Hi guys. Pls I'm I the only one who ever feels lonely and sometimes depressed. What's worse is i'm still searching for my significant other to share my struggles with and to be some sort of support system. I know I worry a lot but I think this Phd is robbing me of friends and relationships. Does anyone feel the same way? What do you do to overcome such feelings for the sake of your sanity?

I think the PhD experience is notorious for making people feel lonely and isolated. One thing I realised early on was that I had to make the effort to keep up with family and friends and that they generally don't want to know much about my PhD stuff, so I tend to keep the PhD chat for people who've been there (including online forums like this one) and try to see as much of old friends as possible for just relaxing and not thinking about the PhD. If you do feel that you're getting depressed to the extent that it's affecting your day-to-day life and work, please try to talk to someone about it, whether that's student support at your uni or someone else you can talk to.

It can be really difficult to establish a support system, especially if the PhD is consuming time and energy and eating into friendships and relationships. I find when the PhD is going well, I have more time to maintain extracurricular activities and my quality of life goes up. When the project is in quagmire I tend to withdraw socially until I breakthrough and overcome the difficulties. Having a significant other may seems great but I've seen marriages break up over PhD stress, in which case one'd be even worse off.

When all is said and done, loneliness and depression are only symptoms of a deeper root problem. These underlying issues may or may not be academic. Face those problems head on, solve them, only then can sanity be preserved. Having friends and family are important for support during those down times but you must solve the underlying problems to reverse the momentum of the troughs.