I agree with what you just said, anita. My team mates did that initially. I am still the junior most. When I had joined a year ago, I was very afraid and it definitely showed. My mentor especially liked to be rude and critical and extremely disinterested in guiding me. I don’t blame her but for me it added to existing stress. I had to add her to a list of people I needed to please.

I also realized that fear comes out of being attached to external things. I still am in the same financial situation as before but I can’t seem to be afraid of losing my job anymore. I actually met with my manager and told him a few things about perhaps why ” the up and down ” was happening and he seems to be really philosophical and told me that losing a job will need a lot of things to go wrong and I just have to keep working and not worry about that. I don’t even know how I found the courage to do that. And it may seem like I set myself up for my manager to play with my fears but I sincerely don’t care anymore. I also realized that I had to have this meeting to let him know the real reasons for my under performance, which made me also realize that I cared more about what people would think if I lost my job than the consequences of losing the job because even I know I’m not hopelessly unemployable and only a year old as an engineer. Even the explanation I gave him was to “correct his perception” of me as a person, not as a team member. In fact, I’m able to approach other people for help now because I realized that this fear of judgement runs really deep and I need to step out of my comfort zone to overcome that. I want to know if that makes sense and if you have advice on this for me because my goal in writing here was not just to “fix” things at work but better myself as a person. There are so many people that do brave and courageous things, I want to at least break out of these fears which tend to nag me daily.

Yes. I associate failure with being a let down. I have never been ambitious in nature but often find myself chasing things I don’t need and I guess that’s from being told that I must do so. It makes me feel like a failure when I disappoint those around me but I have to now distance others idea of happiness and findmy own.

But honestly I don’t think I’m meant to have a passion. I don’t feel that way about anything. I’m most happy when I’m by myself and calm. So, I guess in a way the only thing I must absolutely do, I do – like going to work. I wonder if this is wrong, that there is nothing I want to work towards. I’m working to do a good job each day but not really aiming for a promotion. I just hate the concept of growth = acquiring more things. Have you ever faced such a thing? They say you should be better tomorrow than today but in what aspect and what should the end goal be? I have no desires and this often makes me feel isolated like I have nothing that I want to achieve. I also feel extremely lonely and depressed if I have to fight for things “I must get” but don’t care about . I feel like my life has no where to go. How should I grow? Where am I going wrong?

What you just said brings up a few questions for me –

What should we be doing to have passion that is positive? Is it really okay to not feel passion?

Also, anxiety doesn’t always need fear to get triggered, right? Even boredom can do that. Have you done anything that has helped with your anxiety?

Lastly, I’ve realised that whenever there could be a conflict, like with neighbours, about their noisy pets , instead of choosing to stay away right away, knowing they don’t change – having spoken to them before, I think for a really long time as to whether I should be doing something otherwise I’m being taken for granted. My mother rationalises that some people don’t change and let’s it be  but for me I often feel like I’m acting  out of the need to feel like I have power. To be honest, it isn’t even about what the pets are doing now, it is anxiety over how they may get nastier in the future and how I will have to feel bad then about not doing anything. I feel really  powerless as a person, so I try to avoid challenges and don’t think I can face them. So in this case, my fear of the future makes me want to do something when what I am actually experiencing in the present isn’t even the true problem I want to solve. I basically want to predict all the things that could go wrong and prevent them, because somewhere deep inside I’ve decided I won’t be able to handle things going bad. And I don’t know how I decided that about myself. DO you have any insight?And, I think this feeling of powerlessness is coupled with wanting to be acknowledged as competent and respected. Does that make sense? Does this tie into anxiety as well?

I will have to start working on my anxiety. It has actually started spilling over to everything I do. Thanks for the advice 🙂