I submitted my thesis in end of June and I am waiting for my viva. I don't even know the date yet but I presume it will be around November. I have started a post-doc in the meantime and that is going smoothly.

The issue is, I am very nervous about my upcoming viva and my thesis. Weeks go by where I don't think about my doctoral work and life is good. But then, I suddenly think about limitations in my thesis, things I should've done, things that could've been potentially wrong and all I can think about is my examiners finding mistakes in my work etc. etc.

It doesn't help that my internal examiner is a PI in my new lab and he is known to be very thorough so my anxiety relating to my thesis is exacerbated by this knowledge. I therefore keep thinking about the embarrassment of potentially being the only person in my lab ever to get major corrections and other ridiculous negative thoughts.

How have others coped with these issues? I'm sure I'm not alone with these thoughts. There must be other ways of coping than just being very anxious intermittently until my viva. I honestly need closure from my PhD thesis to move on with my life and feel I won't get it until my viva is done and I've handed in corrections.

I just try not to think about it. Sometimes when I can't stop myself from thinking about something, I tell myself it's ridiculous but let myself do it for a day and then stop the next day.

Like now, I'm anxious about a presentation I have to give to students tomorrow, because I don't know how long it is - e.g. is it 1 minute or 10 minutes? Why people think it's ok to leave it til the last minute to tell people this information I don't know! But I've told myself I'm not going to think about it until tonight, because I don't have time to do anything about it until then anyway, as I have other stuff to do today.