7 Ways to Overcome an Inferiority Complex at Work
If you have low self-esteem or your on-the-job confidence has been threatened in some way, here’s what experts say you can do.
Starting a new job can make anyone nervous. Those first few days and weeks can be filled with uncertainty. You don’t know anyone. You don’t know the lay of the land. You don’t even know where the coffee is — or if you’re going to fit in and measure up.
But if you’ve been on the job for a while and still feel as if you can’t do anything right, despite having been hired for your expertise and experience, it may be that an inferiority complex is keeping you from peak performance.
“Inferiority complex may reduce work performance because it limits the ability of an individual to make accurate decisions and adjustment in behaviors,” says Franki Y. H. Kung, PhD, an assistant professor of psychology at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.
Here’s more on how — and what to do about it.
In a review focused on goal setting published in 2021 in Personality and Social Psychology Review, Kung and his colleague point to evidence-based reasons why feeling inferior can hold you back professionally.
“In order to perform well, one needs to know how far or close they are to the end goal they seek,” he says about that work. A false sense of inferiority makes it really hard to measure your progress towards goals — for example, you might believe that your skill level is much lower than it actually is, or that your work on a project was subpar when it was perfectly good.
“Frustration that comes from an inferiority complex can develop into a sense of helplessness, seeing supposedly meaningful and positive feedback as irrelevant,” Kung says. This makes it hard to feel like you’re succeeding, which can undermine your job satisfaction and make you withdraw from your work over time, he says.
According to Nickia Lowery, a licenced professional counselor with Optimum Purpose Counseling and Education in Lawrenceville, Georgia, some of the ways that the persistent, irrational signs of inferiority complex might pop up at work include:
If you experience any of these signs and feel that they’re truly holding you back at work — for example, you never volunteer to take the lead on projects, or you worry so much about your skills that it slows down your work — you should seek help. “The first thing you have to do is speak to a therapist, who is going to be the most useful resource,” says Howard Pratt, DO, a psychiatrist and the Medical Director at Community Health of South Florida, in Miami.
One important thing to realize about an inferiority complex is that the negative thought pattern is cyclic. “The more it happens, the more it becomes part of our thought process and can lead to severely hampering our lives and lifestyles,” Dr. Pratt says. The negative thoughts become automatic, which makes them more and more difficult to challenge over time.
In addition to possibly seeking out therapy, overcoming an inferiority complex at work (and otherwise) is about intentionally noticing and challenging these negative thoughts when they arise, Pratt says. Here are some things you can do to break the negative thought cycle and overcome inferiority complex at work.
It’s quite natural to compare yourself with your coworkers, says Leigh Johnson-Migalski, PsyD, clinical psychologist and associate professor of psychology at Adler University in Chicago. After all, healthy competition can cause us to work harder and fuel success. But frequently measuring yourself against others to the point that you feel envious, anxious, and frustrated is a recipe for misery. It’s also a waste of time and energy that would be better invested in doing the best job possible, so that you both showcase your abilities and enhance your self-worth.
It's also helpful to turn those comparisons inward by comparing yourself with you, says Lowery. “Tell yourself that you wouldn’t have been hired if the company didn’t feel you were competent. Focus on your strengths to reassure yourself. This can help you to restructure that mindset. Also, if there’s something you feel you can improve on, make that your own goal. Be proactive about taking steps to improve in that area.”
People with low self-esteem may often “handicap” themselves at work. “By not getting enough sleep the night before, underpreparing, or consuming substances, these individuals create a plausible reason, instead of their lack of intelligence or ability, for not doing well on [the job the next day],” says Kendall Thornton, PhD, a teaching assistant professor of psychology at Eastern Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina.
A study previously published in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that while these handicapping behaviors might be self-protective — by creating lower expectations or giving a 'good' external reason for a less than performance — peers and supervisors will eventually catch on to the fact that you’re not doing your best work. This can further undermine your self-esteem, and will impact both your career growth and your everyday satisfaction.
In general, the self-protective behaviors that are common in people with low self-esteem — like blaming poor performance on a hangover in order to mask feelings of inadequacy, or taking yourself out of the running for a promotion in order to avoid disappointment — are reactions to negative experiences you’ve had in the past, Dr. Thornton says.
Attempting to understand these patterns in yourself is the best way to overcome them. Working with a licensed therapist can be extremely helpful in processing past trauma (the big stuff and the small stuff).
Thornton also recommends practicing mindfulness as a way to challenge your internal monologue. “We too often have self-talk that is immediately judgmental and negative,” he says. But once you’re able to be mindful of how your past experiences might be shaping your behaviors and reactions to things at work, you’ll start understanding that your thoughts and reactions aren’t necessarily reality.
People with an inferiority complex tend to immediately blame themselves when problems arise at work, but often the work environment is the real culprit, Dr. Johnson-Migalski notes. So when you catch yourself thinking negatively about yourself at work, ask, “Do I need to make changes myself, or do I need to look for ways to make changes in the environment around me?”
For instance, imagine you notice that during brainstorming meetings your ideas are repeatedly attributed to other people. You could drag your self-confidence down by thinking, “I’m so unimportant no one pays attention to me.”
Or you could do a reality check with your coworkers by asking: “Does this happen to you?” If they say yes, Johnson-Migalski notes, you can take action together. “You and your peers might decide to support one another by commenting ‘nice idea’ in future meetings to ensure the focus is on who really deserves credit.”
Are your insecure feelings a reaction to a real problem, one that you’re getting direct feedback about with concrete examples? Or are you responding to what you assume other people are thinking or to whispered gossip you might be misinterpreting or that isn’t a true reflection of a particular situation?
Dr. Kung’s advice: “Find a trusted network of supportive peers and mentors — people who have your back and see things you can't see — to provide you with kind and constructive feedback.”
Work to take this feedback at face value. Having a clear idea of both your strengths and your areas for improvement is important in being able to make progress towards your goals, Kung says.
Being around supportive, positive people reminds you of how you’re supposed to treat yourself, Lowery says. Don’t waste time on colleagues who undermine you, don’t listen when you speak, or don’t make you feel accomplished and accepted.
A review published in 2021 in Frontiers in Psychology looked at the existing evidence on “emotional contagion” — the spontaneous spread of emotions from one person to another — and found that both positive and negative emotions are contagious. In other words, surrounding yourself with positive people really does make you feel more positive yourself.
Expecting yourself to ace your very first company-wide presentation or be able to complete a new task without any assistance isn’t realistic, and it can set you up for feeling worse about yourself. Kung recommends replacing perfectionism with a growth mindset. “See challenges as an opportunity to grow and develop yourself even further,” he says. “You might not be there yet, but if you try, know that you're getting there.”
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