rejection sensitivity and grad school
**This is part of a on ADHD and other kinds of neurodiversity in the academy - I am not a medical doctor nor am I a therapist or other mental health practitioner and this is not medical advice. It is PhD advice though!**
Have you ever seen a CV of failures floating around? The idea is that successful people, particularly academics, have a whole list of "secret" or unpublished failures for every accomplishment they seem to have. There's a lot that is normalizing about this - even successful people don't get grants! Princeton professors are just like us! But while it is one thing to be open about failures, and at least some of these conversations are acknowledging the huge privilege and resource drain it takes to produce that much unpaid labor in the hopes of one day getting funding/tenure, there isn't a lot of discussion of the toll the system of repeated failure takes on academics.
Especially if those people happen to also have rejection sensitivity.**
Because I am NOT a qualified medical practitioner, I am going to refrain from diving too deeply into the causes, symptoms, and treatments for rejection sensitivity. But for our purposes, the most important thing to know is that RS:
*can feel like sudden emotional waves after real, implied, or perceived criticism
*can feel like a whole body, whole mind, whole being response - people describe it as "unbearable", "devastating" waves of emotion and negative thoughts that are also hard to describe in words
*is a newer area of study within ADHD and other executive function disorders, as many previous diagnostic criterias do not talk about any emotional consequences or patterns.
This is how I see it play out in my work with grad students:
Grad Student A is working with their supervisor on a paper, and in the course of that conversation, the advisor suggests that the draft is not as developed as they expected. "I thought you'd have a little more done by now," or the like - and Grad Student A says "well, I got a little bit behind because I had to grade 100 midterms in 2 days this week." The meeting goes on, the draft gets discussed, Grad Student A continues to work on the draft. They might make an effort to block out a little more time during high grading seasons, or send an email to delay a meeting if they aren't far enough along the next time.
Grad Student B is working with their supervisor on a a paper, and in the course of that conversation, the advisor suggests that the draft is not as developed as they expected. "I thought you'd have a little more done by now," or the like - and Grad Student B freezes. They feel sick to their stomach, and they are distracted for the rest of the meeting because of how badly they feel for not having done more on the paper. They feel so awful that they avoid looking at the paper again for a few days, and when the time comes for the next meeting, they do not reach out to schedule it. They keep waiting to schedule a meeting until the draft is more developed, and waiting, and eventually the supervisor reaches out, concerned that they haven't heard anything for a few weeks. This is so activating that Grad Student B works on everything else BUT the paper until they finally either: build enough anxiety and shame about it that they tip into "deadline crunch mode" and get it done OR the paper becomes The Big Undone Thing that hangs over everything.
Grad Student C is working with their supervisor on a paper, and in the course of that conversation, the advisor suggests that the draft is not as developed as they expected. "I thought you'd have a little more done by now," or the like - and Grad Student C apologizes profusely. They have the rest of the meeting, and now, whenever any deadline comes up with that supervisor, Grad Student C will do anything to make sure they always, always have high quality work ready to go. They spend hours getting every draft as perfect and polished as they can possibly make it, even when they're sick/tired/busy/teaching/overwhelmed, and is utterly and completely burned out. The fear of ever having a draft "not be developed enough" hangs over every draft, even ones that have been explicitly labelled rough or zero drafts, and so each new writing assignment just adds to the pressure. They feel so overwhelmed by all the time it takes to do just one paper that they shove everything else to the side, even projects that are valuable, important, or pleasurable.
I see these types in many of my clients who are neurodiverse, who have experience anxiety, who self-identify as perfectionists - and a lot of that behavior is 100% normalized by academia. If you were to go on Twitter right now, I'm sure you could find all kinds of tenured faculty talking about their avoidance, their deadline-driven behavior, their perfectionism - there are far fewer voices stopping these conversations and saying "wait, what? Maybe there's a more regulated way??"
Because I'm not a therapist, I'm not trained to go deep into the emotional layers, and your own embodied history with these patterns. But, I can say that as a coach, there are a few practices that can help you manage some of the "avoid this" or "never let anyone down" patterns that can come up when you've got some sensitivity reaction things happening:
Have someone translate your feedback for you. Have you gotten a nasty email? Is your Reviewer 2 feedback awful? If you have a colleague you trust, or a partner, or someone who has a little distance, you can ask them to look at emails and see how harsh they are. You can give a red-ink covered draft a friend and say "can you look at this and summarize three big things for me to start working on first with this draft?" Sometimes, another set of eyes can help you translate it into language or a framework that isn't so activating.
Clarify expectations. If your advisor says "email me back when you have a draft" and you immediately jump to "a publication ready draft", either one of two things is true: they want to see writing that's ready to send off to an editor, or they are open to seeing writing in a variety of stages. If you feel comfortable, you can ask a clarifying question - "Would you be willing to read a rough draft?" is a professional thing to ask!
Assess where you are before you take any further steps. If you get a draft back with comments, and the email has language that sets off your rejection alarm bells, your body could be bracing for a fight. It might make sense for you to do a check in - is my pulse racing? Are my teeth clenched? What color do I feel like? - and act accordingly. This video has some good suggestions for green/yellow/red levels of activation. You might want to schedule a time to go through comments, maybe with a friend to help you work on them. Or you could set a schedule of looking at one or two pages of comments and translating them into tasks in your to do list at the end of each day, so that you can unwind and take care of yourself at night, before working on the to-dos the next morning.
Create some visibility around The Great Undone Thing. If you tend towards the "nope! never again!" reaction, it might be helpful to create a little bit of visibility around the thing that is not currently surfacing on your to do list. Especially with other executive function symptoms, you might swing from hyper-awareness of the thing you are avoiding, to periods of time where you are so fully engrossed in other projects or tasks where you lose sight on the other, more emotionally-loaded tasks. You could try repeating tasks in a database like "check in on draft", or have an accountability partner who checks in on that project, or a whiteboard where you have a visual cue of a few next steps you could take on that project.
So much academic advice seems to boil down to "write every day, and work as much as you can on every opportunity so you can always have slightly improved odds at succeeding on something every so often." And while that advice, when framed correctly, can be sound, it also can really invalidate the experience of someone who cannot simply open a rejection letter and keep it moving. And while a good task management system, or coach, or community can help, they're no substitute for compassionately acknowledging your own experience, and where you do or don't fit with some of the advice and assumptions on offer. If any of these patterns were easy or simple to solve, they wouldn't impact so many of us. But, the more you know, the more you can work with yourself, and build systems and frameworks that help you be your best self without denying who you are and how you move through the world.
**For the purposes of this article, I'm choosing to use the term rejection sensitivity, which is a symptom that can, in official DSM terms (on its own a flawed system!), overlap with diagnosable conditions like ADHD, BPD, body dysmorphia disorder, and social anxiety) rather than Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria, which is specifically talked about in relation to ADHD. For more on RSD, see here and here!
stealth expectations: or an easy way to ruin a perfectly good day
most friday afternoons, or sometimes saturday mornings, i make a list of all the things i want to do over the weekend. it's a menu of sorts - i can easily get overwhelmed with decisions so having a range of options to pick from encourages me to remember some of the 1908123908 hobbies i have, and lessens some of the pressure of the minute by minute decision making of what to do. in the early blushes of this routine, i loved it - worked a peach every time. and then, something else started to happen.
as soon as it became clear i wasn't going to do everything, i'd be annoyed with myself for "not maximizing" the weekend. and if something unexpected came up - i'd start to worry about how i would fit everything in (even if there was oodles of time). and if my husband had plans of his own that impacted mine, well, that could be the spark that lit a whole powderkeg of yuck. all together, it wasn't even a pattern that registered as a problem, just an intensifying sense that my weekends were less fulfilling than they had been.
it wasn't until i was reading ATLAS OF THE HEART by brené brown and came across a section on "stealth expectations" that things started to click. as she writes:
"every day, sometimes every hour, we are consciously and unconsciously setting expectations of ourselves and the people in our lives - especially those closest to us. the unconscious, unexamined, and unexpressed expectations are the most dangerous and often turn into disappointment...when we develop expectations, we paint a picture in our head of how things are going to be and how they're going to look....we set expectations based on not only on how we fit in that picture, but also on what those around us are doing in that picture. this means that our expectations are often set on outcomes totally beyond our control, like what other people think, what they feel, or how they're going to react....and when that picture or movie fails to play out in real life, we feel disappointed. and sometimes that disappointment is severe and brings shame and hurt and anger with it." (44)
and goodness me, that was a big part of what was going on. by making a list (EVEN THOUGH I CALLED IT A MENU) i set some stealthy expectations for myself about what i should be able to accomplish. i'd move through the weekend and each activity would be enjoyable - whether i planned it or not - but because it wasn't living up to a sort of fuzzy idea that i had for myself that i would do all the things, i would put a little disappointment into that soup and leave feeling less satisfied without having a real reason why. and once i examined that behavior in myself, i started to see how it has always been a part of my relationships, with others, and especially with myself.
how many of us have had a "fine" day but because we didn't cross every item off the to do list, we leave the desk for the day a little deflated? how often have we planned for a big work session, only to have something else come up or have something put on our plate, and even though there's still time to adjust, we're mad about it?
or maybe you had some expectations about how an advisor would work with your writing, or how a course would go, or how a conference paper would be received. maybe you had a vague idea of how long it would take you to write the next section of your chapter, and because you finished it friday instead of wednesday, you feel behind and rushed even though you still have plenty of time.
we all have expectations about how things will go, how they'll feel, or how other people will react to us. that's part of how we, as humans, move through a world that is at times routine but often unpredictable - we have to anticipate to some degree. and often, once we express those expectations, we can manage them. once i realized that i was treating my options for the weekend like obligations, some of the pressure released and it was easier to reset my expectations for something more reasonable. many of us have a perfectionist streak in us - we maybe are noticing and supporting the places where it's showing up clearly, but brains are sneaky, and so are expectations.
so, what do we do in the face of this cloud of sneaky expectations we can float in? a few tools that might help:
check in with how you're feeling. moods are mysterious and emotions can be tricky to nail down, but it can be a good place to start. once i name what i'm feeling (i try for as little judgment as possible, but don't always get there), it often is easier for me to trace where that is coming from. if i'm ending most weekends - no matter how they go - feeling unsatisfied, then that's solid data to start with.
if you have a sharp sense of disappointment about how something went - and you're in a space where your nervous system is up to it - it can help to use these questions to get some clarity:
how did i think this was going to go?
what made me think that?
how did i think i was going to feel?
what was i imagining in terms of the other people involved?
it can be (relatively) more straightforward to handle your own expectations of yourself - it gets more complicated when other people are involved. i often work with clients who have expectations of how grad school would feel, or how things would go with their advisor, and here are some of the tools that are most helpful in that realm:
write out your expectations - even if you don't verbalize them right away. if you send a draft to your advisor, it might help to write down what you expect to get back - line edits? global comments? notes on argument? help with grammar? if/when you don't get those things, you can then either be more specific in your requests, or find someone or someplace else to help get you the support you need.
figure out where your expectations are coming from. are you seeing other people tweet about amazing conversations in their conference presentations, and then feel let down when yours are more stilted? do other people get loads of help on their job documents, and all your advisor does is send out letters of recommendation? and then you can check those expectations against more sources of data, or data sources that are closer to your situation - there is so much that's individual about our situations that it can be really helpful to check in with where we're getting our expectations, and whether or not they apply to us.
this is the work of a lifetime - like perfectionism, stealth expectations sneak in and take root before you notice them (that's why they're stealth!). but, noticing the invisible expectations we have for how things will go and bringing them to the surface can really help us stay out of the disappointment and shame that we don't necessarily even mean to welcome in.
eat the frog........or not?
Sometimes, there's a task. It's The Task. Maybe it's responding to an email, or paying your credit card bill, or opening up the dissertation file, or taking your trash out. Whatever it is, it's The Task that you know will make you feel better to do it, but also you would pay one bazillion dollars for it to be done and for you to not have to do it.
There is a lot of productivity advice that will say that when you have this task, you should do it first, and they call it "eating the frog." The idea is that if you have to eat a frog at some point during the day, it's better to just get that over with so you can eat more delicious things later without the dread of having to then also eat a frog. Get the hard, tough, maybe gross stuff out of the way, and everything else is crackers and La Croix, or whatever your favorite food is.
In general, this is good advice. It usually feels good to get The Task out of the way, and feeling good at the start of a work session is usually helpful for overall motivation. Once a hard thing is done, you have concrete evidence that you are, in fact, capable of doing hard things.
However, sometimes, you know you have to eat a frog so you just.....avoid breakfast, so to speak. You say that you're going to start with The Task, and then the minutes (hours) creep by and The Task hasn't been started, and the dread builds, so you don't do anything. You just wait to feel up to eating the frog, and keep waiting.
So here's my compromise, a workflow that balances getting tough stuff out of the way and also my own tendency to not always be my strongest in the morning:
When I end the workday, I identify one or two important tasks to start with when I am next at my desk, that will feel like wins to get done.
When I sit down for the next session, I check in with myself and see if I feel like I want to start with those tasks, or if something else has come up that I need to attend to.
If I am starting with a difficult task, I set a timer for one pom. If I haven't started the Frog Task in the first pom, I switch to something else.
I try the Frog Task again when I either a) feel up to it or b) after a hard break (like lunch, or a workout) when coming back to work feels like a new session.
It's great to eat the frog, and it is an awesome way to inject a bit of win right into the beginning of a session. But it isn't so powerful that you should sacrifice the rest of your work day ready to eat that frog. No one tool fits well for everyone, at every energy level, with every kind of task. So experiment with it, and learn when it works for you, so that you can use it on purpose!
are you choosing 'not at all'?
As many of you have probably heard, many many times, I want desperately to be a runner. And there are a few hurdles in this plan:
I'm not great at running.
I have a chronic illness that flares and sometimes my body isn't up to running.
It's hard to run in the rain, and when it's hot, and when it's cold, and when you're tired, and when you're hyped up.....
etc
And so, for the 1920834208 time, I embarked on the couch to 5 k plan. So reasonable! I have a target 5k date and I'm training and then a few things happened, and I missed a week.
So yesterday, I put it on my calendar and in my A column in my to-do list - the "you gotta do it, or else" column. And I realized that what was holding me back was not that I missed a few runs, or that even that I might not be able to run the whole 5k in September without stopping, but that I wasn't "perfect" with the training, which itself, is flexible.
My brain would rather give up on the whole plan together than do it less than 100% perfectly.
And whoooo, is that a pattern that my brain likes to invite me into. Better not to do it than have to work at it. Better not to do it than to do it 80%, or 60%. Better focus on the things that I'm already crushing than spend "all that energy" on things that are hard.
So I'm trying to focus on being "joyfully intermediate". I want to enjoy the path between the beginning and the end state - I want to think of that space before something is perfect, or done, or good enough as a part of the process, and not just something I have to hold my breath and survive until I can be more comfortably high achieving.
It's hard. It was a hard run. But the next run will be easier because I'm back trying to run again. There might not be meteoric progress between 0% running and 100% running, but there will be movement and change and growth and learning, and that's also good stuff.
the zit effect
It doesn't matter how glowing 98% of my teaching evaluations are, the critical, mean, and fair but OUCH ones are tattooed on my heart. You could give me pages and pages of glowing feedback on my writing and I'm going to remember the typos, the mistakes I made with language, the parts that were confusing and unclear.
I thought that this was just my brain doing Brain Things TM but it turns out that this is a well known, research supported Brain Thing: negativity bias.
In other words, things of a negative nature will impact your psychological state and brain processes more than positive things, even if they were of equivalent intensity. You remember negative things more, you notice negative things more, you have a tendency to choose things that will minimize pain rather than optimize for benefits.
I saw it this week (not so) lovingly referred to as "the zit effect": doesn't matter if everything else is going really well, if you have a pimple, you're going to focus on it. And it happens to all of us!
If you have a zit, there are a few options:
Pop it - bold! Not always advisable! Should probably be supervised!
Cover it up - takes a certain skill with makeup, not always fully possible, can sometimes prolong the zit
Ride it out - accept it, try not to mess with it, let it go down in time
Take preventative measurements - get soaps, get a routine, try and stop them before they start
But the truth is that all of these methods have pros and cons, and nothing completely stops zits from happening. And they look different for each person, they can range in severity, they can be part of a whole separate condition and need special attention, and you can't compare one person's zit to another - or tell them that "it's just a zit!" and that they should lighten up.
The useful thing here is to check in with yourself the next time you're in a thought loop about how you never get anything done, or are a terrible writer, or are just a trash raccoon in all areas that cannot be rehabilitated to be a cute, fun raccoon: are you focusing on all the things that aren't working?
Practice countering those thoughts with any reflections this week about the things that are working. It doesn't make the negative things go away, but it does "right size them" - puts them back in the correct scale so that you can see the face for the zits, so to speak. <3
if it's cold, i can wear a coat - thoughts on my brain not always/rarely doing exactly what i want it to do
in my personal life, i am well known for not being dressed in a way that is weather-appropriate. i hate wearing socks, wear sandals WAY past the first frost, often feel that a long sleeved shirt is fine if it's not below freezing.
but, last year, i discovered that wearing socks meant that i was less distracted by my cold toes all day. if i wore a coat, i could take longer walks before my body got real mad, and hats definitely kept me warmer than i would have thought. i don't LOVE wearing them but i definitely don't hate being more comfortable, and with a little bit of effort, i can go out and enjoy my favorite season just a little bit more.
sometimes, i think about my brain as having weather patterns of its own. in fact, brain weather is my favorite term for everything that happens up there! there are some weather patterns - hurricanes! tornados! - that require our full attention and presence, and my brain can definitely throw up a hurricane or two where it's all i can do to stay safe and supported until the worst of the winds have passed. and then there are moments of absolutely gorgeous weather, where my brain just feels so good that i can't imagine what rain was even like! blue skies baby!
i've always been better at handling extremes than the in between - and my brain is no exception to that. i know what to do when i'm feeling 0% good, and what to do when i feel 100% good - easy! but what about when it's like, 60% good? what if i'm in the middle of brain weather that's cold but not life-threatening so? a steady drizzle of brain weather? a too-hot for comfort but not too hot to stay inside day? that's a lot harder for me to adjust to, just like it's really hard for me to decide whether or not i want to bother with a coat when it's just a little chilly.
weather - brain and earth - is something i can't really fight. i can definitely refuse to modify my behavior (not wear a coat, not get extra sleep, you get it) but if it's cold, the earth truly doesn't care if i'm wearing my coat or not. it keeps doing its weather thing, and i'm left to decide if i want to adjust or not. thinking about my brain as having weather systems, and flowing with them instead of fighting to try and get to a 100% sunny days optimism only pattern that is neither real nor sustainable, has really helped a lot.
if i'm having a high anxiety day, i can either bolt myself to my chair and SIT THERE UNTIL THE ANXIETY SUBSIDES AND THE WORK IS DONE, or i can go for a walk, or move my body a little bit, or swap out a coffee for some water. it doesn't knock out the anxiety, but it does make it more comfortable to exist with it. wearing a coat doesn't make it NOT winter, just makes it more comfortable to live DURING winter. i can spend a lot of energy BEING MAD that i'm anxious, and stop everything until the feeling subsides, or i can know that there are short, medium, and long term things i can do to work with it, all of which will both increase my empowerment and my comfort.
we are conditioned to view ourselves as problems to solve, but accepting our current reality doesn't mean that we won't ever feel differently - in fact, showing ourselves care through the sticky moments usually does the opposite, and helps us move onto what's next more quickly, more completely, more gently, more supported.
and that's what i want for me and all of us - more gentleness, more support, more tools to help meet us where we are, with the weather we have. so maybe you offer yourself a hat or a coat, or a little bit of something that makes it just 1% easier to live with your weather - making it all the more likely that when the weather does change, you're not so burned out that you can't appreciate it.