Falling in love with math again

In the fall of 2018, I began my PhD program with noble intentions—I had just completed my undergraduate degree and had become captivated by academic exploration and research. I saw no future path for me other than pursuing a PhD in my chosen field and decided to dedicate my life to a career in technical research.

Since then, things have changed substantially. A lot of factors were thrown into my graduate school experience that I could not have predicted, including my advisor temporarily leaving my institution, a global pandemic, and perhaps most impactfully, my dissociative disorder, which I had unknowingly been managing mostly effectively up until that point in life, caused me to nearly decompose.

It is very common for those with dissociative disorders to function relatively well in life, at least as perceived by external observers, only for their symptoms to become unmanageable once there is a sufficient amount of stress in the person’s life. I believe this is what happened to me—I was able to manage my dissociative symptoms fairly well until the stress of graduate school became too much.

In retrospect, I now see that my dissociative symptoms started appearing more obviously in the spring semester of my first year of graduate school¹. This increase in symptoms was due to a variety of factors, but I believe they were primarily in response to perceiving my academic environment as being unwelcoming and hostile. Because of this, very gradually over time, my academic work, which I learned to associate with my toxic academic environment, became a trigger for me. I went from genuinely loving learning new technical concepts and ideas to being practically unable to will myself to even look at my work. However, because of my dissociation, I often didn’t realize how avoidant I was of my work.

The last few years have been difficult, particularly in my academic life. For large swaths of time, my research progress slowed practically to a standstill as I became increasingly dissociative. For about a 2 year period, my life was effectively on pause as I learned to come to terms with my diagnosis and developed an understanding of how dissociation affects my life.

Now, just over 2 years after starting therapy for DID, things have vastly improved. I now feel like I have a solid enough grasp about how I operate, and I understand what my triggers are and how they affect me. While I previously thought there was no hope for my academic future, I now see the light at the end of the tunnel. I have a thesis defense date set—December 2024—and I feel fairly confident that I’ll be able to make that deadline.

What has changed? What has allowed me to work?² I realized that work itself was never explicitly painful to me. In fact, in the past, working was my main way of escaping the realities of the world around me. What became painful for me was everything surrounding the work, including a toxic academic environment, the shame of being an unproductive student, the fear of advancing in my adult life, and the shame associated with being seen for my accomplishments³. Advancing in work meant progressing in my academic life, and since my academic life was painful, work became a trigger. I had to teach myself, and deelpy feel, that work is safe. Work, in isolation, is mostly enjoyable. Engaging with the environment surrounding work, however, can be difficult. But the longer I avoid work, the longer I stay in an environment that is painful for me. I need to advance in work—to face my triggers—in order to move onto the next stage of life.

I used to have a very promising career as a research scientist ahead of me. I’ve moved on from that now, and realized that that path, while ideal for some parts, was not worth the harm it would have caused other parts. Only once I accepted that I do not have to take that path after graduation, which would have required potentially entering another toxic environment in exchange for perceived “intellectual freedom”, was I able to allow myself to move on and advance my work.

For the past few months, I’ve managed to allow myself to make progress towards my degree. I’ve managed to get productive work done, for the most part without dissociating, which has allowed me to ground as my academic self more. And, in that time, I’ve fallen in love with work again. I now see how much I was missing by avoiding work. I genuinely love math. Nothing is more gratifying to me than having complex ideas click into place, or solving a difficult technical problem in a clever way, or when I’m able to play with abstract concepts and ideas in my mind.

Work has become enjoyable again, which is something I never previously thought would happen. I still do have bad days, especially since I have profound loss of skill when triggered, but I understand what’s going on now. My ability to work is still cyclical, but it’s so much easier to manage than before. Understanding how my brain operates has made all the difference.

Now, for an important question: which direction will I go after graduation? When I entered my PhD program, I was confident that I’d end up as a research scientist, most likely in academia or a national lab. I strove to have a career that allowed me intellectual freedom, to pursue ideas and concepts most interesting to me, over all else. However, I now realize that my mental health needs to be my number one priority, which means giving up on those aspirations.

Since deciding to pivot career paths, I’ve learned that I have so many wonderful opportunities ahead of me. I’ve interviewed with several companies and, to my surprise, all of my interviews have gone really well. I have technical skills that are highly sought after in the job market, so I will likely have my pick about which job to take after graduation. I plan on prioritizing having a healthy, collaborative, and welcoming work environment over all else, even at the expense of intellectual freedom, which used to be my priority. The work itself doesn’t matter if the environment around the work is inhospitable.

Once I graduate, I do not need to continue in this academic life. I can pivot and create a new life that all my parts will enjoy. Plans change, and that’s okay. Because I’ve learned to deconflate my difficulties associated with external circumstances surrounding work with the work itself, I’ve managed to make a lot of progress towards my thesis work. In that time, I’ve managed to reclaim my love for math. Life is so much better now than it was even 6 months ago. I am hopeful for my future again, and am looking forward to what comes next.