notmycuppatea

What does Daisy like most about her job and what do you appreciate most in her?

Sounds like the two of you make a great team!

Relevant username

In my country, 1% of people whose parents have no high school diploma complete a PhD snd I’m one of them. Stress, mental health and Impostor Phenomenon have been in my life ever since I started my PhD and haven‘t left me since (4 years post-doc).

I‘m about to leave academia for good and poor work life balance, perceived stress and the constant nagging feeling I‘m bot good enough either way are the main push factors. I keep wondering whether I can turn things around and install healthy boundaries at my job, but then I remember I‘ve beeb trying that for X years already and I‘ll just continue being miserable if I stay.

• In your experience, can people drastically change the way the manage and perceive stress?

• Whats your favourite exercise you do with students?

• What’s the nr. 2 question you’d ask a person whose partner with mental health issues that came to you for advice? (Assuming #1 is “What brought you here today?”)

My brother started displaying symptoms in his early 20's, they were seizures with loss-awareness that often lasted a few minutes and left him unconscious for a while and then "off" for a couple of hours.

Once the doctors found that his seizures were focal (which came as a surprise, as they really looked like tonic-clonic to the untrained eye) and resistant to several medication combinations and dosages, he was scheduled for surgery. The surgery (in 2010) removed a tiny part of his brain that manifested inflammatory tissue or scar tissue. It must have been quite close to the prefontal cortex if I remember correctly, but they agreed to surgery as the tissue appeared to be well defined and rather on the surface.

Long story short: He recovered fine, struggled with short-term memory loss for quite some time post-surgery, never had a seizure again (just killer headaches).

Now to my questions: His neurology department was really interested in his case and had him become part of a study, monitored tons of things and were just generally very excited to have him there. As far as I understand his case must have been "rare" or "specific" for them to act this way.

Can you eplain to me what might have been different about his case?

Bonus question: One of the hypotheses why his symptoms started showing so "late" in life was a delayed onset caused by his regular cannabis use starting as an early teen. Is that possible at all?

Thanks for the fantastic work you're doing!