Therapy or a career coach?
I definitely need help. But before that, I need to figure out what kind of help do I actually need. Is it a therapy or a career coach or mentor?
So I have a computer science degree and after some initial years of development work, I moved to a project Manager and Business Analysis roles. The problems with me(self diagnosed of course)
- My inherent belief that I am not good enough. This leads to Need for external validation, which if not received sends me in a downward spiral
- Couple 1 with the fact that I am the worst person to defend myself. Even if I am doing something right, I will present it in a way that it seems like a shoddy job. I feel awful and that's why I shy away from leading people because what good is a manager if they cannot defend the team.
- This one is a condition I think. I trust people too much and I am a bad reviewer. As in I miss out little details that end blowing up. E.g. at work today I was supposed to review a non tech report but due to time contraints I only did the key things and we ended up with a lot of feedback from the client which are typos. Saying now that we didn't have time is not a professional thing but in hindsight I should have taken more time and let the deadline extend a little. But I generally choose to meet the deadlines even with compromised work quality.
- Even though I know all of the above about myself, I keep making the same mistakes.
- I am not well regulated emotionally. I take failures and errors too personally. Due to these once I am in a downward spiral at work i do not recover and keep going down.
- I don't voice my feelings correctly thinking problem is just with me. e.g. in the current role, I found out that a colleague with much less experience was being paid almost twice the amount last year and since then I have been off. I dont feel like working at all. Despite having a very frank relationship with my boss I cant bring myself to say because of course #1. (And I didn't even start applying elsewhere because I am not good enough of course)
- I am excellent when projects are undergoing but I believe as you grow in career, one needs to be able to create work or identify and act upon opportunities as well. This is where I lack professionally. When projects end, I start losing sense of purpose.