work and self-doubt... help me break the cycle

October 19, 2021 1:09 AM

Question: how to go about learning something I really want to do, without giving in to negative self-talk that impedes my efforts like a rope tied around my ankles.

So this is a question related to jobs and work, going round and round the hamster wheel, as it were, of a years-old theme of mine that is based in an irrational fear of failure. I say irrational because when the fears are looked at in the cold light of day, they seem to be nothing more than excuses... but the anxieties interfere with any attempts to do more than get the kinds of jobs I have always gotten... jobs where I don't like what I do very much and furthermore, I am not particularly suited for, personality-wise... but I get them because they are widely available and I need an income. What happens is that a pattern develops where I make a "stupid" mistake, managers sense I am insecure about having made it, and things go downhill from there. Eventually I leave and go somewhere else, not on bad terms, but because I am uncomfortable thinking about all my mistakes. I don't honestly know if I make the issue worse than it is, or if my mistakes really are so terrible; what I know is that I do make some, and then my head tells me what a dummy I am, lazy, don't really care, etc. I recognize that it's not good to think that way, but I don't know how to stop doing it. Logically, I believe I make the mistakes because I have undiagnosed inattentive ADD, but it has not been formally assessed. I have not sought formal assessment because although I am aware people are prescribed medications to fix it, I understand it is very difficult to get assessed this way, and furthermore, I am afraid that stimulants would mean I would never sleep again. I want to do something differently, though, rather than continue in this cycle, and since medications aren't a solution I want to pursue, perhaps learning a new skill would be. My primary talents are artistic. I would like to take classes and start to learn skills related to that, preferably in graphic design. The difficulty is that I am uncertain I can succeed - the old fear of failure thing again. I am literally afraid even to try, because some part of me is firmly convinced that I will just end up wasting my time. Please give me your strategies to counteract this thinking, which is extremely unhelpful. I want to get out of this rut.

Thanks.

posted by anonymous to Work & Money (6 answers total)

The structure and formatting of your post reads to me, an uniformed nonprofessional, like meds might help.

That said: Ira Glass on taste and learning how to make creative work. I find this advice extremely comforting when taking on new creative endeavors even though I'm nowhere near as good as I want to be. There are things that don't stick for me, personally (hello, music) but at least it gives me a framework to understand what the struggle is about.

Also, to quote an episode of Star Trek (though I forget which one): "You can do everything right and still fail." That's not an excuse not to try, that's an acknowledgement that everything's hard and nothing is certain. At the same time, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. You might fail, it's true, but here is literally no way you can succeed if you don't try.
posted by Alterscape at 2:40 AM on October 19, 2021 [3 favorites]

I would really recommend you get some kind of psychological/psychiatric assessment, because you probably don’t need to feel this way. ADD, maybe, but you also sound incredibly anxious. The mistakes sounds like much less of an issue to me than the spiraling out over making mistakes. If you’re not interested in meds would you at least be willing to try therapy? Is it just stimulants you’re concerned about or would you be willing to consider antidepressants or anxiety meds?

An ACT-based therapy might help you to learn to live with your feelings without all this spiraling.

Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone fails. The only way to avoid failure is to not do anything at all (and for most of us “not doing anything” quickly leads to “failing to pay the rent”). Fortunately, failure is not a referendum on your worth as a person.

If you pursue a career in graphic design you are going to fail, a lot. You are going to do a lot of shitty work. You might not be able to establish a career where you can sport yourself as a graphic artist. All of this is OK and mostly unavoidable, but as you know, you’re going to have to find a way to get comfortable with these feelings. This is what therapy is for.

(FWIW I used to get into very similar patterns when I was in my 20s - I am much better now but I wish I had started therapy way sooner.)
posted by mskyle at 3:50 AM on October 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

Have you sought any professional help for your mental health thus far? I'd hard agree with mskyle that that should be your first step, or you're probably going to end up trying a creative pursuit and running into all the same road blocks, and then feeling even worse because the thing you thought was your exit route turns out to be blocked. I assume you're always going to have to pay bills, and without doing some work on the way your mind and brain operate, pretty much any kind of paid work where you have to work to some kind of basic standard is going to have the potential to see you reentering this same spiral, whether the basis of the work is creative, or practical, or whatever.

You might be right that meds aren't for you, but it sounds like you've completely ruled out the possibility based on some potentially false assumptions that you haven't tested.

I understand it is very difficult to get assessed this way

I am afraid that stimulants would mean I would never sleep again.

Have you tried to have your ADD or mental health assessed, found out what it would take, and been told that for you it's impossible? Have you taken stimulants and found that, for you, they will interfere problematically in your sleep? It sounds like the answers to those questions are no, and that putting those to the test might result in some good news for you. It might not, but if you haven't tried them, you're ruling out a significant potential solution to your problem for no reason.

And as mskyle says, it may not be that ADD and stimulants are the thing for you. It might be anxiety and therapy, or anxiety and a suitable anxiety med, of which there are many different types you can try.

Anxiety is brilliant at talking us out of taking any steps at all that might improve our situation, especially if those steps initially involve prodding the hive - going to talk to someone about our anxiety, which can itself invoke anxiety. But it's very much a case that the only way out is through, and telling yourself "It probably won't be an option for me so I won't investigate it" is one of the things that keeps us trapped.

The great news is that if anxiety turns out to be part of the picture for you (and your post makes it sound that way), there are many great options that will make your life easier, some of them medication-based, others therapy based (mskyle mentions ACT, you might also find CBT useful for checking those spiraling, catastrophising thoughts, and there are probably others).

Go and see your primary care doctor first, maybe write out your concerns ahead of time and show it to them if you think you won't be able to give good account of your concerns face to face, and see what they say. Also be prepared to visit more than once as some primary care docs unfortunately see time as a kind of triage for mental health problems - if you come back a second time a few weeks later and say "Nope, this is still really a problem, and I really do want you to help me do something about it," they'll act - being sent away the first time with nothing more than some relaxation exercises doesn't mean it's all over, it may just mean you need to be persistent.

Wishing you all the best, it's great that you've identified that there's a problem and asked for advice here. Go, you!
posted by penguin pie at 4:24 AM on October 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

Do you have any informal experience with stimulants? If yes, there is some value in dialing in the right dosage and seeing how you feel in the right set and setting (taking meds in the morning and doing structured things) which may feel really different than, say, pulling an all-nighter. If no, some of your worries may be very overblown. You may react to meds in a subjectively different way than people who don't have ADHD.

For example, my partner uses a stimulant medication for ADHD. They describe the feeling as one of clarity - as if the world around them is a stage with a spotlight and good signposts and one thing to focus on at a time when it otherwise would have been a crowded, buzzing room full of paparazzi all shouting and waving at them at once.
(Anecdotally, they have a good idea of when it feels like the med is wearing off at the end of the day, and they still nap more often and sleep more soundly than most people I know.)

I tried a baby dose on their suggestion and I did *not* feel calm, I experienced it as more of a jittery tunnel vision with an uncomfortable amount of body awareness which was not my jam. I guess the moral of that story is that neurochemistry and drug response can be surprisingly different between people, and it is really valuable to find out what flavor of brain chemistry you have.
posted by fountainofdoubt at 7:20 AM on October 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

If it is ADD, there are some non-stimulant medications if your concern is the stimulant part.
posted by VyanSelei at 7:55 AM on October 19, 2021

I think Barbara Sher's book, Wishcraft: How to Get What You Really Want, could be a good tool for you; she specifically lays out some techniques for dealing with the kind of self-doubt you're experiencing.
posted by Bron at 3:29 PM on October 19, 2021