Rebuilding My Confidence, One Chain at a Time

How crocheting helped me overcome my crippling self-doubt

I can’t do anything.

It’s a secret I clutched close to my chest, stuffed under my bra like a wad of tissues masquerading as desirability. And the masquerade had been pretty successful for the past four years. I’d graduated high school with well over a 4.0, I’d played soccer, worked as a lifeguard, volunteered at summer camps, led Model UN and the school newspaper and the Arabic Honor Society and several other clubs I’ve completely forgotten about at this point.

I could fool anyone. Hell, I even fooled my dream university—tricked them into offering me a full scholarship.

But the joke’s on them.

The joke’s on them because I cannot, in fact, actually do anything.

I dropped out of college two months into my freshman year, my years of repressed sadness suddenly exploding all over my life, drowning me in a cesspool of my own rotten waste.

I know I can’t do anything, because when I went to seek help from one of the university psychiatrists, he told me after a ten-minute conversation that I should take a leave of absence.

I guess I couldn’t fool him.

I filed the withdrawal paperwork the next day. I moved back home the next week. My boyfriend dumped me over text the next month. Just like that, everything I’d built for myself collapsed into oblivion.

So, there you go: I can’t do anything.

I was so fixated on this idea, so convinced that I was a complete and utter failure, so sure that I’d never be able to achieve anything new ever again, that it became my defining narrative. As I blew the next year of my life out the window in endless puffs of smoke, my parents began quietly urging me to try something again. Try applying to another university, try taking some classes at the community college, try something. But who were they kidding. We all knew I couldn’t do anything.

Bleary-eyed and desperate after wasting away my first year of adulthood in my childhood bedroom, I confided in a friend about my ineptitude. “You just need to try achieving something really small to rebuild your confidence,” he advised. I knew he was right. No stakes. No pressure. Just something to convince my brain that I was, indeed, capable of doing something.

I don’t know why I picked crochet. I hadn’t dabbled in the textile arts since my grandmother had briefly tried to teach me to sew when I was ten. But something about the repetitive motions, the individual skills that meticulously built upon each other, the material outcome of your labor—it just sounded so relaxing, so tangible, so purposeful. It seemed like just the thing to get me out of my funk, and to prove to myself that I could actually do something.

The next day, I drove to the YMCA thrift shop and spent $40 on hooks and multicolored yarn. I started watching and rewatching YouTube tutorials that walked me through the basics. How to make a chain. How to start a new row. How to create a magic circle. How to fasten off. I followed along with the videos at half speed, practicing the skills over and over before undoing all my work and starting again. I found solace in the trance-like repetition of it, and sunk hours just into making and undoing long, meandering chains and messy, uneven rows.

But with all the hours I spent on it, I watched my skill level quickly skyrocket. Suddenly, my chains achieved just the right tension, and my rows started looking even and uniform. After seeing my proficiency advance like that, crocheting quickly became an obsession. Slowly but surely, I built up my confidence enough to try actually making things. A purse. A wallet. A sweater. As I gained confidence in my crocheting, lo and behold, I slowly started gaining confidence in other areas of my life, too.

It started with one class—a women’s studies class I decided to take at my local community college. When that didn’t end in disaster, I decided to take a full load. My confidence grew tenfold, and before I knew it, I put myself on a fast track to get my associate’s. I applied and got into another university. I overstuffed every semester with every class I could fit in, including over the summer and winter breaks. I graduated at the top of my class, earning my associate’s and bachelor’s degrees in a total of two and a half years.

And somewhere along the way, I realized that maybe the one who had really been fooled by me…was me.

All crochet projects start with one chain. Building blocks that pile on top of each other, inch by inch, until you have a beautiful tapestry. I can’t help but think that without that first chain, without trying to teach myself the very basics of a new skill, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I would still be stuck in my parents’ house, chain-smoking and binge-watching TV in an effort to escape all the fears and self-doubt I’m afraid to confront. Still convinced I can’t do anything at all. Still too scared to start weaving the miraculous tapestry of the life I live today.

So, yes, okay. Maybe I can do something after all.

Bethany Hansel is a freelance writer and communications specialist who can, in fact, do some things. When she’s not writing and running communications for nonprofits, Bethany loves to write her own stories that explore her grapplings with mental health, identity, and belonging.