How do you calm down quickly post submission?

[Hope.for.the.best]

I submitted my PhD dissertation last week. However, it seems like some of the symptoms (described in the previous thread) are still lingering. 

I am glad that that annoying lump in my throat disappeared the moment I submitted! The tension somehow transferred to my forehead that evening, but after a good night sleep I was marvellous. I woke up with a sense of calmness, which I have not experienced for more than 1.5 year. My standard morning before submission was to fight that lump in the throat. I also felt much more comfortable with the wind. In fact, it was very windy on my submission date, and I was okay the whole time walking from the printing centre to the graduate school office (a long walk actually). I did not have to stop and catch my breaths before continuing with the walk. I was able to travel to a shopping centre half an hour away yesterday, despite the crazy traffic. These are good signs, because I am slowly getting better, and it seems like I was overly stressed out but not having an illness.

However, I still get tensed up from time to time. It is way less severe than pre-submission, but I am wondering how I can get rid of it quickly. I am going on a holiday tomorrow, which will certainly help. Other than that, do you have any suggestions to quickly recover from the intense stress? 

I am notoriously known for calming down very slowly. In my bachelor years, I once studied so hard that I could not swallow food at night (thankfully okay during breakfast and lunch). It took me a psychologist visit and 6 weeks before I got back to normal. 

Thanks.

Edited December 20, 2017 by Hope.for.the.best

[fuzzylogician]

If you've been tense for a year and a half and experiencing severe symptoms, you can't expect it all to magically go away in one day or even one week, especially if you're still in the same triggering environment. The best advice I can offer you is to keep doing what you're doing: stick to a routine, and allow yourself some down-time. A holiday, some shopping, that all sounds good. Regular exercise, cooking at home, doing some leisure activity -- whatever works for you -- are other useful things to do. Whenever I accomplish something big I give myself permission to take at least the rest of the day off, more if I can afford it, to do absolutely nothing related to work. It's also nice to celebrate, to have an official recognition of your achievement among friends. I hope you have someone who you can go to happy hour with to mark the occasion. And then, you find something else to focus your energy on. If you're waiting on anything (referee reports? starting a job?) but you can't do anything about it, it's usually helpful to divert the nervous waiting-energy to something else. Work or not, find something to do to keep yourself occupied; that will also help keep you from getting over-emotional. 

And congrats! It was a long road, I'm glad you made it. 

[kingspeech]

For physical stuff, maybe seek out yoga or meditation videos with a focus on breathing, and practice breathing with an open throat.

[maxhgns]

I treated myself to a new and engrossing video game, and a few weeks work-free. When I got back to work, I prepped my defense talk in very small chunks at a time (e.g. read a dzen or so pages at a time, made just a couple slides, etc.) and then used the rest of my workday to start new projects.

[Hope.for.the.best]

Time flies. Half a year has passed since I submitted my dissertation. My defence went well and I was awarded my PhD 2 months ago. As some of you may aware, I have started my postdoc with one of my advisors, *Ben. Things are going very well, although I was in a bit of tension with my other advisors, *Andy and *Cecilia, when starting this job, as I described previously. 

Thankfully the burnt bridge with *Cecilia and *Andy was repaired. It turned out that that tension-provoking experiment was *Andy's nasty plot to make me work unpaid for him after I submitted my dissertation, as he could not get any funding. I brought that up to *Ben when *Cecilia was upset that I did not do that experiment before starting his job. Thankfully, *Ben was receptive and resolved the situation perfectly. Now, both *Ben and *Cecilia are convinced that *Andy has been nasty to me, and it is seriously damaging our collaboration, so they asked me to draft the manuscript and submit without that experiment. I can tell *Cecilia is apologetic for the whole incident, as she has been very nice to me since then, even nicer than when I was still doing my PhD! I bumped into *Andy the other day, and he asked me how I was getting alone in a friendly way. He may still hate me from his heart, but at least he is not yelling at me anymore. 

It is a relief that things did not end up as badly as I expected. However, I still feel the PhD stress lingering from time to time. My project with *Ben is going very well, and I get on well with everyone in his lab, so I am quite puzzled why I still get stressed out for some trivial things. I have seen a psychologist regarding this, and she says I just need to take all my time needed to get back to that unstressed state before PhD. I am wondering, is it weird to remain in the PhD write-up state after I have been conferred my degree?

Any advice is appreciated. Thank you.