There is a version of you that walked into work a few years ago (maybe even a few months ago) who did not think twice about speaking up in a meeting, sharing an idea, or asking for what you deserved.
Something changed. Not your skills. Not your intelligence. Not your value.
Your belief in yourself quietly started to erode.
It happens gradually, which is part of what makes it so hard to catch. A comment from a manager that stuck with you longer than it should have. A promotion that went to someone else with no explanation. A room full of people who did not seem to notice you were there. A project that did not go the way you planned.
None of it was enough to stop you. But all of it together? It started to change the story you were telling yourself about who you are at work.
"You are not tired from working too hard. You are tired from not being yourself all day."
And here is the thing about that story. Once it takes hold, it runs in the background of everything. It is the voice that tells you to wait before you speak. To qualify your ideas before you share them. To work twice as hard to prove something that should never have needed proving.
It is exhausting. And it has nothing to do with your ability.
The women I work with are not struggling because they are not good enough. They are struggling because they stopped believing they are. They are smart, capable, experienced professionals who have somewhere along the way handed their confidence over to circumstances, other people, and a version of themselves that was never accurate to begin with.
I know this because it happened to me.
Later in my career, after years of success, I found myself working for a manager who had a consistent way of making me question myself. It was never one dramatic moment. A piece of vague feedback that stayed with me longer than it should have. A recommendation dismissed without real explanation. A disagreement that always seemed to end with me wondering if I had been wrong, even when I knew I was right.
Each moment on its own felt manageable. Together, over time, they became a snowball. And I did not see it happening because I was too close to it. By the time I stepped away from that role and finally had the distance to look back, I could see what had happened. I had been second guessing decisions I would have made without thinking five years earlier. Over-preparing for things I was already expert in. Softening my opinions before sharing them. Holding back in rooms where I should have been leading.
What I eventually understood is that what I was experiencing was not a lack of skills. It was a growing lack of belief in myself. And unfortunately, over time, the two can feel almost indistinguishable.
A skills gap is fixable. Learn the thing, build the experience, done. A belief gap is different. It borrows the language of a skills problem — I am not ready, I need more time, someone else is more qualified — and sends you back to do more work that was never really the issue in the first place.
And nobody talks about how exhausting that is. Not the big burnout. The quiet, daily exhaustion of performing confidence for everyone else while not feeling any of it on the inside. Of second guessing every email before you send it. Of over-preparing for things you are already expert in. No wonder you come home exhausted. No wonder you feel stuck and overwhelmed and without joy for work you actually care about. You are not tired from working too hard. You are tired from not being yourself all day.
Confidence is not a personality trait you either have or you do not. It is not something that only belongs to other people, the loud ones in the room, the ones who make it look effortless. It is something you were born with. It is your birthright. But circumstances, and the stories you start to tell yourself, can chip away at it until you forget it was ever there.
The work is not about becoming someone new. It is about clearing away everything that convinced you the old version of yourself was not enough. Because she was. She still is. She has just been buried under a lot of noise that was never hers to carry.
So if you have been sitting in meetings second guessing yourself, shrinking in conversations where you should be leading, or lying awake wondering when you stopped feeling like yourself at work — this is your sign.
You did not lose it. You just need to be reminded it was always there.