Early career burnout/stress/anxiety experiences?
On paper, my career is going really well. I am in the third year of an early career fellowship, currently on an extended research visit to another institution. I've been awarded both individual and research grants, I've set up a couple of collaborations and I'm acting as co-I on those, and I recently secured a permanent position in a location I like starting at the end of the year.
However, my funding doesn't provide any lab members and so for the past 3 years I have been a one-person show. The split between experimental research, application writing, undergrad supervision, teaching, collaborations, and other admin has resulted in me feeling like I'm dropping the ball on something at all times. Added to this, being a mostly solo, semi-independent researcher has felt isolating, and one of the things I like most about research is discussing ideas with others and working as part of a team (which is why I set up the collaborations). Another contributing factor to the isolated feeling is that my funding opportunities have meant moving frequently (5 institutions in 3 counties over the past 5 years- turns out not great for lab productivity).
My experimental work has taken a huge hit as I'm in a field where you need to have significant hands-on, in-person lab time to develop projects (ideally, full time). For the past 2 years or so I have been neglecting experimental research in favour of trying to secure a permanant position/more funding (the prior 3 years I balanced research and applications pretty well). While I've now been successful in securing a position, my individual research has ground to a halt and I constantly feel like I'm letting my host/self/funders down.
For the past 12-18 months, the idea of doing experiments, which I once loved, fills me with a really intense anxiety. This has resulted in a paralysing impact on my experimental work which I hoped would pass but has not, and is almost self-perpetuating- I'm due to present my research outcomes to my host group in the next month, but don't have any. I'm also starting to wonder if this level of regular anxiety is going to impact my health.
I try to "reset" my mentality each week and try again, but the result is usually failing at putting in the requisite time and feeling awful about it. I have looked into this and it seems what I'm feeling matches definitions of stress, maybe moving towards burnout. I was curious to know if anyone else had experienced this and found ways to manage/overcome it?