I might have just experienced my first panic attack this afternoon. Tomorrow I will finally put a first lot of samples through to be genotyped and it’s a really big deal. I’ve been working towards this for at least the last year, and particularly over the past few months. This week I will find out if it had worked, or of it’s all been for naught. I really hope it’s the first!
Today, in between rushing around to seminars, I was getting the samples ready for tomorrow’s run. I broke into a sweat while I was doing this, so much that I could barely pull my gloves off when I was finished due to my soaking wet hands. I convinced myself that everything that I could possibly mess up, I had. Once they were all done and in the fridge to wait, I sent myself home early. There was nothing else I could do, and if I stayed I was only going to fret about what happens if it doesn’t work.
Driving home I had the shakes, stomach pains and couldn’t think straight. Even after I got home my hands were shaking and I couldn’t eat. Wow, I thought, is this what panic really feels like?
I thought it might be cathartic to put it down in words and think it through. Yes, it’s a really big deal if tomorrow’s run turns up problems, but at least I’ve gotten this far at last. A real problem means a delayed finish time for my thesis. An issue given I’m already making plans to go over-time. But should I have to go back to the start and repeat the process, at least I already know how to do it and theoretically I would be faster the second time around.
It’s still not a nice feeling though. Research can be fickle like that sometimes. I’ve talked to several other students over the past few days who have similar research problems. They can be collecting samples, sorting and preparing them, and it can be months before they know if they’ve collected the right thing, or will have any data at the end. Some students do safer projects. They do things that are guaranteed to work, and consequently they’re the students who finish on time and get nice easy grades.
The rest of us, well we take the harder route. We do things a little more unknown, a little scarier, and apparently we pay for it with the odd panic attack. But it should in the long run mean more exciting research, more important results, and you would hope a better all round thesis.
I figured I had a few choices to calm myself down once I got home. I chose the tub of chocolate ice cream, since I figured that was the best bet to both calm nerves and ensure I’m in a state to work tomorrow (if you catch my drift). I’ve been knitting and listening to music: the knitting pattern I’m working on at the moment is fairly complex, and I find the concentration takes my mind off other things. Plus there’s this post, which I hoped would put things in perspective.
What do you do to calm down and regroup when you’ve had a day? Have you ever had a panic attack, or similar, and how did you cope with it? I’ll take any tips, since the week might just get worse from here!
Hey there,
I used to have a full blown panic attack at least once a week during my undergrad. A car accident left my brain a bit weak in some places. I am MUCH better now, but I remember how bad it feels.
Somethings that helped me:
-Walking-just keep moving.
-Lay down on a COLD floor. It shocks you out of it.
-Put your back in a corner and let the shakes out. Get it over with, then you can proceed with what caused it.
The best thing was when I could see the signs of an attack coming. Once I got to a certain point in the recovery process, I could talk myself back down by changing my reaction to the situation. Some times the only thing you can control about any situation is how you react to it. I have some books on anxiety and stress if you feel like looking further into it. Some people only have them once off, others develop a habit to panic. It depends on the triggers.
Good luck and if you need any help, let me know.
Kat
Oh – hope they went well!
). The thing I found worked most was to leave everything and go for a walk or try to do something else.
I know what you mean when saying you start something and have no idea if it will work even after spending months preparing for it.
I had a number of panic attacks last year, but in the last few months I seem to have calmed down and just take it as it comes (I think my nerves have given up on me
Good luck! and let us know how it went
Thanks for the well wishes. I’m afraid they didn’t do the trick though. I am definitely going back to the start and redoing work. It’s frustrating and scary. At least the panic has been replaced by depression – an emotion I’m far more familar with.
Ahh – Definitely good luck! I have gone through that stage before. Right now I am in a no-man’s land place where I am waiting to see what will go wrong next
[...] been a while! I think it’s somewhat appropriate that my last post was about the stress of PhD work. Life pretty much went down the toilet since I wrote that. Briefly: genetics work failed, my father [...]