Confidence, where did you go?

I used to never suffer from a lack of confidence. While growing up and through my college years I had always been a confident person. I was the one everyone looked too, the one that took on whatever came my way and never blinked at a challenge but all that changed when I left college and started my first real job. For the first year, I was confident, outspoken and took on many challenges. With my abundance of confidence, my ability to learn and adapt quickly and my drive I was promoted to regional manager before the second part of my second year. I was ecstatic. Here I was right out of college and was already a manager. People had confidence in me and I had always thought I was special. I always thought I would make something big of myself and this promotion played into my confidence. However, my new promotion didn't go as I planned. Quickly, I was responsible for 15 employees many of which I was responsible to hire and all of which were right out of college. Looking back now, I see the difficulty for anyone who is in the same age group to lead a large group. Automatically, my employees didn't respect me because of my age and lack of experience but more importantly they didn't respect me because honestly I wasn't a good manager. I was bossy, arrogant and micromanaged. I tried to be different but once I realized I needed to change it was too late. I probably could have turned it around and made a big difference except for two things.

First, I didn't have a very supportive supervisor. I never felt she was on my side, I knew at every chance she would throw me under the bus to protect herself. She was never on my side and never backed me up. But I think the reason it never worked out was because early on she wrote me up for something I didn't do and started to blame all the problems of the region on me. She sent me to management training to learn to "work with people better". She ultimately had torn down my confidence instead of building it up. From that point forward, I never regained my step. How could I get my team to have confidence in the direction we were going if my supervisor didn't trust me and I didn't trust me. My earth was shattered. I stayed for over a year trying to make it work but I was miserable, stressed, working 14 hours days to try and make it better. But it all came down to not believing I could make a different. I had realized I wasn't special. I wasn't something big and that I was a failure. It was the first time in my life I had ever really failed at anything. It shattered me. After three years with the organization I was fortunate enough to find a job in my town (did I mention while going through all this I was commuting an hour each way, every day). I used the excuse of the distance to leave but I really left because I didn't want to be with an organization that didn't support or trust me and because I didn't believe I could make a different or be good there.

It's been two year and I still am dealing with the fallout. I am confident in my everyday life. I can do my everyday task at my new job but I am terrified to take a step forward. I don't know if I could take another leadership role if offered. My fear of failure and lack confidence holds me back from opportunities, from starting graduate school, and from taking challenges. I truly feel that I am not worthy of being someone important even though I desire it. I have not applied for positions that people suggest because I am afraid to change and to fail again. I can do this job and do it well but there is not much room for growth here. I can learn from my co-workers-they are supportive and encouraging, but in terms of earning more money, taking on more responsibilities there is not much opportunity for me. I am not ready to leave this organization because I know I am not done learning from everyone but I fear when I hit that point I will not leave because of the lack of confidence in myself.

As I sit here and type this I truly understand how hard it is to build self-confidence back up. Are there steps you have to take or is it just a gradual healing of yourself that will help? I hope one day to find out so I don't limit myself or my family.