This blog has been partially inspired by the release of Celine Dion’s new album Courage her first since her husband died and so about the struggle and perseverance to make the best of the rest of her life. This has also been in part in response to the past few weeks of my PhD as I’ve felt things get tougher just as the days get shorter and darker to boot!
PhD life can be hard. And it can be hard in ways that you couldn’t anticipate until you get there. Even when things are going well, which fortunately in my case they mostly are, it feels like it requires all of your energy just to maintain how things are going, and even the smallest thing could be enough to knock you off balance. If anyone is reading this and feels similar, then just know you’re not alone!
I would like to share how I’m trying to negotiate and navigate this. At times it is about finding coping strategies, and they do have that place, but I have in principle been uncomfortable about approaches that just focus on individual coping with the situation rather than addressing some of the structural or collective underlying issues. This blog will mostly focus on my own coping strategies, but at the end I will share some of my thoughts on the more structural issues that institutions have a responsibility to address.
So here are my coping strategies. Again I can’t stress this enough, coping strategies are not the whole solution, however I am also aware that cultural change takes time and so we need something in the meantime. I am a natural introvert and so as much as I get a lot out of and enjoy the times I spend with people participating in things publicly, be they debates around my research area, meet and greets or even karaoke, my energy is maintained through time in my own company. In order for me to fully participate in these things I need to make sure I build into my week time in my own company.
This time by myself I use in different ways, depending on the week. The activities I do are less important than the fundamental kind of experience that I need, which is to be able to check in with myself, my body and the person that is behind the PhD(olly) researcher that I perform throughout the rest of the week. For me it’s often a combination of walking in parks (I’m fortunate to be living near Jesmond Dene in Newcastle); listening to albums (in full I find important as it gives you a full experience of music that takes you out of the day to day; and sometimes mindfulness or prayer that ultimately allow me to check in with myself and pay more attention to how my body is actually feeling be that exhausted, stressed, angry, sad, which although may sound like negative emotions, it’s only by as Jewel says: 'turning towards' these emotions and going through them that I can then ultimately feel at peace and contented. For any readers who are more spiritual this also gives me a chance to check in with my relationship to God. But (minus the prayer) these activities work well both in a secular and spiritual way.
I often go through the week without checking in with how I am both mentally and physically experiencing it, and I also have the habit of projecting a confident, positive and resourceful face on top of things. So even when I may acknowledge that I experience difficulties I seldom open up about problems that I am not confident with feeling at least on the way to working through. I rarely admit to feeling helpless or lonely.
Loneliness for me is the big one and is a tricky one to solve. As even whilst I try to resolve it through both trying to make the most of my own company, and trying to be sociable and reaching out to friends, a lingering underlying sense of loneliness remains. One essay I read in the first couple of weeks here by Michael Cobb in the book After Sex just called “Lonely” said something that really struck a chord with me: ‘the loneliest of us are not necessarily those who are actually alone but rather those of us trying hardest not to be alone.’ And so there is no easy quick fix to it and sometimes the ways I react to feeling lonely only make the feeling worse.
I mention this not for any sympathy, as the above quote shows this isn't about being friendless. I feel it is important for the integrity of this blog for me to be honest about things that have not quite been resolved, both to relieve the pressure of being on top of everything all of the time, and to demonstrate the limits of individual coping strategies and self-help.
As I mentioned before, the person I am day to day: the “PhDolly person’ has to be positive, inspiring and ultimately able to cope even whilst acknowledging the hard things. I sometimes catch myself thinking or even saying ‘Dolly Parton’s my therapy’ or ‘armed with my Ipod of Dolly Parton, I can take on anything.’ To be fair to both myself and Parton, her particular self-help is fairly multilayered and nuanced. Parton and country music in general takes the time to acknowledge the hardship, suffering and pain before switching to the note of empowerment such as the sentiment: ‘you better get to livin.’ For Parton is is about balancing the importance of processing what has bothered us against the risk of dwelling on it for too long. Particularly in her music, I would argue Parton treads this line well (although I will admit she does not always get this balance right least of all in her self-help books and media persona). Her 1976 song ‘Light of a Clear Blue Morning’ with its balladry start and more up-tempo finish I would argue demonstrates this balance perfectly.
Of course neither myself or Dolly Parton are in charge of running a university or the government, so whereas the self-help she offers isn’t the whole solution, it is definitely not her responsibility to fix structural or systemic issues. The onus is on those institutions to address those. So what I would say about particularly university mental health initiatives, they currently focus disproportionately on self-help and individual coping. That is not to say that some of the activities such as mindfulness and yoga people do not find useful and at times even essential lifelines, just as in some ways country music has been for me. This is not about stopping the provision, but more a reminder that just putting in support for people to cope is not even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to supporting people’s mental health and wellbeing.
Mental health initiatives need to address financial hardship, institutional racism, equality and diversity, academic and institutional culture, experiences of belonging and unbelonging, workload, pay and pensions, and a whole host of other issues. This is of course a wide range of issues that don’t have an easy answer. However we should expect people who are in positions leading in these areas to have the ‘courage’ to be honest when they don’t have all the answers. I spent the last three years in university meetings in my role at a Students’ Union, and found the demand for easily practical solutions overruled anything else no matter how serious or complex the needs or issues were. We need to address these issues at the root, and be prepared for moments of lack of clarity, just as I am trying to be more comfortable with not having everything under control.
