I’m shaky, I’m anxious, I drop everything, I feel overwhelmed by every little task. There seems to be so much to do, yet I flail between tasks like a headless chicken, accomplishing nothing. The idea of getting myself to a departmental meeting on Thursday is daunting. It looms ahead like a formidable task of terrifying proportions. I try answering student emails but can’t formulate a single sentence. The need to choose what to make for dinner scares me. When I imagine that starting next Monday I will have to get up, get dressed, put on make-up, and go teach my classes gives me a panic attack.
“What is it?” I ask myself. “What’s happening to me?”
I vaguely remember reading about this. All of my symptoms sound very familiar.
Finally, it hits me: I have the “housewife syndrome”!
I’m not even a real housewife. In these past four months, I worked a lot. I taught my online course, translated, worked on my research. Still, being at home, away from the structured environment of the workplace, the hierarchy, the network of daily professional relationships has turned me into this indecisive, unproductive, disorganized creature who is daunted by the simplest tasks.
The year I spent writing my dissertation produced very similar results, only they were more intense. It took me almost a year to get fully rehabilitated and reintegrated into the workplace.
If anybody has any advice or suggestions on how to get myself together, I will appreciate that.
Clarissa's Blog 
Just remember that you one of the truly fortunate few who have a well-paid tenurable job in a field that you love. The summer vacation has been too long. That is the only problem that confronts you. Children feel the same way when ‘back to school’ messages flash across the TV screen.
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Thank you! I do feel like a lost child right now, you are right.
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I don’t know if you will find this helpful.
For me this is nothing to do with housewifery or not – it’s to do with routine and comfort levels.
I used to be very bothered by the fact that I would get painfully stressed, distracted and anxious when undertaking anything new or simply different, regardless of whether it was something I knew full well that I could do. I have never really gotten past that – I still always have a period of distress at the beginning of new things.
However, learned experience has taught me that this too will pass. It doesn’t get any better, but I don’t beat myself up about the fact that I am struggling with it. It helps a little, to just accept that this is the way I am and to build time for me to freak out into the schedule.
The other useful tip that I picked up somewhere is to pick a block of free time and to pick the thing that is most imminently scary and to visualise what is most frightening about it and play it out as the the worst possible scenario with all the most far fetched what ifs I can manage. Sometimes this upsets me a lot, but I find it has two advantages; one, if I play the scenario right out it lets me complete the stress cycle and I’m not left buzzing with undealt with tension and two, playing it through helps me gain perspective on it.
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Once again, I’m the opposite to you. I don’ t function in a structured environment, although I can tolerate quite a bit of hierarchy at times, so long as it is rational and the structures are clear.
Since my mind naturally takes me in multiple directions at once, I subdue myself by telling myself I have already achieved a great deal and that what I need now is to stay on one track and to exercise patience rather than engaging in speculation.
I don’t think this will help you as we are opposites.
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I know exactly what you mean; this happens to me too at the end of every summer. What I found helps is (a) a routine, when I still go in to campus for a few hours every day, even if it is summer and (b) talking to someone, usually one of my colleagues, about research. (b) is particularly helpful because it makes me feel grounded and connected to the real (?) world.
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Thank you, L! I have b) planned for tomorrow and a) for the day after. 🙂
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Perhaps pretend you have a new TA (the alter-you) that you are orienting to life as a professor. You have to demonstrate being efficient and confident, for them, and show them how to prioritize things and put them into perspective, so that they learn and so that they have a nice experience. ?
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This sounds very brilliant. 🙂 OK, I will try this. My teaching persona always reduces anxiety.
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I am finishing my sabbatical year, during which I worked a lot from home, and I feel pretty much the same way you do. The prospect of meetings fills me with disgust, and just the fact that I will have to be somewhere at a given time every day causes discomfort. Not sure what to tell you — I just know I will have to get myself together and do what I have to do because that’s what the job requires. So (grudgingly) onward and upward! 🙂
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It makes me feel better to know I’m not alone. 🙂 We can do it! I believe in us!
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My only advice is to breathe.
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Also, consider this: make the structure work for you instead of feeling overwhelmed by it. Visualize yourself as walking along it, rather than having it stacked above you somehow.
It is bullying and resentful students, of which I have a lot in the fall, who terrify me; I have just remembered this and have realized I should prepare for that. I am not completely sure how but it will involve not letting their violence through my shield, somehow. (Paul Ryan’s way of treating people is more or less like theirs … the violent Christian Republican patriarchal types … you have to treat them as a prison guard would, says one of my colleagues, but I am not interested in this tactic, and I am looking for a different solution.)
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http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/a-surprising-realization-clarissas-blog.html
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