Working with (y)our well-being: stress and relational capabilities in PhD life

Content

PhD life is often described as intellectually stimulating, flexible, and full of opportunity. But it is also a period marked by high expectations, uncertain career paths, and intense forms of evaluation. Many PhD fellows experience pressure not only from workload, but from comparison, self-doubt, and the difficulty of navigating feedback, supervision, and collaboration in an environment where the stakes can feel very high.

Conversations about stress in academia often focus on individual coping strategies: how to optimize your time, manage your stress, or become more resilient. While these tools can be useful, they rarely address a central reality of academic life: well-being is deeply relational.

This workshop takes a different starting point. Rather than just asking how the individual can “fix” stress, we explore how well-being is shaped in relationships, expectations and in feedback cultures, and how developing relational capabilities can help PhD fellows navigate these dynamics more constructively.

Drawing on research from CBS Well-being Lab, the workshop introduces concepts such as shame and reaction patterns. Participants will work with real-life dilemmas from the PhD context and explore how different reaction patterns influence collaboration, supervision, and the experience of academic evaluation.

The aim is to develop a language and a set of relational skills for working with the pressure that PhD fellows likely experience in academic life.

The workshop combines research-based insights with practical exercises and dialogue. Participants will leave with a deeper understanding of how pressure operates in a competitive environment and with tools for navigating feedback, expectations, and collaboration in ways that support both professional development and well-being.

Learning objectives:

Participants will gain:

·         A deeper understanding of how pressure, comparison and evaluation shape the PhD experience

·         Insight into different reaction patterns under pressure – both their own and others’

·         A language for navigating feedback, supervision and collaboration

·         Tools for turning dialogue about well-being into a professional capability rather than a private concern

·         Opportunities to reflect on real dilemmas from the PhD context

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Program

TBA