Imposter Syndrome
It has been far too long since I wanted to talk about this topic, but for some reason or other, I could not. Maybe it was procrastination, or no time, or sheer laziness. I have wanted to put my pen to paper, or in this case, my fingers to the keyboard, but I just couldn’t. This weirdly leads us into an excellent segue as to what I want to talk about — Imposter Syndrome.
According to the internet, Impostor syndrome is a psychological pattern in which a person doubts his accomplishments or talents and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a “fraud”. This condition is also known as the impostor phenomenon, impostorism, fraud syndrome, or the impostor experience. The constant feeling of inadequacy. Let me describe a scenario. Have you been with a group of friends or colleagues and felt like you did not belong there? Do you look at your resume and feel like it’s all a bluff? Or you don’t deserve your accomplishments or whatever good is happening to you? Well, if you answered yes to any of these above questions, then I am here to tell you that you are not alone. Even I did not know about this condition until last year and found that everyone has felt these thoughts at some point in their lives (some more than others) irrespective of their gender or sexual orientation.
I have always fought with the notion that I am never good enough for something, and whatever accomplishments I have are due to pure luck. So why do I have these thoughts? More generally speaking, why do people encounter imposter syndrome? May be due to peer pressure or over-achieving friends. Or due to growing up in an environment where your grades were never good enough to your parents, or your gestures were never enough to impress a certain someone, or the viciously pestering thought that “I’ll be more likable if I achieve this.” It’s an endless cycle.
I am no therapist or psychologist. I am just like you who doubts herself in every stage of her life. As I am typing these thoughts, I have one finger hovering over the backspace key, about to erase it all because somewhere I feel this is all codswallop. Oh well. So how to deal with these doubts and this syndrome? Well, you are acknowledging it, and educating yourself about it already gives you an edge. Of course, I will give the most obvious advice of them all, “Open up and share your feelings”. But you and I both know it is not always easy. So, my most candid advice would be, give yourself a break. You deserve it. You are enough. You are important. You matter. Period.
In this “Fake it ’til you make it” era, it is easy to undermine one’s accomplishments. Be kind to yourself and learn to celebrate even the smallest of these achievements. More importantly, cherish your mistakes. Everyone is bound to make mistakes; use them as a learning opportunity. Be goal-oriented and keep soldiering at a steady pace. It is perfectly all right if you don’t know all the information before you start a project, or you don’t possess all the qualifications necessary for a particular job position. “You need to sip, not gulp. Wine, not beer.” Yes, I quoted the movie Gravity. I love that movie even though it is so scientifically inaccurate. There is beauty in imperfection, and imperfections are never failures. So, embrace them and take a deep breath. Chin up! You got this.
