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Best thing I ever did to cope is that I started to deal with people instead of trying to avoid them.

Take the discussion the first time it comes up. Speak your mind as soon as you are given a chance. Keep repeating yourself in meetings and stick with it. Fight for the things that you find important.

It sucks that you have to keep babbling with all these people around you in order to avoid everything collapsing on your head, but the sooner you realise this fact the better. And if you figure out that you are the only one at your job who actually care about your job and the quality of the stuff you produce, then good on you. It'll motivate you to find a better one.



Great advice about facing problems head on, instead of running or avoiding. I started doing that when my anxiety was at its worst, and I've been feeling much better since.

I had been at the company for several years and felt like I was just wandering -- pretty much self taught in a lot of things, for better or worse, so I didn't understand a lot of things still. Pretty much everyone else on the team was/is a senior engineer, and when we would have discussions, I would be quite lost... but I was too afraid/proud to ask for help to understand. I would always feel anxiety during meetings especially, because everyone gave input and I had nothing to say.

I decided that instead of boiling myself in my own anxiety about not knowing how things worked, I would go ask another engineer to help me understand. Reaching out and asking for help (and deciding not to care what people thought of me) helped me realize that it's "ok" (to some extent) to have imposter syndrome.


Good point, sometimes the dread can be worse than the encounter itself. The only way out is through.




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