about the work itself, flawed work often ends up moving a field forward in some way.
I'm not sure if I have the right read without more detail, but -- if your committee meetings were anything like mine, they may have been stressful in part because they were dominated by big personalities and you felt powerless to steer the ship. A practical piece of advice here, if this does actually apply to you and is possible, is to find an excuse to bring another member onto your thesis committee. One thing I semi-accidentally discovered is that big personalities can sometimes balance one another out. When faculty start arguing with each other about your work, that opens up some space for you to be the deciding vote in the room. So if you have one committee member or advisor who tends to steamroll people, find an advocate in the department who you know is not going to be intimidated by them.
If you can't do this, another thing that can help now that you're pretty close to graduating is to basically channel your inner project manager ("Making The Right Moves" has some science-specific project management advice). For example, when you're wrapping up your presentation you can have a proposed timeline you can keep referring to, where you explicitly state that in order to graduate by such and such a time, we need to submit the paper by this date, so I need to have this analysis done by this date, etc. This can help to keep people tethered in the realm of "things you can reasonably accomplish in the remaining time" and gives you something to point at when they inevitably propose you do lots of extra work to address something peripheral. This kind of self-advocacy/assertiveness is super hard for a lot of people, myself included, and I don't know how exactly it interfaces with mental health stuff in your case, but it is fortunately also the kind of thing you can practice in therapy and with self-help (my boss really likes "Your Perfect Right," but I haven't read it personally; I have taken leaves out of the books "Feeling Good" and "When I Say No, I Feel Guilty", though).
The other thing I wanted to tell you is that I completely recognize these feelings. I have my own mental health challenges, but I actually now kind of suspect that it would be more exceptional not to feel exactly that mixture of excitement and impostor syndrome, and to feel it most acutely when you are mostly writing. When I was last going through this type of emotional rollercoaster (writing a research statement), I talked to my advisor about it and without even hesitating or blinking she was like, "totally normal." It doesn't mean anything about your fitness for a career in science; this kind of stuff is just inherently psychologically taxing. I'm not sure how much that helps but I wanted to at least validate those emotions.
posted by en forme de poire at 3:30 PM on October 6, 2018 [5 favorites]
Hey, late to the party, but here is an essay by Virginia Valian that I found posted somewhere here on Metafilter a while ago. It's about academic work and 'getting stuck' and I've found it really helpful. Best of luck with your work, you've got this!
posted by aiglet at 12:06 PM on October 11, 2018
posted by aiglet at 12:06 PM on October 11, 2018
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One reason grad school was so hard for me was that I wasn’t in the habit of sucking at things. So part of how I worked off the stress of dissertating was to take up running, which I have no talent for. It was a relief to have the freedom to suck, and to reorient myself toward assessing my own progress instead of my relative status (which will always be low for grad students - and should!).
Another reason was that I had a somewhat perfectionistic mentor and a lack of regular one on one meetings. These things combined in the worst way to make me terrified of feedback that I actually needed in order to feel any meaning in the work at all. I have a better boss now, but I’m also a better employee because I know what kind of guidance I can expect and I also know I can ask for it if I’m not getting it.
A third reason (and it’s not possible to disentangle this from the others, unfortunately) is that I was no longer convinced this is what I wanted to do with my life. It felt like a big risk to uproot my life for a job I might get fired from in a city I couldn’t pick where I would be doing science I was not confident in. It is so much harder to reach a goal you are not sure you want to reach! But oh, the weird pressure to want it, not to question the brass ring!
No matter what your jerkbrain tells you, you are not actually a failure for taking a little more than the on-paper time to graduate. You’re not! I didn’t finish in five either. I have friends and colleagues that took 7, 8, 9 years. They’re Doctor just as much as anyone else and some of them are also Professor.
posted by eirias at 3:41 PM on October 2, 2018 [4 favorites]