Anonymous asks:
I have been doing my job for the last ten years plus and I know that they take advantage of my good nature. My pay is poor, and I feel no progress is being made. I need to leave and have needed to go for a long time now, but I am so crippled with anxiety about applying for other jobs. The company I work for has not invested a lot in me and I don't have much money behind me to retrain so my CV is a little bland to say the least. How can I get over this drop in confidence in my own abilities and go for something else?
Psychotherapist Noel McDermott www.noelmcdermott.net says: “Don’t attack the problem head on approach it by looking at the various components that exist and breaking it down. There are 3 main areas that I see, though you may be able to refine this further, and they are:
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1. Confidence and self-esteem
2. Experience and qualifications
3. Support.
Tackle each of them separately and come up with a plan. So, for self-esteem, rather than trying to achieve that at work are there other areas of your life you can challenge yourself to develop this? Maybe do a public speaking course for example. Think about transferable skills, learning confidence and development of esteem in one area of your life can transfer to another.
For experience and qualifications is there an adult education course you can do or perhaps some voluntary work? A prospective employer will look very positively on an applicant who can be honest about their deficits rather than try to hide them or be a victim, have actions in place to deal with them.
Support can come from voluntary work and expanding your network, but it can also come from joining groups to expand your interests. Make new friends and share your plans and frustrations, maybe build a group of like-minded people this way who can encourage and support each other, there almost certainly will be groups that already exist like this.
So rather than try to climb the mountain, break it back down into its molehills and tackle them separately.”
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