Incompetent

LegacyUser

Hey everyone. I hope it's okay to post this in the personal issues form and not work & jobs. I wanted to go anonymous for this one.

So my story starts when I graduated from college about 7 years ago. I was effectively unemployed for a year, but luckily managed to get work in the depths of the recession. 6 years later and I'm feeling I've made a terrible choice in my chosen career.

I am constantly getting things wrong in work and I am getting severely stressed over it. I try my hardest to get things right, but time after time I end up screwing up. So far my mistakes have been either relatively minor, or caught in time that it wasn't a major problem. But I fear that given time I'll eventually do something majorly wrong.

I have had sleepless nights in the past where I thought I did something wrong. I ultimately did, but it ended up not being as bad as I thought. But it was still something I shouldn't have let happen.

I'm not able to talk to anyone about this, especially at work because I'd be fired! I'm increasingly feeling that I should just quit and change careers to something much simpler and less stressful.

My job isn't the best paid, but it's very interesting work and I really like the people I work with, but I don't think I can handle this fear constantly looming over my head. I try to emulate my co-workers and try to meticulously do my work to the best of my ability. But usually this ends up with me spending so much time doing it that management gets annoyed.

What should I do? I don't think I can ever overcome this feeling of incompetency and fear of making mistakes. Is a career change my only option?

Faith

It sounds like your issue is more anxiety related than anything else. Every makes mistakes! But it sounds like you stress about it more, and are harder on yourself, than you need to be. Rather than making any drastic life changes, I'd recommend speaking to a psychologist about dealing with the anxiety you feel.

LegacyUser

God OP, I could have typed that post. I just couldn't get anything right in work, really wondered what was wrong with me, how it came so easily to everyone else?

And then I moved jobs. I got a really supportive boss and I realised before I had been so frightened of making a mistake I was obsessing over the handful of mistakes I did make and not giving myself enough credit for the majority of things I did right. I was judging my internal life by everyone else's external life. Everyone makes mistakes but the people who get on (I think) learn from them and also give themselves credit for the things they do right.

You've lasted 6 years (in a very difficult time) so you clearly aren't awful at your job, chances are you're just not giving yourself enough credit.

Good Luck!

Lux23

I wonder is this a confidence issue. Would you consider speaking to your manager and getting their perspective, have you had yearly reviews etc? What did they say?

FizzleSticks

This post has been deleted.

cml387

You can't be doing too badly if you've been working there seven years!
Maybe you are over emphasising the bad and ignoring the good.

Often the most incompetent people in an organisation delude themselves into thinking that they are brilliant and can do no wrong.

Perhaps you have the opposite problem?