How to Stop Ruminating?

Medication has been the best thing for me. It's not full proof, it does help me for some types of rumination. I take Wellbutrin.

You don't sound like a good fit for IFS. Your T may be picking up on unresolved issues, I can see how that works, but even if you did, that doesn't mean revisiting childhood will necessarily be beneficial. It could make things worse.

Getting out with people seems to help the most. Last I was with a group, I had no renumerating. As soon as I got home, I started getting anxiety about my job. I do yoga and working out and distractions too (meditation too difficult for me at this point), but the only thing that seems to work well is being around people.

I work in a hybrid academia environment and have work-life balance issues too. It's really bad. I dread opening my laptop on the weekends, but I have to. I'm realizing I have to balance the external pressures and prioritize. You can't be the best at everything. You can't be highly involved in every project. Delegation would be ideal if you have a student or Jr. person who is willing and able.

Regarding external pressures, just try to make the least amount of people unhappy rather than juggle trying to make everyone happy-I mean that, also, in regard to people who say you 'have' to do something. Some people may have to just be unhappy and you might just have to take the risk. It can help to know who the influential people are, and just try to keep them happy. If they are not influential then say no and deal with the consequences. I wish I learned that years ago (found out the hard way).

My issue is feeling overwhelmed and being an expansive and creative thinker, crossing into ADD. Those strategies may help if perfectionism is your issue. I just think you have to learn to let things go and relinquish some control. That may be what your T be thinking about when it comes to unaddressed issues; fear is often the culprit. If you could get a sense of the underlying fears, that may enable you to let go some. You don't need a T for that. Perfectionism can also be related to OCD too.

There are life coaches who specialize in academia career work. Uhappy academic (just an example). It doesn't sound like you have the means or willingness to go outside of insurance but if you do, I would do that before IFS.

I agree with you that I’m not a good fit for IFS. Can you explain why you believe this also? I think I am going to end therapy, but I’m having trouble articulating why IFS just doesn’t feel right.

I definitely do have perfectionist tendencies. That is something I’m working on. Honestly, though, I think I do better reading books and applying principles I find useful rather than going to therapy, where I feel the T is pushing things on me (that I don’t find helpful).

I can’t tell you how much I WISH I had a TA, student worker, or junior person I could delegate something to— anything! I even asked for a TA and RA was simply told it’s not in the budget. And I’m the most junior person in the department— the most recent hire (it’s my first year here) and the youngest, by many years. I’m in my early 30s. In a few years, I think this will change but right now I’m still being watched pretty curiously by the senior faculty. I can feel them kind of sussing me out. My department chair is the #1 person responsible for my future, and she is the one saying I “have” to do certain things. There are things I don’t have to do (like therapy or conferences) but I do have to do the departmental service my chair is a required part of my job and I do have to teach and grade for 110 students with no Ts and teach 4 days/week.

I was more or less agreeing with you, but I can't picture you dividing yourself up in parts.

Maybe it could be potentially helpful if you have an inner critic that needs drawn out?

I do have to teach and grade for 110 students with no Ts and teach 4 days/week.



What is the breakdown of this student load in terms of number of class meetings and preps?

2 new preps. 3 classes that meet 3 times a week each. I teach M/W/F from 11am-5pm and then have meetings on campus on Thursdays. I lead one faculty group and am on 2 other committees and do one independent study with an undergrad. All of this was assigned; it was not voluntary.

Things that help me:
Playing solitaire on my phone, as silly as it sounds.
Turning my music up to what is probably a harmful level and listening to try to identify all the background instruments. When j catch my mind wandering I try to redirect it back.
Grounding by going out for a cigarette break and closing my eyes and trying to identify everything I can physically feel, my shoes around my feet, my glasses on my nose, my bracelet around my wrist, ...
Riding my motorcycle. My therapist did not approve of it when I got it lol. I half jokingly tried to convince him it counted as mindfulness, but there really is truth to that. For my 20 minute commute each way, those are 20 minutes that I'm spending completely focused on the moment: on the road ahead of me, anticipating the actions of cars around me, going "WHEEEE!" as I go around a curve at 80mph... Point being, I can't be ruminating because I'm too busy focusing on not dying.

Edit to add: not to derail, but what you're describing is a large part of why I've been reconsidering my lifelong intention of going into academia. I used to think I wanted to be a PI at a mid tier state school like where I did my undergrad, not a more research intensive institution like my current PhD program, because I figured it would be less pressure and I'd be able to have a balance between research and teaching. Then I looked at the statistics about job satisfaction and stress and happiness and stuff and realized that that's totally not how it works in practice. But I also want to be actively involved in research, and PIs in my program pretty much never even set foot in the lab.
Do you think it's worth it to try to balance academia and mental health stuff? I'm starting to think maybe a 9-5 industry research job might be a better fit, even though I've always romanticized the freedom of being able to pursue your own projects.
Also I've found a benefit to working with a clinical psychologist with a doctoral degree (PsyD or PhD) is that they went through a PhD program and at least have some idea what it's like. I have nothing against LCSWs/MSWs, but it's nice that my therapist "gets it," even if he doesn't get all the field-specific stuff.

Ouch. Sounds exploitative, even more than the usual uni. The places I'm familiar with (my spouse was a prof) had 2-1 or at max 2-2 loads, but for junior faculty never more than 1 new prep a year and at least 1 class was a grad seminar in his field. A junior sabbatical, semester off the year before going up for tenure. I don't think he did a new prep more than a couple of times in his final job. They tried to protect the junior faculty, mentored them rather than dumped on them all the things the senior faculty didn't want to do. Also he was able to negotiate transforming a 3 day a week undergrad class to 2 days/week (can you do that for future semesters?). But then again he was in the social sciences and I think you are in the humanities, where you have the benefit of higher teaching loads and lower pay.

Objectively you are totally overworked. I can understand why you'd feel stressed, perhaps not only do to the high workload but the fact that you don't have much autonomy in at least some of it. I can't imagine a place that assigns independent studies to faculty as opposed to having an undergrad pitch an idea that the person has to support. How do you have time to do your own scholarship?

Labrat - you can perhaps consider a Research Track - that also involves a faculty position in a research-focused environment but you can remain involved in lab work much more and don't need to manage a lab on your own. Just need to find a very compatible PI and then it can be very nice symbiotic work. Less income though usually. Eventually, if you take initiatives, develop your own directions, publish well and are able to secure funding, you can also become independent nearly like a PI on an Investigator Track or even change to that track and build your own lab. The good thing can be the beginning - responsibilities focusing on direct research, less administration, less involvement in departmental politics etc.

Scorpiosis - is that work load typical for junior faculty in your field? I personally can't imagine myself staying in a position where all the tasks that fill up my time are assigned. I would risk my tenure to find a better solution.

Academia has changed significantly just in the last ten years. With massive funding cuts to public universities (including R1s like mine), faculty— particular junior and non-TT faculty— are being paid less to do significantly more work. Fewer faculty are hired, but student enrollment is increasing. With more and more people earning PhDs and the number of available jobs decline, the competition for even the less desirable jobs is incredibly fierce. 80% of PhDs who want a TT job will never get one. 70% of faculty are non-TT and extremely exploited. If I had known what academia would be like now when I started grad school 11 years ago, I may have chosen a different career path. Now, I encourage my students to think of alternative career options. The autonomy promised doesn’t exist except for the already tenured. And the idea that faculty can “choose” which kind of institution or position they want is pretty laughable. We are lucky if we get a job in academia at all. And I’m talking about those of us who went to top tier schools, published, etc— those who, 10 years ago, probably could gone on the job market without too much worry. With so many PhDs now— all of whom are already overworked— finding peer reviewers to read articles for publication is also a nightmare. This makes it much harder to land publications and creates a huge publishing backlog. I had 3 essays accepted in 2017 that still aren’t our because of this backlog. Anyway, all this is to say that the stress is tied to very real things which are not easily within one’s control. And yes, my colleagues at other Universities are experiencing many of the same problems— some less than me, some more than me. I did decide to quit therapy because I don’t think the T gets any of this (she has a counseling MA from a for-profit school) and keeps trying to say the only way I can deal with my anxiety is to back to my childhood stuff. I disagree. I think I need practical strategies for creating work/life balance in the present.

The good ol' days. Such schedules haven't been the norm for new faculty for @ 20 years. I've never had a 2-1 or 2-2 load. 3-3 or 4-4 loads are very common. My average student load for the last 15 years has been 180--240, teaching 5-10 classes a semester with a couple of repeat preps/semester. Academia made the decision beginning in the 1980's, through initiatives like responsibility centered management, to eat their young--down sizing faculty in favor of exploding administrative positions.


And I've had 3 friends in the last few years with excellent teaching evals, good scholarship and service, and strong dept support not be awarded tenure. All Universities everyone has heard of. Tenure has become a unicorn.

Exactly.

I hope that academic jobs are still worth it for talented faculty, so that students can be taught in the manner I remember. I wish you the best with it.

This article was helpful for me: How To Stop Overthinking Everything, According To TherapistsHow To Stop Overthinking Everything, According To Therapists

Sorry the link kept repeating. I'm not sure how to correct that.,.

Ironically I found therapy was a guaranteed rumination trigger. One of the worst, if the not the worst. 50-60 minutes of unbroken self-absorption enabled by a professional enabler.

As for ruminating in bed instead of sleeping... lot of this diminished when I started taking care of circadian rhythm stuff.

Thankfully, I'm retired (a bit earlier than planned, but that's life). But I would not recommend anyone pursue an academic job. I was already too far along to switch by the time these changes had started taking hold. I see the American Univ system in severe crisis, and it is very sad.

That is exactly my experience. When I tried to tell the new T this was happening, she told me I was being “resistant.” No one outside of this forum seems to understand that therapy isn’t always the answer and can actually make things worse. I only worked with this T for 6 weeks, but they were awful. She kept telling me not to listen to myself, and to trust her instead. I quit therapy today by email.

I think that is probably for the best. I think it's a red flag when they pull the whole resistance thing. Even if they think you're being resistant, it's all kinds of ****ed up to suggest that the client should just abandon their natural defenses because the therapist finds it expedient.

Wow, she actually told you not to listen to yourself and trust her instead? I think you made the right decision in leaving...

It is quite different in my world, being a PI in a large medical school, which is more like what Labrat talked about as well. Not much compulsory teaching, I actually do more privately via my own business. But the "rat race" in research is not lighter at all, the competition, struggles with publications and grants, and there are plenty of administrative duties. I have a resonable selection in what sorts of duties I take on and a lot of room for initiatives as well, my problem in the past was that I chose too much... Currently more that I'm a bit bored with it, it's become quite repetitive even after shifting fields several times throughout my career.

Yeah, therapy for me was definitely a rumination trigger and not much more. Why I stopped it after about 2 years of trying. Jeez, what this T said is outrageous! I would have told her something "nice" before I walked out for good...

If you're in a field that has research posts, it's a very different world. It used to be that only community colleges demanded heavy teaching/student contact loads, but the balance was no research demand, just plenty of service. But now even Tier 1 universities assign heavy teaching duties, but still expect the same research output and service. They've also taken tenure off the table increasingly, expanding the use of contract positions that are high teaching load, with similar expectations of publishing and service--just no advancement to tenure. Acc to AAUP, 75% of faculty jobs are off tenure track.

Sad indeed. I see the whole workforce in crisis or headed that way. It's trending or getting like this everywhere. People are overwhelmed. People are working longer hours for less pay. 60% would have chosen another career.