by Raymond L. Moody, M.A.
In graduate school there is pressure to obtain grant funding and publish research. Both of these require months to review the existing literature, collect data, analyze, and then write a compelling argument. Then, all of your work is submitted to anonymous reviewers for them to examine the strengths and weaknesses of your research. This rigorous review process is vital to ensuring that valuable resources are being used to fund important research and that the information generated from this research is of good quality.
Earlier this year I submitted both a grant application to support my research as well as a couple of manuscripts to various psychology journals. After submitting my work, I began to grow more anxious as the review dates grew closer. Examining my anxiety, I identified a couple of rigid beliefs, including “my work must not be criticized and if it is it means I do not produce any good work” and “my work must not be rejected and if it is it means that I am a failure.” Recently, I began to receive the reviews of my work. Overall, the reviewers had a lot of nice things to say about my work along with several criticisms and recommendations for improvement. However, I noticed that when I received the reviews the first thing I read were the criticisms. My behavior was driven by my anxiety and the criticisms of my work helped to increase the salience of my irrational beliefs, thereby increasing my anxiety.
Fortunately, I began to challenge my irrational beliefs by asking myself what I might tell a friend who received criticisms of his/her work. I realized that I was holding myself to a different standard. I was able to generate a more flexible and rational belief, “I would prefer if my work was not criticized, but there is no reason it must not be. I don’t want to be immune to criticism. If I am criticized it may be uncomfortable but it does not mean all of my work is bad. Actually, critiques of my work could make it stronger.” After a Google search of “people who failed and then succeeded,” I found multiple actors, comedians, talk-show hosts, scientists, and others who endured failure and I was able to generate a second flexible belief, “I would prefer my work not to be rejected, but there’s no reason it must not, and if some of my work gets rejected it does not mean that I am a failure or that I am doomed to always fail in the future.” Having these alternative flexible beliefs available helped me to challenge my irrational beliefs and feel a healthy negative emotion, concern. Without feeling anxiety, I was able to focus on both the strengths and the weaknesses of my reviews and have begun to revise my work in preparation for resubmission.
