Anxiety

“I only have a day left to send off this draft.”

“Why can’t I think of a question to ask?”

“I wish people would just stop looking at me.”

“I’m not smart enough to do this.”

“I’ll never get a job.”

I knew that a Ph.D. program in philosophy would be stressful. I knew that graduate students experienced high rates of depression. But something I didn’t anticipate was how much anxiety grad school can produce. Anxiety both short- and long-term, stretched and compressed, all-consuming and desperate to escape from itself: a circular argument you can’t unravel.

I loved and still love philosophy, and know that I made the right choice attending grad school. Yet anxiety has been a major challenge the entire time. Along with typical sources of anxiety such as illness, relationships, and finances, grad students get to deal with a peculiar yet banal set of causes. Some of the most difficult points in the six years I’ve been in my program have not been due to, for example, my qualifying exam itself, but to my anxiety about my qualifying exam. When I finished coursework, I was relieved that there would be no more dreadful countdowns before term paper deadlines, not fully realizing that when writing my dissertation I would just have that same or worse anxiety spread out over longer periods of time with fewer definitive endpoints. I feel particularly absurd when I’m speaking and I just happen to become aware of what my voice sounds like and the words I’m using, and so then I lose my train of thought before a gallery of judgmental faces—or are they just mildly confused, or blank? Perhaps they secretly hate what I was saying, or like it, but oh no, what was I saying again?

One major element of my fear comes, as it were, from elsewhere. Early in grad school, I was diagnosed with social anxiety disorder. For me, having a name for this was a good thing. It explained my frantic internal monologue and much of my life up until that point: why I felt exhausted after socializing, deeply ashamed of bad grades and letting other people down, and uncomfortable talking to strangers. The fact that I love teaching, and feel less anxious teaching than in almost any other social situation, makes it all the more painful when as a teacher I notice myself and time stands still and it starts to get warm and words lose their meanings.

Much of the fear I have encountered in grad school can be traced back to my genes, experiences, and dispositions. But certainly this is not all of it. I’ve seen fellow graduate students across the field with no previous mental health diagnoses struggle and begin therapy or medication for the first time. This need not mean that attending philosophy grad school causes anxiety in these cases (or that anxiety causes one to attend philosophy grad school). But academia in general invites imposter syndrome. Subtle comparative judgments have wide-ranging consequences in academic philosophy. And there is so much waiting, and time for thinking about what you’ve done and should be doing. Grad students anticipate meetings with faculty, referee reports, and job decisions. These are central parts of our discipline, but in the early stages of one’s career, they can be especially daunting. The graduate application process was only the beginning of repeatedly checking my email and seeing “Updated Just Now” with nothing new.

For me, having an anxiety disorder poses the challenge of separating what might be called “rational” anxiety from “my” anxiety. “My” anxiety has something to do with my own brain, body, and life experiences. “Rational” anxiety is what is more or less typical, normal, and warranted, given the facts about academic philosophy. (Do I think in terms of a distinction like this because I love philosophy, or do I love philosophy because I think like this?) I think there are at least two functions of this distinction for me: to figure out how “normal” I am, and to match my expectations to my surroundings. In other words, I try to sort out the two types of anxiety in order to figure out if and how I can belong.

Despite this important function, the distinction, at least as I’ve stated it, is problematic for several reasons. All of my anxiety is “mine” insofar as I am the one who feels it. The distinction might also suggest that I am somehow especially responsible for handling “my” anxiety, or that “rational” anxiety is just fine to have. There is also plenty of language here that can be used in bad ways. To think or say that “grad school causes anxiety” can in certain contexts be used to dismiss concerns or to legitimize unfair conditions. The same thing can be done with the claim ‘that’s your anxiety, not grad school’. And a “normal” or “typical” standard is clearly a neurotypical one, which is not a standard of the right kind.

I haven’t settled on how to conceptualize the kinds of anxiety I deal with, though perhaps the agency and responsibility literature could help me out. I’ll conclude this piece by sharing some things that have worked for me in my unending campaign to calm and control my anxiety. In my first year, I took what felt like a risk and confided in a professor that I became really nervous when speaking in front of others in the department. I asked for some advice. His main suggestion was for me to jot down notes about points I wanted to make before speaking, so that if my brain locked I could just read the words. What was most important about his reply, though, was that he made me feel like I belonged, and that my anxiety was something that I could cope with. Improving as a philosophy teacher over time, and making myself apply to conferences, have also improved my confidence. And I have reaped great benefits from therapy and medication.

It has also been reassuring for me to know that my worth is not exhausted by my participation in academic philosophy. I keep stock of this by intentionally taking time away from doing philosophy. I’ve witnessed resilience in a variety of forms from my peers in graduate school, and this has reminded me of something that can be frighteningly easy to forget: that life is bigger than our discipline. It can be resilient to stay in academia, defend one’s dissertation, apply to academic jobs, and so on. Yet it can be just as resilient to accept that one’s identity does not depend upon a particular career or field, and move on. I think it is important for grad students to know that they don’t have to stay at all costs. There are many other fulfilling lives.

Our discipline is improving in many ways. However, there’s still much more to be anxious about than there should be. It isn’t sufficient to observe that much of this anxiety is caused by things beyond “our” control, including the administrative structure of higher education, capitalism, and historical oppression. We are colleagues who work and live alongside each other. There must be some sort of moral duty, reasonably qualified, to try to help the people around us be less anxious. A bare minimum, I think, is for all of us to accept some partial responsibility in proportion to our power and influence over the social conditions of academic philosophy. These conditions, which structure the resources we have and the ideas we breathe, distribute the causes of certain kinds of anxiety in unfair ways. They place greater burdens on people of color, women, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ folks, and those who are financially insecure.

Writing and talking about anxiety and other mental health conditions can help, but that isn’t enough either. It probably helps some people to be reminded every so often that there are other people who feel in similar ways. But for many, the facts of the real world, their own minds, and of course the job market can’t vanish in a flash or at all. And for some, talking about anxiety without an outlet, or without clear ways to relieve it, may even increase or intensify it.

As I approach the end of my time in graduate school, I look forward to a day when anxiety and mental health can be discussed more openly in academic philosophy. When anyone with anxiety can feel that they belong, we will have removed another barrier to a true philosophical community.

Andrew Stewart

Ph.D. Student | Website

Andrew is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Southern California, specializing in political philosophy, ethics, and the history of political thought. Their dissertation is called "Five Roles of the Political Philosopher."