I am an Engineering Ph.D. student, and I will finish my 4th year this April. I have invested quite a lot in my research while striving with a lousy supervisor. I am working on a topic that doesn't fit into the institute I am working in. I know I shouldn't complain because I accepted this in the beginning. The lack of proper references caused me to always be in a self-evaluation mode. I have selected the position I have because I was passionate about my topic and I couldn't find any other advisor at the time. Because of the amount of work that I have to do all my hobbies faded away and now I only do this seemingly addictive activity called research. Although my colleagues describe me as a successful candidate, I always feel under a tremendous amount of pressure on what comes next and how to prepare for it. My supervisor is also no help at all. I have read on the forum that you shouldn't expect this, and that from your advisor, or the state of being continuously uncertain about your topic is natural but as I read more, I feel alienated more. I ask myself how people are handling these issues much better than I do. I have contacted several people in my topic and established small connections, to reduce the lack of context. However, I can't say that it helped much for the reasons that I don't know either and the damn pressure is just continuing to kill me. One day I am delighted that I became an independent researcher, the other day I blame myself to be a silent researcher who no one pays attention to. Just before the Christmas, my advisor asked me to stay another year, and I don't know why the hell I said yes to that.
At this stage in my life, I am very doubtful of what I should do next because I have lost the sense of what is normal and what is not anymore in decision making.