A weird one. I'm not a young man (28) but I have only finished my education 1.5 years ago and left wondering around the country, changing 4 jobs and finally finding one I'm really enjoying. It's not a great pay yet but I get to properly start my career, I have a lot of freedom in my work, they treat me super well and I put in more hours than it says in the contract.

Despite many challenges I've overcome, my inner confidence is still yet to shine. I doubt many of my actions and rarely see value in my work, even though I'm miles ahead of those at this position before me.

How I understood that? Well, I had a 6-week probation meeting with my line manager and my VP a few weeks ago. During the meeting, I was nervous to the point where I could sense my face being pale. We had a record book to fill where they establish my competence by choosing on whether my performance is satisfactory. I was on a thin line between 'often exceeds expectations' and 'exceptional'. Literally none of the good performance observations were outside of 'observed' or 'constantly observed'.

Yet, I still felt like I was not enough, kept looking for excuses and explanations as to why I'm not doing well, waiting for that moment when they'd say I'm shite. At the end, they said it was one of the easiest reviews in their 20 years at work. They also had to fill a form with 2 observations for where I'm doing well, and 1 where I could do better. As my VP was about to fill the second form, I whispered 'I can give you a hint' and wanted to cite my lack of focus when doing many tasks at the same time. She smirked and wrote 'you should share your achievements more often'. What the fuck.

Anyway, while I think it's good that I have self doubts as they keep pushing me forward, I also feel that they are significantly hurting my self-esteem, which can also be observed in my relationship with women. I just can't stop over thinking myself, the fact that the review was so good is really massaging my ego but I still can't get rid of the feeling of not being enough.

Its a serious case. I've tried shrooms before and they gave me life changing solutions. I'm thinking perhaps it's time to use them again. But before that, can someone advise if there is any way to change those lifelong assumptions about myself that I have in my head? I learn stoicism, do smaller things like putting words 'smile more' on my phone wallpaper, give myself arguments that I should be more positive but somehow every time I forget about these things and get back to the roots again. I know where it's coming from, it's coming from my childhood and my single mom, but I have no clue how to beat this negativity out of my head.

Any tips? Thank you.