Does Anyone Else Feel This Way?

Graduate School
1

I am a graduate student and was supposed to graduate this June but I didn’t pass my dissertation. I’m feeling pretty low.
Everyone who meets me can’t believe I’m a grad student because they think I’m a space cadet. Lately my heart is racing and I can’t get it to stop. It’s so hard for me to focus. I’ve been getting sick all the time.

I’ve been going to counseling for almost a year, but it doesn’t help at all though I feel like I have to tell people that it really helps even though it doesn’t because what are they going to do to me if they find out that therapy’s not working? Drug me? Kick me out of school? Ship me away? Lock me up?

When I was in my dissertation and they said I would have to do another defense next term, I asked if we could at least schedule it now and she said “no” period and nothing else, like put-off that I had even asked. I feel everyone around me is fed up and disgusted with me. I feel ugly and dumb. I feel like I’m in over my head and I’m finally being skunked out as the loser idiot that I’ve been trying so hard to pretend not to be.

It has been a rough year. My boyfriend broke up with me, he turned cold out of nowhere, my hair fell out because of a bad chemical reaction at the salon, my neighbor threatened me because I made a noise complaint because he’d yell and blast his stereo at all hours. He also told me if he looked like me he’d kill himself and that really stung. I tried to find a new apartment, but I ended up getting scammed $500 in a stupid deposit scheme that I cannot believe I’m stupid enough to have fallen for.

My computer crashed and even though I got some of it back, I still lost a lot of work, and had to buy a new computer. Two of my uncles died, even though we were not close, I had planned on getting closer to the family after graduation but now for them it’s too late and it’s my own fault for not reaching out and trying to get to know them sooner. My mom is a homeless drug addict and we haven’t spoken in almost a decade and even though she would hurt me and steal from me, I still miss her, I miss her so much, and yesterday being mother’s day, I kept trying to keep busy but I couldn’t stop the thought about her from creeping in.

There’s so much more. I’m hurting so bad and I feel like even when I am able to talk to people they just go through the motions of listening and offer the same old platitudes about things getting better, taking care of myself, and things being not as bad as I think. It’s nice, but it does not change this awful feeling. I know there’s people worse off than me, so I’m not trying to be like first world problems, I guess I just need to vent and maybe someone else knows how this feels?

2

I am not a clinician, so please take this with that caveat. But it sounds like you are suffering from symptoms of depression and anxiety. If your current counseling is not working, then you may need to find another therapist that does work for you, and you may need to consider another course of therapy - including potentially medication. Again, I am NOT a clinician, so I’m not saying you SHOULD try medication. But I’m saying that it’s not normal to feel this way, and that you should definitely persist in finding help.

I suffered depression when I was in graduate school, too. I remember how it feels to feel like everyone thinks you’re stupid and dumb and the entire world is attacking you. The thing to remember is that it’s not true. Your brain is secreting some heinous chemicals that’s making you twist everything that happens to you and believe that it’s either your own fault or further proof of how terrible a person you are. It’s not true. That’s the depression talking.

I felt comfortable enough to talk to my advisor about it and give him a heads up that it was affecting my work - so he could at least be aware. You may not feel comfortable with your advisor enough to do that, so that’s up to you. But it is an option. (If not your advisor, maybe there is another trusted mentor in your department who could go to bat for you, or your Director of Graduate Studies.)

Many times, when you fail you dissertation defense, your committee will not allow you to immediately schedule another defense. The reason is because if you were not prepared for the first defense, you are almost certainly not ready for a second. Some departments have a certain number of time you must wait before you can schedule another defense. The committee wants to see what work you do in the mean time and assess your readiness for the defense before they schedule another one. Frankly, they should’ve done that the first time around. I have a PhD and I am a firm believer that a failed defense is almost as much the PI’s fault as the student’s fault.

Your neighbor is a jerk. If he threatens you again, call the police and file a restraining order against him. (Depending on the nature of the original threat, you may want to do that already.) Also, talk to your landlord. You should feel safe in your own home.

Honestly, it sounds like you have a LOT going on right now…is it possible for you to take a leave of absence from your university, maybe for a term or a year? Just enough time for you to recover, feel better and start putting the pieces of yourself back together before you go through the stress of revising and defending your dissertation. You can work on finding a course of treatment that works for you, finding a more suitable living situation if you so desire, building relationship with your family members, or whatever else you need to do to feel better.