Small revelations and strong foundations

Life is filling up (and I am so pleased about this), but oddly I seem to be slowing myself down too. This is cool and not usual for me, but I’m making efforts to do this intentionally. I met someone this week who got me thinking about a few things. I also went walking today and being up in mountains pretty much never fails to have some kind of therapeutic value in giving space for thinking, feeling, and small shifts in being.

So, this conversation I had. A while back I got an email from someone in the area who is also a therapist who has a private practice. Her clinic was full, so she had referred a couple of her new enquiries to me. I had just set myself up in my own practice after a year out of practice and deciding it was time to return. I thought it was nice she contacted me (there’s lots of therapists nearby, and it was cool she had seen I was new in the area in practice). Anyway, email conversation turned into a coffee meeting. It was great. It turns out she also teaches, is interested in trauma therapy and eco-therapy, and has some exciting things on the go. After talking a while she asked about how I came to be here and why the move to Stirling since things sounded like they had been set up quite well where I was before in Northampton. I explained that long story short, my PhD supervisor moved and I decided to move too because I didn’t want to do a PhD long distance. I explained it meant a whole lot of change. This is a little how the conversation went after that:

Her: Oh wow that sounds like it was tough. What a radical move, to move up here too. 
Me: Yeah, I guess it was a little radical – it definitely wasn’t part of the ‘plan’
Her: Yes! And to do all of that on your own and settle in, as well as start a private practice yourself alongside your work and PhD – that’s impressive.
Me: I guess so, yeah. I think academia kind of thickens your skin. A lot. So you do these things and somehow you survive and you still keep going and doing more. It thickens your skin. It sucks that it has to thicken your skin so much, and it sucks that you bear the scars of that too. But at the same time, it does mean I can be radical at times, and I know it’ll probably be OK.

It's funny because I don’t feel so radical. There are for sure a lot of things people do that are more radical than the decisions I have made in my life so far. But I have definitely taken some risks. Academia does thicken your skin, at least it does for me. In small subtle ways that I don’t really notice at the time, but then when I stop to reflect (like when I am up on mountains), I notice these small subtle ways that I have changed. Like actually being out hiking on a weekend and not working. The thick skin, too. It’s not really real but it’s definitely real enough to feel that it is real at times, and to notice the ways that I’ve become a bit hardened to the system, especially this year. The things that used to bother me (being left off an email list, being ignored, having to pick up things that others don’t do, the hierarchy power wars) – they don’t seem to have the same impact. That’s hardened skin I think. But of course there are things that get me and that get under my skin and into my being. I don’t know that I want that to be different entirely. I don’t want to toughen my skin so much that I can’t feel. You know... we do need to feel in order to live.

When I was out hiking, I had some small revelations. Getting out like this is absolutely sustaining and keeps me going. Yes, I struggle with over exercise and I get flare ups of pain in several parts of my body which means that sometimes it’s hard to work out whether moving helps or makes that worse. But most of the time moving and getting out is therapy and it is healing. It’s a way of coming back to myself. When I was doing my counselling and psychotherapy training we were trained in an integrative humanistic framework. We were taught that whilst we have several theories within our theoretical framework, we always come back to a backbone – a foundation that everything else rests on. For me, that is the therapeutic relationship – as a vehicle for change and as a site of exploration and curiosity (i.e. Sometimes what goes on in the therapeutic relationship can say something about what happens ‘out there’ for clients – and therefore exploring that, bringing that into awareness, and maybe doing things differently in the therapeutic relationship, having a different, maybe more healing experience, can be useful). Also, kindness and compassion are things that I don’t think you can do meaningful therapy without. So, in a similar way, getting out, walking or climbing mountains always has a way of helping me re-connect to my backbone – my own foundations, through small revelations that I make. It is a small way of building on these foundations and coming back to them.

This move was hard work but I appreciate the things that I’m getting from it. To be honest, when you live so close to all of this (photos below), gratitude is not hard. Moving was a bit radical, but filling life up might be the more radical thing. It is radical to follow your instincts about things, to trust yourself that you can make decisions, to take risks, and trust that things will be OK. But more to the point, women, alone, can do radical things and that is OK and pretty cool. We can climb mountains entirely alone and relocate alone. We can do things and take up space in this world whilst we’re at it. It is not easy. And I'm not talking about myself here, but this is more a reflection on women doing radical things and trusting themselves in a world that is set up to make us small - in spaces that would rather we shrink, than grow. But following my small revelations, I’m committing to not rushing, not losing kindness as I thicken up my skin, and definitely making time for the things that help to keep building foundations.

One about travel

I have had a few conversations lately where people comment on how often I am away. They are right – I do choose jobs that enable me to travel or work flexibly, and I do have a thing for spontaneously booking flights. I’m not afraid of solo travel and adventure. Truth be told, I really love it. I love knowing I’m good with my own company and I love knowing I can navigate new places by myself (and yes I could do this before we had google maps on our phones). I have firm memories of being handed paper maps of Osaka and Tokyo and being told where my castings were and not having a clue how to navigate cities where signs are in Japanese but somehow getting from A to B to C anyway. I have similar memories of being in Istanbul figuring out my bearings, and being given paper maps of Barcelona with the key studios and our apartment circled on it. I still have this map because that was the greatest city to work in. They did not care about measurements and there was zero pressure to be a certain size. I am glad I could spend time there. Anyway these are different stories. This blog is more about more recent trips.

This year I’ve been travelling to parts of Scotland I’ve never been to – mostly for work, sometimes for fun. And I have also made several trips around different places in the UK for conferences and seeing friends and family – some trips for birthdays and one for a funeral. Because I’m not driving so much anymore, I have been in airports and train stations more this year than I have in any other year, and I have been on several trips to European countries – mostly because I have a pretty generous family who know me very well and they know that the best 30th birthday gift to me is to go somewhere with me and for us to spend time together. Also, because my sister turned 21 and we did the same for her. I know these opportunities come from a place of privilege and I’m really fortunate to have a family who now can do these things together. We definitely haven’t always been able to. I didn't leave the country properly until I was 16. I am also grateful for a job that means I get to combine things I enjoy with work. So I know these opportunities come from a place of privilege.

However, travelling is also something that I tend to do in a very enthusiastic way and I have been thinking a little about this. I’m definitely not alone in this. One of the greatest ways I mask stress and keep discomfort at a distance is to keep busy. I don’t think I wear ‘busy’ as a badge of pride but I do keep moving and keep busy and this is a very culturally valuable way to deal with stuff. In other words, you still get stuff done. You still get stuff done on time and organise things well. You look like you are always on the go and manage to somehow tick all the boxes. Exercise. Done. Work. Done. PhD. On track. Family. Done. Friends. Done. Social life (OK, not so done – I’m an introvert mostly and my socialising is mainly small one to one things that are lovely but not what I’d describe as a booming social life). But my point is that busy looks good. But I think it also costs.

On Monday I came back from Portugal. This was my last week of annual leave and I was exhausted but it was a trip that’s been planned for a while and another good friend and I had decided to spend some time there beforehand. This was mostly a good trip. We did lots of walking, eating smoothie bowls, talking about therapy and PhDs (friend is also a therapist), and reflecting on life and intentions for the future. Came back on Monday after a bit of a chaotic weekend and a near break-in to one of the air bnbs. And launched myself into work. I discovered that old habits rear their head when life seems a bit up in arms. There are a few big-ish work things coming up, including two more trips out of the country. And whilst part of me is looking forward to them, I have also reached a point where I know I have over-estimated the energy I have. So instead of preparing myself calmly, I’ve been keeping busy. Running, swimming, yoga-ing. Running TO the pool to swim and back from the pool in the dark. Today I’ve found the spot in my flat where the sun shines through the window and been living in that space for most of the day because the warmth is a thing that helps the aches and home is the place where I would like to be. Again, I am lucky I can work from home and get things done still. But this is a thing. Whilst travel is good, it’s exhausting. PhD life and work in addition to the work of self-care is something I’m still working out. Busy looks not bad – getting work done, getting to yoga and the pool and out for runs, but it is not so good when you do *all* those things all the time. No text books to tell you the answers for this quest for balance. Just a body that’s pretty good at giving you cues if you can listen to it for a moment or two. 

Here’s to the sunny spot in the flat where the sunlight shines through that’s great for basking and easing pain. And to the yoga where you find centre and strength. And the neighbour who texts you to say if you need a distraction then a coffee with her is probably better than running to the pool at 9pm in the dark and rain. And the osteopath who will be flexible and make time for you because busy is sometimes not helpful for your body too. And here’s to super wise bodies that really could be trusted a little more. Oh, and good planning ahead. Maybe next year I will learn from this… (I did say this to myself last year too!)

Finding light switches in the dark

I last wrote something in this blog in November 2018. Beginning to think that an 8 month silence says something. I won’t write about all that’s happened, but I did want to write a short something to get this up and running again. The best way to pick it back up is to go back to where I left it, I think - on PhD and Scotland!

In November I wrote that I should learn next time I have a stressful PhD thing, to pace myself and not think that I can do All The Things right after moving and starting a new job. That was good advice to my future self. I was writing about my APR (Annual Progress Review) stress, without actually writing about what happened.

I also wrote that people who were well-meaning would ask how I was finding living in Scotland, and I genuinely didn’t know how to answer. Moving up here was not the same as my last move when I went to Northampton a few years ago and I felt very much a stranger here. How do you know when you start to feel settled? When you don’t feel like a stranger at home? When you don’t have to use google maps to find your local *whatever shop/place you need to find*? When you stop feeling your way around your own house when you get up in the night and need to find the light switch but can’t feel your way to the switch on the wall because it’s not yet etched into your memory?

Finally someone asked me this week how I was finding Scotland, and I surprised myself by saying that I like it. Most of the time, I am glad I moved. Yes, I know where the light switches are in my flat. No, I don’t need google maps for some places but I do still need it for other places. And no, I really don’t feel like a stranger at home. I know my neighbours and their cats. We even sit in the garden sometimes together and one of them is a joiner and has helped with stuff (and yup this surprises me given how introverted I tend to be). Also, I have found some yoga folk who are lovely. Super lovely actually. They are people who notice when you are away for a week, and who ask how you are and remember when things happen in your life. Having your presence (and absence) noticed is one of those small things that is not a small thing at all. Lastly, there are some people I consider friends and that definitely changes how you feel in a place.

Back to the PhD. Which is the other thing people ask about after they ask how Scotland is.  I submitted my work for the APR (the review you do every year, to determine whether you can officially progress). Did what I thought would be OK, but was asked to make a lot of revisions to my work in order to pass. I re-wrote my literature review, wrote two new methods chapters, changed the theory that underpins my work, and ended up submitting three chapters 8 months later. It passed in the end, but I couldn’t even tell you how many revisions of chapters went through supervisions. My work is much more developed now. And I am absolutely OK with where I’m going with it. But this all makes me reflect.

So when people ask how it's going, I tend to say ‘ah yeah. It’s slow.’ Or ‘it’s getting there’. Or ‘Yeah, it’s moving… slowly’. Which is all true. Huge emphasis on the slow progress. Slow tends to be my code-word for 'I am super tired and I can't believe I've been doing this for three years...' That is not to say that I don't care about my work. I deeply care about my work and my topic. Understanding about domestic abuse - doing feminist domestic abuse research - is important. I think it's important to contribute to knowledge in meaningful ways and do work that might one day contribute to things being different. That women, children and survivors are taken seriously. But there's a PhD process too. I see so much on Twitter and hear others saying that it’s a journey and everybody has a different experience, you have to roll with the unexpected and not compare your process to other people’s. But really, it is true, and I think that’s one of the reasons it is hard. You’re a lone wolf playing a big game yet you haven’t toughened up your skin yet, so each hit feels raw and painful. Of course, you heal, you grow, you toughen up and move on. At least, hopefully with enough support, encouragement and kindness, you can do those things. I am very fortunate I have friends around the country, and supervisors who hold you up and don't knock you down. I am immensely grateful for that. But still, this year has been the hardest PhD-wise. I am accepting it as part of one of the many PhD stories I’ll have to tell at the end.

No one can really prepare you for moving universities, changing half your supervision team, changing disciplines and new jobs. Doing that whilst trying to pull yourself out of an eating disorder relapse, is not something I’d do again. In hindsight I’m not entirely sure how I did that, but we do what we do, and we live to tell the story. This year was the PhD year where I learnt a whole lot about not giving my ‘success’ with work the power to determine who I am. I also have started re-evaluating my relationship with what failure means and how fearing getting things wrong and messing up can be powerful in shaping how you live your life. In and outside of academia. All things considered, this was not the worst thing to happen. Still here, and PhD is still moving, slowly. But moving…