Hello everyone,
I’ve a teaching position at a UK university, which also comes with other management responsibilities. Everyone here thinks I’m great at my job, and paints a rather rosy future for me. I’ve got neither enemies nor obvious competitors in my department. Colleagues are nice and my boss is OK. Surprisingly, this makes me feel really vulnerable and fragile. As the adage goes, “the higher you fly the harder you fall”.
My coping strategy is avoidance: I tend to postpone issues for the fear to get something wrong, make an embarrassing mistake, or revealing a hidden weakness. This surprises me, since I rationally know for sure that the best strategy is to spend a little time and effort to deal with a problem right now, rather than to wait until later, when it may get worse and take longer to deal with. The result is form of paralysis, either by postponing key decisions or by deliberately ignoring things I’m supposed to keep tabs on for the fear of discovering something that requires immediate action.
I’m determined to stop it as it’s getting really annoying. It's a nasty form of self-sabotage, and I want to tackle it before it gets unmanageable. My question is: a) is there anyone out there who has experienced something like that and has found a solution?; b) If so, can someone point me to relevant self-help resources?
Any help would be massively appreciated.
Many thanks
Valtra
PS Some further information about me, just to stress that there’s nothing obviously wrong and I myself consider what I’ve outlined above purely irrational.
- I’m healthy, don’t smoke, sleep a lot and exercise regularly. I’m almost teetotal abstemious and follow a healthy diet. All in all, I’m fairly happy with my lot, to the point of feeling guilty for not being super-duper-happy all the day.
- In my previous incarnation I was living and working in continental Europe: low wages, temporary positions with no employment certainty, and high taxation. You get the picture. Then I came over to the UK, taught English to myself, and went to strength to strength until I was offered my previous position.