Sobriquet 42.9
Okay, so I wrote about the anxiety I have been feeling more intensely the deeper into the writing process I get with this chapter. It got really bad today. I mean really bad. Normally, when I feel anxious, I have a heightened sense of nervousness, but nothing more difficult to deal with than that. Today, though, my nervousness had a bit of panic-y agitation added into the mix, which was quite unpleasant. Now, I have several friends with anxiety disorders, many of whom suffer from panic attacks, so I know a bit about what to look for and, fortunately, this wasn't one of those. I mean, I felt my heart beating a bit more rapidly than normal, but that was about the extent of any physiological symptoms. So, I was lucky in that respect, I suppose. At any rate, I managed to finish what I was writing and took the evening off to relax, using the time to finish listening to the end of Chuck Palahniuk's Diary on audiobook.
Still, it's irritating to find oneself really, really anxious, even when the reasons for the sensation are plain. All I can say, though, is that virtually everyone I have spoken to in academia have had similarly unpleasant experiences while working on a manuscript or preparing for a comprehensive examination, which is nice to know. At any rate, my approach to instances like this one is to focus on the task at hand, force myself to finish working without giving into the stress. That way, I reason, I can show myself that I can work through such times in case I encounter another bout of dissertation anxiety.
So, yeah. I wrote some more.
For tomorrow: Read some more of Foe and grade papers.
Still, it's irritating to find oneself really, really anxious, even when the reasons for the sensation are plain. All I can say, though, is that virtually everyone I have spoken to in academia have had similarly unpleasant experiences while working on a manuscript or preparing for a comprehensive examination, which is nice to know. At any rate, my approach to instances like this one is to focus on the task at hand, force myself to finish working without giving into the stress. That way, I reason, I can show myself that I can work through such times in case I encounter another bout of dissertation anxiety.
So, yeah. I wrote some more.
For tomorrow: Read some more of Foe and grade papers.
Comments
Anxiety sucks. That's really all I can say on that subject without going through the obligatory (though somewhat true) statements of anxiety being normal and understandable in stressful situations. That doesn't change the long and short of it: Anxiety sucks.