I have been away from this town and forbid myself to think about the PhD and research, for a week. That really helped to ease the tension. Now I've started to work again, small steps and I found somebody to work with. I guess the PhD-life can be quite lonely if you don't buddy-up. Now, in every block of 4 hours, we set goals for the 4 hours and after we evaluate what we've done and how we achieved it. Works quite well.

I've decided not to go back home. The costs that are involved in going back are 'too damn high', I get paid in the local currency and after conversion to euro's that'll give me fuck all to live on, lol. And if my prof is going to pay it, it will be deducted from my research budget, and I'd rather spend that money on actual research. But as I said, I've been away for a couple of days, it really helped, left my smartphone back home so I couldn't check my mail, FB, and other distractions (old nokia's come in handy sometimes).

I sat down with my prof and made a planning for the next couple of months. He encouraged me not to take off to fast and soon as it might backfire, basically what you guys said as well. Hopefully nothing else happens, and I will stay on this track... Getting out of bed at least before 11 am nowadays ;-). Thanks so much for the advice and the nice words.

As my prof told me: The pain of a cheating partner will only last for a couple of months, your doctorate will be for the rest of your life.

Yep I did. Same thing. The institute I am doing my PhD now had al ready offered me a mphil but after reading my BA thesis they offered me a PhD straight away. But, I have to say, I al ready had 10 years of work experience before enrolling into a UG course.

I didn't face condescending comments though. I do think it's quite hard, when not trained in a MA degree. Feels like playing for 2nd league shite team and then immediately have to perform in a Champions League match. Pressures me a bit.

Don't take shit from them, they might be just jealous for your achievement. Just must have written an outstanding thesis and had great results. It's jealousy.... You've done very well for yourself.

Hello everybody. I am new to this forum, stumbled upon it while googling on PhD's who have a loss of motivation.

Doing my PhD was a dream for me! When I finished my bachelors I send in my thesis to a research institute who were willing to fund and host my MPhil in history. After a couple of days I got a skype from my contact at the institute telling me that they wanted to offer me a PhD instead of a masters. They were amazed by my bachelors thesis. All the work I did for the thesis was more than necessary and I loved doing it. It got rewarded with a PhD position. I was so happy and felt acknowledged in my efforts.

After a one and a half month in my PhD, 10.000 kilo's away from home, my girlfriend cheated on me and told me she wasn't coming to visit me, 2 days prior to her arrival here. And to make matters worse, two weeks after that somebody close to me tried to commit suicide. So in those two months, trying to adapt to life in this rather boring academic town, I got so depressed. My research prof offered me to go back home for a while but I rejected his kind offer. After a month of being homesick I passed that point so I didn't want to relive that.

But now (month 4 of my PhD) I have a complete lack of motivation. I can't even focus on reading, ah hell, if I don't have any appointments I just lay in bed till 1pm. I want to get out of this downwards spiral, but the 3 months that I didn't do any significant stuff, are pressuring me now so hard to do even more, which eventually leads to looking up to an enormous mountain of work/responsibilities, which stresses me out so much I'll drop everything and be idle.

Anybody of you have experience with such situations and how did you get out? Thanks, for reading my 2 cents