PhD paralysis

My mother developed breast cancer at an early age, so I have been warned I must be vigilant and get regular check ups. Of course, time marches by, I get busy and don’t always go when I am meant to. You know where this kind of procrastination leads right? Yes indeed. Last week the doctor found something and I had my first cancer scare, which meant a couple of days of tests, worry and kicking myself for not facing the music like a grown woman.

As it turns out I’m totally ok (apparently ‘my girls’ are just getting on a bit – like the rest of me!) but during this time in medical limbo I slipped into some kind of… I can only describe it as walking paralysis. I kept going to work and being with my family, but the whole time I felt detached – like I was watching myself just going through the motions. As soon as I let myself start to feel anything I would be overwhelmed by the ‘what if?’ questions and end up in tears. So I suppressed feeling altogether and existed in a horrible state of numbness and inaction. I watched a lot of TV, but wasn’t good for much else.

One of the terrible side effects of this numbness was I completely lost my writing mojo; it was even difficult to reply to routine email. The sense of loss I felt was profound. Writing is central to my life, so much a part of my identity that without it I felt bereft. Reflecting on the feeling, now that the comfortable illusion of immortality has been restored, I realise that the same, strange lassitude around writing would happen occasionally during my PhD. I would sit at my desk, unable to focus on the screen,  every key stroke an effort, for days at a time. Eventually the feeling would lift and I could get on with it.

Now I know what was causing this PhD paralysis: Fear.

For all that this terrible numbness I was experiencing this week didn’t feel like fear, that’s indeed what it was. As Yoda once said: “fear is the path to the dark side”. What the wise old green dude was pointing out is that it’s the effects of fear – what it does – that we must pay attention to, not the feeling itself. In this case Fear put me into emotional retreat and cut off the vital part of me that I needed to get into the flow of work.

Once you recognise a fear it becomes easier to conquer it, but when I was doing my PhD I don’t think I was very good at this. Even when I was able to write without obvious distress I often indulged in bad writing habits which stemmed, at least in part, from fear.

One of these habits, which you might be familiar with, is the ‘one step forward two steps backward’ syndrome. In the morning I would open an existing file and, by lunchtime, would still be editing. Although I was ‘working’ the word count was not progressing. The only way I got through this block was to give myself permission to write really badly for awhile – sometimes in a new file so I wouldn’t ‘mess up’ what I already had. What I couldn’t admit to myself at the time was that I was afraid my new ideas wouldn’t be any good, so I avoided engaging seriously with them.

Fears can be plentiful in PhD study – fear of failure, fear of leaving out vital information, fear of missing key references, fear of examination, fear of a lack of ability… So how do we deal with fear without becoming paralysed?

Last week @julierudner send me an excellent article by Virginia Valian called “learning to work” which provides a helpful analysis of exactly this kind of  PhD paralysis. Only in 1970′s feminism could someone look to sex therapy techniques for a cure for the inability to write, but this is essentially what Valian does. She starts with an insightful diagnoses of the problem; pointing out that inability to work because of ‘internal problems’ is a kind of luxury only available to the well educated who are engaged in ‘self development’. After this quick smack in the face, she goes on to tell her own story of work paralysis, which sounds hauntingly familiar to the problems I have described above.

Valian claims that problems with mental work, such as writing, are similar to sexual problems in that a lack of enjoyment in the activity itself leads to an inability to perform. In sex therapy couples are encouraged to overcome their sexual dysfunction by just touching each other, without expectations. Removing expectations, along with rewards and punishments, allows couples to experience the act of touching as a pleasure in its own right.

Valian applied this principle to her work problem by setting a short period of time – 15 minutes – in which she would just work, without expecting anything to come out of it. Just writing for the pleasure in the act of writing, without any thought of punishment or reward. The sense of accomplishment, she explains, should come from doing the work – not how good it is.

The most important insight in the paper, for me at least, is that I am responsible for the paralysis – I am not a victim of it. I can choose to recognise fear for what it is and learn ways to deal with it. In that spirit (and because I am a total nerd) I will  leave you with the Bene Gesserit litany against fear featured in the Frank Herbert Dune novels to recite if you happen to experience an attack of PhD Paralysis:

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”