Podcast – If you can’t love yourself, then how the hell you gonna love your science – Part 1

Voice Over:

Welcome to the NIHR Dementia Researcher podcast, brought to you by dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk, in association with Alzheimer’s Research UK and Alzheimer’s Society. Supporting early career dementia researchers across the world.

Adam Smith:

Hello, thank you for listening to the dementia researcher podcast. I’m Adam Smith, and I’m joined today by three early career dementia researchers to discuss mental health struggles in academia, which is often seen as something everybody needs to go through, but do they? Before we start, I want to explain that this is the first podcast we’re recording since the social distance in measures came into place. And this means that we’re using a slightly different method to record, and the sound quality might not be as great as it would normally be, but we hope you can still understand. And on the bonus side, we may even release a video version of this podcast.

So, in this podcast, we will chat about the factors that play into the struggles and the experiences of our panellists in moving through those challenges I mentioned earlier and how they came out of the other side. Circumstances have changed a little since we planned this podcast, making the topic even more pertinent now than ever before. So we’re going to keep with the original plan format, but we will also touch on what’s going on outside right now, since the measures came into force to protect people from corona virus just because that really does add to the extra struggles that I think we might all face. It is a little hard to sound up-beat in these months, but I am genuinely delighted to introduce Dr. Katie Askew, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Edinburgh and owner of two bunnies called Lola and Flocky? Is it Flocky?

Dr Katie Askew:

Hello.

Adam Smith:

Hello Katie.

Dr Katie Askew:

Hi.

Adam Smith:

I also have Dr. Isabel Castano, a postdoctoral researcher from the University of Exeter and a practitioner of aerial yoga and a front line soldier in the battle against Omnix, which in layman’s terms means that she plays a lot of video games. How are you going with the practice in your aerial yoga whilst self-isolating in Isabelle?

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Hi. The aerial yoga was more of a short phase, but yoga is definitely still a constant in my life.

Adam Smith:

Well, hello Isabel. And last but not least, we have Makis, I’m going to have a crack at your surname, Makis Tzioras?

Makis Tzioras:

Almost there, Tzioras.

Adam Smith:

Tzioras, who is a PhD student from the University of Edinburgh. Could you feel like, it sounds like you’ve been a PhD student forever. Are you nearly finishing?

Makis Tzioras:

Well, that’s the thing about the PhD, lasts both for a second and also for a lifetime. So I was, when we did the podcast last year was my second year and I’m in my third year and I’ve got barely less than a year left now.

Adam Smith:

Okay. So it’s not been as long as it feels like. I just seem to have seen you around for ages.

Makis Tzioras:

I know, I know. I just, I’ll never go.

Adam Smith:

Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. You’ll get it soon, eventually.

Makis Tzioras:

I’ll get it soon. And also for the Brooklyn-99 fans, I’ll have to say not a doctor.

Adam Smith:

Well, and also as well, I should say that we allow panellists to choose the title of each podcast and today’s title, get ready for this, is If You Can’t Love Yourself, Then How The Hell Are You Going To Love Your Science? Let’s have a serious chat about self-care in academia. I instantly thought that I would have you to thank for this Makis, because of course you are famous for our 50 Shades Of Microglia, which you, those of you will recall, we recorded at the AI UK conference last March, but I gather it’s not your title.

Makis Tzioras:

It’s not mine. I must give all the credit to Katie who so brilliantly came up with it.

Dr Katie Askew:

Yeah. I don’t know quite where it came from, well I can, that’s a lie. I binged watched 11 seasons of Drag Race in about three months because I live on my own. So even when I’m not stuck in my flat, I have a lot of free time and I have this thing about two part titles for things. I don’t like it to just be one thing. It needs to have an explanation after it, and I should probably grow out of that at some point, but like a subtitle.

Adam Smith:

And so will we recognise that in your papers when you publish? Is that something you’ve sneaked in?

Dr Katie Askew:

In one of them already, yes.

Adam Smith:

Well, I would like to thank you because it makes it really fun to try and squeeze that into the title of a podcast. Because when you’re going to look up this on your app, it’s going to be one of those that kind of it’ll get to the first part, I think we’ll get to, if you can’t love yourself and then we’ll get dot, dot, dot, who knows what people will think we’ve been talking about.

Dr Katie Askew:

Well, love yourself. Just give up now. I’m kidding.

Adam Smith:

Okay. Thank you very much, everybody for joining us. So before we start, could I perhaps ask you to do a more serious introduction of yourself and tell us a little bit about your work. Katie, could you maybe go first?

Dr Katie Askew:

Sure. So I did my PhD at the University of South Hampton in neuroimmunology. I finished in November, 2018. So then I moved up to Edinburgh, my first post doc. So I’m over halfway through that now. I’m supposed to finish next March, which is somewhat stressful with how much there is left to do and the time constraints. We now find ourselves in. At the moment, I’m trying to figure out how the anatomy cells of the brain microglia contribute to white matter damage in a rodent model of vascular cognitive impairment. And I’m really enjoying it. We’re trying to write up a paper at the moment, which is super exciting. So like it’s a good time in the lab. And I was just about to start another big study, which would have also been exciting. It’s now on pause for a little bit, but things are going well and I’m really enjoying it.

Adam Smith:

Fantastic. Thank you, Katie. How about you Isabel?

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Oh, hi, again. My name is Isabel Castanho and I’m a postdoc at the University of Exeter where I actually did my PhD. So originally I come from the Azores Islands, did all my undergraduate and master’s training in main Portugal. And then I moved to the UK in 2015 to do my PhD, which was, it’s in an epigenetics lab, but my PhD was more focused on gene expression. And currently I’m doing research more into epigenetics and this all in the context of Alzheimer’s disease using mouse models. I finished my PhD last year and then got married, started the post doc. I just finished the first year of the postdoc,

I guess something that I just wanted to mention for being here today, I was so excited when I saw the great title and theme topic on Twitter, because for me, it’s quite close to my heart. I do have a fair amount of experience with mental health as I’m no stranger to anxiety, which I’ve been learning to control over the past few years. And I do have a history of depression in the past, but something that I’m very proud of, which I achieved during the PhD and now a postdoc is that I guess I’ve evolved. And today I cherish my mental health much more and I take care of it. And I’m looking forward to discuss all of this with you guys today.

Adam Smith:

Thanks, Isabel. And Makis.

Makis Tzioras:

Yeah, so hi, I’m Makis. I’m a PhD student still at the University of Edinburgh. I’m also working on microbial cells, which I really, really love. So, my project is a little bit different to Katie’s because I am looking at how much microglia and synapses interact in Alzheimer’s disease and in the ageing brain. It’s been a very interesting journey, the whole PhD. I have to say, I have enjoyed most of it. When I went in it, I knew of the challenges in mental health that people face. And I really went in thinking, you know what? I think I’ll be okay. And no matter what happens, I’ll just keep a positive attitude. It doesn’t always work out that way, but then you go through it and you learn how to make the most of situations. So just before we go into the whole topic of mental health and academia, I think everyone can get help and everyone can get better.

Adam Smith:

Well, thank you very much, everybody for those introductions and for being so honest as well, which is we know that these can be tough things to talk about. And I feel guilty now for taking the mickey out of you Makis at the start saying you’re still a PhD student. For all I know, that could be one of the things that’s really preying on your mind. So I apologise. I hope you know I was only joking.

Makis Tzioras:

Not at all. Honestly, it’s not been, I’ve really been enjoying the PhD process and I’ve been lucky enough to be in a great lab and with great people, great supervisor. If anything, I keep telling my supervisor, I wish I could just stay a PhD student with you forever and just stay here and never go.

Adam Smith:

Oh, well that’s something that I think we’d all like in academia, is a place to be forever, right. I should say Katie, you are coming to the end of your fellowship, did you say, and do you know what your next move is? Or is that adding to the anxiety?

[crosstalk 00:09:55] It’s really cold over there. It’s nice and warm in England.

Dr Katie Askew:

So today it’s going to be 17 degrees. Do you know how much that is? 17. Yeah. I mean, it’s a bit of a weird one because when I finish, I mean, like everybody else, I have a long history with mental health problems, which were around before I started in academia, but I’d say academia probably hasn’t helped. And at the end of my PhD, I was very done with, not with science, but the love had kind of gone out of it. You know, it had been such a slog to get to the end. Things hadn’t been working, lots of stuff had been going on. And I wanted to do a postdoc to see if I still loved science. And if that spark would come back in, because I had always wanted to be in academia, have my own lab, be a PI and I don’t want my own lab, which is fine. It’s taken me a long time to come to that being an okay thing because I love being at the bench. To a certain extent, I do really like writing. I had a great time writing my thesis, but there’s a lot of … this could be a whole other podcast, there’s a lot of aspects of academia that don’t sit quite right with me, but I don’t know what I would do if I wasn’t in academia at the moment.

Adam Smith:

That’s a struggle. James Quinn, who you may know from Manchester recorded a webinar with us last week and he raised this issue about, do you want to do a postdoc? Is it really the right thing for you? Is a fellowship …? I mean, he’d made a big slide of all the other jobs you could do with that skill set. So go and have a look. There was a bigger list than I expected. There was lots of stuff in there. You could become a teacher, you could become this various other things, you didn’t have to follow that path.

Well, thank you very much again, everybody for sharing that. When I introduced you, I deliberately selected something from part of your bios that was around a fun fact. And then of course, I brought you all back to the science and I want to take you back to those fun facts again there. So how important do you feel it is to get away from the science with those work activities? Maybe Makis, if you could, do you have some interests outside of work?

Makis Tzioras:

So I’m definitely not the kind of person that has all these hobbies and stuff like that. I do a lot of things after work because I realised you really need to switch off when you leave work. And I learned that the hard way, because I would not stop thinking about work when I would go home. So whether that is watching Drag Race or doing some exercise or recently I’ve taken up painting. Me, I used to get a C minus in arts, and now I’m doing that and it’s been really fun. So I like to switch things up a lot. I’m not the kind of person that will do one thing as a hobby and just keep at that. But it’s absolutely important to just switch off, you leave work and that’s it. Next day you go back. If you have a problem, you’ll fix it tomorrow. It’s not a problem that you should take home.

Adam Smith:

Do you have work emails come through on your iPhone?

Makis Tzioras:

I do. Yeah. I think …

Adam Smith:

Do you read them?

Makis Tzioras:

I read them. It doesn’t matter, I got an email 2:00 AM and I woke up from it and I still had to look at it just to see what is it and I didn’t reply, but I still had a look and yeah, maybe I should take my own advice better.

Adam Smith:

Well, I’ve often thought about this myself about, about perhaps find a way to turn work emails off. Whilst I do need them on my phone because I’m out and about through the day. And I do need to check them to be able to. I’m not disciplined enough to be able to say at five o’clock, I’m going to turn those off and it can ruin a whole evening. I can read something that frustrates me and then I play this over and over again, over and over again in my head. And I’ll stew on these things and it can really down my mood. Like you, those kinds of other things distract me and help. But it’s good that you managed to leave the lab at home and have that work separation.

Makis Tzioras:

Yeah, it was a long process. It still happens, but as much as possible. I try to just leave it behind. But there is a part of me that just … I need to be reachable if you know what I mean. So if the world is on fire and someone needs to let me know that the world is on fire, I need to be reachable. And if I decide to do something about that or say, well, the world’s on fire, I can’t do anything about it. It’s now up to me, but it’s giving the peace of mind knowing that if someone needs something, they have the option of reaching me.

Adam Smith:

So again, I guess you do manage to escape. What about you, Katie?

Dr Katie Askew:

So, I’ve realised that I say, I mean quite a lot, so I’m going to apologise everyone for that now, because I can’t stop saying it. I always thought that there’s this idea in academia that if work isn’t your whole life, that you’re not good enough or dedicated enough, I’m doing the fingers, if we do release this video, you’ll be able to see it, I’m doing quotation fingers. I just don’t buy that. I think that’s a load of rubbish because I love my work, but I also really want to have a life outside of work. And you know, for my mental health, I cannot function if I don’t switch off. I used to have my emails on my phone until last summer, I think. It used to send me into a tailspin every night because something would come through and I’d read it and I’d be like, Oh God, I haven’t done that. I haven’t done enough, all this stuff. And it’s not good for me. So I don’t have my work emails coming through to my phone, but I do have the outlook web page in my Safari. So I can check them if I want to. I usually don’t, but I try to leave the lab at five. I try to leave everything in the lab because realistically, if I’m at home, what am I going to do? I’m going to get stressed about it. So I might as well not look.

Adam Smith:

That’s interesting, you made that point about work and your life. Because I’m the same. The something is that when I am just working all the time, I feel really in control. I’m really on top of everything and I feel happier than I am when I’m working less, but doing personal things outside … do you know what I mean? I think being on top of absolutely everything at work and being in control makes me happier than having a work life balance, which feels really unhealthy. I don’t know Makis, you wanted to …

Makis Tzioras:

I really resonate with that statement that when I’m really busy at work, it makes me feel really good because I like what I do. And I feel like it’s going somewhere, which is really great. The only downside to that, I guess the listeners may want to pay attention to is that, when you put your work so far up into your life and it becomes so important, when something goes wrong, because things do go wrong, especially in science, when something does go wrong, if you’ve put your science on such a high horse, the downfall is a lot bigger. So take those waves as they come. So, when your work is going well and you want to work a bit more, do it, but always remember that your self-worth does not depend on your science and that comes back to your title.

Adam Smith:

That’s a good point. Isabel, how important do you feel it is to get away from the science without work activity?

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Yeah, the points that were, that was just on top of everything that was said so far. And it’s the fact that we feel guilty when we’re not working and I do tend to do that a lot of the being in constant control and trying to be on top of everything. But at some point you just aren’t, at some point you lose control because it’s just so much and it’s definitely not healthy for you. One thing you guys were mentioning phones. One thing that I’ve started to doing is, at least in my phone, I have a do not disturb option. So after I think is 9:00 PM every day until 7:00 AM, I think, nothing comes up and that includes messages as well. But then I choose if I want to go on WhatsApp and check if someone messaged me. I’ve been much more in control. And I do that for holidays as well. I just put out of the office replies and just turn everything off. And although it’s hard for me to lose that control, I know it’s good for me because then my mental health thanks me.

Now on the fun facts, I wanted to touch a little bit on the fun facts that you mentioned, Adam. Because as I said, aerial yoga was a bit of a short phase, but yoga has helped me. Yoga meditation has helped me so much. So I started half way through my PhD and it really helped me a lot. It has been teaching me to pause when I have to, to accept things, to love myself.

And then the video games. When I read the fun facts that you were going to touch on today, about me playing a lot of video games. That’s so true for some specific times, like last week on Easter break, some weekends, I wouldn’t say maybe last evening, but truth is most of the time that I do spend playing video games, it’s with a really nice group of boys. And when I say boys, most of them are between 30’s and 40’s. So most are actually older than me, but I’m just in a completely different world. I am not Isabel anymore. I don’t have experiments, abstracts, meetings, career, even to worry about for those few hours, I am Dr. Cherry and yes, I will admit I changed my nickname after PhD.

Adam Smith:

I was about to ask what your gamer tag.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Now it’s Dr. Cherry Sweet. Yeah, it’s very tacky, but on those few hours, I’m just Dr. Cherry, the healer or the space ninja. It really helps me because it gets me away. And like it was mentioned, I think it’s really important that our science doesn’t define us because then we just get lost in it. There’s so much more in life. There’s so much more that can even help us with our science because then we get creative or just by stepping away, we come back with a fresh mind, with a new perspective. I think it’s really important. And just to have fun actually, to just calm you down.

Adam Smith:

I absolutely agree. Katie spent a lot of time nodding during that reply there as well. I can see Katie has a Nintendo Switch Controller around the background. I’ve got Nintendo Switch and an X-Box. My gamer tag is Dynorod, but I’ve had it for like 15 years. I can share that experience. I have a group of 20 people I’ve known for years. We physically met once, which is always a little bit strange when you’re in the pub and people are still calling each other by their gamer tags. But I quite enjoy the escape. What are you playing at the moment, Katie?

Dr Katie Askew:

So I’m not as cool as everyone else because I’m currently playing Animal Crossing.

Adam Smith:

Well, I’ve been playing Lego Harry Potter and it’s really annoying me where the last gold brick is.

Dr Katie Askew:

I love the Lego games. I also play video games and I also do a lot of yoga. So I’m in the same boat as well. I started doing yoga, I think, at the end of my master’s and then really kicked up during my PhD because I just need a little bit of time to myself. And even if you don’t buy into the whole mentality of yoga, it’s really good exercise. I have a ton of joint problems. So I’ve had to stop doing all your generic exercising and yoga is the only thing I can really do now to stop my joints falling out. So I try and do an hour or so a day. I do it with Yoga with Adrienne on YouTube. And I am sure be many people listening who know who she is. I love her. She is my internet best friend, even though she doesn’t know who I am. And at the moment I’m spending more time with her than with anyone else because I can put her on the TV and we can have a laugh together. It sounds really sad. Yoga has been a huge, huge part of sort of my mental health out in the last three, four years. So I very much advocate for that as well.

Adam Smith:

That’s good. And we should add, you have got a boyfriend, right? I mean, you could always talk to him instead of your yoga lady.

Dr Katie Askew:

Okay. So yes, I do talk to him a lot. He also does yoga.

Adam Smith:

He answers back, which is a problem, right?

Dr Katie Askew:

No, he’s very good. Bless him. He’s great. Yes. I could talk to my man friend, but Adrienne’s there.

Adam Smith:

Well, I am going to put my next question back to you, Katie, I’m being serious for a moment. So when the science isn’t going well, just how does that make you feel and what do you do about it?

Dr Katie Askew:

For a really, long time, my whole sense of self-worth was defined by my research can see Isabel nodding away. Well, look something that everyone she has in common. Yeah. It was really, really tough starting my postdoc actually, because I was trying to set up new technique in this lab. I was trying to do protocols, but like things like immunohistochemistry, sorry, I’ve got the rabbits in the room with me and I’m really worried they’re going to start banging it around, so I’m looking over in the corner ever so often to see the rabbits.

Trying to start up this technique in our lab. Doing things I’d spent my whole PhD doing that suddenly weren’t working. And I was like, Oh my God, what? I guess I can’t actually do science. Why am I here? Why am I doing this postdoc? It sucked. I would go home from work every day, cried on the phone to Charlie, my boyfriend and be like, this was a terrible decision. Why did I move here? I’m not very good. I can’t do this. They should have hired someone else. That was really, really hard. So that’s been something for the last eight months, I’d say maybe July last year was a turning point. I’ve been trying really, really hard to separate me as a human being from me at work.

And I’m still not a 100% there. A lot of my anxiety at the moment is work related. So I think I’m going in the right direction. I try more to take a step back now instead of descending immediately into a tailspin, when something doesn’t work, I’m like, right, hang on a second. Let’s stop. Let’s take a breath. Thank you yoga. And I go and talk to someone, be the other postdocs in the lab. I have a PhD friend from South Hampton who I talked to every day, she’s my science pa;. And whenever anything isn’t working, we’ll message each other, mostly for a moan. But actually just for a little bit of a reality check is good because it’s like, hang on this isn’t the end of the world. This is quite a minor thing that’s happened and it’s fixable.

Adam Smith:

What’s this pressure you’re putting on yourself? Genuinely when things go wrong, I think so much, then the problems can be caused by other people because of course other people’s reactions to you. If your supervisor’s coming off as disappointed or they’re applying pressure, that certainly doesn’t help. And I think then there’s not a lot you can do with that, other than try to decide how you’re going to deal with the response you get, but it might not provoke that kind of feeling within you if that external supervision and that external support was presented in a different way. And I know the MRC has done that work recently, but pushing back a little bit and giving that feedback to supervisors, which nobody ever dares to say, look, you could have just presented that a little bit differently instead of calling me a dick.

Dr Katie Askew:

Yeah. It’s very difficult to talk about that kind of thing on a public podcast, isn’t it, if you don’t want to be like, Oh my supervisor, I don’t think that.

Adam Smith:

No. You don’t have to name names, but I suppose is it fair to, did some of the problems you were feeling, did you feel that they were external and it wasn’t just … yeah.

Dr Katie Askew:

Yeah. Yeah. I definitely think whether PIs mean to or not, they play a huge part in the development and propagation of mental health problems in ECRs and on PhD students. Some PIs are very, very supportive. Some of my PhD friends have gone through their PhDs with mental health problems that haven’t been exacerbated by PI. Others, I’ve had friends that have left their PhDs because of their PI. I think it’s really tough. And part of that is I think PIs themselves must have their own mental health struggles. Obviously, never been a PI. Haven’t got a clue, but I think there’s this sort of I don’t … words are really hard at the moment.

It’s not a food chain, but it’s that sort of thing with mental health that down from the PIs to everybody else. And even if you don’t intentionally frame your response to someone in a negative way, I certainly always perceive things as negative. I assume that everybody’s annoyed at me. I assume that nobody likes me. And I assume that people regret inviting me to work with them, even if that’s not the case, that’s the first thing my brain will go to.

Adam Smith:

I’m sure it’s absolutely is not the case, but I think it is important to recognise that particularly for any PIs who are out there who are listening to this, is to hear this feedback from early career researchers that whilst everybody might be putting a brave face on it at work or disappearing to have a meltdown in the bathroom, that you can make a big difference into changing that culture and to helping people in both how you present your feedback and also as well, just being attentive to him, showing interest, not to the point that you’re looking over somebody’s shoulder all the time, because that’ll make everybody … it’s a fine balance. That will make everybody paranoid, but enough interest that you can identify when things are going wrong, that you can provide that help and support and Katie do you want to come back on that one?

Dr Katie Askew:

I want to point out that I’ve seen a lot of really encouraging things on Twitter. A lot of young PIs really actively pushing for a change in culture and a change in recognition of mental health and advocating for ECRs to work healthily, which is really nice. I think there are people moving in the right direction. I certainly don’t think that’s a cross academia thing, but I think now it’s being recognised and steps are being taken. Obviously the MRC rapport was a huge wake up to a lot of people, and I know that some PIs actually contacted their staff and were like, can we talk about this? Because I didn’t realise. And I think there’s a shift happening. It’s a very slow shift. Be nice if it was a little bit faster, but I think we’re starting to recognise and hopefully implement change in a good direction.

Adam Smith:

All right, thank you for making that point. That is important. I think we could talk about this all day. So what I’m going to do now is we’re going to make this podcast into a two part special. So we’ll take a pause right now.

Thank you very much to Katie, Isabel, Makis, for sharing with us so far. If you have been affected by any of the things we’re talking about today, please do know that help is out there and we’ll put some links on our web pages. We have profiles on all our panellists, including their Twitter accounts. And if any of our listeners have any questions, we also have a busy WhatsApp community group where you can catch other early career researchers. We also have a new webinar series. So please do take a look at our website where you’ll find details on that. Finally, remember to like, subscribe and share our podcast. Thank you very much again to everybody who’s contributed. This is the end of part one. Please come back for part two where we’ll continue talking about this important subject. Thank you.

Voice Over:

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