Over the past 12-24 months I have prided myself on how much work I have done towards growing and moving away from reactionary trauma related responses. In most cases this ‘growth’ goes unchallenged but in moments when I am pushed it feels like all my triggers are activated again and all roads point to questioning my self worth and capability. In many ways I feel like I have healed parts of my heart that broke into pieces after every miscarriage. But the chaos that ensued during the same time with relation to my professional life back then feels like a festering wound that never properly mended.
After some painful critique in my job recently I found myself right back at that place at the time of my redundancy. I suppose I hadn’t fully realised how much the rejection involved with losing that role has eaten away at my confidence in my professional abilities. When I look back I understand that my time in that job was an endless psychological mess in which I was made to feel less than in every circumstance. This was well before I parted ways with this company but it’s made me realise that I carry this trauma around every day; it’s just hidden a little deeper below the surface than others.
When I start to dig into this feeling, it feels like pulling a proverbial thread that becomes disastrous quite quickly. Instead of being able to rationally accept a critique, something triggers a kneejerk response that pulls me into an almost doomsday scenario where I genuinely question if I have anything to offer at all. This takes me down a spiral where I can’t see straight and the creeping feeling of imposter syndrome begins to tower over everything, tainting all that is in front of me.
All of these compounding emotions have emphasised feelings of existing inadequacy and made me question if the professional path I’m on is one in which I’m capable of pursuing. If I could cite anything to embody how I feel, it’s a never ending questioning of ‘am I enough?’. It feels like the beginnings of an existential crisis in which if I am not actually good at the things I have forever credited myself as being good at; am I good at anything at all?! One can sense the creeping anxiety that threatens to be all consuming here!
It’s made me understand that I have more healing to do in the space of rebuilding my self belief. The unfortunate nature of someone telling you something over and over again, even if untrue, means that it begins to seep into your consciousness and ultimately can determine how you see yourself. It takes work to unlearn this and to quieten that voice in your head that tells you that you aren’t good enough. I’ve come to realise that the period in my life in which the redundancy took place, and the two years before that, destroyed my confidence as I knew it, in a way that I have never been able to get back. In truth, I don’t think I will ever be able to return to the mindset I had before. But surely that’s a part of life in which growing and changing, even if through hardships and trauma, becomes imperative.
I often remind myself that self belief doesn’t happen at once. It is built through small, intentional acts of courage. It takes having inner conviction to quieten the outside noise and focus inward. The current stage of my life is signalling to me that I need to redefine my belief in myself. It’s telling me that I need to take time to do this in order to reaffirm my faith on the inside which will enable and empower me to face challenges towards eventually achieving my goals. For now all I can do is aim to take the fear of failure away from the conviction of trying. I need to be courageous and remind myself of the 15 years of experience I carry in this sector. I need to focus on what I can control, grieve the professional pathway previously lost to me but refocus on building on the things that I know. And to be fair to me, I kinda know a lot! ❤
I blog for Change. 