Category Archives: Self Care

My life as a grad student with a chronic illness

APAGS recently spoke with Stacey Feuer, a fourth-year clinical psychology doctoral student, about her experiences of living for the past 17 years with Gaucher disease, an often invisible chronic, genetic illness characterized by its numerous effects on the body’s organs and systems.

Stacey Feuer.

APAGS: Stacey, please tell us a little about yourself.

SF: I am currently at NOVA Southeastern University in South Florida and my focus is on health psychology, specifically the psychological impact of people living with chronic medical illnesses. Next month, I will be working with people living with HIV/AIDS during a service trip to Swaziland in Africa. I am excited to present a paper at the annual APA convention in August with Dr. Barry Nierenberg and fellow student Sarah Cooper on an integrative model we are developing to evaluate and treat medical patients. I am also involved in other research projects — one involving cognitive contributors to pain, and another on applying positive psychology to individuals living with spinal cord injury. My future plans are to continue working with people living with chronic medical illnesses as both a therapist and advocate.

APAGS: What are some of the challenges of having Gaucher as a grad student?

SF: It has been challenging in many ways. Many people, including faculty members, have difficulty understanding how this illness has impacted me because even at my sickest points I have looked perfectly healthy from the outside. As with any chronic illness that has exacerbations and remissions, it is sometimes difficult to make short- and long-term commitments with friends when your health may change from one day to the next. I have been very fortunate, however, to have some wonderful people in my life.

Even at my sickest points I looked perfectly healthy from the outside.

Returning to school as a full-time student has only been possible because of certain accommodations. This has been essential to keeping up with all of my required coursework and commitments by helping to reserve my energy and pain levels as much as possible. Since my treatments take approximately half a day at a doctor’s office, it has been necessary for me to not schedule other commitments on those days. I have learned to tell others that I am simply unavailable.

APAGS: Have any positives come from this experience?

SF: The biggest positive has been the opportunity to use my experiences to help others in similar circumstances. Isolation is one of the biggest contributing factors to depression and anxiety in people living with chronic illnesses. It is very rewarding to be able to have a positive impact on the lives of individuals who are living with ongoing negative circumstances.

It is very rewarding to have a positive impact on individuals living with ongoing negative circumstances.

APAGS: How has Gaucher shaped your decision to study psychology?

SF: Being diagnosed with Gaucher 17 years ago has had a huge impact on my decision to pursue my doctorate in clinical psychology. In my twenties, there were several years in which I was very sick, requiring several surgeries and being essentially bed-bound. During this time, I was never able to find a therapist who understood chronic medical illness. I eventually went back to school for my master’s degree in leadership development and healthcare; however, I realized that I wanted to have a more personal impact in the lives of people. This realization encouraged me to pursue my doctorate in clinical psychology and to concentrate on health psychology.

APAGS: How did Gaucher inform your decision to find the right graduate program for you?

SF: I chose NOVA because it met two basic criteria (besides academic ones) — the warm weather and proximity to a Gaucher specialist. Due to the Gaucher, I have significant bone damage. These bone issues are the primary source of my chronic pain and are exacerbated by cold, damp weather. In addition, I knew there was a Gaucher specialist 30 minutes from Nova. Most doctors are unfamiliar with rare diseases and this can make communicating with them about your needs very difficult. Knowing that I would be able to have regular access to someone very familiar with Gaucher was key.

APAGS: Thank you, Stacey. Finally, is there something you want to pass on to fellow graduate students who may have similar health challenges?

SF: I have met many students in my program who are also balancing a demanding doctoral program with chronic medical problems. We have been able to support each other most importantly by reducing that sense of isolation and validating each other’s experiences. We also swap “war stories” and share tips on how to get through the program (like discussing which professors are most likely to work with you), and remind each other to take care of ourselves.

We support each other by reducing that sense of isolation and validating each other’s experiences. We swap “war stories” and remind each other to take care of ourselves.

Recently, I decided to take an extra year to complete my coursework due to my health and general burnout. I learned that several others have made this same decision for similar reasons. There can be so much pressure to complete these programs in their prescribed timelines which often do not work for someone with ongoing health issues. I would strongly encourage other graduate students with similar health challenges to seek out peers, faculty and staff with whom they can talk about their challenges and who will help them complete their education in a way that best fits their situation. Having that support is so important and can make all the difference.

5 Lessons from Harry Potter to Deal with an Advisor who is Like Voldemort

Mattu, 2011

So what do you do if your advisor is as evil as Voldemort?

Graduate school is full of enough challenges and hoops to deal with a toxic advisor. But just as Harry Potter was able to overcome Voldemort, you can graduate with your degree, if you think about the allies that Harry developed over the course of the series. These allies all taught him something important, and you can too by discovering people who are like them in your life.

1) Get Hermione on your side – You need a smart peer on your side who can give you feedback on drafts of your proposal, or challenge you with tough questions before your defense. You want someone who can give you truly constructive criticism, without being mean about it.

2) Find Ron – Everyone needs a best friend, with whom you can commiserate after a tough test or a difficult meeting with your advisor. Social support is so important on the journey to earning your degree! Find someone whom you trust.

El-Ghoroury, 2012

3) Seek Dumbledore – As the headmaster of Hogwarts, Dumbledore often went out of his way to protect Harry (even if Harry didn’t know it). It helps to have an ally among the faculty in your department, particularly someone with some power, such as the department chair or the director of training. An ally who is well connected can be a buffer for you in your interactions with your advisor, particularly on committees.

4) Discover Remus Lupin – While Remus Lupin was Harry’s teacher for one year, the most important thing he taught Harry (the “expect patronus” spell) was something he taught outside of class. Find a mentor who is not at your school who can be a source of support as well as instruction. Perhaps you can find a mentor from your undergraduate institution, or from a conference.

5) Reach out to Sirius Black – Although his parents were deceased, Harry had a godfather, Sirius, who played an important role of loving Harry. Reach out to your parents or family for support in grad school, even if all they do is empathize with you and tell you it will get better.

If you can find these types of allies, you will be well on your way to handling a tough advisor.

There is just one last question to consider: Is your advisor Voldemort, or is he really Snape?

El-Ghoroury, 2012

In the books, Harry is convinced that Snape is a bad guy and out to get him, but he learns in the final book that Snape had been protecting him the whole time he was at Hogwarts. Is your advisor really trying to harm you, or are the challenges he’s giving you merely lessons to make you a stronger psychologist?

If these allies don’t help, you may need to learn some spells. Expelliarmus!

Paying It Forward

In my January 2014 gradPSYCH column, I described the idea of paying it forward and helping out the generation of graduate students following us, as well as publicly thanking those who helped us while we were in school. I am happy to start this feature off, and here are the many people I’d like to thank for their assistance, support and encouragement while I was in grad school.

First year blues – Moving across country to a rural town was tough for a California raised city boy like myself. Tracy Rachmiel was an advanced student when I started grad school and gave me numerous tips on surviving the academic hurdles and how to survive the long winters in Binghamton.
Struggling in supervision –

Tamra Holtzer & Nabil El-Ghoroury (El-Ghoroury, 2000)

I shared a very challenging clinical supervisor withTamra Holtzer; we’d prepare for supervision together & discuss long cases on walks around campus.
Changing advisors – After struggling for several years with a very challenging mentor (think Voldemort from Harry Potter), talking with Susan Latham encouraged me to take the scary step of switching labs and mentors. She was already in the lab I planned to move to, and without her encouragement I might never have switched.
Applying for internship – While the internship situation when I applied had not quite hit the crisis stage, the application process was complicated and stressful. My internship prep group, Tanya Williamson and Roxanne Manning, made this process less painful and more enjoyable (and even better when Tanya and I matched to the same internship).
Nabil El-Ghoroury, Tanya Williamson & Roxanne Manning, celebrating their graduation with their PhDs!!! (El-Ghoroury, 2002)
Difficult dissertation – Who doesn’t have a problem completing the dissertation? For me, it was compounded by the death of my mother while I was on internship and dissertating. Coaching and support from Elisa Krackow helped me wrap up and graduate!

If it takes a village to raise a child, perhaps it takes a department and a cohort of friends to help one earn a doctorate! This list is incomplete; I don’t have enough space to thank everyone for their assistance in graduate school. I know without the support of these friends and others, graduate school would have been a much more difficult (and lonely) journey.

Who helped you get through graduate school? Share your thanks to them in the comments. We’ll invite a couple of you to share your stories in your own article on gradPSYCH Blog!

Overwhelmed, but let’s be honest: I did it to myself

Overwhelmed.

What a small word to describe such a large feeling.

Can that one word truly describe the weight I feel right now? Can that word fully portray my stress, my failed attempts to prioritize, my feeling of being so far buried that maybe it’s not even worth attempting to dig out? Can that word express the fear that one more thing, just one more insignificant little thing, will break me?

No.

Yet, it’s the only word I have to describe and classify these feelings.

A day when there isn’t enough caffeine in the world! (Source: “day 300, clutching my morning coffee” by massdistraction, on Flickr. Some rights reserved.)

The good news? Whatever my most overwhelmed moment was up until this point, I clearly made it through. So have you! You may have felt broken, trampled, and/or lost…but you made it. You survived. And, hopefully it made you stronger, more resilient, more ready to take on those feelings that are way to ominous to be embodied by one tiny word.

For those of you who struggle with feeling overwhelmed, who find themselves giving up when those feelings begin to build, let me share with you how I manage it.

Many people ask me how I do it. How I raise a very young family, work part-time, and work towards my doctorate degree. I usually tell them, I just do. But, that’s not the real answer.

I choose to fight the feeling of being overwhelmed in these ways:

I do my best to bar negative feelings from clouding my successes, erasing my hope… Granted, this is not an easy process, but I look at it as choosing to survive rather than worry over my ability to meet every demand.
I take my semester one day, one assignment at a time. I start each day with my girls as a new day. When I feel my patience slipping–which it seems to be doing by 8:30 am these days–I hold whichever one is starting to drive me crazy (if they allow me to) for a full minute, reminding myself that not every moment with her is a mini hell.
I remind myself–force myself, rather–to believe that there is an end in sight. That I am alive, that things can be so much worse, and that those things that are weighing down on me are actually things I am so very grateful for, that I would be lost without, that I could lose if I do not continue to fight and survive.
I take ownership. I am an individual who thrives when overwhelmed, who purposefully adds and adds and adds to my plate until it is at that point. I admit that am overwhelmed because I want so much out of life, and life wants so much out of me. It’s a give and take.

My plan, humble as it may be, is to not only allow life to take what it needs from me, but to give it my all. I have the hope that pushing into it allows me to receive more resilience and strength when it is time for the pendulum to swing back in my direction. And it always swings back.

When were you at your most overwhelmed? How do you manage? Do you see it as an obstacle to overcome or a learning and growing process? Talk about it in the comments.

Read more about raising three kids under three while pursuing a PhD at my blog.

6 Experts on Battling the Dissertation

Don’t let the dissertation bring you down. Six experts, including 3 former APA Presidents, provide their tips on how to manage the dissertation process in this month’s issue of gradPSYCH.

How are you coping with your dissertation or thesis? Share your ideas with your fellow students in the comments section below.