Anxiety over promotions

[Spikie]

Hi all

It's funny how your life going well can sometimes be more stressful than when it is going badly...

I've had recent success at work and with exams, meaning I am getting shunted along on some sort of fast track thing whereby I'm taking part of a manager's role and the implication is this is just their knee jerk 'we want to make you more important' reaction, the real promotion is coming later in the year.

I am more than happy to take on new work, get more money and especially to make my manager's life easier. I'm always happy to learn new things and want to better myself.

However as I'm sure most of you can appreciate, this has led to an absolute mountain of stress and unhelpful thinking, along the lines of 'I can do my job, what if I can't do the new one?' and 'The more they get me to do, the more likely I am to mess up and the bigger the effect when I do'.

I also don't want to damage my boss by making mistakes and causing her more work/to look bad given she is supporting me with the higher ups.

I feel I'm going to let everyone down even at the moment, how will I be when they actually promote me later?

I almost feel like (in my early 30's) I want to just say 'That's it, I'm fine where I am, so what if I should be on the fast track to great things, it's not worth the stress'. But I'd then live my life with everyone around me moving on and me staying still, plus I'd be harming the household by crippling my earning potential.

I'm in the mindset that I'm a sergeant now and they are trying to make me a h'officer, and it's just not me.

But then why did I do all those exams (I'm better qualified on paper than anyone else here, from the bottom to the top). I know the answer, because I wanted to show the people who think I'm dozy and useless that I could pass exams with 40% pass rates first time.

I suspect this is the normal reaction to promotions for people like us, but it is... upsetting I suppose.

[MyNameIsTerry]

It's a normal reaction of many an anxiety disorder sufferer. It's change and the unknown and a whole lot of "what ifs" (as shown above" that lead to catastrophizing.

So, how about some positive "what ifs?" What if it all goes well? What if you enjoy the new job? What if you prefer the new job to the old one? What if you can do it standing on your head?

Take some time to weigh up the pros & cons of this but remember - they obviously think you can do it or they wouldn't waste their time.

I've been a manager myself and I wanted the progression but I didn't have an anxiety disorder back then. Once I had this, I stopped pursuing promotions and that was more due to controlling my situation and not having to venture into the unknown. I let it halt my career back then when I didn't have any support from places like this, CBT or even understand what anxiety really was.

What is the different to what you do now? Is it really more stressful? Some management posts are more stressful because it means people management but the work itself is fine. Some people struggle learning that to take a step up, you can't retain all those friendships as eventually you will have to clamp down on someone and unless they are fair people, they hold grudges. (thats just life)

[Spikie]

Thanks Terry.

I don't mind the grudges (I get them already from my mini-promotion as I now review work), I don't mind long hours and a more 'work to the job than the clock' system (as I already do long hours as it keeps me from stressing as much :) ), it's the old fear that I'm going to be 'found out' to be not as clever as people think I am.

It's my current job, but harder basically, not many new skills, just old ones but taken further. I'll see how it goes, you might get a few more posts on here from me :)

Off to get a needle stuck in my eye now (for medical reasons, it's not just my idea of blowing off steam!), oddly zero stress about that!