Please help. I feel so disappointed in myself all the time.

[Sunflowerz22]

Lovely house, mortgage paid off
Plenty of money
Gorgeous DD school age.
Great marriage

I'm officially a kept woman, and I bloody hate it.
My DH is very successful, in a 'big job'.

Yet I'm miserable, and I feel so guilty for it. I'll get flamed, I know what MN is like.

I'm a qualified teacher, and I've just quit after 14 years in the job. Went off sick with stress and then left. I was only part time but it was more than enough to break me. I had to get out. I did, and now I feel like shit. Education is a shambles. I'm reluctant to go back to the classroom at all.
I still do a bit of tutoring but that's it. I barely work 10 hours a week.

I feel like a failure.
I'm a very driven person and I find it incredibly hard to be reliant financially on someone else. I didn't mind while my DD was pre-school age, but now she's at school I feel completely useless. I desperately want to be as successful as he is, and have a decent career. I wish I could turn back time. Why did I choose teaching? It was never the right career path for me. What a terrible mistake that was.

The self doubt and disappointment in myself is so strong and I just want to have the confidence to feel good enough and to get out there and pursue a decent career.

There is one career path I'd love to take. I have a hobby I love and I could turn it into a career, but I don't feel good enough, and I don't have the confidence to go for it, not to mention the years and expense it'll take to retrain to do it. It's a good career and would pay well but I'm not convinced I'd stick at it. My nerves and self doubt would get the better of me.
My husband supports it, but I still need to earn something the meantime and I don't have any confidence to apply for anything as a stop-gap.

I'm expecting to get flamed. There are people out there who can barely feed their children. Trust me I know, and I feel so guilty for feeling like this. I should be feeling grateful for what I have.

I'm just so fed up with myself. I'm hoping someone somewhere can help me feel even a tiny bit better.

I've tried therapy, many times. Nothing seems to help.

Thanks for reading.

I think being a teacher was a huge part of your identity and it’s very difficult to then not have that. Do you think it also made you feel less uncomfortable about having the lovely house/lots of money as you weren’t a kept woman, you were independent?
Nurturing your DD, marriage and home is by no means a failing and you describe everything else in your life as good - that is a huge accomplishment and you shouldn’t feel a failure.. but we feel what we feel.
there’s nothing to stop you returning to teaching - perhaps when your DD is older, a different setting or a different age group might really suit you. Or you could build up the tutoring you’ve started.
it sounds like your DH supported you leaving your job so there is nothing to feel bad about, you needed to leave and he understood.

if you’ve got the money, the world could be your oyster- think of it as an exciting opportunity! Get your flying licence or try something new and go for it! You have a chance to really enjoy life.

I had exactly the same conversation with my husband last night, so please don't feel like you are alone in this. I gave up a career when I had my first child and have floundered ever since. I have freelanced, trained as a TA but hated it, and did something I thought would be a dream.job while my second baby was small. But I found each thing too much alongside being a mother, and I am totally lost and direction less. My confidence has bottomed out and I don't know where to go. I can't go back to working full time or I will burn out, there are no part time jobs in my industry, and I don't have the confidence to start retraining at something else again. I really feel for you and I hope you get some clarity on what the future will be like.

Could I recommend a book? How to do everything and be happy by Peter Jones. Changed my life, might help with the all or nothing thinking too.

Thank you. It makes me feel better I'm not alone.
I've always had big goals and dreams and I find it very difficult to relax and watch TV for example. I always have to be working towards something.

I just feel so lost when I don't know what my next steps are. I can't just live day to day without a 'plan' for my future.

Make a plan then! Get a big piece of paper and start writing about what you want your life to look like in five years time. If that's too big, think about this time next year. Walk yourself through an average day. What would you want to be doing? Where will you be? Who will be there with you?

Keep writing until you feel you have got a vision that's realistic but also exciting. Then make your strategy to get there.

What steps will you need to take between now and then to make this happen? What are the things you'll need to research more? What obstacles will you need to overcome? Figure out an order that you'll have to do things in. What needs to be done first? What do you need to make happen in order to achieve that first step? And what's one thing you can do this week to move towards that?

Take a couple of days or more to formulate your plan. You were a teacher so get out your nice stationery and create yourself a sticker chart or a visual calendar. Stick it on the wall. Do something every week or even every day that moves you incrementally towards your goal.

Don't even bother thinking about confidence or self-doubt. Confidence comes from doing things - you teach yourself that you can be trusted, solve problems, and be kind to yourself through your actions. The more you show yourself with actions that you're a trustworthy person, the more naturally confident you'll become. And when it comes to things that scare you, like, I dunno, making a phone call to enquire about training places, just "feel the fear and do it anyway!" You fly planes for fun, OP! I don't think you could do that if you weren't actually pretty brave.

Hi OP first of all I just want to say give yourself time to heal. Yes you will feel down as you've just been through a horrific experience. Being signed off with stress will take time to get back from.

The flying sounds like a great idea, maybe build up from the small planes and see what suits you?
I only say this as I know quite a few pilots, we live near one of the major airports. I know nothing about the training but I know quite a few Captains and First Officers. In every circumstance, the pilot goes off to fly, their home life is run by their partner &/or family, they have a stable job and are there for school drop off and pick ups etc.
One of the Captains I know is a woman, divorced, has a school aged DC - she lives with her mum who frequently does the school drop offs etc. She flies short haul.

All I am saying is before you pour thousands of pounds into training, see if this lifestyle is right for your family - will your DH / family be around or would you have to get a nanny?

Would flying props be more for you?

OP, I understand completely. I am close to retirement and, taking an objective viewpoint, I know I have done very well in my career. I also know that everyone who meets me will regard me as someone who has high levels of confidence and self-regard. However, for years I struggled with stress, anxiety and imposter syndrome. There was this nasty, spiteful little voice in my head, pretty much all of the time, belittling my achievements, criticising my appearance and pushing me forward to work harder in order to achieve God knows what.

i believe that at least some of this was caused by my going part-time when our DC were small and then being self-employed for several years. I was treading water with my career for a long time and struggled to come to terms with not achieving what I thought I was capable of achieving. I also tinkered with the idea of expanding a hobby, which made me a small amount of money, into a career.

Last year, feeling pretty terrified of what retirement or semi-retirement would look like for me, I contacted a life coach and my sessions with her have truly been life changing for me. That nasty little internal monologue has been silenced and I am genuinely happier than I have been for decades. Everyone around me can see it. My husband and I were close before, but now we are having an absolute ball together.

May I suggest that you need to truly understand yourself in order to move forwards in the best possible way. Don’t wait too long, as I did, to tackle this.

if you or anyone else wants the contact details of the fabulous lady who helped me sort myself out, please feel free to DM me. And no, I don’t get anything from promoting her.

@Pipsquiggle thank you. I live closer to the smaller airports with very short haul operations. Going to Jersey, Scotland, things like that. I wouldn't want to do any more than that. I probably wouldn't even leave the UK.
Maybe when my daughter has grown up I'd consider flying further afield, but I'm not sure being away for long periods of time is for me. There are no long haul flights within a 1.5 hour drive from where I live anyway.

My husband is quite keen to leave his job and do something more flexible with fewer hours which could eventually work in my favour.

I'd also love to be a flying instructor further down the line which is not particularly well paid but is a more flexible option if things don't work out. I'd need to do at least some of the commercial training to do that anyway.

@LegallyBlondish I've sent you a PM.

I used to be a teacher and lost my job in a restructure. I did a business based on my hobby which didn’t work 😁 but it did teach me I don’t want to be self employed. I now do something different where I started at the bottom and worked my way up. I have a much better and less stressful job now than my teaching one. I would never go back to teaching unless my kids were starving in the streets.

Teaching breaks you even if it is going well, you’re only ever one observation or change in management away from being on the hit list. I would give yourself time to heal before making sweeping judgements about yourself and your capabilities. I still have nightmares about teaching though sometimes 😁