| My 2 cents… Anxiety is the emotion, not the internal conflict that leads to that emotion. You are having the exact same anxiety in both cases but the cause appears to be slightly different. So the real question is not "what kind of anxiety is this?" but "what causes this anxiety?". The problem, here, is that impostor syndrome, if that's something you actually have, is very likely to skew your perception and prevent you from answering the question correctly. In the first situation, "is way above my skill set" may just as well be your impostor syndrome kicking in, so how can you actually tell if you need a confidence boost or a kick in the ass if internal signals can't be trusted? I guess external signals are the only alternative. Do the people who put you on that project actually know what you are capable of or do they have a history of bad resource management decisions? How do you compare with others on the team in terms of experience? Is it something you have already done or something new? Is it the same for everyone in the team? Etc. In any case, a clear, honest, unbiased answer to "what causes this anxiety?" is what you really need to go further. By the way, the "good" thinking and the "bad" thinking are both done at the same place by the same entity so you should give up on that dissociation between "my brain" and "me": there is only one pawannitj and he/she is as responsible of the "bad" thinking (internal conflict, impostor syndrome, etc.) as he/she is of counteracting with "good" thinking. Deflecting responsibilities to "my brain" is not a healthy way to address your problems. |