Everyone gets stuck sometimes. Folks with depression and anxiety are especially prone to do so. DBT includes in its tool kit three things to ponder when it happens: the emotional source, the worst-case scenario, and the actual objective facts.
For today’s homework, I worked through an example. I’ve been stuck on writing two papers. More than that, I’ve become phobic about even trying.
With respect to emotional sources, I identified two. On the one hand, I’ve become afraid of finding out that I’m no longer able to perform well in a task that has been central to who I am. So much of my worth has been tied up in impressing, academically, those who matter to me. What if I can’t do it anymore? On the other hand, I no longer know why it’s important to publish papers. Too many are being churned out already. No one will read these latest ones. And, more deeply, my career goals have changed in recent years. I’ve set aside old ones, yet haven’t identified replacements. (Ah yes, that old problem of my values.) My aim, from High School onwards, was climbing the ladder and achieving “glory”. Scoring a medal in the Academic Olympics. (A bronze would do. But I needed to be on the podium.) By now, however, I’m perched at the highest level professionally that it’s reasonable to aim for. (Getting still “higher” – e.g., becoming a named Chair at Princeton, on everyone’s tongue, receiving ever bigger awards – doesn’t matter to me.) In sum, I’m stuck because writing these papers feels like a huge challenge given where I am mental health wise, and I don’t know why I should undertake the challenge anyway.
Turning to the worst-case scenario, the question is: what would failure look like? Well, of course, a very direct consequence of giving up is that I won’t finish the papers; in turn, that means disappointing my editors and my co-authors. Suppose I finish, and that they aren’t as good as others I’ve written? My reputation suffers.
That all looks pretty bleak. No wonder I’m floundering. Time, however, to check the facts. Do the emotions evinced by the papers depict things objectively? How bad are the scenarios, and how likely are they anyway?
This is the toughest bit. The emotions are very compelling, the scenarios seem daunting. However…
Suppose I don’t finish the papers. In fact, others won’t be disappointed in me. The editors of the volume, Ernie Lepore and Una Stojnic, are kind. They care about me and know my situation. Ditto for my co-authors Arthur Sullivan and Chris Viger.
Suppose I finish them, but the papers are plain-old terrible. Well, first, that’s actually very unlikely: my co-authors and our peers would catch blunders. But even if they slipped passed everyone, and the papers were so bad that my reputation was tarnished, how bad would that be? No one would die. I wouldn’t lose my family or my home. I wouldn’t even lose my job.
Where are we? Ah yes. I’m stuck with respect to finishing two academic articles. To move forward, I’ve been considering what the consequences of failure could be, and how likely they are. Time to check the facts regarding my emotions.
My fear of incompetence is misplaced. Let’s face it, when I compare myself with the appropriate group (e.g., not my teacher Noam Chomsky), I am still succeeding. I know this – well, I should know this – because there are other academic tasks where I still flourish: preparing complex lectures, refereeing papers for journals, writing these blog posts. More than that, I have written some excellent papers recently. It’s true, there was a time when I literally couldn’t type because my hands were shaking; a time when my speech was aphasic, and I couldn’t read a novel, let alone Plato. But those times are past. So, I haven’t lost the capacity. Besides, again: I have help from talented friends who care.
More importantly, I’m not valuable merely because of how I’m seen by others; my worth doesn’t flow entirely from impressing other people academically. My reputation isn’t as central to my validation as it can seem. Indeed, my worth academic or otherwise doesn’t flow entirely from others. (A slogan I commend to all: “Do unto yourself as you would do unto others”. I do unto others taking them as inherently valuable. Ergo…)
Next emotional fact to check: that it feels kind of pointless. That too is a bit askew. First off, it’s too strong to say that my work no longer has impact. The actual fact is, my papers get downloaded about five times a day, I regularly get emails asking about them, and I frequently receive requests to referee papers on my stuff. Secondly, being Bipolar, my temptation is to push farther and farther back in seeking a reason to do anything, including publishing. “What’s the point, from the perspective of the galaxy and its eons of existence?” But interim goals are enough. And for the time being, my motivation can be learning, thinking, collaborating, creating. Relatedly, overcoming a challenge can be a good thing in itself. (Why run farther, Rob? Why master a new fly-casting technique? What does the galaxy care about those achievements? These are bad questions. Similarly for getting these papers done: coming up with excellent results is something to be proud of, even if nobody reads the articles.)
In sum, the emotions turn out to be overblown too. Emotions, including fear and desire, are important, they send me messages; in this case, though, they have been tilted unduly to the negative.
[Postscript: I ended up working on a draft of one of the papers today.]