Research and Work-Life: Stress, Anxiety, and Self-Care

by Janet Salmons, PhD Research Community Manager for Sage Methodspace

---

Mental Health America hopes that in May, Mental Health Month, we will challenge ourselves to examine our world and reflect on how it can affect our overall health. They ask us to “look around, look within” to recognize the factors that contribute to our mental health.

As social researchers, teaching faculty, academic writers and students we certainly see many factors that can contribute to stress and anxiety. When we look around us, immense changes and pressures are influencing our institutions and fields of study. At the same time, we can look around us and find community and support, and look within to find strength and self-confidence, solace and joy.

Academia can be Stressful!

Nature of Academic Work

A 1994 book Stress in academic life: the Mental Assembly Line (Fisher, 1994) was introduced with a foreword by Sir Graham Hills. He observed:

There is a not-too-distant image of the academic leisurely passing the hours in an ancient library in some arcadian setting far from the day-to-day pressures of the busy world. … [A]ll that has changed. Economy, effectiveness and efficiency are with us seemingly forward. The new academic has now to teach increasingly more from a shrinking resource base (and salary) and in the face of an explosion of knowledge and skills not seen before…There has never been so much to know and so much to do.

You may have encountered this false narrative from friends or family members outside of academia who think you have a cushy job. They imagine an idyllic, untroubled life of the mind. But you know as well as I that the efforts involved in designing, planning, obtaining funding and support, conducting, and writing about research, and inspiring the next generation, are demanding activities in the best of circumstances. We must ask hard questions, make sense of the answers, and interpret them in ways that will contribute new knowledge and inform practice. For those studying sensitive topics or vulnerable populations, painful stories from participants aren’t easily set aside at the end of the day. We need time to reflect and think - not just to do. And of course we have personal lives, partners, children, and parents who need us.

Fisher defines stress as “an imbalance between demand and capacity” (p.2), an imbalance many in academic life feel acutely. She suggests that this imbalance is heightened whenever there is low personal control over the environment. In academic work-life we are responsible for and to others, including students, co-authors and co-researchers. We typically carry out these activities within the framework of an academic institution, lab or agency — with the bureaucracy and administrivia inherent to any large organization. Catherine Hoyser (2023) lamented:

As more tasks from upper administration crash into my email, demanding that I complete more paperwork and jump through more hoops, I know that I am not alone. Colleagues from multiple types of universities experience the same situation… Budgets and majors are being removed from programs, staff positions being eliminated, all before Covid-19 arrived to create more pressures. (p. 73)

As Hoyser knows, lack of control or the power to reframe priorities and practices can exacerbate and already stress-prone situation.

Political Climate

We have little or no control over problematic matters occurring on a larger scale. Economic, political, social justice and environmental concerns are shaking our institutions and many fields of study - particularly in the US and the UK.. Loveday (2021) conducted a series of interviews and published an article titled “‘Under attack’: Responsibility, crisis and survival anxiety amongst manager-academics in UK universities.” They stated:

Universities have been undergoing a process of marketisation for some time now, but recent changes to the regulation and audit of their activities – as well as uncertainty engendered by broader events – arguably make this a turbulent period for the sector. … [I]f the sector wants to avoid implosion, then management would do well to consider how those measures that have been imposed in the pursuit of accountability and as a means of defence against their own survival anxieties are conversely contributing to the overall decline in health of relationships with staff and students, and the very notion of HE as a public good. If we accept that managers’ survival anxieties are well-founded, then the question becomes how best to contain and defend against these.

In addition to expectations for accountability, political pressure and legislative constraints on what can be read and discussed in the classroom are creating increased stress for administrators, faculty, and students. A recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education ‘This Is How Censorship Happens’ reported on some of the difficulties:

more and more state lawmakers seem eager to interfere with the work of running campuses and classrooms. In the past two years, more than a dozen states have passed laws or taken other actions that discourage the teaching of critical race theory or “divisive concepts,” posing a threat to free speech in academic settings… As states pass more laws, colleges and universities will be left to interpret them. In cases where the effect on higher education is unclear, administrators will be left to divine where the line between legality and illegality might be, and that’s what worries free-speech advocates.

Campus leaders who do not want to run afoul of lawmakers and risk losing state funding may decide to play it safe and tell their employees exactly where they think that line is — and instruct them not to cross it. Faculty and staff members without job security and those who do not wish to draw the attention of the conservative media may feel pressure to self-censor.

Two points to highlight from this quotation: as noted in a previous post, self-censorship is a risk for researchers, as well as for teaching faculty. How do academic and intellectual freedom exist when we are on-guard? What problems will not be studied and discussed if we “play it safe”? And job security stress is not limited to the many academics in contingent or adjunct positions, given that tenure is also being called into question. “Survival anxieties” indeed! How can we not only survive, but thrive, despite the fact that we are in this historical moment?

Attention to self-care: Forced to let go of the “I’m too busy” excuse

Narelle Lemon, editor of a series of books on Wellness and Self-Care in Higher Education, points out that “self-care requires us to engage with different and diverse types of practices to help us with our wellbeing. We can think of these as a menu of items informed by wellbeing science” (p. 1). Before we can chose what on the proverbial menu suits our appetite, we have to overcome the first hurdles: making time and finding meaningful pursuits. I hope you won’t have to use my approach!

Around five years ago a ruptured disc sidelined me. When, prone on the examining table, I told the spine doctor about the conference I needed to attend, etc. the following week, he looked at me like I was crazy and basically said, no. Just no. You aren’t going anywhere! I was in extreme pain and could barely move for about a month. Needless to say, my urgent to-do list had to be set aside.

Once I was able to sit in a chair, I remembered the art supplies that had been gathering dust on a shelf somewhere. I started art journaling, and became an enthusiast over the course of that summer. When I focused on mixing colors or trying to represent the flowers in my garden on paper, I couldn’t obsess about the email I needed to write or missed deadlines. In contrast with other kinds of creative activities, journaling is private, so the pressure to produce something of artistic merit is absent.

If you’ve had an incident or accident, you know that physical health problems have a mental health component. It is scary to contemplate the possibility that you won’t fully recover. When you are an independent person it is difficult to accept that you need help. You need 360-degree healing! I found this DIY art therapy incredibly relaxing and I believe it helped me heal physically.

As time went on I realized that art journaling was not entirely separate from my work as a methodologist and academic writer. I started to discover ways it helped. Becoming more carefully observant. Cultivating reflexivity. Being more focused and giving up on my usual multi-tasking frenzy. I recently had the opportunity to meld my ideas about art and research in a chapter for the book Creative Expression and Wellbeing in Higher Education. I called it “Journaling Right and Left” to indicate that journaling can help us think analytically as well as to exercise our imagination. In short, what seemed like a sidestep turned out to be beneficial both personally and professionally. Now art journaling is central to my mental health and those creative moments are woven into my busy life.

What will benefit your mental health?

If stress and anxiety are interrupting daily life don’t go it alone. Find the help you need. The Mayo Clinic recommends that you speak to a health care provider about your anxiety should any of these situations occur:

• Your anxiety becomes an obstacle — In any aspect of everyday living, often causing difficulties for six or more months

• Your anxiety becomes a negative influence in relationships — Creating barriers in life

• Your anxiety leads to isolation — Producing thoughts of hopelessness or helplessness

• Your anxiety controls your life — When your emotional or physical response to excessive worry is controlling your life in some aspect or another

I chose watercolor paints and pen and ink. Hoyser, whose quote above poignantly described being overwhelmed by a growing workload, started meditating, took a creative writing class. She noted that “conflict and time disappear when I am working out an idea for a poem… it suffuses my activities that used to be largely rote, for example, folding laundry or taking a walk” (Hoyser, 2023, p. 80).

These kinds of options might not be the answer for you. Can you take time this month to look around, look within, and find what will work for you? What will improve your mental health and wellbeing?

---

References

Hoyser, C. (2023). Stepping off the edge: Circles of connection and creativity for wellbeing in the academy. In N. Lemon (Ed.), Creative Expression and Wellbeing in Higher Education. Routledge.

Loveday, V. (2021). ‘Under attack’: Responsibility, crisis and survival anxiety amongst manager-academics in UK universities. The Sociological Review, 69(5), 903-919. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038026121999209

Salmons, J. (2023). Journaling right and left. In N. Lemon (Ed.), Creative Expression and Wellbeing in Higher Education. Routledge.

---

More Methodspace Posts about Self-Care