During the doctoral and post-doctoral course, given the great pressure of the process, you usually go through several emotional stages that can affect the student's performance, so it is important to anticipate, to be able to work on them and not get carried away by these situations.
Today we want to talk about 3 obstacles that can make your doctoral path very difficult, and how you can have efficient emotional management to survive the pressure of the Doctorate without dying trying.
Breathe, because everything has the same solution: Emotional Management.
The most common potholes that people go through during the doctoral/post-doctoral course are:
Impostor syndrome: the person who suffers from it has the feeling that everyone knows or can handle a situation better than he or she. This situation is exhausting since the individual is frequently in a continuous effort so that no one discovers that he really is not worthy of the position that he occupies, be it in the doctorate or in his work.
7 out of 10 people suffer from the impostor syndrome and, according to the International Journal of Behavioral Science, more than 70% of people are affected by thoughts of impostors in the workplace at some point in their lives.
Perfectionism: According to the specialized site areahumana.es, "perfectionism is considered a tendency to establish excessively high standards of performance in combination with excessively critical subsequent evaluation and a growing concern about making mistakes, traits that are expressed with a low tolerance for frustration".
People with perfectionist profiles tend to be stubborn that everything must be perfect. Their goals are very high, and they are controllers. In general, they have a hard time delegating tasks, there is never enough work for them.
Bad relationship with thesis directors: This point is crucial since the thesis tutor will be that character who will accompany you and will be a participant in your success. Having a cordial relationship will have a direct impact on your work. If during the thesis, due to the tensions of a doctorate, the relationship begins to erode, seek by all means to have a lot of emotional intelligence and be assertive, and do not get carried away by emotions. This will definitely be part of your emotional maturation process.
Understanding the previous points and knowing that many more can be added to the list, is key when you make the life decision to do a Ph.D., to understand that, like everything in life, many things will not go as planned. You must learn to trust yourself and your abilities. And as a bonus tip: I never give up! Because it's worth it.
If you are looking for some places to get inspired, we recommend you search LinkedIn, where there are more than 3,600 groups dedicated to Ph.D. topics and where you will surely find information that will be useful to you.