370: Grief, Guilt, and Shame in Grad School: When Your Experience Isn’t What You Imagined

370: Grief, Guilt, and Shame in Grad School: What to Do When Your Experience Isn’t What You Imagined

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[00:00:00] I want to start today's episode with a story. Imagine someone who decided to go back to school after time in the workforce. This was a thoughtful decision on their part. Perhaps it was one that took them years to take action on. They had really high hopes and a lot of lofty goals. They had a clear vision for what this degree would open up for them in their career and life. And they enter their program, with so much enthusiasm and confidence. They were feeling hopeful and they could clearly see the future they were aiming for. But then somewhere along the way, things came up that started to taint that picture. Maybe the mentorship that they expected wasn't there. Maybe the workload became harder to sustain than anticipated.

Maybe their health changed. [00:01:00] Maybe life outside of school demanded more than they could have planned for. And slowly but surely the vision they once held closely started to feel more fuzzy or distant. And so now they're sitting with something that they didn't anticipate. They're grieving the version of this experience that they thought that they would have, and they're feeling guilty too over what they haven't been able to accomplish. And underneath all of that, there is an even heavier feeling. They are feeling shame, lots of it. But what do you do if you, too, are experiencing these feelings? What do you do when your grad school experience isn't what you imagined? If any of this feels familiar, I want you to know that this episode is for you.

In that story I [00:02:00] just shared, I'm not naming a specific person. Instead, it is more of a composite of reflections that have come up among the dozens of grad student clients I've worked with in the last few years. Today I'm gonna be walking you through a couple of things related to this. So please tune in and share this episode with a friend if you know it'll resonate with them as well.

Welcome to the award-winning Grad School Femtoring Podcast. The place where first generation BIPOC students and professionals can listen in on inclusive grad school stories and gain practical tools for sustainable success. This is Doctora Yvette Martinez-Vu, a certified coach, consultant, author, and speaker.

I will be serving as your femtor, providing you with [00:03:00] insider knowledge to help you thrive in grad school and beyond.

Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Grad School Femtoring Podcast. This is your host, Doctora Yvette, like I mentioned earlier today, we are going to be talking about grief, guilt, and shame in grad school, and specifically I'm gonna share with you, what to do if you are also someone who is experiencing grad school in a way that's different from what you imagined.

So for today, I am going to define grief, guilt, and shame so that you can better understand what you may be experiencing. I'm also gonna walk you through how this may be showing up for you if you're in grad school, and I'm gonna be sharing a couple of strategies and reflection exercises to help you [00:04:00] to ultimately do something about the fact that you are having a different experience than you hope for, and it's coming with a lot of uncomfortable emotions.

So let's start with the language. I'm gonna start by talking about grief. In psychology, grief refers to an emotional response to a loss. A lot of times when we think about grief, we think about the loss of a person, but it also comes with the loss of expectations, the loss of identity, the loss of belonging, the loss of a dream, and a future you once imagined.

I've actually been thinking a lot about grief lately as I've been navigating my own forms of grief recently. I had a moment at the beginning of April when I just faced multiple emergencies, both for myself and my loved ones. [00:05:00] It was one after the next, after the next, and I couldn't believe that was happening.

As that came up and I shared with friends and colleagues, two people recommended the book, As Long As You Need by JS Park. Now I'm halfway through reading the book, and I'll have to admit it has brought on so many tears. And what came up for me or what has come up with me so far in reading through it is just how important it is to name the grief that you are experiencing, especially because a lot of us can relate to the grief that comes with losing a dream that you once held. That's why I'm bringing up grief today.

I also wanted to bring up guilt, and guilt is a feeling of responsibility of remorse, feeling bad about a particular behavior or choice. And it often can look [00:06:00] like you saying to yourself, oh, I should have done more, or, oh, I didn't meet this expectation. And when you take it another step further, that's where shame comes in, because shame is different from guilt in that shame is even more painful. It's more uncomfortable. It's going from thinking that you did something wrong, and that you made a mistake to internalizing it, and making that mean that there is something wrong with you.

Wanted to mention that because that distinction really matters, and a lot of the people that I work with, they're distinctly experiencing shame. It's more than guilt. And they're experiencing shame around a missed deadline. They're experiencing shame around an incomplete. They're experiencing shame around their timelines being different than everyone else around [00:07:00] them.

So there is so much shame that they're holding onto, and they're also carrying grief about how their grad school experience doesn't match what they hoped it would be.

So let's dig into that a little bit more. Let's talk about how this shows up in grad school. In the context of grad school grief can look like realizing that your program is not what you expected. Maybe you lost access to mentorship that you thought you would have, or your advisor is not the supportive person you were hoping they would be. Maybe it looks like you experiencing health challenges, and all of a sudden you don't have the same time, energy or capacity that you had when you first came in.

It can look like letting go of a career path that once felt so attainable. For the people I work with, a lot of times it means recognizing that the tenure track path may not actually work out for [00:08:00] you, and that comes with grief as well.

For some folks, they are not only carrying grief, they're also carrying guilt, and it's usually guilt tied to your productivity. Again, going back to the examples I mentioned earlier, you might be dealing with incompletes. Your timeline might be delayed compared to a normative timeline, or maybe you're working on multiple projects and each of them is taking longer than expected. And shame begins to form, again, because you might be internalizing the circumstances, and you might be making them mean something about you, and you're starting to feel like there is something wrong with you because of what is going on around you.

And so all of a sudden being behind, and I'm using scare quotes here, starts to feel like a sign of your personal failure, or maybe you just keep comparing yourself to your [00:09:00] peers, and you might make them mean something about your worth, when in fact you have no idea what your peers might be experiencing; the level of support or resources or privileges that they might have that might be different than yours.

And when you're first gen grief and shame are also shaped by the hidden curriculum, because higher ed comes with so many things that you're assumed to know, but are never explicitly taught, and then that makes it harder for you to navigate this experience than others who do know what to expect. And you might find yourself asking, why is this so hard for me and not for those around me?

Well, guess what? That's because it is harder. Then if you are black, if you're indigenous, if you're a person of color, there are additional factors tied to systemic inequities, racism, ableism, sexism, you name it, all [00:10:00] the isms. There's issues tied to lack of representation, lack of belonging, and all of these things also impact your feeling grief or shame.

Then let's add another layer. Let's say you are neurodivergent. Let's say you're dealing with chronic illness. Let's say you are disabled, and you might be dealing with fluctuating energy levels or a lack of access to resources or to spaces, and so you're having to tend to your workload while also tending to your health or your disability needs, and that can feel like a whole other job in it of itself.

So what you're carrying in this season is more than just academic work. You've got multiple hats, multiple roles that you're playing, and you're doing all of that while probably also navigating deep structural issues. Again, I can't emphasize this enough, if all of this feels [00:11:00] like it's harder, that's because it is harder.

Before I transition to talking through some ways to approach this, I'm gonna share a caveat. I do this often. You might have already seen it coming, but I do this as a reminder and as a boundary that I'm setting. This podcast is for educational purposes only. It comes from my work as a coach and an educator. It is not a substitute for mental health care. So if you're dealing with a really tough season full of grief, guilt, shame, and other feelings, and if this feels too heavy to tackle on your own, please consider accessing therapy if you can. And I also wanna mention that in my work, many or most of my clients have access to a full support team.

So they've got their mentors, they've got their therapists, they've got [00:12:00] medical providers, and they have me as their coach. And each of us serves a different purpose. Coaching offers support with structure, decision making, accountability, and taking action. It is future focused and it's designed to help you make progress on your goals.

That's what I do best and I love that, and I stick with that. Therapy on the other hand, offers a space to process emotions where you can process your mental health concerns, where you can process past experiences, and you're working with a licensed professional and a person that is trained to assess, to diagnose and to treat any symptoms or conditions you may be experiencing.

I need to mention that, because you deserve support from people who can support you with navigating the different challenges that you're facing.

If you're feeling stuck in grad school or navigating a major [00:13:00] professional transition, personalized coaching from a certified coach can make a meaningful difference. I offer one-on-one coaching for first gen and or BIPOC graduate students and professionals who want structure and compassionate support while working toward important goals.

Together we can create action plans that align with your capacity, your responsibilities, and your long-term vision. Clients often come to coaching when they are preparing for major milestones, like qualifying exams, defending a proposal, finishing dissertations, exploring new career paths or building sustainable systems that work for them.

Coaching includes live sessions, voice memo, and email support between sessions, and access to a resource library filled with dozens of tools for academic and professional success. If you'd like to explore working together, visit gradschoolfemtoring.com/coaching to learn more and schedule a free [00:14:00] consultation today.

Let's get into some of these approaches that may help you to stay connected to your work while still honoring the feelings that you are experiencing.

The first thing I wanna say is, that it's important that you name the loss that you're carrying. Ask yourself, what has changed for you? What did you expect this experience to be? What feels different now? What feels uncertain? What feels out of reach? It's important that you give yourself some time to sit with and name that loss, and that's a really important first step, because in doing that you can better understand and have a better idea of what you're experiencing, and how you can use that to adapt to your changes. And I also wanna remind you that you're allowed to slow down and to [00:15:00] acknowledge that something important to you is not going as planned.

The second thing I want you to do is to separate your capacity from your character. This is really important. When guilt and shame pop up, it's so easy for you to make that mean something about your identity. A missed deadline all of a sudden means something about who you are. An incomplete becomes a judgment about your supposed lack of discipline. If you're feeling that way, too, please pause, slow down for a moment, and give yourself permission to reframe this experience. Yes, life happens. Yes, your capacity can change. Yes, your circumstances can also completely change, but they are not reflections of your identity or your worth. The more compassion you can offer yourself in this [00:16:00] moment, the less shame you'll be walking around with and the more resilience you'll have to get through this.

The third thing I wanna mention is to redefine what counts as progress. In many academic environments I know that progress is narrowly defined as a specific output. Completing your courses, completing your milestones, getting a set number of publications done, you name it, it's all output oriented. In my work where I promote sustainable productivity, we expand that definition, so we expand progress to include clarifying your next steps, organizing your materials, sending an email, revising your plan, and even resting in a way that supports your recovery.

All of this to say that [00:17:00] progress helps you stay connected to your goals, but the big difference is that I'm encouraging you to view progress as process-oriented rather than output-oriented.

The fourth thing I wanna say, and this is gonna be the last thing that I share before sharing some reflective questions, you want to stay connected to support and to community in this moment. Why? Because grief, guilt, and shame tend to intensify in isolation. They work best when they meet you alone. And a way to combat it, a way to resist it, an antidote to that is to name it in community. So connection plays a huge role in you getting through this and in you maintaining your resilience.

What does this look like? It looks like having a peer that [00:18:00] you check in with who understands your experience. Having a mentor you can reach out to who can offer guidance. Having a therapist you see regularly who supports with the emotional processing. And having a structured space like coaching for accountability and planning.

You are allowed to be supported in multiple ways. I mentioned this actually to a client that I met with recently, because she is dealing with lots of changes in her personal life and in her body, and I reminded her that this is the time that she needs a full support team. All hands on deck, and that that is okay, and I wanna remind you that as well.

So before I close today's episode, here are a few questions that I want you to sit with tied to everything we've been talking about today. The first is, what version of your grad school experience are you grieving? [00:19:00] What expectations did you bring into this experience that may no longer align with your reality? Where might you be interpreting a capacity limitation as a personal failure or as making it mean something negative about you? And what would progress look like if you developed a process that honors your current capacity?

That's it. If this episode resonated with you, I wanna remind you that there is nothing wrong with you for finding this season to be hard. You are doing hard things, and if you're experiencing feelings of grief, guilt, shame, please know you're not alone, and that there is something you can do about it, and that you will get through this. I say this as someone who is on the other side of grad school. There is definitely hope. If you're looking for support, please know [00:20:00] that you can also access that. That's the kind of work that I do in my one-on-one and group coaching program. You can learn more about my services in the show notes. Thank you again for being here, and as always, I'll talk to you all next time.

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The third way to support my show is by joining my email newsletter where I share key takeaways and additional resources. Thanks again for listening, and until next time.