Recurring Dreams

Someone recently mentioned to me the often common occurrence of recurring nightmares that plague those of us who have spent a lot of time in school. You know the ones: you are taking a final exam and realize that you've somehow forgotten to attend this particular class...or you are trying to find the room where your dissertation defense exam is being held and you are lost....or you can't find your class notes and have an exam in a few minutes.  There are many variations on this theme, but they all have the same underlying fear of failure. 

I had such nightmares periodically all through school and even long after I had obtained a Ph.D. and had a job.  Mine always involved high school and an inability to find my locker (where my books and class notes were) or the appropriate classroom (always a math class) or both.  In the dream, I would be forced to go back to high school (regardless of age or the fact that I already had a Ph.D.) to take a math class that I had somehow neglected to take.  So there was also an element of not fitting in with the other students due to my age and other factors.  There I would be, back in high school...sort of like in the movie, Peggy Sue Got Married, in which a woman has an accident at her high school reunion and wakes up back in the 1950s.  In that case, Peggy Sue gets to relive a lot of events during her high school years, but with the mind of an adult. 

My dreams were similar to Peggy Sue's in that I would have the mind of an adult and all my memories and skills acquired up to that point.  You would think, then, that I would be more adept at finding my classroom and keeping track of my class notes.  But nooooo....I would be totally at a loss to figure out my class schedule, the locations of my classrooms, and how to find and open my assigned locker.  In some cases, I would find my classroom, but I would be so hopelessly behind, due to prior absences, that I would just sit there in complete bewilderment at what was being discussed.  Or I would find myself taking an exam for which I had not studied. Excruciating for someone who was always prepared for exams and always made high grades.

You would also think that someone who had managed to acquire a Ph.D. in a science field would be immune to such dreams.  Quite the contrary.  For me, they actually got worse after I completed my schooling and was working as a professor at a university.  I found these dreams to be unsettling because I realized that they indicated a lack of confidence.  I suspected also that they were related to my tendency toward perfectionism. 

Ultimately, however, I discovered how to stop these recurring dreams.

I had been reading about lucid dreaming, in which the dreamer realizes that they are dreaming and is then able to direct the dream.  The advantage of lucid dreaming is that you are only restricted by your imagination, not by the laws of physics or rules of society.  I've only managed to have a handful of lucid dreams over the years, but they were all quite amazing and realistic...bordering on out-of-body experiences.  The trick is to realize that you are dreaming, which is not as easy as it sounds.  For me, when I think I am dreaming, I apply a test, which is to see if I can fly.  If I am able to fly, then I know I am dreaming and can proceed to direct the dream.  It's a tricky balance, however.  I think what is happening is that you are in between a state of dreaming and consciousness.  Once you recognize you are dreaming, it often happens that you wake up because you slipped too far toward consciousness. 

My lucid dreams always seemed to have a very practical storyline.  The first lucid dream I ever had involved an ability to shoot a laser beam from my fingertips.  So what did I do with this amazing gift?  I proceeded to use it to trim the trees in my yard of dead branches!  Other dreams involved flying and traveling great distances to see different ecosystems of the Earth.  A bit more adventurous, but still practical from a professional standpoint.  These are quite vivid dreams, which upon waking, are difficult to distinguish from a real memory. 

I had other recurring nightmares about elevators, for example (don't ask me why, because I don't have a phobia about elevators in real life).  I began thinking that perhaps lucid dreams could be used to rid myself of these annoying recurring dreams. Unfortunately, I couldn't just turn lucid dreaming on and off at will.  I had to wait for one to occur spontaneously.

That's what finally happened with the school nightmares.  I found myself in the middle of a typical dream in which I was running around my high school, desperately looking for my math class, when I suddenly realized that this was a dream.  I then stopped and said to myself, "I have already graduated from high school and college and also completed graduate school. I have a Ph.D. and a job at a university. I don't need to go back to high school and take some silly math class."  Then I just turned and walked out the front door of the high school.  I never had these dreams again, and my sense of confidence increased dramatically.

My experience exemplifies one advantage to learning how to dream lucidly: overcoming fears and other psychological barriers to success.  You can accomplish the same thing with psychotherapy, of course, but going the dream route may work faster.  It certainly worked for me.  From what I understand about it (which isn't a lot), the best predictor of lucid dream ability is whether you have good dream recall.  I've always been able to recall my dreams in great detail; in contrast, my husband reports that he has great difficulty recalling any dreams at all.  In any event, dreams provide powerful insights into your psyche, and the ability to modify or control them might provide a means of treatment for certain disorders (post-traumatic stress disorder, for example).  It is definitely a way to minimize or eliminate nightmares.

I've been quite pleased to be rid of these recurring dreams about school.  However, I wonder if students these days have such nightmares?  Considering that skipping class and not having to take notes (the professor provides these on a website) are more common now than when I was a student, perhaps these fears of missing classes or losing notes are not as great? On the other hand, maybe it's worse?

Photo Credit: Promotional image for Peggy Sue Got Married, Tristar Pictures.

Beyond the Imposter Syndrome

I came across a blog post at "On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess" in which the blogger, Isis, announces that the "imposter syndrome" is a scam.  In case you've not heard of it, this condition is one in which the person secretly feels like an imposter in their field, despite being highly competent and successful.  They are afraid that eventually everyone will find out that they are not a real scientist. Graduate students (in general) and women in STEM fields seem to suffer disproportionately from this problem.

Anyway, Isis expresses frustration over how many women are moaning about suffering from this condition. I think the concern here is that women will attribute any failure (to land a grant, to publish a paper) to this syndrome and this behavior will, consequently, enhance the belief that they are imposters.  I also suspect that those who have read or written a lot about the imposter syndrome have become weary of it and think that there is nothing new to be learned.

However, I think there is more to be understood about imposter syndrome and its opposite, the Dunning-Kruger effect, which I think of as the "overinflated ego syndrome".  The Dunning-Kruger effect is one in which the person overestimates their abilities...and the more incompetent they are, the higher their level of confidence in their abilities. At first glance, it seems incomprehensible that people who constantly make mistakes or fail to meet performance expectations would paradoxically believe that they are competent or skilled. However, the mental skills required to be competent at any task (e.g., ability to assess what steps to take to accomplish the task, to gauge standards of performance) are the same skills needed to accurately evaluate one's own competence.

Kruger and Dunning summarize the key features of such people:

1. They tend to overestimate their own level of skill;
2. They fail to recognize genuine skill in others;
3. They fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy

Thus, people who are generally incompetent are unable to gauge their own performance correctly and tend to over-inflate their performance (in their minds) relative to the performance of others.  Ehrlinger et al. provide the following example:

"..to produce a grammatically correct sentence, one must know something about the rules of grammar. But one must also have an adequate knowledge of the rules of grammar in order to recognize when a sentence is grammatically correct, whether written by one's self or by another person. Thus, those who lack grammatical expertise are not in a position to accurately judge the quality of their attempts or the attempts of other people. In addition, because people tend to choose the responses they think are most reasonable, people with deficits are likely to believe they are doing quite well even when they are, in reality, doing quite poorly."

Sufferers of the imposter syndrome are just the opposite.  In psychological terms, imposter syndrome is a condition in which the sufferer is not able to internalize his or her accomplishments and skills.  They are highly critical of themselves and tend to over-inflate the performance of those around them.  If we use graduate students as an example, we can see the dynamics involved in creating the imposter mindset.  Students are in a subordinate position from virtually every standpoint. They interact with people who are obviously competent and superior (professors) and who constantly tell the student (in various ways) that they are not yet competent at the skills required to succeed in their field of study.  When the student is thrust into a position of responsibility (they graduate and get a job), they may find it difficult to transition from the "incompetent" to the "totally competent" mindset.  They may go on to develop "imposter syndrome".

These two syndromes are neatly summarized in one of my favorite sayings: "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." Charles Darwin.

Of course, these are two extremes along a wide spectrum of mental states. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle, perhaps with more women toward the imposter end and more men toward the inflated ego end (I have no data, just more than 40 years of observations). We may shift between these mental states over time, depending on our history and new situations.  I recall feeling like an imposter right after attaining my Ph.D., but this faded with time and experience. I can envision someone taking on a job in a new field and initially feeling like an imposter...at least until some experience in the new position is gained.  You can probably think of many other examples.

So what does all this have to do with women in science and does this information lead to any insights as to how we may solve some of the "challenges" we face?  More in the next post.

Writing Worries

Most of us started out in science with visions of all the neat experiments we would run; the interesting plants, animals, and environments we would work with; the exciting people we would meet; and the fame we would enjoy when we made some new discovery.  We were not aware (or if aware, did not give it much thought) that to succeed in science and continue doing all those other fun things, we would have to write....a lot.  And the writing would have to be good.  And it would be scrutinized by reviewers and editors.  And it might not pass muster.  Little wonder that many scientists struggle at some point in their development with writing problems.  

Until I did some reading about writing problems, aka "writer's block", I thought these were due to single factors such as perfectionism.  According to R. Boice, author of a book on writer's block, things are a bit more complicated.

Information about writing problems apparently is based more on conjecture than on empirical study. People view writer's block as being as mysterious as writing itself.  A lot of myths surround the process of writing, which can contribute to some of the problems novice writers encounter.  For example, I often hear people say that they have to have a good idea of what they are going to say before starting to write.  The fact that this is a statement often made by people with writer's block speaks for itself.  I find, in contrast to this idea, that the very act of writing stimulates ideas and insights that do not necessarily come while just contemplating a writing project.

So what are the causes of writing problems?  The following points are modified from the book, "Professors as Writers-Self Help Guide to Productive Writing", by R. Boice:

1. Poor work habits. I would guess the single most common reason given for not writing is lack of time.  I know I use that excuse. However, observations of academicians' activities show small blocks of time during the work week in which writing could be done, but isn't taken advantage of. These writers often say that they need large blocks of uninterrupted time to write.  In fact, professors who write in brief, daily chunks (30 min) accomplish more than their colleagues who binge-write. Successful writers tend to write early in the morning when they are fresh, work at a regular schedule, and ensure a good physical environment for writing.

2.  Fear of failure.  We fear that our writing may turn out to be inaccurate or boring and get rejected.  Or we may fail to complete the writing task on time.  These writers are apprehensive about the outcome and engage in behavior that undermines their writing.

3. The internal critic.  This construct of our own brains censors our ideas as not being good enough, which prevents us from getting any ideas down on paper until they are perfect in our heads.  This mental censor kills spontaneity and confidence.

4.  Perfectionism. This trait is a major cause of writing problems and one that has connections with #2, fear of failure and #3 internal critic.  For some writers, this manifests itself as a compulsion to keep revising and never getting to the point of finishing.  For others, perfectionism prevents spontaneity and getting ideas down on paper because they think it has to be written perfectly the first time.

5. Procrastination.  Because writing is an intermittent activity and easily put off, it suffers inordinately from procrastination.  People procrastinate because of #2 fear of failure and distaste of the task.

6. Early experience.  This cause can range from being told unproductive myths about writing by teachers to a terrible writing experience such as the one I described previously. 

7.  Mental health.  Writers and other creative people have traditionally been portrayed as being mentally or emotionally unstable.  This idea about writers' psychopathology naturally extends to why writers have writing problems.  Studies correlate mood disorders with creativity in writers and conclude a cause and effect relationship.  But it may be that mood disorders arise from the writer's work habits or that both are responding to a third, unobserved factor.

8.  Personality types.  This cause is related to several of the others. People who are introverted and more self-conscious (perfectionists) may be inclined toward writing problems more than those who are extroverts and less concerned about what other people think of them.

In the next posts, I'll take a closer look at some of these issues and some possible solutions.

Photo credit: Library of Congress, unidentified "woman scientist" circa 1909