The PhD I dropped taught me more than any degree
learning from regrets
Hi everyone,
I want to wish you well, wherever you are.
I’m writing from floor 42 of hotel in Dubai, a few days before starting a new job here.
It's almost June (wild..). After two major rejections and heartbreaks, I'm doing better.
In fact, I'm much more resilient compared to six months ago.
You know that period of life when it seems like you’re stuck in a dark tunnel?
You know you'll come out at some point, and when you do, it feels like you owe everyone a story. That’s me right now.
So, I’m sharing this essay as a life update. More updates are coming soon,
Note:
This essay came from a compilation of notes I kept over the last three years about my PhD topic: identity change and loss. (my supervisor Nettra would be proud!)
The irony and sadness lie in the fact that these thoughts didn’t become a thesis or a paper. Instead, they became part of my life story.
Who knows, maybe they will inspire a paper one day.
—
I didn't expect this to be my research question, but turns out it is:
How do you start rebuilding yourself when you've become a stranger to yourself?
I have a personal answer now: let in the heartbreak.
My wise Sandbox friend Caesar's words echoed in my mind: "You are heartbroken, not in the breakup sense, but in the sense that you've disconnected from the better part of you—the part you have always loved."
The Landscape of Lost
I have always wanted to contribute to how people can work and live better together.
But during those eighteen months since leaving the PhD, that purpose vanished.
My teacher Robert Ellis, who passed away last year from cancer, called this “The Dark Alley”. I didn't just lose a job or a direction; I lost the very essence of what had defined me.
It was hard.
What triggered was a series of difficult conversations with my extended family, who were disappointed and hurt as I didn’t include them in my decision to leave the PhD. I didn't fulfill my own promise.
Happiness as the Chinese saying goes, is
“having something to do,
someone to love,
something to look forward to”
I was not having any of these.
The story I had been living was no longer true, and I couldn't articulate what I was working or living towards. It was tough.
Uncovering Layers of Grief
Grief, I discovered, is not a single emotion. It's a landscape with multiple territories:
Lost Opportunities The first grief was about missed opportunities. I mourned the chance to work with great people like my former PhD supervisor, to collaborate with minds that could have transformed my understanding. But this was merely the surface wound. I missed the good old time there in London too.
Losing Touch with Myself The deeper grief was about losing my capacity to guide myself with a sense of direction. My former goals no longer clicked. My old projects & community in Vietnam no longer resonated. I couldn't even dream anymore—those carefully constructed aspirations now felt like empty echoes. Worse, I couldn't feel gratitude in my body. Everything felt disconnected, muted.
Relationship Pain: The most painful territory was my disconnection from those closest to me. I wasn't just losing professional opportunities. I was hurting the relationships from people who have shaped me for almost my entire adult life.
The Terrain of Shame
Nov 2024 was more than just the beginning of a challenging job search.
It felt like losing a limb. I was thrown into the darkest night of my soul, a challenge presented by those who cared most about me. The fear of losing those relationships became my most profound motivator.
The most crushing pain was realizing how much I cared about the three people who mattered most to me. The shame of disappointing them was more than emotional. It was physical.
I remember moments coming out of a tough conversation with one of them where I heard the phrase “shame on you!” and I couldn't stand straight afterwards.
My spine would collapse internally, a visceral manifestation of my internal fracture.
From that conversation, I discovered something terrifying: being untrusted is worse than being unloved.
I carried that crippling shame for a long time.
I read this line from the entrepreneur Alex Hormozi about the hardest thing about taking the entrepreneurial path, when he first let down of his father.
“Have the courage to be willing to be wrong,
have shame by failing at things in front of people who's opinions you care about”
Have SHAME. Feel that crushing weight of shame. Once you have done that, you can do it again.
Someone put into words what i was going through.
Another ashamed part was not being the person I knew I could be.
I've always seen myself as someone who strives to be a bit more generous, kind, supportive. In that dark period, I found myself in a position where I could only take, not give. It was a version of myself I didn't recognize. Vulnerable, weak, constantly needing support.
It was not easy.
What truly helped: The Compassionate Clearing
There was a pivotal conversation that really helped me in this process.
My dearest soul friend & former partner Hui Woon was helping me with a process called Compassionate Clearing. I realized that I was so consumed by grief and shame that without it, I don't think I would've been able to take the right action.
You know when you try to push yourself, taking action but it didn't work because you were going through such intense grief and pain.
We had several deep dive conversations, and under her guidance, I began to say sentences that uncover layers of my wounds.
I remember saying to myself sentences.
“I’m so sorry you couldn’t bring your parents on stage to see your success.”
“I’m so sorry you couldn’t father yourself”
In that moment, my tears began to flow - the tears i knew that had been stuck for a long long while - and I was surprised by how powerful that realization was.
I hadn’t expected that my biggest grief around dropping my PhD was really about not being able to make my parents proud and happy.
I also grieved the painful mistake that I could have just suspended the PhD and returned a year later to take care of myself instead of dropping out completely and burned the bridge.
It hit me that I had overlooked that motivation—I thought my dreams were mine, but in truth, I've always wanted to make those I care about proud. After all those Western individualisation, I am still an Asian kid after all…
Three insights on transition & rebuilding oneself
Unresolved internal grief creates drag. It makes you tired, unmotivated, unable to take meaningful steps forward.
Before those conversations with Hui Woon, my narrative was: "There will never be something better for me than the PhD. There's no way I could make that much aligned money here in Vietnam” (true btw)
(It's similar to being alone after breaking up with your dream partner and feeling hopeless: "I'll never find someone better than this.")
Each tear was a release of unresolved grief, of unexpressed pain. In that releasing, something crucial happened: I found energy. Focus. The ability to take action.
The external journey of job searching - reaching out to people, sorting out your CV, applying, preparing for interviews - was challenging enough. But without the inner work, i.e processing the grief first, I wouldn't have developed the openness for the right opportunity to come by.
2. Stay open to receive support.
Rebuilding isn't linear. Some days were so tough that I had to lean on multiple people to merely survive.
I remember some Thursdays when I would go to my friend Minh’s house and just sit next to him as I do my job search. I also went to a Christian support group at sister Van’s house. Whatever it took.
Gratitude for the smallest thing became my lifeline. Gratitude for conversations, for support, for the ability to keep moving forward.
3. Letting go of my wrong idea of independence.
The most important lesson? It's easy to decide for yourself, but much harder to consider the people closest to you. Responsibility is about understanding how our choices impact those we love.
What this made has taught me really is, in the word of Morgan Housel essay on Pure Independence.
“Independence does not mean you don’t care what anyone thinks of you. It means that you strategically decide whose attention you seek.
I need the love and admiration of my wife, kids, and parents. I enjoy the presence and camaraderie of about five friends. I want to foster relationships with a small group of people I admire in my professional orbit.”
I need the love and admiration of my parents and my soon to be life partner.
I enjoy the presence and camaraderie of about five friends.
I am fostering relationships with a small group of people of 15-20 people I admire in my professional orbit.
Four pointers for your journey
If you're in your own version of this, here are some pointers
Point 1: Map Your Grief Territories
Identify which of the three territories you're experiencing:
Lost opportunities (surface level)
Lost internal compass (deeper level)
Relational fractures (deepest level)
Point 2: Feel the Grief
You cannot think your way out of grief. You must feel it fully before you can act effectively. Find someone who can hold space for your pain without trying to fix it. Find a grief circle, find somebody you trust. You do need to cry it all out fully, or get upset, stomping the ground etc.. express with your full body.
Point 3: Choose Whose Opinions Matter
Write down specifically whose attention and approval you actually need. Most of us are seeking validation from too many people and not enough from the right people.
Point 4: Take Actions and Learn.
Do whatever you need to be done, hopefully now with greater acceptance and ease inside.
Last note from my own journey:
Navigating identity change and loss requires both emotional clearing work, strategic clarity and persistent action.
Some mistakes teach you who you really are.
The question isn't whether you'll face your own dark alley.
It’s whether you have the inner resources, relationships and tools to navigate it when that inevitably happen.
I believe you do.
If not, reach out to me.
With all my love,
Khuyen