Reframing feelings of self doubt with lessons from an anxious past

Hey! Before I get started, this post deals with the complicated topics of self doubt and mental health. I believe our experience of these topics is heavily entangled in the rest of our lived experience and massively affected by our individual identities and context. I’ve had resources to support me through mental health and career challenges that simply aren’t available to everyone.The challenges surrounding these topics, for some people are not just personal but social and systemic. Feelings of self doubt can be heavily compounded for under represented folks (including, but not limited to race, gender and class) who face real social barriers to opportunities and resources that others take for granted. I felt it was important to frame this article as a personal reflection and not as widespread advice that ignores these systemic challenges. And, whilst this piece isn't about these issues?I also wanted to highlight the importance of our individual actions in bringing about change so I've included some links to great resources in the footnotes.

I'm currently several weeks into a coaching programme run by the folks at Leading Design. During the first week we had to work out what we wanted to take away from the programme. One of my goals was to tackle some feelings of self doubt as I take on more leadership responsibilities in my career and to feel more confident in the value of my experience.

Across my career I've always looked for roles where I can exercise high levels of agency. The worst jobs I've had have been overly restrictive and discouraged resourcefulness. I've worked with some great business leaders that have let me own problems and push boundaries. I'm grateful for that and I've learnt a lot about the mechanics of the businesses I've worked for. But I've rarely had a explicit mentor with industry leading design experience to inspire and guide me. As a designer I've learnt what works mostly through trial and error. Of course I've learnt from countless other designers but mostly in the form of group problem solving, written words, conferences and occasionally more formal training. But because I haven't had an every day role model to gain validation from, I sometimes doubt the validity of my own experience. This often manifests as a simple but nagging feeling of self doubt.

The answer to self doubt is not more knowledge

As part of the coaching programme, each week we take away an action that will help move us towards our goal. After the first few sessions I had identified a number of actions that I believed would help me learn more and quell the feelings I was experiencing. These actions felt challenging but achievable however something didn't feel quite right.

This week we were asked to complete an exercise where we had to identify a 'golden moment' in our career. A moment that felt particularly wonderful. I picked a moment from some time ago, when I was young, confident and my experience and knowledge felt validated after being offered a new job. And then it hit me. The power of that moment was not how much I knew (at that point I knew comparatively little) it was how I felt about myself. I had been approaching the problem in completely the wrong way. It wasn’t lack of knowledge that was the problem.??

Lessons from an anxious past

I'm going to rewind a little...

In my late 20's I started experiencing debilitating anxiety. After a series of extremely challenging life events, including the loss of a parent, it felt like my nervous system simply got stuck on full power. To be honest, for a little while I struggled to just keep going. My full journey of recovery that followed is a story for another day but one key concept was critical to climbing out of the hole I found myself in. I had to learn to embrace uncertainty.?

The nature of?anxiety

A significant theme for many people who experience debilitating anxiety is the sensation of losing control. For me this was triggered by a death. Our natural reaction to anxiety is to try and create certainty. We look to neutralise things we perceive as a threat (emotional or physical) by controlling them or avoiding them. The problem is life is full of uncertainty and the more we try and take control the tighter we have to squeeze. It was only when I reached my lowest moment that I was able to see that the only way out was to let go. I had to learn to normalise the presence of uncertainty in my life again. This was scary but ultimately liberating.

You can’t stop the waves but you can learn to surf - Jon Kabat-Zinn

Of course this epiphany was only part of the journey rather than a silver bullet but it stands out as a critical moment. I later came across the philosophical concept of Acceptance and this has become a practice for me. Some days I'm better at it than others but I’ve got a powerful tool available to me now to help me through harder times.

Managing uncertainty?

The realisation I had in this week's coaching session was that my self doubt was also being driven by uncertainty. I was worrying about future hypothetical problems I might need to solve and if I had the right knowledge to solve them. But reframing this, shines a spotlight on the absurdity of the issue. Did I have the knowledge I needed to solve any potential challenge that may arise? Of course not, that would equate to knowing everything I might ever need to know. But do I believe in my ability to learn and adapt? To respond to uncertainty when it's required? To prioritise the right learning when it matters? I do. I've practised this throughout my career.

There is so much information available to us today. Just scroll through Linkedin and there's probably 30 posts or articles you feel you should read and never enough time to do all the learning you would like to do. It's overwhelming and easy to feel like you're falling behind. This breeds feelings of inferiority and self-doubt. But knowledge and confidence have no causal relationship. You just have to look at how much poor information is spread on social media by people with utmost confidence to see this is true. For me, coping with feelings of self doubt is about living with uncertainty and trusting in my ability to take on new challenges when they arise. This isn't a call to 'fake it until you make it' but instead encouragement to value the transferable skills we have. Humans have evolved to be masters of adaptability but also crave certainty. Understanding this about myself is helping me find balance.

Final note…

Just as I was finishing the final edits of this piece Julia Whitney , who is running the coaching programme I’m on, shared this great post that really nicely sums up a lot of what I've talked about in this piece.

If you’d like to read more…

MotherBoard - MotherBoard is a Business Charter, Community, Event Series, and Podcast driving tangible change for mums working in the tech industry.

Change the Race Ratio - Bringing together UK businesses to build more diverse and inclusive workplaces.?All signatories are committed to change and making progress in transparency, inclusion, action and accountability.?

Why Everyone Feels Like They’re Faking It - A thoughtful and detailed exploration of the term 'Imposter Syndrome' and its relationship with gender and race from The New Yorker.

As well as the coaching programme I've been on a bunch of other resources have really helped with my thinking on the topics I explore in this post.

Two episodes of Emergence Magazine's excellent Podcast.

• Turn Towards the Dark: Fear, Courage, and Surrender by Hala Alyan
• Kinship, Community, and Consciousness: An Interview with Richard Powers (author of Overstory and Bewilderment)

The work of Jon Kabat Zinn - he has a great course on Masterclass and his books have been life changing for me.

The book ‘Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine’? by Derren Brown

A super interesting Twitter thread by Shreyas Doshi where he explores agency and talent as skill sets for leadership roles.