I need help...

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

My field is astronomy. Useful, I know. (Academia is pretty much my only option…) In my program, we have to write a prospectus that outlines each chapter, and this needs to be done a year in advance. I wrote down the titles of each chapter, eahc section, and each sub-section, and then I wrote a few sentences about what I would write about. A lot of those sentences went like this, “In this section, I will discuss my results about A, B, and C.” Nothing too detailed, just getting a rough sense of what goes where. My prospectus was about 10 pages total. Like I said, it’s required in my program, but it’s really helpful and I would recommend doing it even if you don’t have that requirement. Just keep in mind it’s a rough outline. Mine changed over the course of the year, even before I started officially writing the thesis.

As for citations, I cite pretty much every statement in my introduction, where I give the background to the field. After that, most of the work is my own so I don’t need to cite anything except to compare my results to other studies. Or sometimes I cite another study if I use a similar technique. I don’t necessarily remember every detail in the papers I read, but usually I remember the basic point of the paper. If you’re finding mistakes when going back through your notes, treat that as a good thing - you’re catching the mistakes. Sure there might be others, but they’re not intentional, right? If someone else finds a mistake, then that’s great too, because you can fix it. Until your thesis is bound and published, you can fix anything you want, and nothing is the end of the world.

I think the key to writing is not to get obsessive about it. In fact, aim to write a crappy rough draft. Every rough draft is crappy, so just get the basic thoughts down. Remember, you can always edit!

I just read your more recent post about the backpay - can you pay it back in installments, and without interest since it wasn’t your mistake? They don’t expect all $900 at once, do they? Any chance your parents can help out?

I’m having a rough day too, so I just want to reiterate, I feel for you and what you’re going through. It occurs to me that it might help if you had some people to talk to, besides us on this board. You can’t talk to your girlfriend without worrying her, I get that, but maybe there is a dissertation support group you could go to, I know there are some at my university. Or maybe you could ask your therapist if there are support groups of some kind, either related to dissertations or mental health (or both!), somewhere where you can talk about your problems and not feel guilty about talking about your problems. It helps to have people physically there, to feel physical support. Well, social support, but physical presence.

Also, I agree with Anne Neville - nobody should be working 12+ hours a day, so don’t even think about aspiring to that! :slight_smile:

62

Now your name makes sense :wink: Really, academia is it? I wouldn’t have guessed that. Astronomy seems to be one of the most useful fields one could get into. Aren’t there observatories all around the world? There are some here in Texas I know of. Wow. I think you picked a great field. I’ve always loved the night sky.

I think at first she thought I could just whip out my checkbook. Then I had to gently remind her that I’m a doctoral student. In fairness, she was as nice as anyone could be, given that she has to ask me for that much money. She told me she’d get back to me about a payment plan. I’m crossing my fingers.

(Incidentally, although I wanted to go off on her, my frontal lobe kicked in and told me that she’s the only person who can help me, so it’d be best not to piss her off. Never understood going off on people with no authority).

That’s something to check into. Although I have the delusion that no one really understands how I feel. Not really. It’s frightening how much the idea that I"m alone has ahold of me. Even the people who say that they’re going crazy and are really stressed out, to me, have it completely together. They aren’t a quivering mass of nerves who can barely move.

63

It’s likely that those same people feel themselves to be a quivering mass of nerves and are wondering how the hell you keep it together so well, what with your having a girlfriend - plenty of late bloomers your age have never had one - and being in a fancy-schmancy-pants program, and all that!

Trust me when I tell you that everyone at some point feels like everyone around them has their shit together and they’re the only ones left out of the party.

64

You’re getting a lot of good advice. If you had the ability to read this thread as though it was written by somebody else, so you could circumvent the unfair standards and the ridiculous privilege you apply to your own personal doubts about yourself, it would be really easy for you to figure it out by yourself, but people are doing it for you. And I could write for you a little essay about how similar your experiences are to some of mine in law school, but because of those similarities I know that it wouldn’t do any good. Here’s what I can tell you: one, give yourself a fucking break. Two, this stuff isn’t magic, and you aren’t going to one day just feel entirely differently about life just based on thinking about it enough. The thing to do, if you suspect something is true but don’t really feel it deep inside, is to test it.

Realize that the secret to all your “I feel like this is true, but not really” isn’t that you need somebody to put the words in the correct order so you’re immediately changed inside: “Now I can live!”, but that you haven’t yet acted on the things that you begrudgingly concede are probably true, even if they haven’t done anything for you. They’re not going to do anything for you just by virtue of you thinking about them. They’re just things that are true, and you can do what you want with them. In small measure they’ll make you feel better about things. As it turns out, all the answers really are cliches and apparently facile little slogans which, as David Foster Wallace said, “look so shallow for a while and then all of a sudden drops off and deepens like the lobster-waters off the North Shore.”

To take just one example:

You already know that the solution to being afraid of this is to start writing, even just a little bit, right? Intellectually, I mean, not how you actually feel about the moment when it might have to happen in the real world. As a theoretical matter, you know if you start writing it will feel a little better to have started. A little bit; true? That, my friend, is the entirety of the answer. Yeah, but I don’t get around to it, because I get this feeling in my gut just thinking about it, and then I push it into the back of my mind, and it keeps me awake at night, etc. All of that might be true, but there’s really only the one step to the solution. The difference between you and starryspice as it pertains to this particular conundrum is: he or she has written, you have not. When you do, then you will be equal in that regard. That’s really all there is to it, and then there’s the writing problem gone and you can’t hate yourself about that anymore. Next.

65

Sure, there are plenty of observatories, but first of all, they’re in the middle of nowhere, and second of all, I’m nowhere near qualified to work at an observatory. (I could be wrong, but I think that most people who actually work at an observatory are technicians and not PhDs.) In any case, I’ve never observed during my six years of grad school, so working at an observatory is not for me. I just do data analysis (exciting, I know). Academia would be the only option if I wanted to continue astronomy research, but I’m considering science writing as a much better (for me) career alternative.

I have some of the same cynicism, that nobody understands how miserable I feel right now. But does it matter? Sure, nobody’s going through my same exact situation, but some of my friends are in similar stress-filled situations even though they’re not writing dissertations, and I look at them go through that and think, if they can do that, I can do this. On the one hand, I am completely alone, but on the other hand, there are people out there going through something. You for example - I’m not happy that you’re unhappy, and your situation also isn’t the same as mine, but it makes me feel a tiny bit better to know that someone else has the same paranoid fears that I do, feels the same academia-based pressure that I do, etc. We’re both completely normal people going through a difficult situation, and that makes me feel less alone, and I hope it does the same for you.

I hope the payment plan works out for you. You may have been the first person she called who was a student, but I’m sure you won’t be the last. They’ll need to have some plan in place for students. Good luck!

66

I don’t know if it will help you, but there’s a book that I think is well on it’s way to changing my life. I’ve struggled with moderate depression that dipped it’s way into severe off and on for about 10 years. I feel like I have hope and happiness in my life again. It’s amazing.

I recently read a book called Mindset: the New Psychology of Success by Dr. Carol S. Dweck. On the surface it doesn’t look like a book that has anything to do with curing depression. It’s mostly focused on the business world and education. However, the basic principles were exactly what I needed to learn. Basically what it taught me was I was looking at nearly everything in my life the wrong way. Once I was able to recognize my fixed mindset thinking for what it was and what it did to me, I was able to start to change. I’m still working on it, but I have hope again.

I don’t know if this will help you, but some of the things you’ve said have reminded me of myself. It’s a short book, quick read, and less than $12 on Amazon. It’s worth a try.

67

That won’t happen. CBT is a not pseudo-science. The therapists who use it do so because of evidence that shows it works. If they are asked to defend it, they can. There is no need for them threaten non-believers.

And even if your therapists does say something like that, it’s not something you should be scared of. If anything it will tell you that she doesn’t know what she’s doing so then you can think of something else to do.

I’m glad you’re ok with your new psychiatrist. The next time you have your therapy appointment try to get the therapist to admit that her methods won’t work for you. Let us know how that goes.

68

I will give this a read. Thanks!

69

**Jimmy, **if I were someone giving advice to someone else about overcoming anxiety about writing, my advice would be to start with small goals. Write one sentence. Good. Now write another. And another. Stop when you have a paragraph. Next, sit down and write a paragraph at a time. Then two paragraphs at a time, etc.

Does that sound reasonable?

70

Well, yes, it sounds reasonable. But if you’re anything like me and most people I’ve talked to about this sort of thing, reasonable is very little of the battle. The question is will it work.

You don’t even have to write a sentence. Even sitting down and thinking about what ideas I might – theoretically – be writing about if I ever started writing generally worked for me. Whatever it is that gives you a good running start around the massive walls you’ve built between yourself and the completed product. I always had to write about these enormous trends in court cases and in American history, and there were infinite research trails I could go sniffing down. Very imposing. I would have freaked out just thinking about trying to write my first sentence. What usually ended up doing the trick was looking at what I already knew were the major cases, and just jotting a few notes down about them. Hey, ideas! I wasn’t anywhere near (as far as I knew) actually writing a good, polished sentence toward the final paper, but I was sitting there with all my resources in front of me working on it, which is all I needed. By the time it came down to the writing, I wasn’t thinking about the horrors of “starting” anymore.

71

Part of my problem is the “infinite research trails” thing. I never know when to stop looking for sources and just start working on ideas. All the papers I read in the business disciplines seem to cite 3-4 sources in every sentence. The reference list is 60-70 papers long. And each of those 60-70 papers cites 60-70 papers, and each of those cite 60-70, etc. What if the reason my manuscript gets rejected is that I didn’t cite one key paper?

Another thing I can’t comprehend is how professors seem to be able to work on 10 things at once. I’m proofreading some papers for a professor I’m working with for grammar and style; he seems to be working on all of these at once. And all of them have all of these tortuous connections between theoretical constructs. How can professors remember all of the details in all of these papers? It takes me forever to “switch gears.”

72

naw, we all curl up and cry, honest. And we all wonder how everyone else is handling life so well while we’re curled up and crying.

A few things I can share that I hope will help:
I think about suicide often, because it seems to relieve some of the pressure I’m feeling as an older student/single mother/only person in my family willing to care for ill and annoying mother etc. And I do know that those hotlines are happy to chat no matter if you’re in emergency mode or not. Calling them was very helpful for me because they got me to make an agreement that I would not act on those feelings, which makes me feel safer about having them.

re: excercise, some of it just sucks and makes you feel crappy. I think the benefit isn’t in burning calories but in physical activity that you enjoy. Yesterday I took a juggling class and enjoyed it, one hour of laughing and trying something tricky and getting my mind off of all the awful…and I did work up a bit of a sweat. So maybe just find an outdoor thing you like doing and call that excercise, even if it’s sitting on a park bench staring at all the joggers that’s ok. If you can find the right thing it will help.

Also some of the teachers at my community college absolutely inspired me and changed my life for the better. Please don’t listen to anyone who suggests that you might have less than amazing potential, they suck and they are wrong…no, really.

Plus there are probably plenty of people here who would be happy to be a person to talk to anytime (myself included).

Good luck to you, hang in there.

73

I’m sorry to hear about your caretaker role. And being a single mother and a student must be difficult. I have had some older students in my classes and I always cringed when they, unprompted by me, would call me “Mr. Statsman1982” instead of my first name. They were old enough to be my parents, and here they are calling me “Mr.” I don’t think I could do that if the roles were reversed. Your life is definitely more stressful than mine, it sounds like.

I have concluded, after some thought while I was exercising today, that I am an absolute selfish asshole. Evidence? Well, my mom’s getting knee surgery on Thursday and all I can think about is how much I’m dreading having to visit my hometown and help her for a few days. How terrible am I? A good son wouldn’t think such things. More evidence? Well, there are people with much more difficult lives than mine (you, and our very own blinkie on this board, who has locked-in syndrome), yet I still complain. I know there is always somebody out there who has it worse off, but still, all I can think about is myself. I don’t have any close friends because I’m frankly bored by listening to them for the most part, and I’m afraid of what I’d do (or, more correctly, not do) if I were really needed in a crisis situation.

More evidence? Sometimes, when I’m on Facebook, I will look for ways to poke holes in someone’s happy post. I don’t actually post hurtful things, because I don’t really want to hurt them, but I think of things I’d like to say. For example, one of my “friends” on there is overweight, and she commented on a picture of her holding her nephew, saying “he’s soo tiny!” I wanted to say “Well, yeah. Compared to you!” I didn’t, but I thought it. I don’t dislike her. I think I’m just envious of her happiness. I think that’s the case with everyone whose posts I wish I could shit on metaphorically.

But here’s the weird thing: Can a selfish asshole not like being a selfish asshole? That seems to run counter to the definitions, but I do feel bad about the fact that all I seem to care about these days is myself. I wish I could care about the plights of other people, but it’s hard. I find myself saying “Well, at least so-and-so has this,” or “Well, he doesn’t have to do such-and-such.” I also find say to myself, “If I ever get in that person’s situation, I’ll just take a header off a tall building. Problem solved.”

74

Sorry to double post, but this isn’t really a reply. More of an insight.

I think my suicidal thoughts are a way to gain power over those who have power over me most of the time. Because suicide is still regarded as something most rational people don’t want, regardless of their station in life, I see the fact that I even considering it as an “option” as a way of asserting that, regardless of how much more successful or “with it” a person is than I, they still care about living and will do what it takes to live. I, on the other hand, am not so constrained. I’m more powerful than they are, since they still fear death much more than I. You’re [the general “you”] such a big, bad, hot-shit somebody in your field? Ha! If your life were at stake, you’d be a quivering ball of tears. I might be scared, but not as scared as you! Not as powerful as you thought, huh?

Another thought I just had is that, were I to tell these people about my suicidal thoughts, they’d probably try to talk me out of them. In that way, they would be working for me. I would be making *them *do something for a change.

75

When you’re in the middle of feeling really rotten, your world does tend to shrink to only your own feelings. It takes A LOT of time and concentration to have an anxiety disorder. :slight_smile: When you think selfish or nasty things, are you just lashing out because you feel bad, do you suppose?

76

I don’t think there’s any question that’s what I’m doing with the Facebook people. I really do feel some anger and resentment against people who seem so fucking happy. “Why are they so happy? I wish I could make them as miserable as I am.” Another part of it is that some part of me feels that because I’m unhappy, I must be more enlightened than they are. I feel that if they knew as much as I do about life, they’d also want to give up.

Maybe I’m just a little bit scared about changing that view, because it seems like the “Depressed Statsman” has been my identity for so long. I’m a little scared of feeling happy, because that means I won’t be me anymore. Not that I like “me” now, but “the devil you know…”

I’m also frustrated that medication seems impotent at fixing this. If I were schizophrenic and hearing voices, I could take some meds and the voices would go away. Meds seem to literally change these people’s minds so that they can be functional. Why can’t I take a pill to change my mind too?

77

Maybe, yeah, but civilisation wouldn’t be in great shape if everyone chose work that left them so unhappy they were contemplating suicide either. Screw Kant’s “Only if you can will that it should become a universal law” bullshit. Let the people who actually enjoy research take care of advancing the human race. You be happy. Teach, if that’s what you want to do. Personally, I respect the hell out of teachers. Your point (which I’m too lazy to go back and quote) that people could just educate themselves with textbooks and the internet is technically true. But textbooks can’t answer your questions or clear up things you misunderstood, and online articles can’t persuade you to keep studying when it seems impossible. And researchers’ work would be lost if there was no-one to pass it on to the next generation.

A good son would help her out despite the fact that he was secretly dreading it. Which is what you’re doing, right? Everyone has thoughts they’re ashamed of. Just having them doesn’t make you a bad person.

Knowing that other people out there have it worse doesn’t make your own suffering any less real. My mum’s been struggling with depression for as long as I remember (you kind of remind me of her in this thread - maybe that explains my impulse to hug you tight and promise things will get better), despite the fact that before the past year or so an objective outsider would have said she had less reason to be feeling this way than you do. That didn’t stop her from being unhappy. How you ‘should’ feel is irrelevant to depression.

You’re not an asshole. Selfish thoughts are just one more symptom of the screwed up mental state you’re going through.

I can’t offer any insight on your PhD issues (ouch about the $900, though), but I’m thinking of you. Good luck.

78

Long term depression and anxiety sufferer here. Can I make a suggestion? Get off Facebook. I have never had anything that caused me more emotional turmoil since I started than that site. There were good things, too, don’t get me wrong, but the majority was shit.

Just like you said: People possibly pretending to be too fucking happy. Me posting depressing, deep, meaningful shit that was just showing how fucked up I am. Re-connecting with a guy that I went to high school with (I’m 46), seeing him twice and practically falling in love. Then trying to talk to him on Facebook chat and getting my heart stomped on. Over-sharing in the worst possible way. Hearing from people that I really could not care less about. Taking on other people’s problems as my own. I could go on and on.

I just deleted my account tonight and found it very empowering. I tend to be a loner anyway. What was I thinking with a social “networking” site in the first place? If I want to talk to someone I will pick up the phone. Facebook is the worst from high school all over again. Nothing but a popularity contest and a race to see who can be the coolest.

I know that I’m off topic in a way, but it was kismet that I read this thread tonight and you mentioned Facebook a couple of times.

As for the pills changing you into a happy, well-adjusted person, you just have to get over that idea. As someone who has been depressed and anxious for most of her life, I gotta tell you that you have to do the work to “cure” yourself. And I just don’t want to so I’ve made a conscience decision to just hang on and do the best I can. I am at a point in my life where I see myself alone till the end and that’s okay. Alot of people are this way. I’ve made my choices. Would it be nice to find a soulmate…sure, but I learned after dating high-school dude that I really do prefer solitude unless I’m completely accepted for who I am and what I look like.

I do take meds and I know from past experience that going off them is a very bad idea. I have suicidal thoughts all the time and I feel as you do, that they somehow make me stronger. The meds are definitely doing something and that is probably just keeping me from acting on my dark thoughts. I hope you’ll keep taking yours. They take awhile to work and you may (as you’ve seen) have to change things up but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I consider myself lucky to have lovely parents who would die if I did and that, some days, is the only thing that keeps me here. But that, somehow is okay, too.

I’m sorry. Guess I really needed to share myself. Hope some of this digression helps.

79

How is your diet?

80

A ZonePerfect bar for breakfast and lunch, a Healthy Choice or Lean Cuisine entree for dinner, along with a small bit of 75% reduced fat cheese and Wasa crackers. I’ll have a small apple or two a day, also. If I have dessert, I’ll have a Weight Watchers ice cream bar. Sometimes I’ll have some fresh mixed berries too.

I’m trying to lose weight. Right now, I’m 199 at 6’0, which by any measure is overweight. I should be in the 170-188 range, I think. I think I’m also losing weight to gain some moral power over others, to be able to say “Ha! I’m in better shape than he is!” I also don’t like eating particularly.