How To Tell If You Are Gaslighting Your Career Concerns
Have you ever tried to convince yourself that “everything’s fine” with your career, even though secretly you’re worried it’s not? If so, you’re in good company.
In my last 5.5 years in business as a career fulfillment & mindset coach, I’ve seen this challenge more times than I can count! By the time people get on an exploratory call with me, they often say something along the lines of, “I’ve been debating this for 2 years now… Can you help?”
This cycle breaks my heart, and it’s such an emotional rollercoaster. Here’s how it typically looks:
Things are plugging along at your job and everything’s seems great.
One day, the whisper of doubt pops up. “Is this really what I want to do until retirement?” “Do I even truly like this job, or am I just good at it?” “Doesn’t something feel off?”
You momentarily panic. You’ve spent a long time building your career! Where is all of this doubt coming from? This is what you said you wanted.
You push said doubt down, locking it up and throwing away the key.
You get back to work, focusing on staying busy and upholding your “superstar” image.
One day the doubt comes back, but this time it’s louder.
You push it down.
Rinse, lather, repeat steps 6 & 7. Until finally, one day your whisper of doubt feels like a full on scream, and you finally realize you might need some help figuring out what’s wrong.
Sound familiar?
When you’re in this spiral, you’re essentially gaslighting yourself about your career doubts. You try desperately to convince yourself that nothing is wrong, mainly because you wish that were true.
As one of my alum, we’ll call her Molly*, said on our first coaching call, “Honestly, the fact that I’m even on this call is a miracle. Getting myself to admit that something was truly wrong with my career was the hardest part because I was in the role that I thought I always wanted.”
Molly was right. Admitting something is wrong is the hardest part for most people.
In my experience, though, this “self-gaslighting” about your career seldom works. Typically what happens is that your professional doubts build and build and build, until one day they’re impossible to dismiss.
As you might imagine, this self gaslighting happens for a few reasons, but for the most part they’re pretty much all fear based. The fears like:
“I was clearly wrong about my career once before… How can I trust myself to make another choice now? What if I’m wrong again?!”
“I’ve spent so long building this path! What if I have to start over?”
“Maybe things will get better. Maybe I’ve just been stressed…”
The funny thing about these fears is that they’re typically trying to keep you safe in your current job no matter what, but in reality, they might be doing more harm than good. You might think you’re making the “responsible” choice by sticking to the career path you know, but in fact, 9 times out of 10, you’re hurting yourself in the long run. Because not only are you then stuck in an unhappy job, but even worse, most of the time you can’t avoid these doubts forever. Instead, what ends up happening is that you ignore the concerns until they get way too big, and then you reach the point of making an away from choice. “I don’t care what I do anymore! I just need OUT! Like…yesterday”.
Oof.
This leads to people making short-sighted, away-from career decisions, which they end up regretting in the long run.
Have you ever seen someone else do this before? Have you ever done it?
I know how scary it is to have doubts about your career. I went through the exact same experience when I had my own quarter life career crisis and left my “dream job” in advertising for something more fulfilling. It’s normal to want to push them down because you’re scared of what they mean. But please hear me when I say: I know you’re scared, but the doubts are there for a reason. And the sooner you start listening to them, the sooner you can make some tweaks and get back on track.
I’ve seen this pattern time and time again over the last 5.5 years, and one thing that always proves to be true is that the sooner you admit that something is wrong, the sooner you can figure it out and change things (and the more likely you are to be able to salvage your existing role in some capacity).
So please, stop trying to shove the doubts down. Stop gaslighting yourself. Instead, maybe try listening.
P.S. If reading this feels as if I’ve cracked open your diary, remember that I’m here to help you through it. As soon as you’re ready to admit that something feels off, we can get started and help you figure out how to build a more aligned and fulfilling career (which does not necessarily mean “starting over”, PSA). Just click here to apply for a free exploratory call to learn more about working together, or read more about my offerings here.
*Names have been changed