Anxiety + Self-Doubt.
Honest reflections on taming your inner critic.
Have you struggled with anxiety and self-confidence issues as a Product Marketer? Join the conversation; submit your questions and thoughts to be discussed in our monthly advice column.
My Journey of Overcoming Self-Doubt and Anxiety
By: Anonymous
Before I go into this story, you should know a little bit about me. I’m a 27-year-old woman and I’ve struggled with low self-esteem and anxiety almost my entire life, in part stemming from a chronic brain condition I am affected by daily. I’m also a very sincere, kind, and empathetic person and I am most fulfilled when I feel like I’m helping people.
I started my marketing career at an 11-person B2B startup selling technical software products. At the time, I had an English degree and some internship experience writing blogs and copyediting. I didn’t know anything about marketing funnels, SEO, or what B2B sales was.
I looked to my manager for guidance, and he was so helpful in pointing me toward learning resources, but he had only been in marketing a year more than me. I consumed as much material as I could to teach myself marketing and learn about sales and product development, and I did everything I could to prove I was a capable marketer. But despite my accomplishments, I still felt like a dumb girl with an English degree who was somehow doing marketing.
About a year into my time there, my manager left and wasn’t replaced. I remember getting the Slack message and crying at my desk filled with panic. I had become the only marketer and felt responsible for the company’s success. I loved marketing, I’d worked so hard to get to this point, and I worried that failing meant I would lose my career. The entire time, I felt like I was one wrong move away from everyone realizing I wasn’t capable and getting fired.
I needed a proper mentor and wanted to learn how to work on a marketing team. I accepted a product marketing role without really knowing what it was, but I liked the hiring manager, and I figured I could learn along the way in a more supportive environment.
Our team consisted of me, another product marketing specialist, and our manager. My manager was also new to product marketing and began building out the function six months before I joined. She was a great mentor, introducing me to the Product Marketing Alliance, helping me figure out what product marketing is, and building my confidence.
She left about six months into my time there. We had to pick up where she left off—educating the company about product marketing while we were learning what it was ourselves. We had no GTM framework, sales enablement program, or customer advocacy program. We had no personas, messaging, or positioning documentation, and no collaborative relationship with the product team. Our competitive intelligence program was minimal.
I was overwhelmed by everything that needed to be done and I wanted to be the person to do it. I communicated my plans to execute all these things on top of my other responsibilities to my manager and other stakeholders without knowing how much time everything would take.
I gave everything to my job, and that made it my identity. I considered my coworkers and manager close friends and shared almost everything with them—including my fears. With growing layoffs in the tech industry and the general sentiment that anyone at any company could be next, my ongoing fear of everyone realizing I wasn’t capable grew to an all-time high.
Then I got fired.
Flat out, no warning. One day I was heads down on a project. The next I was unemployed. It was devastating, and even though it was a macro business decision, I took it extremely personally. I cried a lot. I wasn’t upset with them for letting me go but with myself for not being enough. It felt like the confirmation my inner critic was looking for.
Who was I without a job? I didn’t know at first. I laid in bed depressed for weeks. I felt like giving up, but that wasn’t an option. I had to find a way to keep going, which meant I had to believe in myself. I was forced to take a breath, recoup, and reassess how I could change how I approached my work. And that’s when I started growing in a way I didn’t have time for when I was running at top speed.
I realized that with all my anxiety about not being enough and needing to be perfect, I was working against myself. I was constantly overpromising and apologizing. Even when I received compliments, I would point out areas I could have done better, and I would be over-emphasizing shortcomings—even when they were outside of my control. This anxiety affected the way I presented myself—my facial expressions in meetings, my tone of voice, and the way I communicated with others.
Unemployment was like self-confidence boot camp. My biggest fear had come to pass, and the only way forward was to believe in myself. I got back in touch with who I was, redefined my greatest strengths and how I would operate as a professional, and continually pitched my worth to hiring managers until I believed it myself.
After reflecting, here’s what I learned:
Ideas mean nothing without action: I let my grand vision and creative ideas get in the way of my capacity for execution and action. It was good I had an idea of what I wanted product marketing to be, but you can’t just tell people what you want it to be. You have to show them, and yourself, that you can realize this vision by implementing incremental change. Get some wins, earn trust, and collaborate on a pragmatic plan to implement a piece of your vision.
Save total vulnerability for mentors, friends, and mental health experts outside of your workplace: It’s important to provide context for effective communication, and it’s fantastic to form friendships. Still, work relationships will always be transactional to a certain degree, and you need to make sure you’re positioning yourself in a way that inspires the confidence of others. You may be well-liked, but if you’re not well-respected, you won’t go far.
It’s okay to have limits. Having personal limitations does not mean you are any less capable. You can’t do everything all the time—even when it seems like others can. Have grace with yourself. Communicate your limitations with confidence. It will work out.
I just started a new job, and I can’t say I’m 100% confident or that my anxiety has magically disappeared. But after this past year, I have a better understanding of my strengths and an easier time admitting my limits to myself. I know that whatever happens, I’ll be able to get through it. I’m getting better every day, and I’m proud of myself.
A huge thank you to our writer for sharing her story with us this month. Let us know what you think of this edition of Product Marketing Therapy by leaving a comment below. Get involved in the project by authoring an essay or submitting a question to be answered in our advice column.