Dear all,

I have struggled with a deep seated anxiety for several years now that has to an extent severely affected myself through allowing bad habits to develop and feeding them.  I am still trying to understand it and all of its triggers.  I understand that it comes from a lack of self-belief and anxiety surrounding my direction in life, prior to my current situation I left university and travelled to China where I learned Chinese and eventually took up a career in real estate.  I left this after feeling that it did not fulfil my ideas of where I should be, I did not feel valued and also felt that I was far from being an expert in the subject.  The role was business development based working with companies and included annual targets; this weighing on my anxiety as each year I would be measured against a target, also I did not see a future at the time with little attention being paid to career development in the company outside of the business line I was working in.  I have never been a consistent A student, my grades go from C up to A but lack that consistency that would mark me out as an all round A candidate and this shows in varying degrees of discipline, consistent grade scores, commitment and hard work in both work and education.  After leaving University I did not follow through on my earlier dream to join the Army full time despite serving as a reservist for many years, a combination of immaturity, lack of commitment to the role and anxiety over my ability to fulfil it meant that I left Unvierstiy with a good degree in History but a lack of direction in life, soon after leaving I began pursuing English teaching as a way to move to China and study Chinese.  My years in China can be characterised as leaving my universtiy self behind and maturing however in an uneven way.  The last comment is perhaps another symptom whereby I am easily lead to comapre myself with others without realising what it is I am aiming for.  I have returned to the UK and have almost completed my Masters, however I have, since January, suffered from a series of severe anxiety episodes that have had a varying level of impact on my life.  I am set to graduate with a strong grade however with a new graduate job coming up I am afraid of everything I don’t know, what their expectations are compared to my current knowledge and ability despite being told that the technical knowledge and skills that I believe I lack will be picked up in the training period of 2 years ahead of me.  My maths and technical knowledge are the main things that trouble me, being a humanities student I was happy to leave the formal study of maths 16 years ago and while my level is consistent with the asking requirements of many graduate employers and many other good PMs in the field I have encountered I have resolved to improve this through taking formal A-Levels in maths as a method of boosting my self-confidence and mathematical skills (I’m currently re-learning my current level of maths).  The technical skills for my role – some were taught during my MSc however others I did not attend the optional modules electing to take different specialisms.

In many ways the road to success is laid out in front of me – hard work and learning.  It seems a simple mantra and perfectly accomplishable however my self-doubt continues to infect my day to day mentality filling it with doubt, lack of self-confidence to see things through, fear of failing and being found out and essentially being shown the door not long after starting.  It can be summed up neatly as – “You eventually will fail at this somehow – but it’ll likely be in the first 3 months”.  This attidue has become utterly disasterous to my ability to discipline myself and my work productivity – making me question “Is this all worth it if I’m going to fail anyway?”  I angers me that I allow myself to continue thinking like this however after only really seeking counselling this January after the first episode of anxiety and depression (quite severe at the time – very dark time in my life).  I’d prefer not to go onto meds however am not sure over how to combat these feelings as I know that they’ll continue to get worse and affect me more.  I’ve tried to rationalise and control my methods of thinking however I would like some advice from contributors on ways you’ve changed your lives or reformed your thinking to be more proactive in tackling this problem.

Thanks