Doing a PhD can be a stressful and challenging experience. At times, you can find yourself feeling overwhelmed by self-doubt and negative thoughts such as “I am not good enough”, or “I will never finish this project”. At such times, your negative thoughts will become your own worst enemy. However, negative thinking and self-doubt during a PhD journey are very common. Therefore, it is important to emphasise that you are not alone, as almost all doctoral researchers feel at some point doubts about their career choice and whether they belong in academia.

In this workshop, which will be supported by a qualified and licenced low-intensity psychological wellbeing practitioner, you will learn what negative automatic thoughts are, what the most common negative thinking traps are, and most importantly, you will be thought strategies to challenge your negative thinking and balance your negative thoughts towards more positive ones. Once you complete this workshop, you will be able to independently put your negative thoughts to trial, find evidence for and against your negative thoughts, and come up with alternative thoughts, which will help you to balance your thoughts more toward the positive. There will be no need to disclose private or confidential information; we will just be discussing a practice which you can apply in your own time.