Imposter Syndrome
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| This tragic facial expression = how I feel when I'm battling imposter syndrome. |
imposter syndrome
n.
1. a psychological term used to define a phenomenon where you feel like an imposter in your own life
2. a knockout to your mental health that makes you feel a) like everyone else has their s*** together while you don't and b) like you don't deserve to be where you are in life despite having earned it
symptoms include: feelings of incompetence and inconsequence and low self-esteem
In the picture above, I'm looking off into the distance. This represents my comparison of myself to idealistic versions of other people. My mouth is forming the tiniest smile, but my eyes convey my true feelings of isolation and falsity. This represents how I have been guilty of furthering the cycle of imposter syndrome by faking that I have my life together.
Imposter syndrome is incredibly common and "normal," especially in a world where social media surrounds us with carefully cultivated glimpses into other people's lives. Imposter syndrome strikes everyone at different periods in their lives, but mine has always snaked its head out during periods of change: a new job, a new school, a new home. And don't get me wrong, I like change because it leads to growth. But that doesn't mean that it isn't really freaking hard.
In high school, I had a reputation for being smart, even among the smart kids. As such, my classmates would ask me for homework help (not answer copying, because I didn't think it was fair for other people to benefit from my hard work) during class and I would usually oblige. However, I would often explain things in an unclear way or freeze up and not be able to think of the answer to a question. I saw these failures to communicate my knowledge as proof that I was an imposter: I wasn't really the intelligent person everyone said I was. Consequently, I compared myself to the other top students in my class and began to doubt my so-called "natural" intelligence; if other kids at the top of my class could get all A's without studying and answer their peer's questions better than even the teacher could, where did that put me? These feelings of imposter syndrome led me to justify my qualifications to myself in unhealthy, unfair, and often irrational, ways. For example, I would tell myself that although one of my classmates was better than me at math and science, I was the superior writer so it balanced out. This line of thinking eventually devolved into judgements like these:
"Oh, that girl's prettier than me but I'm better than her at math, so it evens out."Putting people down to make myself feel better made me feel even worse. Questioning other people's legitimacy spreads imposter syndrome and continues this vicious cycle of not feeling good enough. The cycle can only be broken when you self-analyze and realize that you have the ability to become successful in whatever situation you feel like an imposter in, even if it requires more effort, time, or money from you than the person you're currently comparing yourself to.
When I started college, I braced myself for the return of imposter syndrome. I quickly felt like a kid going to the beach expecting a wave pool and ending up in a tsunami. I made the top orchestra at my school, beating this other freshman cellist out of last chair. As the first few rehearsals flew by, I found myself feeling like I didn't deserve my spot in the orchestra because I hadn't practiced for a good majority of the month leading up to the auditions in the wake of my grandmother's death. I knew that this was irrational, because I didn't tell anyone about my grandmother's passing, so the judges scored the auditions on talent alone. But I still felt like an imposter. I kept thinking, what if I just had a really good audition and the other cellist was having a rough day? Did I really earn a spot in the orchestra if I didn't practice the music as much as I should've? (All the music kids reading this are probably like "but no one practices for auditions tho.") Thankfully, my cello section is made up of wonderful, beautifully flawed people who support each other both inside and outside of orchestra, so my imposter syndrome has since returned to a dormant state.
xxx,
carley
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