The Day I Forgot Who I Was
The Day I Forgot Who I Was
How a difficult environment convinced me I wasn't the person I thought I was
There was one meeting I remember clearly.
The moment I walked in, the temperature changed. The atmosphere shifted in a way that was almost physical. I used to think of it as the White Witch entering Narnia. That particular cold. That particular stillness.
The person sitting across from me had applied for the same post I had been appointed to. She hadn't been successful. And she was going to make sure I knew it, every single day.
To understand how I got there, I need to go back a little.
How it started
Early in my career, I saw an advert for my first senior leadership post. The timing felt right. The school was the right size. There was just one thing I hadn't mentioned on the application. I was three months pregnant.
I decided to prepare for it anyway, go through the process honestly, and use the interview to assess whether it was the right fit as much as whether I was the right fit for them. I was blown away by the vision and energy of the head teacher. At the end, when they asked if I had any questions, I said no. But I did have something to tell them. I was pregnant and would be going on maternity leave, but my plan was to take six months and come back.
I got the job.
Looking back, there was a significant amount of naivety in all of this. I had moved quickly through my career. Results in my department had gone from the bottom 10% nationally to the top 10%. I knew I was good at what I did. With the confidence of someone who hadn't yet been properly tested, I thought I had it.
What I walked into was something I hadn't prepared for.
When the environment becomes the problem
There were two people in that school who were deeply unhappy that I was there. One was the colleague I have already mentioned. The other had been doing the role before a restructure and had chosen not to reapply, but carried bitterness about how that had happened. From the start, both of them made things very difficult. Things were done behind my back. Work that should have come through me was being shared with others without my knowledge.
The head teacher was visionary and often out of school. We were all new to our posts. We were expected to stand on our own two feet. And I was also, in the background, about to become a parent for the first time.
I went off on maternity leave at eight and a half months. When my son was six weeks old, I started writing the school timetable from home. When he was less than six months old, I went back. We hadn't managed to move closer to the school, so I was commuting 67 miles each way. My baby had just started nursery. I was exhausted in a way I hadn't known before. He picked up every illness going. And back at school, the negativity continued.
The combination of all of it meant that, with hindsight, I became very unwell. My confidence was completely gone. I lost weight. I was not making clear decisions. I remember thinking: why did I leave the school where my team knew me, where I was valued, where I had something solid under my feet?
What self-doubt looks like from the inside
This is the part that is hardest to explain to anyone who hasn't experienced it.
Every piece of evidence around me seemed to confirm the same story. That I wasn't coping. That I wasn't good enough. That I wasn't cut out for the role. The longer it went on, the more I believed it.
I couldn't see what was happening clearly while I was living inside it. The exhaustion, the hostility, the isolation — all of it compressed my thinking. I had stopped being able to separate the facts from the story the environment was telling me about myself.
This is one of the things I have come to understand deeply through my work with women in leadership. Self-doubt is not always something that grows from inside us. Sometimes it arrives gradually through the environments we work in. Through sustained pressure, exhaustion and the slow accumulation of experiences that make us question what we thought we knew about ourselves. I wrote more about the five protective patterns that tend to show up under this kind of pressure if you want to explore that further.
The decision that changed things
Eventually I made the decision to apply elsewhere. Same level of post, but a bigger school, more responsibility, more scope. I remember buying two suits and leaving the labels on — just in case I needed to return them.
The process of applying, and going through the interview, reminded me of something I had lost sight of. I was good at what I did. I had skills and experience that were real. I had just spent the better part of two years in an environment that had made me forget that.
I got the post. And it was almost as if the moment I did, I remembered who I was.
The part I hadn't expected
When I was appointed to my new post, she took over my role. The handover brought us into the same room properly for the first time.
In that conversation, I learned that she had never known I had been honest at interview about the pregnancy. She thought I had hidden it deliberately to secure the job. For nearly two years, we had both been working from completely different versions of the same story.
We cleared the air. We left on good terms. I did a thorough handover and wished her well.
I have thought about that conversation many times since. What strikes me most, looking back, is how impossible it was to see any of it clearly while I was living it. I didn't have enough distance from the situation to see it for what it actually was.
That is one of the reasons I value having someone outside a situation so much now. Not to tell you what to do, but to help you separate the facts from the story you have started to believe.
What this means for you
If you are in a difficult environment right now, or if you are looking back at a period in your career when your confidence was significantly knocked, I want you to consider this.
The self-doubt you felt may not have been an accurate reflection of your capability. It may have been a rational response to an irrational situation.
One of the questions I come back to most often with the women I work with is this: when did you stop trusting your own judgement? The answer is rarely "never." It is usually tied to a specific period, a specific environment, or a specific set of circumstances. Knowing that changes things.
The two suits with the labels on were me, just barely holding onto the possibility that I might still be the person I used to know. Somewhere along the way, I had started believing the environment's version of me rather than my own.
Reflection questions
Is there a time in your career when your confidence was significantly knocked, not by your own performance, but by the environment or the people around you?
Looking back, can you see that the self-doubt you felt was a response to circumstances, rather than an accurate reflection of your capability?
And right now, are there any voices you are carrying internally that might originally have come from outside you?
About the author
Johanna Urquhart is a leadership coach, mentor and the founder of Resta Forte. With 25 years of senior leadership experience, including 12 years as a school Principal, she helps women in professional and senior leadership roles lead with confidence, clarity and sustainability. She is a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute, a Certified Menopause Support Coach and holds qualifications in nutrition, women's health and holistic wellness.