Mental Health

Juggling the different aspects of a PhD project can be stressful, and unfortunately, there’s no way to completely avoid it. But here’s a few tips that have proven useful.

Stress

Please take your holidays! And do not work during your holidays. Even if your supervisor does not encourage you to take your holidays, you may take them anyway – they’re for your wellbeing. When you and your supervisor have inconsistent opinions on taking holidays, and you think it cannot reach an agreement, or if he/she even denies your application, the work’s council can help.

Take time for yourself! This helps your stress levels immensly. This is not just about holidays, but mainly about daily freetime and your weekends.

Please remember that your PhD is sometimes an extraordinarily stressful time and it is not normal! To ease the stress, sometimes it is necessary to remind oneself of this fact.

Talk about your situation! Talking to somebody who is not or has not been doing a PhD is often helpful. Additionally, HIGRADE offers confidential consultations and our company doctors offer counselling sessions with a psychologist. Sadly, COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the burnout in academia. However, several tips in this nature career feature article Pandemic burnout is rampant in academia might help you manage it. Feel free to check them out.

Conflicts

Sometimes things do not work according to plan. Different parties may have different ideas on how to go on with your PhD project. Doctoral researchers are often vulnerable when it comes to conflicts.

Try to resolve things early on! Unresolved conflicts do not get better with time. Instead, communication gets difficult because even if “it is not so bad”, it still bothers you and will influence your behavior towards the other party and vice versa.

Get help! If you do not want to tackle this on your own, you don’t have to. Have a look at the website ''Dealing with conflicts''! Here at the UFZ, we have many responsible staff members willing to help you with open ears or strategies to solve conflicts.

Check your rights! Have a look at the rules and regulations of the UFZ.

Re-assessment of your goals and contentment can help you find stressors and combat them.

You can use this template to find out about your biggest stressors. Rank all aspects from 1 to 9. The category environment includes both private and professional. Personal development can also take hobbies and other private aspects into account.

If you think, there are other aspects that contribute to your wellbeing, feel free to add them!