Hello!

I’m new here but I figured this might be a community worth joining as I’m sure there is lots of helpful advice to be shared and someone is bound to have been in a similar position as me.

So over the last few years since graduating college (2017) I’ve been paying more attention to my behavioral patterns/trends at various companies that I’ve worked at.
I typically am not an anxious person when it comes to most things, but when it comes to being at work, I just can’t shake it. Every company I’ve ever worked at I’ve had a hard time feeling any amount of confidence in myself and projecting that to my coworkers. 

Well, that compounded with my fear of being wrong, looking or sounding stupid, making bad calls, not knowing what I’m talking about, and the all time favorite: stressing over not knowing things that I think I should know already...

A bit of background, I’m an engineer who’s been in industry since 2017. I’ve been at a few companies for a year or 2 each, and I landed at a great company over summer. Anyway, my boss left the company in January, then my project manager left the company in early February, and I was given his responsibility as the new PM.

Since then, I’ve been dreading going to work even though I love my company and what we do. Every day I dread my meetings because they’ve begun to feel like just a concentrated period of time where I’m being put on the spot and feeling/looking unprepared or misinformed. It’s an awful feeling.

Now that I look back on how I felt at previous jobs, I realize I eventually developed the same feeling. I think as soon as my “new to the company” phase wore off and I was no longer to have that as an umbrella, I developed performance anxiety (I don’t know what to call it but that seems right?). Hosting my own meetings always made me nervous, and I never quite felt fully prepared for what I should be ready for. 


I’m coming to this group for some advice on how to break through this feeling, or how to unlock a stronger sense of confidence in myself, and shake the fear of looking/sounding dumb.
I would agree that it’s a good and healthy thing to have some degree of stress/anxiety related to work because it shows that you care and want to do well, but to a degree. It’s begun to impact me more and more, and at times I feel so overwhelmed or just buried that I don’t get anything done.

So tips, advice, similar stories, anything are welcomed in the comments!