Academics, Anxiety

Posted by fxckfeelings on June 22, 2009

Academics are often perfectionists, which means their own faults are always subject to scrutiny, no matter how futile the pursuit. These two professors are scholars of their own inadequacies, but they don’t know how necessary it is to accept and make use of their faults instead of trying to revise themselves to death.
–Dr. Lastname

I’m an English professor, and I split my year between 2 schools in 2 different cities. I’ve been a heavy drinker since my 20s, but last fall, with the encouragement of friends and family, I finally decided to get sober. My family was wonderful, I found a very supportive AA group and, and with their help, I stopped drinking and kept it together for several months. But I’ve always been a very needy and insecure person, and I couldn’t believe I’d get the same kind of help from my friends and an AA group in the second city. The idea of leaving my safety net behind filled me with dread, and, a couple of weeks before my annual move, I fell off the wagon. The truth is, I have a good support system in the second city too, and my family is behind me, but I let them down. Now, I’ve moved to the second city, I’m connected with a good support group here, and I haven’t had a drink in 3 days, but I feel like such a loser because I can never believe in myself. My goal is to be less needy and insecure, but I don’t think I’ll ever get there.

Being less needy and insecure aren’t good goals because, like most things having to do with your emotions, you don’t control them. As you’ve seen, wishing to make them different can be so frustrating, it can drive you to drink. Now you’re still needy, and you need a drink. Not good.

Don’t believe all you hear about the evils of feeling needy and insecure. Some people say that those feelings cause all sorts of problems, and that it’s the job of therapy to make them better. That’s crap.

For one thing, therapy often does nothing to change one’s levels of neediness or insecurity. For another, they’re nice qualities in lots of situations, and much better than that real scourge of relationships: excessive self-esteem.

If you know anyone who doesn’t need anyone and always believes they’re right, you probably know a perfect asshole. Of course, the needless and ultra-secure will never write in with their problems, but such is the asshole way.

On the other hand, needy people are more open to relationships and to considering the other person’s feelings, and insecurity makes them more open to questioning the value of their actions. They may suffer more, and their fears may cause other problems, like drinking.

But they’re also more likely to connect to their families and children and fellows in an AA group and better able to help others, and that’s the single most important source of real self-esteem: not just the good feeling that comes with being rich or winning or having lots of the right kind of neurotransmitter, but knowing you’ve done some good with people you care about.

So stop berating yourself or your neediness and insecurity. It’s no better than attacking your alcoholism or the dumb things you’ve done in the past. It is what it is, and the whole point of going to AA is to remind yourself that accepting what you can’t change is the most powerful tool for making the best of what you’ve got today and respecting yourself for doing so. That’s the real way to build self-esteem. And that’s your goal: to accept the various needs that pull at you, and manage them with the strength you have, one day at a time.

STATEMENT:
Prepare a statement to protect your pride in self-management from the chagrin of knowing your control is shaky. “I’ve gotten a good start on my sobriety but I lead a challenging life and the stresses may well push me back into drinking. I wish I were less needy and insecure; but those qualities have made me more sensitive in good ways and, in any case, I am who I am. I’m ashamed of being a drunk and the possibility of drinking again, but, remarkably, the people who know I’m a drinker continue to accept me and seem to respect my efforts, regardless of whether I always succeed. So I’ll keep doing what I’m doing and value that fact and the relationships that seem strong in spite of my drinking.”

I’m a research scientist at a lab at a large university, and I’ve always felt like a weirdo because I get really bothered by the things that other people don’t worry about. They’ll worry about not getting a grant and I’ll say, “whatever.” But then something really stupid will happen with the university bureaucracy and I’ll feel destroyed and irritated for days at a time. Like, for instance, I’ll fill out a form the wrong way—put an attachment in the wrong position, something that I could never possibly have known was wrong—and a clerk will tell me he won’t accept it or worse, he won’t tell me and I’ll find out a few weeks later when I find out my application is listed as missing. That kind of thing drives me crazy, and gives my friends a good opportunity to laugh at me, but also makes me feel like an outsider, so I end up being even more upset. My goal is to not be so bothered by the little things.

You can stop worrying so much about the little things by becoming more philosophical about life, but it sounds like you’re already philosophical about life, so that won’t help. Just wanted to clarify that and get it out of the way.

So that means, yes, you guessed it, you’re probably one of those people who can’t help sweating certain little pieces of small stuff, no matter what you do, and wanting to be different is just another one of those pieces that will drive you crazy, isolate you, and give me business.

On the other hand, your motivation for your research probably comes from the way you’d like the world to fit together more sensibly, and is part of what makes science fascinating for you. So if you weren’t bothered by the weird illogicalities of human bureaucracies, you might not be driven to get your doctorate and take on the extremely precarious and uncertain business of being a research scientist. For which we should all be grateful.

So the sad news is that you will also be vulnerable to torture by bureaucrat, and, as such, your goal isn’t to become immune. It’s to keep going in spite of that rage and not let it damage your confidence.

If you suffer bravely and without threatening death to a bureaucrat, trashing lab equipment, or starting an anthrax epidemic, you’re doing a good job and need to respect yourself. You’re doing OK, for a murderous weirdo scientist.

STATEMENT:
Before you smash a bunch of test tubes, repeat the following statement to yourself: “If I was normal, I wouldn’t be a research scientist, let alone calm and cool about filling in forms, but I’m not, and I’m proud of what I do and the temperament that drives me to do it. I’ll try to ignore the pain of being prodded by stupid, senseless idiots, refrain from smiting them or dedicating my life to making sure they can never, ever do it again to anyone else; and instead appreciate the strength it takes for me to live in this world the way it is and be reasonably nice to human beings.”