3.42 What to do if you are considering leaving your PhD – a special coaching episode

Today you get to hear a real coaching session with a listener, Ruth, who is considering not finishing her PhD. We talk through the reasons and I take her through a process to help her make a decision that works for her. This is a great episode for you if you ever doubt your own abilities to finish your PhD or if you have any big decisions to make. 

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I'm Dr Vikki Wright, ex-Professor and certified life coach and I help everyone from PhD students to full Professors to get a bit less overwhelmed and thrive in academia. Please make sure you subscribe, and I would love it if you could find time to rate, review and tell your friends! You can send them this universal link that will work whatever the podcast app they use. http://pod.link/1650551306?i=1000695434464

I also host a free online community for academics at every level. You can sign up on my website, The PhD Life Coach. com - you'll receive regular emails with helpful tips and access to free online group coaching every single month! Come join and get the support you need.

Transcript

Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. And for the first time in quite a while, this is going to be one of my coaching episodes where I get a real life listener to come and talk about something they're finding challenging at the moment. And so I'm super excited to be joined by Ruth today. Hi, Ruth. Thank you for coming on.

Ruth: Thank you for having me.

Vikki: No problem. So Ruth contacted me. I did a bit of a shout out. Those of you who aren't on my newsletter, you need to be. 'cause every now and again I do a shout out asking for volunteers and Ruth replied to that with a challenge that, to be honest, I hear more often than you might think. And so I thought it would be a really good fit for the podcast. And so that's why we're here today. So maybe we start Ruth with you telling people a little bit about who you are and what challenge you came to me with. 

Ruth: Okay. So, i've been doing my PhD for on and off for about 10 years. And I'm now at a point where I'm utterly terrified of it and I'm not quite sure if I wanna carry on or not. That is the problem I wrote to you with. 

Vikki: Yes, yes. And that's why I said it's a problem that unfortunately I hear too often. This, this challenge of, you know, it's not what I thought it was gonna be. I'm having these really big emotions about it and I dunno what to go from there. So let's start by just getting a bit of backstory. So you say you've been doing it 10 years on and off. Yeah. You don't have to go into lots and lots of detail, but just gimme a little bit of a backstory as to how we got where we are.

Ruth: Sure. So, I think I started actually in 2016, so it's not quite 10 years. I was working in the education sector at the time. I was in a full-time role. So I think the, you know, mistake number one was probably, you know, trying to work full-time in quite a stressful job with the PhD. My two children were quite young at that point.

Ruth: That's how it got started. So the PhD's in education, so it sort of fitted in that sense. I took some leave of absences in that time and as I'm sure you can imagine over such a, quite a long period of time, I've have had some supervisory changes, which have all been fine in terms of the supervisors and their support.

Ruth: But every time you have a supervisor change, it was almost like taking another step back, you know, this sort of another six months added, having to rebuild those relationships. And then I got to a point where I needed to leave the education sector. I was working in further education and it's quite a, a stressful and an intense sector to work in, as I'm sure lots of sectors are. So I took a bit of a break, started doing some other jobs, so that I could just be a bit home at the more, a bit more and theoretically give me a bit more time to work on my PhD. I did all right at that for a couple of years and then I basically did my data collection, which was interviews, got to the end of that, and that's when this struggle hit. I am running perilously close towards my end date.

Vikki: Okay. So you've got all your data and you are part through your analysis.

Ruth: Yeah. 

Vikki: Is anything written? 

Ruth: I've got a draft lit review that will need reviewing. Of course. I've got half an introduction. I've got the methodology chapter, and then I think that's it in terms of the structure itself. Yeah. I've got tons of other stuff that probably won't ever make it in, but I've got, you know, there's quite a body of work there, if that makes sense.

Vikki: Yeah. And then it would be a results, analysis chapter. A discussion, conclusion. A little mini conclusion. Yeah. And that would be the, the structure.

Ruth: That would be it, yeah.

Vikki: Okay, cool. It's always just useful to get a kind of handle on exactly where we're at with things. Yeah. Now tell me more about what you are thinking about your PhD at the moment.

Ruth: So it's a really, if I take this subject and the research question I've got, it's actually really important to me. It's a question that it has always been important to me, throughout my career in education but also, so what I've done is I've collected life histories um, and actually the whole process of, making those connections with the people that were willing to give me their time and their stories that's probably my biggest driver now to completing it because they've given me this, you know, gift, I suppose and I don't want to just abandon that, that feels really, I'm not sure the word is dishonest, but that feels, I don't know, there's a bit of integrity there that I have in myself that I would like to take that forward with them.

Vikki: And what's making that feel difficult at the moment?

Ruth: I don't know whether it's because I've stepped out of education but also working independently in quite a remote place in the country, it's quite isolating. There's not much networking. I'm distant from my university, and I feel quite stupid sometimes.

Ruth: Like I've lost those sparks that you get from conversations from being around other people that are doing this sort of thing. So I feel very alone in it, and I think that means that I rely really, really heavily on good interactions within supervisory meetings. Yeah. And the minute my confidence gets knocked, then I'm like, oh, I'm just really stupid and my, I actually can't do this. I actually can't do it. I don't have the capacity to do it. 

Vikki: Yeah. And how does that feel telling yourself that ?

Ruth: Awful? It feels awful. It feels like I'm really heart wrenchingly sad, really sad.

Vikki: Let's drill into it a little bit. Okay. Okay. If you can sit with the sad at the moment. Yeah, yeah. What do you think you mean when you say you don't think you can do it? 

Ruth: I wonder if I'm clever enough. I get hijacked by big things. So like, you know, this is, I'll be working on the data analysis and then suddenly I think, oh, but what if somebody asks me this, you know, in the Viva or whatever. And then I'll be like, oh, I don't know. And I haven't read enough and I'm not gonna have time to read enough and I'm gonna look really silly. And they're gonna say, oh, wow. What are you doing all of this time? And then I'll think, oh, I can't do it, then I can't do it. Um, so yeah, I, I get easily hijacked by things that, you know, are quite far down the line, I suppose.

Ruth: And I have a worry and anxiety about being told that I'm wrong, or I should have done it this, or I should have done it. And then I think, well, why am I doing it? Oh, no! I've created these scenarios in my head. I understand that. Um, yeah.

Vikki: So why, and this might sound like a strange one, but go with me. Okay. Why does it feel like a problem to be told that you are wrong or that you could have done something differently?

Ruth: That is a good question. There's definitely something about imposter syndrome in there and that fear of being caught out. I remember that definitely when I was working in education,, I kept getting promoted and there was always that, oh no, they're gonna find me out this time. They're gonna find me out this time. And I think that, um, you know, when you've had a poor experience with the delivery of feedback, and then that makes you not want to get feedback. There is a bit of that as well. 

Vikki: Yeah, no, definitely. And without going into the details of how it was delivered or anything like that, how did that feel for you?

Ruth: Okay, so I've had a couple of experiences where that's happened and I think I cried for about a month after one of them. Um, and that was a verbal sort of feedback thing. There was another incident which was delivered via email and it was an interesting one because the feedback within the email was, um, awful. It was dreadful. It made me feel about this, this big. Um, but then when I read through the comments within the body of work, they weren't actually that bad. So it, I was like, I can't marry this up because had I received the document, I would've been able to take that very constructively and worked with that.

Ruth: But having it topped with a very, I guess, patronizing type email, really threw me. I don't need people saying, oh no, you're doing a really good job all the time. I'm not saying that I can't take, I can take constructive criticism. As well as a PhD student, I'm a writer and writers get rejection all the time. Right? So I can live with that and I can work with that, but in this case it really, really bothers me.

Vikki: Okay. Right. I want us to get a little bit more specific 'cause this something I see with my clients in the membership all the time is that we criticize ourselves for really big things. I am not clever enough to do a PhD. I'm not smart enough to be here. I can't do it. Whatever it is. Yeah. And one of the things I always encourage people to do, and I'd like to support you to do now, is to actually try and narrow that down a little bit.

Vikki: Okay. Because a PhD is made up of a whole bunch of different activities, a whole bunch of different skills and stuff like that. And I think it's useful just to be a little bit more specific about what we're criticizing ourselves for. Okay. So tell me a bit more, which bits of this do you think you are not good enough at?

Ruth: Okay. I think the thing that I don't think I'm gonna be good at is around the discussion. So if I flip that question on its head a little bit, the thing that I have been good at and really enjoyed was the development of the research questions. Really getting down to what it is that I was doing and then finding the methodology that best fit that. And then doing that so that all was brilliant. I'm even okay with the data analysis. I like that and I can enjoy that, but the deeper I got into that, the more I started thinking, this is all great, but I'm very concerned now about how I write this up as a discussion.

Ruth: That is a very different skill, isn't it? And that, that bit, that bit frightens me. I got frightened during the lit review in the sense that I was worried constantly that I was missing something and therefore continually trying to read more and make it perfect and perfect and perfect.

Ruth: And I think that that experience, I'm sort of pulling into the discussion in advance and thinking, I'm not going to be able to do this.

Vikki: Okay. How does it feel getting a bit more specific about it? 

Ruth: Better, better, better. Because it becomes less nebulous, doesn't it? . And if, I guess it's, you know, if you can pick bits off and just go, okay, actually maybe it's not the whole PhD, maybe it's just this bit of it. That's makes it a bit more tangible and something you can hold. 

Vikki: And let's get specific on the other part because, so at the moment we've narrowed it down that actually, you know, you had a bit of some struggles with your lit review. Mostly the kind of, sounds to me, reasonably normal kind of perfectionism that people have when they're writing that sort of thing for the first time. You loved formulating the question, you loved picking your design, you designed it, you carried it out. So there's a huge chunk of this that you actually really enjoyed and felt that you were pretty good at. 

Ruth: Yes. 

Vikki: And so now we've got to more specific about which bit of the PhD is the discussion that feels really challenging. Now I wanna get more specific about you. So, rather than saying I am not good enough to write a discussion, what specifically are you concerned that you can't do for that discussion?

Ruth: I think I guess the easiest way to explain this would be to be writing the discussion and maybe even the conclusion and thinking that you've added something to the body of literature only for, to then discover that actually everybody already knew it. There's definitely that, and that I will, perhaps because I'm not immersed in that world anymore, that I will miss something really, really obvious and therefore by avoiding it, I won't miss it.

Vikki: So we're most concerned that you'll miss something 

Ruth: Yes. 

Vikki: And that that'll mean something bad if you do.

Ruth: Yes.

Vikki: So does that mean you think you can write a discussion, it just might miss something?

Ruth: I'm concerned I will write it wrong, that I won't understand how it should be written and therefore write it wrong. That probably sounds really silly, doesn't it? Given that you can, and I have read, you know, other people's PhD thesis in, you know, not just in this area, but in lots of different areas, just to get a, you know, a flavor for, you know, structure and language, et cetera. But I, I am concerned about that. I'm afraid of that. 

Vikki: What would wrong mean though? Because again, we are back to using very general phrases. What does wrong mean?

Ruth: I guess, if I imagine a scenario where I send a chunk of work to my supervisors to have a look at, for them to come back and go. No, no, this is not how you do it. And that sounds really daft when I say it out loud, because actually, if you're only a few pages in then actually knowing that at that point, it's quite helpful. It's really interesting because like when I, when I say that to you, that sounds a really silly thing because I'm not gonna get it right first time.

Vikki: I mean, I'm not even sure what right means in this context. 

Ruth: Okay. So really, really wrong. Like, if they were saying, this is not a PhD. What are you doing?

Vikki: But this is what's really, really useful for anybody who is generically criticizing themselves. 

Ruth: Okay. 

Vikki: Is the more specific we get. Yeah. Either we hit on something that's solvable. Yeah. Like it's learnable or we realize there's not much substance to this. 

Ruth: Yeah. Okay. 

Vikki: Because if what you are really worried about is that you end up writing a discussion that is just in no way the shape of a discussion should have. Bear in mind, that could be a whole variety of things, right? Depending on the discipline, depending on the approach you take and whatever, then you get to go, well, how would that happen? Because remember, we are not talking about first drafts. We're not talking about, 'cause if you hand in a few thousand words and your supervisors say, this is no idea what you've been doing, Ruth, this is rubbish , then that don't feel good. Right? But that's not the end of this line. That's not a pass fail issue. That's a, okay, I need to do this again in a different way with some more information from them. But if we are talking about, I'm not capable of doing this, as in the version you submit gets that response from your examiners, then we get to go, really, are we really believing that you are gonna write a discussion? Somehow get it past your supervisors and submit it that your examiner is gonna go, this just isn't even a discussion.

Ruth: Yeah, yeah. I can see that. I can, I can see that. That's an unlikely scenario to get to, isn't it? 

Vikki: And so what, then we get to backpedal a little bit. We say, okay, that's probably unlikely. Okay. I don't want you to call it silly 'cause this stuff all comes from somewhere and it is, it feels so, so true and so, so dangerous. I get that. But we get to just backpedal a little bit. So it's like, okay, what am I actually worried they might say? What is it a little bit more plausible that they might critique me for?

Ruth: Hmm. Yeah, because all I can, all that goes on in my head when you say that is that they'll go, you are wrong, you are wrong, you've got this all wrong. But then you'll say, well, what does wrong mean? And I guess I'm worried that what, that they will prob that they could say, if we don't think you're actually up to this, 

Vikki: but up to what? 

Ruth: Finishing, 

Vikki: but, but which bit? Because a viva is not a test of whether you are good enough to have a PhD. A Viva is a defense of a piece of work. 

Ruth: I, I do understand that, like on paper, but I do feel, I do get a bit hijacked by the thought that actually, even though that's the process, that that's secretly what people might be doing, 

Vikki: I can't say it never is. Right? I have looked after people in the past. I have coached people who have had viva experiences that I don't think are appropriate. Okay. So I'm not gonna say that that never happens, but it happens way less than people fear It will happen. And it's almost always resolvable, even when that happens. A thesis has to be sufficient work. 

Ruth: Yeah. 

Vikki: Can be defended in a viva. And what happens when we start getting more specific is we start going, okay, well what are they gonna pick holes in in my discussion? Maybe they'll say they don't agree with the argument I'm making based on my data. 

Ruth: Yeah. 

Vikki: Maybe they'll say, I don't give sufficient areas for future work. Maybe they'll suggest that I don't acknowledge a key limitation of my work.

Ruth: I am worried that they will say, but you've completely ignored the work of Joe Blogs in 2021 or something. Yeah. That's the sort of like, you know, detail that I worry about. That they'll just be like, you know, where have you been? You know, all this stuff's been happening. I am worried about that. 

Vikki: How do we deal with that?

Ruth: I don't know. I don't know. because my approach to that particular concern in the past has been to then basically start trying to rewrite my l review over and over and over again to, and that, that doesn't work because that just sends me back into my little loop of doom. Yeah. 

Vikki: So the people who were listening on the podcast, you will not have seen me shaking my head. If you're on YouTube, you'll have seen me. No, we don't. We deal with that by saying, yeah. There might be stuff I've missed. I have done systematic, whether it's actually an official systematic review or I have just been systematic in how I've looked at things. I've selected the literature that I wanna include in my thesis. Is there stuff I could have included? Probably. Does it mean my thesis is wrong? No. If the examiners feel strongly about it, I'll add it in my corrections. 

Ruth: Right. Okay. That does sound a much better approach. 

Vikki: Now, obviously, I'm not saying, any supervisors listening. I'm not saying, oh, just do a crappy lit review. No one cares, but if you have genuinely put due diligence into your lit review, you've done your best. You know, there's infinite literature out there. We all have to put boundaries around what theoretical frameworks we're gonna talk about, what past literature we're gonna talk about, da, da, da.

Vikki: Right. You can check you've made it clear where those boundaries are. I'm including these sorts of studies, but not those sorts of studies. Yeah. I've taken this theoretical approach or this methodological approach because of A, B, C. Yeah. Okay. You can be clear around why you've done that. Yeah. And then there people are allowed to debate it. Yes. That's literally the point of research. 

Ruth: Yes. 

Vikki: So at the time of recording last week's podcast, with Dr. Ilana Horwitz, who wrote the Entrepreneurial Scholar, and one of the things she talks about in there is that a thesis isn't the end of a conversation, it's the beginning of one. That theses and research articles are put out there to start conversations and some of those conversations will be, I wonder why Ruth didn't include the whatever method. Yeah. And that's okay. Someone can use that method. You will be someone else's gap. Okay, Ruth did this but never did that. Therefore I'm gonna do that. 

Ruth: Okay. That's helpful. Very helpful. Very helpful. 

Vikki: I'm leaving space for somebody else to, to write their PhD in. 

Ruth: I like that. That's nice. That's a really lovely way of framing it.

Vikki: Yeah. It's what we are doing. Right? We look at other people's research and go, oh, a limitation of the Vikki et al study is that she never did X, and that seems important to me, so let's go try. 

Ruth: Yeah. Okay. Doing it. Yeah.

Vikki: We're not saying that they're rubbish and they should never have got a PhD because they didn't do this thing. No, we're saying, oh, look at us finding a gap. Aren't we clever? 

Ruth: Yeah. Okay. I like that a lot. Yeah. 

Vikki: Now I know we haven't actually got on to talking about whether you should finish this or not and I think we should get to that. The reason I wanted to do this stuff first is because sometimes we have a whole bunch of stories that are clouding that decision in the first place. Yeah. And it sounds as though you have your fair share of those. Right. It sounds as though there's a whole bunch of stuff in terms of some of the interactions you've had, which we won't go into but stuff around some very, very general criticisms that you're giving yourself. 

Ruth: Yeah. 

Vikki: That once we start sort of scratching at them a little bit are perhaps not quite as robust criticisms of yourself as they could be. 

Ruth: Yeah. Okay. 

Vikki: And the reason that's useful is because as we decide, you could believe all the things I just said and decide not to finish your PhD. 

Vikki: And that is absolutely fine too. But what we wanna be trying to do is make any decision about whether you are gonna do this from a place where you are essentially thinking you could be fine either way. 

Ruth: Okay. 

Vikki: I could choose to do my PhD and I can believe that I could be fine while doing it. I don't have to burn myself out further to do it. I don't have to beat myself up. This doesn't have to be this awful torture. I can believe that I'm capable of doing the next bit and that I'll figure out the bit after that and we'll keep doing that until the thing's done and handed in. Or I believe I can be fine putting this to bed, saying I'm not doing it. Feeling whatever emotions I feel about that, but not making it mean loads of things about myself. 

Ruth: Yeah. 

Vikki: Okay. Yeah. So let's go to that side now. Okay. How would it feel to decide not to do your PhD?

Ruth: I think there would be a very short term relief. But I would probably, I don't wanna jump to the word regret, but I would wonder, I probably for the quite a long time about whether I'd just done that out of fear. It. It does make me sad to think of that. 

Vikki: Mm-hmm. But that's okay. Sad is okay. 

Ruth: Yeah. 

Vikki: Sad is a really pure emotion. It would be slightly odd for you to decide not to do something that you decided 10 years ago you wanted to do. Yeah. And you've put all this work. It would be slightly odd not to be sad about that. We don't have to avoid sad. 

Ruth: No. Okay. 

Vikki: Yeah. Sad feels rubbish. But it's because you care about it. It's fine. Yeah. We can look after you through sad if needs be. 

Ruth: Mm-hmm. 

Vikki: The bit about regret though is optional. 

Ruth: Yeah. Okay. 

Vikki: And this is why understanding your process of decision making is so important because if you can make sure that you are making decisions for reasons that you love.

Ruth: Yeah. 

Vikki: Then anytime the regretful thoughts come up in future, you remind us, I made this decision for reasons I love. 

Ruth: Okay. 

Vikki: And I stand by the version of me that made that decision. 

Ruth: Okay.

Vikki: Tell me what you're thinking. 

Ruth: Yeah. I am thinking, because there's, when I have considered that option, there's, my immediate thought was, yeah, but how would I explain that to the people that gave me their time as you know, participants. How would I explain that? What would my answer be? And honestly, at the moment, my honest answer to them would have to be, well, I just got really overwhelmed and afraid of it.

Ruth: And that doesn't feel like a good reason. That doesn't. If you feel, you feel overwhelmed and you know, you, you take a break and see if you feel better in a, you know, a month or so. Right. You don't just give it up because it keeps you awake at night

Vikki: don't you?

Ruth: I don't know. That just feels, somebody asked me the other day, I live in a small town. And quite innocently they said, why are you doing it? Are you doing it for your ego? No, they, they weren't being like, you know, funny with me. I really like them, but it was such a good question and I was like, I don't think so because I'm not in that sort of place anymore where, you know, you are sort of bumping into people at conferences. But the equally where I was going with that is there is a part of my ego that doesn't wanna let go of it because, you know, ego's still important. You know, I'm not saying like, ooh, you know, 

Vikki: but what would it mean about you if you didn't do it? 

Ruth: I was a quitter. Okay. Quitter gave up because it got hard.

Vikki: Okay. For people not on YouTube. You can't see the face that Ruth is pulling right now. Whatcha thinking about the fact that you just said that? 

Ruth: Uh, I've just started laughing, I think, but I'm not sure if I'm laughing hysterically or not. I don't know.

Vikki: Because that's optional too? Telling yourself you're a quitter and the quitting things is a bad thing is completely optional too.

Ruth: There's one thing that , so basically when I left my job, right, that was a massive decision. That was a massive, huge decision because it was a, you know, it was a good salary, it was a good position, but I gave time to that decision and I was so confident that it was the right thing, and because of that, I don't regret it.

Ruth: So I think that's what you're talking a little bit about. Yeah. If you have confidence in that decision, then actually the, you know, the fact that I gave up a really good position and a really good salary, et cetera, and I'm really happy with that. And I've embraced this, you know, slightly strange new life.

Ruth: And I've loved it and grown from it. I, despite the months that I've been thinking about this decision, I don't have that confidence and I almost want that feeling again before I make that decision.

Vikki: Why did you have the confidence in that one, do you think?

Ruth: I almost don't know because on paper it was a really bad one. Like, you know, I had some really funny looks from that one. Not from my immediate family or anything like that, but you know, from people within that circuit. I think because I, when we were talking about it, and when I came sort of right close to that decision, everything just started to feel right. Everything just started to go, okay, okay. And that, and that, and the decision making process itself brought peace.

Ruth: But before I sort of, you know, made that decision and, you know, handed in my notice, I was already feeling better and I have not got that this time. There was something in the whole process last time that felt right. Whereas this time, I keep coming back to that word that it would be quitting. It would be, you know, I know there's the whole thing about, you know, grit and, you know, you carry on but for this one, it just, it's not there. I, I think I'd probably hide in shame a little bit. I feel really ashamed. 

Vikki: So it's no wonder it's making it a hard decision. No. If one of the options in some ways is tempting and in other ways is shrouded in a load of shame, it's not a surprise. It feels like a really hard decision. 

Ruth: No.

Vikki: I want you to think about ways, and this is not me persuading you to quit your PhD. I genuinely believe you can be absolutely fine either way. Yeah. And I think that is the best starting point for a decision like this. I want you to think about how could it be a great decision to not continue? How would that mean wonderful things about you instead of bad things about you?

Ruth: I will be really honest at this like, like point in time I cannot think of a single thing.

Vikki: That I am someone who prioritizes her mental health. I, yes, I'm someone who has other options that they can reengage with that are just as meaningful. I'm someone who knows they don't have to finish something just because they started it 10 years ago. Mm-hmm. I'm someone who can make difficult decisions. I'm someone who can look after myself when I'm sad because it didn't go the way I wanted it to. 

Ruth: Yeah. 

Vikki: I'm someone who trusts that I can be Okay anyway. I am someone and you can, it sounds as though this is true, so I'm gonna make some assumptions. I'm someone who's surrounded by people who will support me regardless of what I decide. 

Ruth: Yeah, that is true. That is true. Yeah.

Vikki: I think that's a bunch of it is things that it could mean about you.

Ruth: Yeah, I, I take those, it would never have come up 

Vikki: It's something I wanted to do once and it didn't work out the way I wanted it to work out and that's a bummer. 

Ruth: Yeah. 

Vikki: I'm someone who knows when to cut their losses. I.

Ruth: Okay.

Vikki: And what I would then encourage you to do is then think about the other side, the continuing to do it. But not to think about it with anything that undermines those reasons , because it would be very easy to create a narrative. I'm someone who always finishes what they start. I'm someone who has grit and resilience, da, da, da, all that stuff. But that undermines the other stuff. Yeah. We want both sides to feel true and both sides to feel. Okay.

Ruth: Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Vikki: So on that side we might have things like, I'm someone who can work through things one step at a time.

Ruth: Yeah. 

Vikki: I'm someone who can look after themselves when they find something difficult. 

Ruth: Yeah. 

Vikki: That sort of thing. 

Ruth: Yeah. Okay. 

Vikki: Okay. Because if over here we like hold up as amazing, the I'm someone who can finish things, then it makes this side a bit sticky. 

Ruth: Yeah. Okay. I can, I see that and I can see how easy it would just to just do that.

Vikki: The other thing I wanna check in before we finish is I think there are ways you could think of honoring the work of the people who contributed to your studies either way. 

Ruth: Do you? Because I couldn't, I couldn't think of any because I just thought that, you know, everything that they contributed to and everything I've got is all, you know, obviously it's super wrapped up in, you know, protected by the appropriate processes at the university. So I always just assumed that once that book got closed, if you like, then it would just be gone, deleted.

Vikki: I mean, you'd need to check with your university. Yeah. But as the pi you can write up for publication one assumes if you wanted to. 

Ruth: Okay. 

Vikki: Without submitting it for your thesis. I don't see why. Okay. It would be important to check that there's no regulations to prevent that happening. You'd probably need your supervisor's consent.

Ruth: Okay. Okay. That's good to know. That's good to think about. 

Vikki: There's stuff around informal feedback to participants. 

Ruth: Yeah. 

Vikki: Stuff around, look, this is the situation. These are the reasons I've made the decisions that I'm making. However, I have done preliminary analysis. These are the sorts of things that are coming out. I've written you a bit of a report that kind of summarizes what I did and what I found so that you can see the sorts of things that came out of it. 

Ruth: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. 

Vikki: As a kind of non-published, but just for you so you can see that, you know, some love and care and thought did go into this. Yeah. And I think there's some interesting things here.

Ruth: Okay. That's really important to me. So yeah,

Vikki: we can present at a conference and then never write it up. 

Ruth: Okay. 

Vikki: You've shared it publicly. People are aware work has been done. 

Ruth: Okay. 

Vikki: You can write a book chapter, there's, there's many, many routes. You can just explain to them the situation and be okay with that too.

Ruth: Yeah, yeah. Okay. That is really important for me to think about.

Vikki: Because those are sort of what I would call like sticky thoughts. Because when you're trying to make a decision, if you've got a sticky thought in your head, like, I would be letting down my participants. Particularly something where it's really important to you. It's an important part of your sort of sense of self that you are not letting them down. Whatever that would mean. 

Ruth: Yeah. 

Vikki: Then that sort of sticky thought is important to resolve before you try and make the decision.

Ruth: Yeah.

Vikki: 'Cause otherwise it just sits really heavy on the side of, I've gotta finish this thing.

Ruth: Yeah.

Vikki: Now taking that sticky one away doesn't mean you have to not finish or you have to finish. It means neither, but it just cleans it up a little bit. 

Ruth: Yep. 

Vikki: Yeah. And so I think for me, the two thoughts I want you to really clean up before you make any decisions are that this would mean something bad for my participants and this would mean something bad about me. Because neither of those things are true and they're kinda unfair, sticky thoughts. Once you can, you know, we're never gonna make them completely go away, but once you can sort of process those a bit, decide that those are not necessarily just strictly true thoughts. And there's different ways of you being okay and it meaning lots of positive things about you and it not necessarily meaning that you've let them down in any meaningful way. Once we can kind of tidy that up a bit, then we can get to what do I actually just want to do? Yeah. Because you allowed to just pick what you want to do.

Ruth: Are you?

Vikki: You could just pick for no other reason than it's what you want to do. Okay. Why didn't you finish your PhD? Didn't want to in the end. Why did you finish your PhD when it looked like it was being super hard? 'cause I wanted to. Either's fine and it doesn't have to have more explanation than that.

Vikki: Okay. Yeah. And there's gonna be some self-coaching on either side. Yeah. 'cause if you choose to carry on, there's gonna be a load of self-coaching around supporting yourself while you do things that are not just magically not gonna feel hard anymore. No. There's gonna be a bunch of coaching on that side and there's gonna be a bunch of self-coaching on the site if you decide not to. Yeah. 'cause whilst you can believe and tell yourself that you're not gonna beat yourself up for it, you're not gonna have regrets,. Those things are gonna come up 'cause our brains are fishy like that. So there's gonna be coaching, like self coaching on yourself either. 

Ruth: Yeah. 

Vikki: How are you feeling?

Ruth: Um, I was gonna I feel much better. I feel much better, um, because that the whole, I think it's just been, yeah, I'm probably just gonna have to like go and lie in a dark room for a minute. 

Vikki: Yeah. It's a lot to take in. 

Ruth: It is a lot to take in. 

Vikki: It's the joy for doing it for the podcast is you get to listen to it again.

Ruth: I know. Yeah, definitely. Um, yeah. The joy for everybody listening to on the podcast is that they haven't seen all of the ridiculous faces I've been making through 

Vikki: While they could go to YouTube and check them out there, but quite seriously though. Yes, there'll be so many people listening who are empathizing with this, who have either had these doubts or having these doubts, are making these decisions now.

Vikki: And I think just hearing somebody else talk them through, hearing where they've got options, I think will, will help a lot of people. So thank you so much for being so, so open and honest about it all. It's important. 

Ruth: I, I am so pleased that you have picked me to come and talk about it because I think there is, you know, there will be people out there like me. I know there are, and it's, it's scary and it's. You know, it's, you don't really wanna admit it. And I get particularly not to supervisors, so it's, you know, that's not, you know, something you really wanna do. Is it? So actually, yeah. Yeah. Well, I hope that it encourages other people to be brave. 

Vikki: Definitely.

Ruth: Whatever that means.

Vikki: I'm sure you have inspired them. Thank you so much, and thank you everyone for listening, and I will see you next week.