When You Don't Feel Like Yourself at Work (And It Might Not Be You)
- Patricia Ezechie
- Jun 8
- 4 min read
Updated: Jun 10
How the environments around us shape our confidence, energy and experience of ourselves.
Have you ever noticed that you seem to become a slightly different version of yourself depending on where you are?
In some environments you feel relaxed, articulate and capable.
Ideas come easily.
You contribute freely.
You feel comfortable in your own skin.
In other environments, something shifts.
You become more cautious.
You secondguess yourself.
You say less than youwould normally.
And you find yourself holding back, editing your thoughts or questioning your instincts.
Most of us assume this is telling us something about who we are. Whether we are confident, capable, or maybe not. But what if that's only part of the story? What if some of what we're experiencing isn't coming from inside us at all?
What if it's emerging from the interaction between us
and the environments we're moving through?
We Tend to Treat Confidence as a Personal Trait
When we feel less confident, we often turn that feeling inward.
We ask oursleves:
What's wrong with me?
Why am I struggling?
Why can't I seem to show up as myself?
Why am I hesitating?
These are understandable questions. But they can sometimes lead us to overlook something important.
Confidence may not be as fixed as we think it is.
Many psychologists now view confidence, belonging and performance as being highly influenced by context. Research into psychological safety, for example, consistently shows that people contribute more freely when they feel safe to speak, experiment and make mistakes without fear of negative consequences. In other words, our environment influences what becomes available to us. The same person can appear highly confident in one setting and deeply uncertain in another. So, the difference isn't always the individual...
Sometimes it's the conditions around them.
Different Environments Bring Different Parts of Us Forward
Think about a time when you felt completely comfortable at work.
You probably weren't thinking constantly about how you were being perceived, or monitoring every word before speaking, or whether you belonged.
You just showed up.
Now think about a different environment. Perhaps a workplace, team, leadership culture or social setting where things felt harder. You may have become more cautious, and guarded, and less willing to take risks or contribute.
You didn't suddenly become less capable.
But the environment may have been sending very different signals.
Signals about what was valued.
Signals about who belonged.
Signals about what was rewarded.
Signals about what was safe.
These signals rarely operate in isolation. They often show up together, creating the wider environment that shapes how we experience ourselves.
Like the culture of a workplace.
The behaviours that are encouraged.
The expectations we learn to navigate.
The relationships that provide support, or don't.
The stories about who succeeds and who doesn't.
Taken together, these signals and stories form what I think of as ecosystems.
And just like any ecosystem, they create the conditions that influence what grows easily and what struggles.
The Quiet Influence of Ecosystems
Every ecosystem creates conditions. Some conditions support growth, others make growth harder. Some encourage experimentation, creativity and openness, and others, caution, conformity and self-protection. Most of the time these influences subtle and are found in our everyday interactions.
In who gets listened to.
Who gets overlooked.
What gets rewarded.
What gets ignored.
What is considered normal.
And over time, these subtle, seemingly small experiences begin to shape our relationship with ourselves.
When We Internalise Environmental Messages
The challenges is we rarely experience environments as environments. We experience them through ourselves.
So instead of saying:
"This environment doesn't feel supportive."
We say:
"I've lost confidence."
Instead of recognising:
"I'm responding to difficult conditions."
We think:
"Maybe I'm the problem."
This is where things tangled. Beacuse what feels like a personal limitation is actually a reasonable response to the ecosystem we're operating within. But, that doesn't mean the environment is entirely to blame, or that we don't have agency.
Two people can experience the same workplace very differently. We all bring our own histories, identities, experiences and interpretations. But environments still matter. They are part of the equation.
Looking Beyond the Individual
Conversation around careers tend to focus on individual action.
Set goals.
Build confidence.
Develop resilience.
Improve performance.
And while all of those things have value, they can unintentionally encourage us to see every challenge as an individual problem requiring an individual solution. But sometimes the more useful question is:
What am I responding to?
What signals am I receiving every day?
What feels supported here?
What feels constrained?
Where do I feel most like myself?
And where do I feel like I'm performing a version of myself that the environment expects?
These questions don't immediately solve anything, but they do increase awareness. And that awareness creates options.
Understanding Your Ecosystem Creates Perspective
One of the most stabilising things that can happen during periods of uncertainty is realising that your current experience is not a complete reflection of who you are. It's a reflection of who you are in relationship with your current environment.
That's a very different thing.
It allows us to separate ourselves, at least partly, from the circumstances we're currently operating within. We stop treating every feeling as evidence about our identity. We become more curious, observant, and more compassionate towards ourselves, and that's where meaningful change begins... through seeing ourselves more clearly.
A Reflection to Leave You With
This week, rather than asking:
"What's wrong with me?"
Maybe try asking:
"What am I responding to?"
Notice the environments you're part of.
Notice where your energy expands.
Notice where it contracts.
Notice where you feel seen.
Notice where you feel overlooked.
Notice where you feel comfortable being yourself.
Because the ecosystems around you may be shaping far more of your experience than you've previously realised.
Listen to the Full Episode
🎧 Episode 16: The Ecosystems We Live Inside
This article explores ideas from Episode 16 of the Proactive Empowered Careers podcast.
In this episode, I explore how workplaces, cultures, teams and wider systems influence our experience of ourselves, and why understanding the ecosystems around us can help us make more sense of our confidence, energy and sense of possibility.
Listen here:
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