3.47 What to do if you’re lonely in academia

Loneliness in academia is so common yet so rarely talked about. In this episode I’m going to get honest about some of my experiences of loneliness, share why I think academia can be a particularly lonely place, and give some tangible tips that you can use to make it all feel a bit better.

If you enjoyed this episode, you might like this episode on the six types of social support you need and this one on how to build your academic community.

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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

Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. Now, I think this episode could end up being a little bit more personal than some of the episodes that I record. We are gonna be thinking about loneliness, loneliness in academia, and life in general, and what we can do about it. But I'm not gonna be presenting it from a, and I've got this all sorted kind of perspective. I'm actually gonna be sharing with you sometimes in my academic career that I was quite lonely, and I'm gonna be sharing with you some of the challenges that I'm having at the moment as somebody who moved away from a place that she'd been for a really, really, really long time, and how that's still not quite where I want it to be.

So let's dive into this slightly more vulnerable one together. But I wanna start by thinking about why loneliness is so endemic in academia. You know, people talk about it being a kind of global issue in all walks of life at the moment for a whole bunch of different reasons. But I think academia is particularly prone to loneliness and particularly prone to not talking about feeling lonely. And I think that's for a bunch of reasons. It's a career where you often have to move a lot, right? If you, you know, a lot of people will move at the end of their undergraduate, their end of their PhD, and then at various stages through their academic careers.

And it's not always easy to just up sticks, essentially move away from family or establish networks and reestablish them, especially if you're doing it for a short period at a time. Right. I have clients who, you know, they're PhD students, but then they go and do a postdoc here and a postdoc there, and they're only ever in a place for a year, and that's really, really tough.

Some of you though might be thinking, well, hang on, I've stayed in the same place, but I still feel lonely. And that's because it's not just about moving. So many of you will know that I stayed in the same place through my whole academic career. So I left home to go to university like two hours away from where I grew up.

Um, so not super far from Americans, but you know, that's beyond the commute from British people. But then I stayed there. I was an undergrad, PhD student, postdoc. Lecturer, senior lecturer, reader, professor. And so I stayed there my whole career and people often think, oh, well you must have had a network the whole time.

But I didn't because the thing was everybody else left. So at the end of my undergrad, most of my friends went off to do other things, and I had to make new friends as a PhD student. And then at the end of PhD, most of my friends left and I then had to make new friends as a member of staff. And then there's always a sort of cycling of academic stuff in the department. And so whilst I had friends sort of in other bits of my life, that kind of real network that I had at work, we were a very social department. It really did change every three to five years and I really had to reestablish things over and over again. And that was often not that easy.

And I'll, I'll talk later about reasons that was complicated. So whether you move or not, academia has this kind of transient feel to it, which can make it really hard to build lasting relationships. It's also kind of weirdly hierarchical, right? Where we're sort of collegiate and all work together, but sort of also hyper aware of the fact that they're a final year PhD student. I'm a first year PhD student, or they're a professor and I'm only an assistant professor or whatever. And often, especially as the junior partner in that, you are hyper aware of the differences in seniority. Often when you are older, you are less, not necessarily older, but more senior, you are less aware of those hierarchies.

But you are aware that the other, the, the junior person sees those hierarchies, so that can make friendships difficult. People are also often at very, very different life stages, even if at the, the same career stage. So I, because I did my PhD quite quickly, which if you wanna hear that complicated story, I have a whole podcast episode about it.

I did my PhD quickly, and then my postdoc was a permanent position that turned into lectureship. So I was in a permanent job by the time I was 24, whereas most of the other people who were starting their permanent jobs were, with the exception of my gorgeous Jen Cumming, who I always mention, they were all five, 10 years older than me.

Most of them were in relationships, many of them were having children. It was a really, really different life stage for me. And often we have that that complicates our friendships within the workplace. And then when you think, you know, I'm talking about all, many, many moons pre COVID. So I'm not talking about the modern times, but with modern times, with the increase in remote working and more and more use of Zoom and things like that, people not being on campus, far more distance learning students and things like that, we're often geographically remote from the people that we work with too and the places that we work, which can mean that a lot of that kind of incidental chat that happens around the building just doesn't happen in the ways that it used to. And I think some of that is by necessity, right, that actually we need to do this sort of remote working. Sometimes it's that we've kind of got in the habit of it. Since COVID, we found that it's quite comfortable to be able to work from home with your own fridge and your own dog and all of those things, right? And so sometimes the benefits of going in just feel a little bit oblique and so we don't do it.

Other times there'll be many of you that are still being COVID cautious in terms of avoiding getting infections through transport or through going to crowded places and all those sorts of things. So for whatever reasons, a lot of us have got more used to this kind of remote working. Now, I am not someone who doesn't think you can build relationships online, right?

Some of my favorite people in the world, I've barely met in real life that I keep in contact with by this sort of connection , but that does make it harder to make new friends and meet new people.

We are then in a world where we work really hard, right? There's loads to do. Often it's loads that we need to do on our own, other than meetings with people that are in a position of authority over us, like our supervisor advisors or whatever. So often it is lots of solitary working, lots of work so it's sort of bleeding into evenings, it bleeds into weekends if we allow it and then that can be tough. Many of you will also be supporting a family, which whilst gorgeous is not the same thing as necessarily having friends outside of the family and having that time just to be yourself.

Performance is really drilled into us how important it is we do well. And to add on top of that, if your friends and family are not people who have PhDs or understand academia, it can be really hard to explain to people why your life is the way it is or why you are stressed about the things that you are stressed about.

I remember one of my besties works for a really big corporation. Shall remain nameless, but like a proper businessy business and she's pretty high up in it. And I was moaning. I was in some leadership position at the university and there were some dudes not doing what I needed them to do. I can't remember what, it was some crappy form that I needed to make sure people had filled in properly and they were just being really difficult and they weren't doing their role and all that stuff, and my friend was like, I know it's okay. What you should do, you should talk to your boss, and they'll put them under performance review and then they'll get fired if they don't step up. I'm like, oh my dear soul, it doesn't necessarily work like that in academia. Now it might be, if they've been rubbish at their research and all that stuff, it might work like that, but if they're just being rubbish at their administrative roles, I don't think it works like that.

And they were like, and she was like, but can't you just tell him he has to do it? I'm like, I'm not his line manager. She's like, how are you going to do anything? I'm like, exactly. So we have this kind, people don't get it. And that's one of my besties and she tries really, really hard to understand, but she doesn't get the unique pressures that there are within a university environment.

Yeah. Those of you who are doing PhDs who may be a first generation in your family to do PhDs or where you don't have friends doing PhDs. They don't get it. It's like, oh, you can start work whenever you want and stop work whenever you want. That must be gorgeous. It's like gorgeous or infinitely pressure all the time. So people don't necessarily get it and that can be really difficult when you're trying to make friends receive social support and things like that.

There's then also, academia, especially if you're not properly supported either through good supervision, advisors, mentors, all that stuff, it can be a bit crushing to your self-esteem, right? You can get yourself to a stage where, you just think you're not very good at anything and that you're just a bit of a boring person 'cause you haven't done anything except work on this thing for ages and you're not even any good at that. Okay. And that is not a great mindset to be trying to make friends from. Yeah. That doesn't make you go, oh, I know what I'll do. I'll go and shine at a party so everyone wants to be my friend. No, it makes you be like, oh, no one's gonna wanna be friends with this. It's really easy for that to translate across into your social life as well. I've been there. I'm a pretty extroverted person, but that can be really tough. And then for those of you who have moved and are like, yeah, I do have friends. I do. I just live a long way from them. I don't see them very much. That can be really hard too.

That's what I'm struggling with at the moment. To be completely open with you. So I lived in Birmingham, big city for 20 something years. And I moved back to, it's a big village, but it's a village. Um, and it's very families around here. And I'm a family now. You know, I'm married, I've got stepchildren, all that stuff, but I'm not bringing up little people or anything. And almost all my friends are other places, right? They're either back in Birmingham. The people that I spent the most time with, or like my old friends from university and stuff, are all over the country, all over the world. I have one bestie that is still here, who I went to school with and is still local but she has an uber stressful job, so she's very, very busy.

And the problem is I do have all these friends, but they're not friends that I can do things with tonight. Right. They're not people that I can just say, let's go for a walk on board. They're two hours away and we have to plan it. And they have children and their children have social lives and hobbies and things that fill up weekends and stuff.

And it's hard. And then you're like, well, yeah, okay. But you could text them or whatever. You could speak to 'em on the phone, say, yeah, I can and I do, but there is a big difference. It's something that I saw on Instagram, you know, that font of all things, but it really resonated with me that there is a difference between catching up with friends and living your life with friends and those of you, this is an emotional one for me, and those of you who are far away from your old friends will probably feel this too is. You can catch up with those people. You can have a conversation with those people. You can arrange to see them for a weekend, but if that consists of getting up to speed on each other's lives, well, how's this? How's that going? How's your job? How's your kids? How's your partner? How's your this da da da?

If it consists of doing that, it's not the same thing as just going to the park together 'cause you see each other all the time. Or like my, one of my besties from Birmingham, we used to just do jobs together. We'd go to like the, you know, the DIY shop, the hardware store for my Americans and get the stuff we needed for our house jobs and we'd help each other with our house jobs and things. Especially 'cause we were both single at that stage. It's not the same thing. If all your friends are far away, even if they're gorgeous and wonderful, I have the most gorgeous and wonderful friends you can possibly imagine. But it's not easy when they're far away, and it's easy to still feel lonely in your day-to-day life.

And when everyone is so busy, it's hard to meet new people that become friends. We're gonna talk about strategies, some of which I'm trying and some of which I'm setting myself the goal to try over the summer. But that's what many, many reasons that I think that feeling lonely in academia is really, really, really common. So where do we start? We start where we always start, guys, we start with compassion. Because often one of the problems with loneliness is right, you haven't got people to talk to about it, okay? But often, you know, if you had people to talk to about it, you might not be feeling quite so lonely. And so it can become this slightly embarrassing thing, right?

It comes, becomes this thing where you're like, oh my God, people are gonna think that I'm not a nice person or that nobody likes me, or any of these sorts of things. People are gonna feel sorry for me or think there's something wrong with me and everybody else has got friends, and why don't I, and you know it, it can be really hard to not criticize yourself for this and that's where we always start with compassion.

It is completely understandable that you feel like this. Some of you might be thinking, I feel lonely, even though I'm surrounded by people all the time, and that is normal too. Loneliness is a completely separate construct from being alone, okay? You can be on your own and not feel lonely at all. You can be in the middle of a crowded place and feel immensely lonely. They're two completely separate things, so if you are like, I've got people around me and I still feel lonely, normal, okay, I'm here. I'm with you. All right? It's completely normal. 

And the reason that's so important is that if we are telling ourselves that the loneliness is either a personal failing in itself or the result of other personal failings, like being an annoying person or whatever, then it's really hard to snap out of it. It's really hard to take the steps I'm gonna talk about in a second, because you don't feel like you're somebody who people would want to be friends with.

So compassion first, it is understandable that you feel lonely. It is kind of a part, not an inevitable part, but it is kind of a part of the industry that we are either studying in or working in, and more people feel lonely than you think. So what do we do about it? I have a few different tips for you.

The first is about almost accepting where we're at and appreciating what we do have. That's not to say get over yourself. You're not as lonely as you think, but sometimes we don't recognize the bits we do have. So I have had the biggest flip in my circumstances, right? So when I was in Birmingham, I had, especially for the last like five, eight years I guess, where things got a lot more stable in terms of who I was friends with and all those sorts of things. There wasn't such a turnover. My friends were less based at work, there was less turnover, and so on for the last sort of seven or eight years. I had friends coming out of my ears. I had so many people that I could just live life with, have fun social things with , like my sort of bestie friends. And then I had my layer of kind of gorgeous acquaintances who I knew from my various different clubs and classes and things that I did. And so I had this huge swathe of social support, of friends. I did not feel lonely, but I did feel lonely 'cause I didn't have a partner and I wanted a partner. I wanted to be in a romantic relationship and I wasn't. So I'd still felt lonely even though I had all those things.

Now, fast forward however many years, I'm now living in a village where I don't have that sort of friend network around me. I have my gorgeous husband and I have, I'm now close to where my parents live, where my sisters live, and things like that. And I often feel lonely because of not having those friendship groups, those acquaintances, those communities around me at the moment. A really, really important thing to do in a really important thing that I do is recognizing the togetherness that you do have. It's not saying we're not gonna go look for the other bits. We are gonna go look for the other bits. Just like back then I was dating. Now I'm gonna be, I'm on a mission to find new friends, but we can appreciate the bits that we do have, so that we love on them. We recognize where we are getting support, offer support to them, and remind ourselves of the network that we do have.

Sometimes that might be your remote network too. So, if any of my old friends listen to this, be warned. I'm on a mission to be in better touch with you all. So it's whether it's a close network geographically, a far away network geographically, appreciating what you do have is a huge first step.

The other part of it is recognizing and appreciating the alone time that you have without it having to make you feel lonely. So having time, I now, my life is so much less chaotic than it was in Birmingham because of all these coaching things that I've learned but I have so much more time. I have more time to just not feel like a hot mess all the time. And part of that is not seeing as many people and not feeling as busy, not trying to cram everything in quite so much. And so remembering to appreciate that stuff really helps as well. Some of the things I'm experiencing, not all of them, but some of them are the result of positive changes. They're kind of that flip side of a positive change. Now when it comes to actually expanding our friendship networks, building these relationships, I have a couple of different tips. The first is to remind yourself what you either love doing or what you used to love doing often, especially those of you who have allowed hobbies to get away from you in your PhDs and, and academic careers often you'll say, you know, what's your hobby? I don't know. Sleeping, don't do anything else. Too much work to do. Once I've dealt with the kids, dealt with, they dealt with that to do nothing left. But there will have been times in your life where you had things that you love doing. This is one where I've always been all this.

I am like the serial hobby meister. I've always had a hundred thousand things that I enjoy doing and that I've tried to cram into my life. So remembering what those were, figuring out where you can find bite-sized bits of that. Now, remember, it's also worth thinking about the different levels of friends that you need.

It is really useful to have one or two local besties so that you have people who you can confide in, who you can spend time with, sort of on the regular without having to make big arrangements and things like that. That's really useful, and they're not easy to find. That's what I've not found yet here.

They're not easy to find, but there's also that level of just nice community. So when I was in Birmingham, I had my bestie besties, my people that came to my wedding and all that stuff. But I also had a whole layer of people who I adore who were colleagues that I knew less well from around campus, but who I bump into, have a chat with people that I paddle boarded with, people that I did circus with, people that I did CrossFit with for my shortlived, ruined by the pandemic CrossFit career. People that I did british military fitness with whatever it was, right? All my different hobbies, I had this like layer of people who I wouldn't arrange to spend the weekend with them. We weren't that level of friends, but I blooming adored them. They were great and they were people that I would see regularly that I would do fun things with.

I would turn up, I'd go to my adult gymnastics class and we'd mess around, fall in the pits. It was all good. I miss those people. So think about what things you used to enjoy doing or that you currently enjoy doing and think about how could you reintroduce one of those things into your life. Now you might be saying, I don't have time, Vikki.

I'm too busy. Everyone has time. Everyone has time. I know it can be complicated, especially if you've got children, especially if you don't have family close by. But even if it's one thing a month. Having something like that that you can do where you see people you like. Now we are not necessarily looking for besties here.

We are just looking for people who we enjoy spending time with, where we are someone other than our PhD self or our academic self. I, for what it's worth, have signed up for a life drawing class in Cambridge, so I'm going to go and learn how to draw rudey nudey people cos why not? I used to enjoy doing art classes, so there we are.

And right now, 'cause of my stupid broken ankle, I'm not in a position to do a lot of the active things that I'd planned this summer. So I'm going to do that instead. Happy days. What more can you want?

The second thing, and I stole this callousy from, again, somebody on Instagram who I'm afraid I can't remember her name. I feel bad about it. I feel like it's also quite generic advice, but I found it really, really useful, which is if you wanna make friends as an adult, you have to go to the same places regularly and be open to having conversations. She calls it putting in the reps. You have to put in the reps. So I want you to think, where could you put in the reps?

Now this might be going to a coffee shop at the same time each week. So every Friday morning you work two hours in a coffee shop instead of at your own desk, for example. Or it might be at the pickup or the drop off of your kids at school if you have that. So I, I don't have children that I take to school, but I help run a local or guide unit girl scouts from my North Americans. And so I'm starting to get to know some of the parents there and some of the other leaders, for example, things like that. Where can you put in the reps where you keep turning up and you keep having the bits of inane conversation that especially you introverts out there probably go, oh God, don't make me.

But how can you put in those reps so that there's an increased possibility that at some point you might find somebody that you're like, oh, they're nice.

And that's where we then have to manage our minds because our minds are gonna tell us there's no point. They're gonna tell us we don't have time. They're gonna tell us other people don't want to that. How do you translate that into being friends anyway? What do you do next? Da, da, da. You have to be willing to put in the reps, willing to stick your neck out slightly. Because that's when you know you have little tiny conversations. If it's someone that you're a bit like, okay, they seem quite nice, quite like them, da, da, da.

You figure out what things you might have in common, you then suggest, you then tell people where you'll be. Now, this was a brilliant one. So instead of saying, do you want to go and do X with me? You tell people, I am going to X, come along if you're about. Completely different vibe. You are doing it anyway, so I'm gonna go, so one of my plans where my foot's a bit better, I wanna start open swimming.

And I'm on a relatively new build estate and we have a, a ladies WhatsApp Chat. Who knew that existed. But anyway, somehow I'm on it and I've decided that when I'm well enough that I can go open water swimming, I'm gonna drop a message in there and say, I'm going open water swimming next Wednesday.

This is the location, this is the time. Let me know if anyone wants to join me. We can either share lift or I can meet you there or whatever. I'm going regardless. Let me know. Because that way you are doing something cool. You might meet somebody when you are there and you are giving other people the opportunity to opt in to do this stuff with you.

This all sounds like stuff that takes brain space. It all sounds like stuff that might be potentially quite awkward or difficult if you are quite introverted or quiet or whatever. But loneliness is awkward too. Loneliness takes brain space too. However busy you are, you deserve people around you.

You deserve not to feel lonely. You deserve to find people that understand you, and it's okay to take a bit of time to do this even if you feel like you have a hundred thousand responsibilities right now. Now, one option I can offer all of you who are PhD students is my membership. So many of my members talk about how it's a wonderful sense of community. They are all over the world. They drop into their co-working sessions together. They hear each other talk in the coaching sessions, they chatter with each other in Slack. So if you haven't checked that out, yet, we open for new members on the 4th of August. Quarter three starts on the 11th of August. It's going to be amazing.

So if you are feeling lonely in your journey and you want the sort of support that only comes from people who really proper get it because they are having it too, check on the membership. I hope I will see lots of you there. Thank you all for listening. I'm on on a mission over the summer to build new community and make more friends, and it's gonna be fun. I'm gonna do it doing lots of reps and lots of fun stuff, and I will keep you posted. Keep me posted on your journeys too. Thank you so much for listening everyone, and I will see you next week.

Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach.com.

You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time.