When self-doubt creeps in at work, pause and reframe your negative
thoughts. Here's how
[September 18, 2025]
By CATHY BUSSEWITZ
NEW YORK (AP) — When we make mistakes at work, it can lead to a cycle of
negative thinking.
The damaging thoughts swirl: “I’m an impostor.” “I’m not smart enough.”
“I’m failing at my job.”
Feeling like an impostor — doubting one’s own abilities despite a track
record of success — is common, especially among women and members of
marginalized groups. Even on days when everything’s going right, it can
be hard to shift out of a cycle of self-doubt.
But there are ways to interrupt that downward spiral.
Many people have found cognitive behavioral therapy, a form of talk
therapy, helpful to examine internal monologues such as “I’m going to
say the wrong thing” or “I’m not good enough” — and replace them with
neutral or positive mantras.
“What we do in cognitive behavior therapy is help people identify these
negative thoughts, and then we teach them to evaluate those thoughts and
see how accurate they are,” said Judith Beck, president of the Beck
Institute for Cognitive Behavior Therapy, based in Pennsylvania.
“If they’re not accurate, we discuss what’s a more realistic perspective
on this,” she said.
To reach students with social, emotional and behavioral challenges,
Randolph Public Schools, a district outside of Boston, held a recent
seminar about helping children reframe their negative feelings using
cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT.
“We want our students… to really have the mindset that they can do
things confidently,” said Alpha Sanford, chief of development and
student services, who started the initiative.
During the training, Christin Brink, an assistant principal for special
education, thought to herself, “Wow, I need this just as much as the
kids do.”
“Being a younger administrator in this role, it’s something new to me,”
Brink added. “A lot of times I’ll have impostor syndrome, and I’ll make
a choice that I later regret.”
Why we might focus on the negative
If you find yourself having negative thoughts frequently, you’re not
alone. There are evolutionary reasons for it.
“When we were cavemen, it was very important for us to be alert for
danger,” Beck said. Preparing for the worst possible outcome helped
people stay alive. Some worries — such as “I don’t have enough time to
complete this project” — can motivate people to get things done, she
said.
But lingering on what’s going wrong can be unhealthy. We sometimes
filter out positive reinforcement, downplaying recognition we’ve
received and overemphasizing mistakes, said Kristene Doyle, director of
the Albert Ellis Institute, a psychotherapy training organization based
in New York.
Practicing your positive beliefs by saying them to yourself with force,
vigor and frequency can help you build a healthier thinking muscle, she
said.
Hold that thought. Is it really true?
One of the first steps to reframing unhelpful thoughts is to identify
those that are recurring in your mind. Examine whether they have any
validity. What evidence is there to support them?
“Telling myself ‘I’m not good enough to be here’ is only going to lead
me down a path of a self-fulfilling prophecy, and you make that
worst-case scenario happen,” Doyle said. “What makes somebody good
enough to be in the room? What makes somebody good enough to have a
job?”
When someone is thinking they’re an impostor, “look for reasons why
they’re not an impostor. What are their strengths? Why were they hired?”
Doyle asked.
For example, when high school teacher Catherine Mason of New York was
asked to reexamine a section of her lesson plan, she had some damaging
self-doubt.
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(AP Illustration / Peter Hamlin)
 “I just heard, ‘You’re a terrible
teacher. You’re so bad at this. Why can’t you just get it?’ And that
was all internal,” Mason said. Acting out of fear, she rewrote the
entire lesson plan, when she only needed to make minor changes.
Now, instead of jumping to the worst conclusion, she pauses to
examine the thought. “What did they actually say to you?” she asks
herself. “Did they say the actual words, ‘You’re terrible?’ Did they
actually say, ‘You have to throw out the whole lesson?’”
People who are thinking “I’m not good enough” can challenge that
thought by asking, “What does ‘good enough’ actually mean?” Doyle
suggested.
Throw it under a microscope
Some therapists get creative when working with clients to identify
negative feelings or beliefs. Avigail Lev, a psychologist with the
Bay Area CBT Center in San Francisco, has clients write down the
phrases, such as “They don’t value the work that I’m doing” or “I
haven’t done enough to get a raise.”
After that, she leads clients through exercises to diffuse the
strength of those thoughts, such as reading the sentences backward,
counting the words in the statement, or writing the phrases on a
cloud.
It can take time and practice to successfully reframe negative
thoughts that have been replaying in our mind for years. When Renee
Baker was studying architecture in college, professors and
instructors frequently tore into her work. The critiques were
designed to thicken her skin. But they had a lasting impact.
“There’s the self-doubt that comes with being told, literally,
‘You’re not good enough. Your ideas aren’t good enough. Your work
isn’t good enough,’” said Baker, who’s now director of project
management at Inform Studio, a design firm. “At the heart of a lot
of my self-doubt is feeling like my voice, and what I think, what I
believe, what I am passionate about, isn’t as important as the next
person's.”
So Baker worked with a therapist to challenge her damaging core
beliefs, exchanging them for more neutral thoughts. At work, she
practiced speaking up even when her throat felt tight with anxiety.
Over time, she became less anxious and more comfortable sharing her
ideas.
Find a replacement thought
You can get specific when you're searching for alternative,
healthier mantras.
“When we look at this sentence, ‘They don’t value the work that I’m
doing,’ do you have any examples of when you felt your work was
valued? Do you have examples of when people appreciated your work?”
Lev asked.
You can also reframe your thoughts about other people who are part
of your workday.
Eleanor Forbes, a social worker in Randolph Public Schools, helps
teachers and administrators learn to apply CBT techniques. When
staff members complain that a young person is being manipulative,
she helps them reframe the thought. “How about we just say that this
young person is just using survival skills?” she said.
Brink, the assistant principal, learned to reframe her own negative
thoughts, saying to herself: “I made a lot of great choices today,”
or “This was what went well,” and “Tomorrow we can try again with x,
y and z.”
Having scripted phrases ready to go helps when negative thoughts
resurface, she said.
“I’ve got this,” she tells herself. “One step at a time.”
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