Pupil Paranoia

I'm now 7 weeks in to pupillage and for the most part it all seems to be going surprisingly well.  I say surprisingly because I regularly find myself in the grips of an hitherto unknown evil: "Pupil Paranoia".  This beast casually drapes itself over your shoulder whispering poison into your ears, spreading doubt into your mind and keeping you awake at night.  

A mild example can be a sinking feeling of letting a tenant down because you don't have any spare post-it notes knocking about, or catastrophising about an inability to translate a document from German into English despite my only contact with the German language being the consumption of jaegermeister in Stuttgart one weekend two years ago.  

More prominent bouts of pupil paranoia oddly occur when receiving compliments or praise.  Firstly, how do I respond to a compliment?  Gushing with thanks for the appreciation is, well, embarrassing for all involved; self-deprecating refusal to accept that you've done well or deflecting by saying "well I had help from so and so..." is counter-productive; accepting the praise outright as though it were nothing is rude and arrogant... and anything in-between is likely to cause sleepless nights while the beast whispers in your ear that you now need to analyse their reaction to how you behaved, did they raise their eyebrow when you thanked them for saying so?  did they think you were taking the piss a bit when you asked them to let your supervisor know?  The next stage is pulling apart the exact words they said and the beast manages to twist them into double meanings, backhanded comments, thinly veiled sarcasm, the lot.  

Over the last week I have been told that I'm doing very well and have made a good impression.  Great right?  Wrong.  I'll tell you what has been running through my mind: 

"Oh dear, if that person thinks I'm doing well, then maybe so and so wont like me because yesterday they had a falling out over whether or not the window in their room should be open or closed... and anyway, all I did was put a jury bundle together for them, what if that is all I'm good for?...maybe he is just saying that because he knows someone else disagrees and he is trying to reassure me because he is basically just a nice guy... or maybe I come across as needing a confidence boost, I don't want people to think I'm not confident in myself... and I must make sure that he doesn't think that praise has gone to my head so I better think of a way to make it clear that it hasn't...etc etc etc."

IT IS UTTER MADNESS.

As with most problems I have discovered that the best way to subdue this creature is through a regular medicinal intake of gin and tonic.  It works a treat until the next morning.