I think my coworkers think I'm incompetent.

I can appreciate feeling anxiety and then that undermining your skills. I can also appreciate how damaging lack of self confidence can be and how that energy invested in that feelings lead to mistakes - it sounds to me that you are distracted by yourself i.e. you are creating self fulfilling prophecies. I would suggest you find a way to ground yourself before you do an activity. Find something you can say to yourself, something to calm your mind like a breathing exercise, or yoga, meditation, prayer or a mantra you make up for yourself i.e. I am a competent intelligent person and am able to successfully complete any task I put my mind to: A mantra is a saying you say to yourself that pushes you close to the edge of comfort but not over the edge. And by repeating it you set an intention in your mind and it helps push you past anxiety and gets your brain working in a positive way. Confidence is a tricky things, especially if you already have gone down the track of not feeling it because it can easily snowball. Going to your coworkers with clear questions is a great way to develop relationships at work and to learn how to create a process for yourself inside the work environment that is collaborative. I think that could go a long way to getting you to be competent through the evidence of your work. Another suggestion is everyday make a list of all the things you did well and then look at how you did it well,. what steps did you take, what did you feel, how did you do it. The better insight you get into how you do things right the better able you are to consciously apply that knowledge to other tasks and the less you will focus on what you did wrong. And finally I am huge proponent of the fake it 'til you make it. That is, pretend you are confident, act like you are confident, and you will eventually feel confident. Anyway hope some of these suggestions land well with you. I would love to hear an update when you have had some time to think this through and come up with your own solutions.

/r/offmychest Thread Parent