For those who don’t know, Impostor Syndrome is the persistent feeling that your success is undeserved, that your accomplishments are due to luck rather than skill or effort. Even those with significant achievements often feel they don’t truly belong.
There are many causes for this, external or internal high expectations, comparison with other seemingly successful people in the same path as you or maybe it comes from a strict upbringing. Whichever the cause, it sucks going through it.
I didn’t know it was a thing until around 2010, using StumbleUpon (RIP) showed me this wikipedia entry. When I first read that article, I felt that things started to click. Knowing that it is common and that it has a name helped me understand my feelings better. I don’t know if it’s common in other careers, but I’ve realized that it is common among developers. People that I think are very smart have expressed this self doubt… goes to show that we don’t know what’s going on in someone’s mind.
Being “Found Out”
I myself have experienced it over and over again, at the start of my career, changing jobs,when the company and I don’t click and things are not going smoothly, or after a failed project.
One of the worst signs of Imposter Syndrome is the feeling of being “found out”. As if any slip up and my manager will think I am a fraud and fire me on the spot. Simple, inconsequential mistakes were overblown in my own mind. This would lead me to Perfectionism. I would get very stressed if anyone noticed a mistake, so I would try to fix it as soon as possible. And because of this I would over work to at least put in more hours to cover for feeling like a fraud.
Needless to say that I was anxious all the time, trying to live up to whatever image I had created in my own head.
How I’ve been handling it
Over the years, I have gained more confidence in my abilities and have been able to put aside that feeling of inadequacy. But it still crops up here and there, not as bad as it was at first.
One thing that has really helped me is just being aware that it’s happening. If I’m having self doubt in my work, I become aware, naming the problem takes power away from it and prevents me from thinking too negatively.
Another strategy I’ve developed is to remember past accomplishments. Even if during that moment I feel that it was all luck or timing, thinking of successes gets me out of funk. This technique also helps when embarrassing moments from my past come in the middle of the night, I replace those thoughts with moments I enjoyed or good things that I made happen.
Lastly, and I think this is what has helped me the most: fake it till you make it. If my confidence is low because of a new circumstance, faking it till I make it slowly improves my self esteem, it makes me feel that I’m working to get better where I am at, and builds up my self-esteem.
Side note: I brought up this point at a meeting some time ago, and a guy questioned me “what happens when you need to prove it?”, my reply was “By then I would have already made it”. This is the whole point!
Conclusion
Imposter Syndrome doesn’t reflect your actual abilities, only your perception of them. By having strategies to manage it, you can move forward with confidence, no matter what level of experience you have.
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