10. Withdrawing from a PhD | Tonja Wright

TW: Depression

Emily chats with Tonja Wright, who opens up about treatment-resistant depression, the difficult decision to leave her PhD, and how she is now grateful to have re-evaluated her life’s direction.

This discussion includes:

How Tonja’s experiences led her to start a business (Design to Transform) that uses evidence-based design to optimise productivity and wellbeing in workplaces
A few ‘getting to know you’ questions – The answers to which really help develop an understanding of how Tonja’s experiences have led her to where she is now - if you prefer to dive right in to Tonja’s experiences in academia, most of this is covered from about 13.5 mins in.
Insight to the process of feeling ready to start speaking out, and how Tonja hopes others won’t delay getting support, as she did, due to feeling shame for experiencing reduced mental faculties in a high-achieving environment
Acknowledgement that Tonja’s identity was tied up in intellect but that learning to see herself as more than her work was healing
Opening up to supervisors about experiencing depression
Taking time off PhD
Mention of pharmaceuticals, getting linked up with healthcare services, and talking (schema) therapy, which is discussed more in the next episode
Tips for navigating the healthcare system while depressed

Resources:

Tonja’s business Design to Transform - an evidence-based, green, inclusive and vegan interior design consultancy for workplaces.
*Tonja’s web course to help working mums increase their productivity and wellbeing working from home (www.designtotransform.com)
Insight timer app - free guided meditations for anything you could imagine

*Keep on the lookout for this to be released.

Tonja is available on LinkedIn and Instagram

The full transcript of the podcast is available here, thanks to Dan Ranson

For mental health support, please contact your GP or use the appropriate support for your country at https://checkpointorg.com/global/

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You can find out more about Voices of Academia & other personal stories at @academicvoices or our website.

Recorded 13/05/2021.

Sound: Mindset and Hard Sell by Ketsa is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, available through Free Music Archive.