I Thought I Was Just Going Back to School
When I started this Ph.D journey, I thought I was signing up to write papers, conduct research or complete a project, and eventually earn a title.
What I didn’t realize was that I was also signing up for:
- identity crises
- emotional support coffee
- twenty open tabs I swear I still need
- and a completely unhealthy relationship with Microsoft Word
No one really talks about how a doctoral program will humble you and heal you at the same time. One minute you feel brilliant. The next minute you’re rereading the same sentence wondering if you’ve ever actually known how to read.
“Somewhere between burnout and becoming, I kept going.”
The Doctoral Delusion Phase
I truly believed I would be “organized.” I bought color-coded notebooks. Loaded my Remarkable. Downloaded planning apps. Created timelines with hope and confidence. That lasted about fourteen business days.
After that, my life became a blur of:
- revisions
- committee feedback
- APA formatting
- existential reflection
- and whispering “I’m almost done” every three months
At some point, the write up stopped feeling like a document and started feeling like a personality trait.
The Unexpected Mirror
What surprised me most wasn’t the workload. It was the way this process forced me to confront myself. A doctorate has a way of exposing every insecurity you thought you buried under professionalism and achievement. Suddenly, all the perfectionism, self-doubt, imposter syndrome, and fear of failure show up uninvited… usually around 1:17am. And somehow, in the middle of researching body image, intimacy, identity, and healing, I found myself doing that work personally too.
I started this journey thinking I was writing a workbook. Turns out, it was writing me too.
“There’s something deeply personal about researching healing while actively trying to survive your own stress.”
Becoming Looks Messy Sometimes
I used to think growth would feel graceful. Instead, it looked like:
- crashing out over formatting and grammar issues
- celebrating tiny victories
- forgetting what day it was
- and convincing myself that deleting one paragraph was “productive”
But becoming isn’t always beautiful while it’s happening. Sometimes it looks like exhaustion with purpose. Sometimes it looks like showing up imperfectly anyway.
Closer Than I Was Before
And maybe that’s the thing I keep coming back to:
I am closer than I was when I started. Closer to finishing. Closer to myself. Closer to the woman I’m becoming outside of the degrees and titles.
This process stretched me intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. And while I’m still tired, still revising, and still questioning why APA has so many rules… I’m also proud. Because despite every moment I wanted to quit, I stayed.
“Maybe the goal was never perfection. Maybe it was resistance.”
A Reflection Forward
This doctoral journey has taught me that healing and becoming often happen simultaneously.
You can be exhausted and evolving. Overwhelmed and growing.
Burned out and still becoming. And maybe that’s what this season really is:
not a breakdown, but a transformation in progress.
According to LaShonda, Your Finer Sex Therapist.