Feeling like I'm hitting a low point

[oak]

Thanks for sharing weary.

[weary]

I used to feel like I was a good writer. I still kind of think I am, but like with everything else, I have psyched myself out, developed lots of mental blocks, overthink things and think that I don't know what I'm talking about. I feel like I back myself in a corner and end up with something that looks like a half-assed job, and everyone will be able to tell. Everything I do for work is too little too late. I have a 6 page research proposal that has to be submitted tomorrow that is only 75% done... I have another 12 page proposal due in a week and I have two manuscripts that I am trying to get ready to submit for publication, and I am struggling to get any writing done at all. I feel stupid, and I feel like it is all pointless. These proposals probably won't get funded - they are in essence busywork, so that I can show that I got two more tries for funding submitted before my portfolio goes up for tenure. The manuscripts will get published (if I ever finish writing them), but they will probably end up in journals where nobody will read them or cite them, and my total number of publications in my pre-tenure period will still end up being way lower than it should.

Even right now I am trolling these boards because I am having a hard time focusing on my proposal. I will probably be up most of the night finishing it. That's how it always is, 99% of the work gets done in the 12-24 hours before it is due. No matter how hard I try, I can't pace myself. I make schedules and plans and outlines, I start early, but then I spend day after day procrastinating and avoiding and being unproductive and end up doing all of the work at the end and the outcome suffers. And I'm getting too old to keep doing the all-nighter shit. It's all a big fucking game anyway.

[SmartCookie]

weary,

It's bordering on creepy now, how much what you are writing resonates with my own experience. I guess in my own low times, when I am close to convincing myself that I must be the only one in academia who feels the way I do, my memory will be like, "Ha, NOPE!"

It is interesting how sudden URGENT events, like your trip to the ER, can shake us out of our everyday patterns and give us a chance to really feel, all of a sudden, what's been hurting us slowly.

I realize now that my fear of other people perceiving me that way has completely crippled my ability to ask for help when I legitimately need it, and my fear of other people seeing the way I am or just the need for help as incompetence or weakness has made it hard for me to open up and be authentic to other people and made me feel like an incomplete failure of a person.

Do I ever feel you on this one. I spoke to the interim chair of my master's program about my troubles about 2 months ago - someone with whom I'd taken a class over two years ago - and not only was he supportive, he helped me understand all the options I'd had available to me, were I just willing to let go enough to frackin' admit I was having problems. I could have saved so much money on tuition if I'd just taken a leave of absence. There were so many things I was unwilling to confront, needing to the Strong One Toughing It Out, like changing supervisors (didn't do that until last week!).

My therapist keeps telling me that I need to not put all my eggs in one basket - that I need to get love and support from many, many people (as well as myself) and not put all of that on one person. The trouble is, that requires letting other people know the real me, which is hard, because I don't even know the real me all the time.

I think I'm struggling with this one myself. It probably deserves its own thread instead of me hijacking this one, but that last part, that you don't know the real me, really resonates. For me, it's not so much I don't know me, but that I'm asking some really hard questions about what drives me, what I expect from people when I interact with them, and what my self-talk is when I get triggered by certain events. I find that I can be really perfectionistic in small interactions, that actually make it really hard to work in research collaborations in which I need to negotiating things with others. Or I can have problems with internal boundaries, which blurs with low self-esteem (i.e. someone makes a criticism of me and I believe it without questioning it, in part because I feel like I can't have a relationship with that person unless I buy it hook line and sinker). Or I retreat into avoidant behaviours, which (I learned at a procrastination workshop last week) are self-reinforcing, i.e. the chemical hit makes you more likely to turn to that form of anxiety relief in the future.

I agree with your therapist, that it can be really intense for a couple people to feel like they are carrying you. I'm lucky that I'm able to call even on people who don't know me super well, who I can share some parts of my life with, and whose company I can get something out of, even if I'm not spilling my guts. In those conversations I try not to dwell on the pain parts of my life, because I am trying to see the occasion with them as an opportunity to celebrate the little wins or the things I can still feel good about in my life (you mentioned previously the exercise you do, that's a great thing to connect on). Those parts of you are every bit as 'the real you' as the other parts. A big part of my recent recovery has been able to see my 'issues' as something I'm just going to have to chip away at slowly, because it's such a large bundle of interconnected, well, shit, and I've been trying to really live out the belief that I can, in fact, continue to be, if only for small stretches at a time, a real living person and make slow, steady progress on making it not cripple everything else worthwhile about me.

Oh, and EVERYTHING you've said about writing I agree 100%. I hope you are able to find something to light your fire for the work again. I'm almost certain you are only where you are because at some point it meant something to you. Many things may be in flux, but based on my own experience, when the conditions are right for it again, I'm fairly certain that it will show itself and you'll hopefully be able to connect with that part again.

SC

[weary]

Thanks a lot for your response, smart cookie.

There were so many things I was unwilling to confront, needing to the Strong One Toughing It Out, like changing supervisors (didn't do that until last week!).

I am the king of Strong One Toughing It Out. Until I can't. And then I'm screwed, because it's even more humiliating thinking about asking for help when I really should have asked for it a long time ago. I used to have everyone (including myself) fooled that I was strong and competent enough to handle anything life could throw at me. And it is so exhausting and painful to feel like you have to maintain that facade when you are screaming and shutting down on the inside.

It probably deserves its own thread instead of me hijacking this one, but that last part, that you don't know the real me, really resonates.

Probably a good idea (starting a new thread). I've got more to vent about that, I think.

I agree with your therapist, that it can be really intense for a couple people to feel like they are carrying you.

In my case and the context that my therapist is discussing it, it isn't really about the other people carrying me (remember, being the strong one, not asking for help, etc). It is about getting my needs met emotionally and feeling like I am able to be myself/OK/acceptable with more than just one or a small number of people. Being open and connected with people emotionally, to prevent too much entanglement with one partner/friend's emotional life. The good stuff as well as the bad.

[weary]

Finished my second of two grant proposals at the beginning of last week. Took me a few days to recover fully from the all-nighter that led into the finished proposal. I have two manuscripts in progress that I really want to submit to journals ASAP so that when my tenure portfolio goes out for external review on July 15 that I can at least have them listed as submitted rather than in preparation. One of them should have been published six months ago but I am having a major block with finishing it. It is admittedly a shit paper that my grad or postdoctoral advisor would never in a million years publish because nobody will ever care or read it if it is accepted. And every draft my student would write I (or a colleague reviewing the manuscript, which made it more embarrassing) would find something that we described as novel that really wasn't. This paper represents such an incremental increase in knowledge that I have a hard time really deciding what to write and how to word it properly, and wouldn't bother except for the fact that the student and I would both seriously benefit from having an additional publication, he deserves it for the effort that he put in, and this much time has already been invested in it. The second paper will be easier, but it still hinges upon some experiments that the student will be completing in a colleague's lab tomorrow and Tuesday.

I used to really love writing and feel like I was better than the average bear at it, and now it is like torture and I avoid it to the point that it screws me. My optimism waxes and wanes by the day whether any of this effort that I'm putting forth will make a difference in getting me tenure or not, but the bigger picture (whether even if I get tenure, anything in my life will feel worth it if things don't improve with my wife/marriage) is still depressing.

I am afraid that I have sabotaged many of my goals subconsciously, whether it is my career, my fitness/weight/physical condition, or friends/social life. Whether it is just some subconscious passive-aggressive acting out, because I feel so hurt and unimportant but afraid to advocate for myself and speak up for myself, or whether because I am so hurt and exhausted and stressed and sad and angry that the drive to seek self-soothing behavior and avoid stressful situations is so overwhelming that I can't resist sabotaging myself. Either way, I guess I am reaping what I have sown in all areas of my life.