Seeking advice on how to deal with social anxiety and low self-esteem when doing group assignment

[Peart]

Hello,

As I was researching tips on how to deal with my GAD online, I often got the "tell someone" advice, but since there was no one, I though I could ask everyone how they manage to cope with anxiety when working on a group assignment.

Just a bit background on my situation: at the moment I'm doing post-grad. I've always been a high-performer in uni and taken the initiative to facilitate group work. I actually do not have any issues dealing with lazy members. So as a result, I've done pretty well for myself and this semester I managed to have myself included with one of the highest performing groups in the class. The people in the group are amazing and I basically can just step down from my usual relentless self who often shouts "chop chop" and gets people to work. However, because I've always been dealing with people who are performing at the same level as I do or lower, I immediately feel disorientated as I am no longer in control of the group since everyone's so high-performing and self-sufficient. I trust my group mates, respect their opinions and appreciate the work they do but that makes me feel like I'm the weakest link in the group. I always manage to muster up the confidence to voice my opinions, make suggestions but often afterwards, I feel stupid, I feel like I don't make sense and that other people can see through me. It get even worse when I get pushed back on my ideas - I feel like I could literally flinch every time people disagree with me. I really want to do well as a team member and contribute amazing work but I'm always afraid I'd let everyone down and that I'm not as good as they thought I'd be.

To make it worse, everyone else in my group is a native English speakers and English is my second language. Usually I can communicate very well and don't have an accent, but during group meeting when my anxiety is high, I tend to make a lot of mistakes in my speech which send me into a vicious cycle of self-blaming and shaming.

I'm just wondering if anyone has experience the same thing and could give me some advice on how to cope with my anxiety better, because I really want to do well and exert more confidence when doing group work.

[sisu100]

Hi Peart,

Thank you for reaching out and sharing your story. You've come to the right place, I'm sure there are many people also relate and have experienced similar situations with group assignments.

First of all, congrats on getting into post grad! You sound like a very hardworking and high achieving student and I'm sure you're extremely intelligent to have gotten into the course in the first place. I've also just started postgrad this year too, and I can totally relate in feeling somewhat taken back by how competent and high-achieving everyone is and how lacking I am in comparison. For me, sometimes I find preparing myself before group meetings (like writing some notes or planning what I want to say before) helps me feel more confident and prepared for when I share things with the group. I'm wondering if your group also has a group chat or email where they discuss things? From reading your post, you sound really eloquent with your language and thought perhaps you could maybe write up your ideas and share them with the group this way if it helps with your anxiety. The other thing is to remember to give yourself some self-love! From hearing your experiences in other group work, I can see that you're really good at guiding and supporting your other members in doing well. I'm sure even if you've taken a step back from having to lead the team this time round, your contributions are much more valuable than you realise and that your group really recognises and appreciates your input.

Hope your course and group work has been going well. Please feel free to let us know how you're going with it! 🙂