JC's Experiences with Therapy and Mental Health: Before and After Leaving

In the summer of 2008 – about 2.5 years before I decided to leave academia – I started seeing a therapist.

I wasn’t feeling depressed or particularly anxious, and I didn’t go to the therapist because of issues related to work or school. Rather, I had found myself struggling with different parts of my life – my marriage, my relationship with my parents and siblings, and the fact that I was making some irresponsible choices. Basically, I was behaving as if something was very wrong in my life even though on paper, everything seemed to be going quite well for me. Great partner, a job that I (thought I) loved, etc.

Everything should have been fine ... but I wasn't acting like it was.

It was almost like my subconscious mind was working against me. Something was clearly wrong, but I could not figure out what it was.

For about two years, I went regularly to the therapist. She helped me out a lot, and after a few months I was doing great. I wasn't diagnosed with anything, really - just some mild situational anxiety. She didn't prescribe anything ... just talk therapy. So I kept coming in and talking.

And even though I could tell I was making progress, I never really felt like I wanted to stop seeing her. Every few weeks, I'd have this vague feeling where I'd feel like I was going to burst. I'd suddenly be vaguely frustrated and anxious and just want to start screaming at people, venting about anything and everything. I'd take it out on my partner, or I'd just start crying and screaming for no reason. I'd go in and talk to my therapist, and I'd feel better. For a couple of weeks.

But I could never feel permanently better. I'd always need to come back a few weeks later after another freakout.

My therapist and I talked about my family, and my relationship, and my friendships, and the way I dealt with problems. We talked about everything ... but not work. We never talked about my academic work. Well, more accurately - I never felt like I needed to talk about work.

"Work? Work's fine. Going on some interviews next month, and making progress on my dissertation. It's fine. Now, about that thing my mom said to me the other day..."

It wasn't that I didn't have frustrations about work. I most certainly did - my friends and partner were hearing about them. But I didn't feel like I knew how to talk about them with her. And what good would it do, anyway? It's not like I'm going to quit or something. 

So my therapist never told me to quit. I never discussed the fact that I was unhappy with academia. Hell, I never really talked about academia at all.

But the week after I decided on my own to quit, I went in for my appointment and told her. She was surprised, but happy that I'd made a decision that clearly made me feel happy and relieved. She told me that some of her other clients were grad students and academics and that many of them had expressed unhappiness and a desire to quit. She said she was proud of me.

I felt great.

I went to see her regularly for the next six months or so ... always talking about my decision to leave. I'd excitedly tell her about this or that article that I'd run across that had validated my decision to leave. I'd talk about the sad search terms that were bringing people to my blog, and tell her how thankful I was that I'd left and that other people were finding my blog useful. I'd talk about how nice it was to just come home from work and have my evenings to myself. How glad I was that I wasn't busy moving to Nowheresville, Idaho for some crappy professor job. How happy I was to have left.

And by mid-August of 2011, I found that I didn't have anything else to talk about in therapy. Things with my family and my partner were much better. I was hardly ever feeling anxious or overwhelmed anymore. I wasn't having my freakouts anymore. I simply didn't have much to say during my sessions.

So she and I agreed that it might be time to stop regular sessions, and to have me just call if I needed to come in. I thanked her for everything, and went on my way.

And I haven't gone back.

Now ... that's not to say that I will never go back. I think therapy is a wonderful, useful thing, and I definitely expect that there will be another point in my life where I'll be dealing with some stuff and will need to go back into therapy to help myself work through it.

But I haven't felt the need to go yet ... and now that I look back? It seems obvious - based on the time when I needed (and then didn't need) therapy - that my unhappiness with academia was seeping into other parts of my life, and making me miserable and anxious and causing me to act out.

My therapist would help me work on some stuff, and I'd go home and do okay ... but I'd always need to come back. Things would always bubble back to the surface, and I'd need help. I just wasn't stable yet.

And then I left academia, and suddenly my life and my moods stabilized.

Coincidence? I don't think so.

So if you're feeling vaguely unhappy in academia and are thinking that maybe you could be happier or maybe you might want to make some changes, I strongly recommend making an appointment with a therapist.

But unlike me, try talking to them about work. Maybe they can make some suggestions ... and save you some time and mental anguish.

Currer's "Pangs" at Leaving Academia: Stress and Phantom Pain

Sometimes the toll of leaving academia manifests itself in "funny" ways. For me, this meant never-ending infections, gastrointestinal issues, and chronic pain. As I was wrapping up my degree, applying for non-academic jobs, and preparing to graduate I realized I felt poorly all the time.

Initially, I assumed a host of minor ills had all decided to randomly hit me at once. Later, I thought I had pinched a nerve in my sciatica. Yet no matter how much rest I got, the pain never improved. Then the pain spread. What started in my posterior and upper thighs spread to my left arm, then my upper back, then my lower back, then my right arm, and then my right leg. My entire body felt like burning. Tingling, shooting pain with a little side order of a persistent head-in-a-vise headache. Frustrated and confused, I decided to go to a local urgent care center. (I write in greater detail about my experiences here.)

My doctor informed me that my pain was mental.

Me: "Mental? Like you're saying I'm some kind of hysterical 19th c. housewife?"

Doc: "No. Mental like you've been under tons and tons of stress for at least a year, if not longer. Mental like your body no longer realizes how to process serotonin and so you don't sleep and you always feel anxious. No sleep and anxiety=pain. Chronic, migratory pain. Instead of doing a hundred thousand dollars worth of diagnostic testing, looking for something rare, I'd like to put you on a temporary round of antidepressants and see if we can't sort this out."

At which point I promptly burst into tears. You'd think I might feel happy to hear I wasn't being handed a death sentence or a life-threatening illness. But, nope. All I felt was CRAZY. Crazy, weak, and like a failure for not managing my stress better.

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Me: "I'm not taking antidepressants! I can do this on my own! I'll exercise more! I'll relax! I'm not a quitter! Everyone takes antidepressants now and most people don't even need them. I won't be a statistic!"

Doc: "Well, don't take them. Live in pain. Or take them and feel better. Youve got two choices."

When he left, I sat there feeling ashamed, embarrassed, and like a loser. Logically, I knew that there was nothing wrong with therapy, antidepressants, and/or mental health issues. (For fuck's sake. One of my primary research areas is disability studies! )My dear friend accurately and clearly reassured me that this was a chemical issue, not just mental. Like a diabetic who needs insulin, my body was not operating right chemically. But, this rational knowledge of the circumstances, my body's rebellion did not fit my neat, orderly Type A overachieving picture of self-control. Ultimately, I swallowed my reservations, dealt with my shame, and took the pills. I'm so glad I did.

Since my diagnosis I feel much better. My medicine does wonders for my sleep. Since taking my medicine I haven't experienced that kind of pain again. Getting help for my phantom pain was the best decision I could have made. At the end of the day, the only one who made me feel any stigma about taking antidepressants was me.

For any of you readers who might be on the fence about seeking help for depression, anxiety, or phantom pain, I hope this helps. You'll be glad you sought treatment.

Should I Quit? Definitive answers here!

Just kidding. Sorry. We can't tell you if you should quit. We truly wish we could be an Academic Magic 8-ball and give you that confirmation you're looking for.

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The collaborators of this website have gone in circles over how to answer this question. Should you quit? We all grappled with it in different ways, for different reasons.

Below, we'll link to dozens of articles and essays that ask the questions should you quit, why should you quit, what are good reasons to quit, etc. Then Lauren wraps it up with a few thoughts.

* * *

Reframe your concepts of "leaving," "quitting" and failure with our article here. There are tons of great reads that will stoke the fire of your indignance and make you feel like less of a chump (you are not a chump, but you probably feel like a chump).

This May 2012 article from The Guardian discusses reasons that Chemistry PhDs -- especially women -- decide to leave academia:

The participants in the study identify many characteristics of academic careers that they find unappealing: the constant hunt for funding for research projects is a significant impediment for both men and women. But women in greater numbers than men see academic careers as all-consuming, solitary and as unnecessarily competitive. Both men and women PhD candidates come to realise that a string of post-docs is part of a career path, and they see that this can require frequent moves and a lack of security about future employment... Women more than men see great sacrifice as a prerequisite for success in academia.

Karen Kelsky @ The Professor Is In assures us that "IT'S OK TO QUIT":

What starts out as an inspired quest for new knowledge and social impact can devolve into endless days in an airless room, broke, in debt, staring at a computer, exploited by departments, dismissed by professors, ignored by colleagues, disrespected by students. It is ok to decide that’s not what you want.  It is ok to make another choice.  There is life outside of academia.

JC has written an entire series called "Reasons I'm Leaving." She also did a more academic, less personal, series called "A Sociologist's View on Leaving" that's worth reading as well.

Julie Clarenbach has a lot of suggestions for weighing this important decision in "How can you tell if you should leave academia?"

Get rid of the shoulds. If you take a break from telling yourself what you “should” do, what do you WANT to do? Does anything on your to-do list sound fun? We spend so much time learning by watching in this career that it can be hard to notice what we need to make this work for us. Maybe your colleague can grade four papers a day and get them all done efficiently, while you really just need to set aside five hours in front of Glee reruns. If that’s your way, having “grade 4 papers” on your to-do list every bleeping day will likely make you want to stab your eyes out. And that will affect everything else.

You “should” serve on committees, you “should” contribute, you “should” teach a certain way, you “should” write a certain kind of essay — what happens if you drop the stories?

(Dropping the "shoulds" was huge for me.)

Grad school made Caroline Roberts puke. No, really. Stress is no joke: it really can destroy your body and make you crazy. It doesn't really matter if you "should" be stressed out. You just are. It's not weakness. Caroline also has some amusing and very helpful reactions to a bunch of advice columns that focused on grad students here.

Bottom line: only you can know if it's time to go. From my personal perspective, I think any reason is a good reason to quit. I don't think you need to hit some magical threshold to have a "good enough" reason to quit. It seems like a lot of folks consider quitting for a long time, and then there's a "straw that broke the camel's back" that pushes them into actually quitting -- a missed deadline, a rejection letter, a disappointing interview, a conversation, a revelation. I could say "I quit grad school because I had a disagreement with my advisor," but it was really so much more than that: years of accumulated stress, debt, fatigue, and frustration. If you want to quit, you can quit. Really. You don't have to justify it to anyone except yourself.If you're considering quitting, and are stressing out over should I, should I, I challenge you to flip the script: ask yourself why you should stay. What's keeping you here? What are you getting out of academia? What's the reward? You might be surprised how short that list, how flimsy.

Lauren's Experience with Depression During & After Grad School

If I could tell all y'all who are considering going post-ac or becoming grad school quittas one thing about mental health issues in academia, it would be this:

Depression doesn't feel like you think it does.

I wish I'd known this eight years ago, when I started experiencing what I now recognize as symptoms of depression, but what I thought were thyroid problems, or PMS problems, or motivation problems. I thought depression would be like, crying all the time. Feeling "sad." I had images in my mind of damsels in distress on fainting couches.



But depression has manifested very differently for me.

For many years, while I was a grad student, depression manifested as physical symptoms, like: stomach problems, excessive fatigue, lack of energy and motivation, heart palpitations, and changes in my menstrual cycle. I experienced intense emotional swings and was distractible to the point that I couldn't finish end-of-semester projects on time. I thought it was my thyroid, but my tests came back fine. I thought it was "adrenal fatigue" or some kind of nervous exhaustion brought on by an intense summer of graduating/moving/getting married, but it lingered years beyond that event (and adrenal fatigue is bunk, fwiw). When my acerbic doctor mentioned the possibility of a "mood disorder" I dismissed it completely out of hand. How could my mind wreak such havoc in my uterus? In my aching legs?

I truly believed I could "think" my way out of unhappiness. If I just found the right field of study (I switched PhD programs). If I could just find the right career path (anxiety about jobs preoccupied me from the moment I matriculated in 2004). If I could just find the right areas of focus for comps. If I could just hit on that perfect diss topic that hasn't already been done, that will make me excited enough about school to motivate me through the rough patches. I believed what this erroneous and wrong article promotes about depression in grad school: eventually I would pull myself out of it. I sought the help of a talk therapist at that time, and joined a grad student support group, and both of these helped a lot, but the problems persisted. As we've said elsewhere, graduate students are more likely to suffer from mental health problems, and of them, women suffer the most.

Five years ago, I started my second PhD program (having taken an MA in my first) and gave birth to my oldest daughter. Two years later, her sister arrived, an unexpected joy. The stresses and responsibilities of "real life" piled on top of my internal struggles with grad school. Bone-deep fatigue beyond anything I could imagine. Intense stress over childcare and finances. My children were chronically sick during much of this time. My marriage was on the rocks. For over a year, I felt lucky to make it out the door at all, let alone make progress on my comps exams while balancing family and teaching duties. I sought the help of a therapist again, and again, it was very helpful, but the underlying hopelessness remained.

Finally, I couldn't do it any more, and I quit grad school during the 5th year of my 2nd PhD program. I hoped that the freedom, the relief, would cure what ailed me, but (perhaps unsurprisingly) it did not. In "Fallout: The Psychological Debt of Grad School," I write:

Thing is, this has been a tough six months for me. Quitting grad school is incredibly difficult, as we have documented, and I have struggled with it. But really, it’s more than that: quitting grad school shook me to my core, and now it’s bringing up a bunch of really messy, dark stuff that’s been dormant, too. I’m now dealing with deeper, more longterm problems that have been on hold or deferred or ignored while I was in grad school. The last 2-3 months have been extremely hard for me, emotionally, even though on the surface everything worked out fairly well (I have a good job and necessary income: things could be so much worse). But I liken it to lifting up a rock and peering at all the gross stuff beneath. Or cleaning a room that seems rather messy but then you get in there and realize, oh shit, this is going to take me all day. The depression and unhappiness that led me to quit grad school is just the tip of the iceberg. The confusion and identity shifts that quitting brought on go way deeper than just the vocation I was aiming for, or the kind of student I wanted to be.

I never became suicidal, but I did often wish I could just disappear. I couldn't walk away from my problems, and I couldn't solve them, so I wished I could just go away and have my mind be quiet, for once.

Nine months after quitting grad school, I saw a psychiatrist. She was very nice (and she has an MD and a PhD -- double trouble!) and asked a series of questions. I told her that I'd had a moment where I sort of "zoomed out" and looked at my life for the last ten years and realized I'd spent more time being stressed and unhappy than I had being content and pleased. I said I was fearful that I didn't know how to experience happiness. She said, Yeah, well -- that's called depression. She gave me a prescription for Lexapro. I started taking it every night. I also started up therapy again.

At first I was just sleeping better (it is a sedative, after all). Within a week, I noticed that I wasn't so edgy. I was more patient with the girls and felt less tense and like I might scream if someone asked me a question one more fucking time. A few more weeks passed and I started picking up projects that had languished for a long time. I started feeling genuinely happy. I could sit on my couch and enjoy it in a way I'd never been able to before. I always had this raw internal emotional reality, a sense that I should be doing something, a sense that something was off, often a sense that I should feel happy right now but was not happy. Now that I am on medication, I don't feel that grating grumpiness inside very often. I just feel happy. I smile inside.

I wrote a long post about this at my own blog, but I want to reiterate something I stated over there:

Treating my mental health problems has been so transformative that I hate to think others are out there suffering. If you’ve ever thought you might benefit from treatment from depression or anxiety, if you’ve done the therapy thing but feel stuck, if you have been down for so long you don’t remember up, please consider contacting a psychiatrist and trying something new.

Consider contacting your University's student counseling or faculty/staff counseling service. Call a community resource center and ask about low-or-no cost counseling. See if student health has a psychiatrist on hand, or what your insurance will cover if you have it. (I do recommend talking to a psychiatrist, versus a generalist, about medication.) I just can't tell you what a huge difference it made in such a short amount of time.

 

If You Are In Crisis: Hotlines and Other Emergency Help for the Distressed Post-Ac

If you are feeling suicidal or are in a serious, can't-take-it-anymore crisis, there are people out who can help. Please don't hesitate to call one of these numbers or to reach out for help. Grad school and academia can be sites of tremendous stress and anxiety and isolation, and you are not the first person to reach a crisis point. You are not alone, and there is help out there for you.

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The Kristin Brooks Hope Center has a dedicated crisis line solely for grad students anywhere to use: 1-800-GRAD-HLP (472-3457)

From their site:

Recent studies have shown that the pressures of academic performance, finances, advisor relationships and other factors create intense anxiety for many graduate students, bringing some to a dangerous point of crisis.

That's why we've come up with the National Graduate Student Crisis Line -- a toll-free, 24-hour hotline staffed by highly trained phone counselors who understand the unique issues faced by grad students like you.

Please don't hesitate to call. These people understand what you're going through, and they are here to help.

If you are thinking about harming yourself, please call the National Suicide Prevention Line 1-800-273-8255.

For more general suicide prevention and crisis hotlines, check out this site. They list national hotlines as well as links to organizations and crisis lines for every state in the U.S. As that site states: crisis counselors are waiting for your call. They are there to help. Don't hesitate.

If you feel like you are not in immediate crisis but still need help, please contact a mental health professional in your geographic area. Listings for licensed therapists and counselors and other mental health professionals can be found in your local phone book and the internet, as well as through many insurance company websites. If you are still employed or enrolled at an institution, find out if they have a faculty/staff counselor or student counseling service that can help you for low or no cost. This is how a lot of us get help when we're sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. Community health services are also a great place to look, as well as women's resource centers.

Many therapists will schedule quick appointments for people in crisis, and many charge on a sliding scale. Don't be afraid to make some calls. They are there to help.

And don't be embarrassed to seek help. I've done it, as have many people I know both inside and outside of academia. (Me, too! And me, too! Chime in the co-editors of this site.) Going to a therapist doesn't make you crazy or broken. It just means that you need an impartial person to give you some perspective on what you're going through.

Grad school and academia can wreak havoc on your mental health ... we all know it. Grad students joke about popping antidepressants and about how they're too anxious and overworked to sleep. I'm willing to bet that every single person reading this post right now can think of at least one time when they had some type of emotional breakdown over their academic work - a crying jag, a panic attack, a screaming fit, or maybe just a few days where you could not motivate yourself to go to campus (or even get out of bed). It's not just you who feels this way. A 2009 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required) summarized some major findings about the mental health of graduate students, and the findings were not good:

At the University of California at Berkeley, 67 percent of graduate students said they had felt hopeless at least once in the last year; 54 percent had felt so depressed they had a hard time functioning, and nearly 10 percent said they had considered suicide, a 2004 survey found. By comparison, an estimated 9.5 percent of American adults suffer from depressive disorders in a given year.

You are not alone, and there is no shame in asking for help. Please, if you are in crisis, make a call.

And please: don't end your life over academia. The world is better off with you in it. The transition out of academia is tough and the chasm can feel deep, but we truly believe you can lead a happy life outside the ivory tower. Get help through the roughest patches.

The Emotional Transition: An Introduction

Hello, fellow quitter! If you’re here, it means you’re leaving grad school, or quitting the adjunct circuit, or bailing on the job market, or considering in some way getting out of academia. You've decided to pretty much change everything about your life as it is now, and everything about your hopes and dreams for the future. We've been there. We've done that. It's hard, but it is doable. 

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So, yeah: expect to feel a lot of intense emotions around the decision to quit. Expect to feel them for quite awhile after you’ve left, too. Even for folks who leave academia on good terms, who simply want a different direction and have no regrets, feelings of confusion, uncertainty, and turmoil can crop up. In a month or a year you might glimpse a CFP your diss would have been perfect for, or see a job ad that you would have loved to apply for if only... We all hit those rough patches. It’s part of the territory. Because academia is more than just a job, right? It’s our life. It’s our passion, it’s our hobby, it’s our bread and butter, it’s our social circle, our hopes and dreams, our health insurance, our visa, our sense of self. Leaving academia is more than just changing vocational goals, it’s leaving a whole world behind. I’ve heard it compared to leaving a church, or the military. It’s understandably difficult to disentangle that web when you decide to leave. Heck, a lot of people stay in academia just to avoid that messy process.

So the first thing we want to say is: your feelings make sense. Quitting is freeing and can be extremely rewarding, but I think we’ve all found it difficult at times. Don’t beat yourself up for feeling overwhelmed, confused, sad, or angry.

The second thing we want to say is: you are not alone. It’s easy to feel isolated when you don’t have connections to people who’ve left academia, especially if you feel like you can’t talk openly about it with your advisor/partner/friends who are still in that world. But you are not alone. For all of us, finding a community of supportive post-academics has been really valuable, and we welcome you to join our conversation! Fire up a blog and join our blogroll, or just drop us an email. In regular life, think about people you know who’ve left and dropped off the map. They’re still out there. Look up that guy who was a fifth year when you started and quit to become a teacher: find him on facebook and ask questions. Ask around. Talk to people. It really helps.

But for some of us, friends and journaling aren’t enough and the support of a therapist, sometimes even a psychiatrist, is essential. I know it was crucial for me. Anxiety and depression can be excruciating and debilitating. You do not need to suffer through this process. Find help. Ask for help. Accept help.  More on this TBA.

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When we started this project, we all agreed that the dearth of info and support for the emotional transition you undergo when you leave academia had to be remedied. We hope the resources in this section offer some of the solace, perspective, and advice you need to navigate these rough waters.