Let's Talk About Imposter Syndrome.

Hi again. It’s been a minute, I know. I’ve been having a hard time being creative recently. Whenever I’ve tried to write over the past several weeks, none of my thoughts have come out looking or sounding as good as they did in my head (Hi, My Name is: Overthinking It). Sometimes, when people are feeling anxious or depressed, their focus and creativity suffers. For me, it seems to be the opposite: the healthier and more balanced I feel, the less time I tend to spend writing down my thoughts and working through things on paper. However, I set a goal to consistently publish these essays, and I plan to stick to that commitment, even if it means that I need to work through my paralyzing perfectionism.

During my brief hiatus, I also turned twenty-seven. I’m not a huge “birthday” person, but in recognition of my most recent turn 'round the sun, here is a list of twenty-seven things that I did in order to continue to put off writing new essays over the past few weeks:

1. Did four loads of laundry

2. Folded four loads of laundry

3. Watched Summer House

4. Changed the sheets on my bed

5. Washed all of the dishes in my pantry

6. Ran my dishwasher

7. Watched Ted Lasso

8. Took out the garbage

9. Took out the recycling

10. Cleaned out my fridge

11. Vacuumed my apartment

12. Watched Yellowstone

13. Made numerous phone calls to friends

14. Exercised (once)

15. Tried using my new air fryer

16. Almost burned down my apartment using my new air fryer

17. Snaked a drain for the first time

18. Made eight pots of coffee

19. Started looking into the Tik Tok stars’ relationship drama

20. Immediately regretted that

21. Started three new podcasts

22. Online shopped

23. Listened to the “new” Taylor Swift album

24. Had mixed feelings about the “new” Taylor Swift album*

25. Tried to pull off a middle part

26. Did a face mask

27. Spent way too much money at Whole Foods (aka "Whole Paycheck")

But now I’m back! And I have plenty of thoughts to share and new issues to work through. Ready? Let’s dive in:

Lately, I’ve had this irrational fear that I’m secretly a lazy piece of human garbage (don’t let my list fool you; procrastination is a powerful force).

I’ve been told that there are people who wake up every morning and believe automatically, without question, that they are enough exactly as they are. Try as I might, I have had to come to terms with the fact that I am not one of those people. I can look myself in the mirror and repeat the positive affirmations until I am blue in the face, but at I know that at my core, my sense of self-worth is tied very tightly to my level of productivity. I also have this tendency to believe that everything that I do successfully is either a complete accident or the result of sheer luck. To put it plainly, I suffer from imposter syndrome.

What is that, you ask? Let’s pause for a brief history lesson.

In their groundbreaking 1978 study, psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes sought to understand the “imposter phenomenon,” which they recognized was a recurring thought pattern among highly successful women across a variety of professions. Clance and Imes found that, “despite their earned degrees, scholastic honors, high achievement on standardized tests, praise and professional recognition from colleagues and respected authorities, these women [did] not experience an internal sense of success,” and determined that “Women who experience the impostor phenomenon maintain a strong belief that they are not intelligent; in fact they are convinced that they have fooled anyone who thinks otherwise.” (Raise your hand if you feel personally victimized by this paragraph).

In short, imposter syndrome is the belief that though you may have achieved success in some (or many) areas of your life, you were only able to do so by fooling everyone around you into thinking that you were competent or capable. Though Clance and Imes’ research focused primarily on women, men can be equally affected (though they may not be as willing to admit it). At its core, it’s borne out of cognitive distortions, or “thinking errors.” My personal brand of imposter syndrome is a unique blend of several distortions:

• Minimizing: “It’s no big deal, anyone could have done it”

• Polarized Thinking: “I’m a complete fraud and I have no redeeming qualities”

• Mental Filtering: “Even though I bought groceries and cooked dinner, I didn’t wash the dishes immediately afterwards, so that means I’m lazy and worthless”

• Unfavorable Comparisons: “Everyone else has their act together, so why can’t I figure it out?”

To live with imposter syndrome is to wake up every day feeling like you need to prove to yourself and to everyone else that you deserve to be here. This is an un-winnable battle, because the standards of achievement only exist inside your head. It’s as if you’re participating in an imaginary high school spelling bee. You get called up on stage, and your word is “arachibutyrophobia.” Fortunately for you, you’ve always had an irrational fear of peanut butter getting stuck to the roof of your mouth, so you proudly annunciate each letter with confidence. But, after you’ve spelled your word correctly, the judge informs you that you’re actually wrong. They’ve now decided to change the rules, and you should’ve known that they wanted you to spell it in Portuguese instead. Well, you figure that’s fair, because you secretly knew that you were just stupid anyway, and now the jig is finally up.

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By this point in my life, I’ve developed enough self-awareness to know that I am very, very hard on myself. I also understand that people generally tend to remember negative events and ideas more clearly than positive ones. In that sense, it’s much easier to sit back at the end of the day and think more about the things that you regret saying or doing rather than the things that you were proud of achieving. It’s also why, when I look at my to-do list at the end of the day, I see all of the things that I didn’t quite get to instead of clearly recognizing myself for the things that I did get to.

Because imposter syndrome emerges from a messy amalgamation of memories and emotions, it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what causes it in the first place; however, it’s not something that simply manifests itself overnight. When I was growing up in my parents’ household, there was a lot of value placed on activity and structure. The only excuse for staying in bed all day was having a fever or, presumably, having an injury that rendered you temporarily immobile (I say “presumably” because this latter condition never presented itself while I lived at my parents’ home, but I’m inclined to believe that nursing a broken limb would be sufficient grounds for taking a day off). Otherwise, there was an expectation that you would have things to do, responsibilities that needed to be tended to, commitments that you needed to keep. Everybody was always doing something, whether that was playing sports, doing yard work, cleaning the pool, picking up the dry cleaning, or helping out around the household in some other way.

Having that structure during my formative years was very important for me, and I would not have had it any other way. At the same time, I can recognize that as an adult, I have a difficult time believing that I am deserving of rest when I need to take a break. I put a lot of pressure on myself to perform, and it’s hard for me to slow down gradually instead of coming to a screeching halt when something inevitably breaks down. On top of this, like many kids with undiagnosed ADD, my approach to learning could only be described as “scrappy.” I was incredibly insecure in school, because I constantly compared myself to my classmates. I went through elementary, middle and high school believing that I was either dumber than everyone else, or just not capable of being a hard worker (both assumptions contributed to my burgeoning imposter syndrome, and would prove to be equally detrimental to my sense of self later on in life).

Like any other cognitive distortion, imposter syndrome can be unlearned, but it needs to be understood and challenged in order for a change to occur. We have to examine why we don’t feel deserving of love, attention, or success. We have to take a closer look at why we are minimizing our victories in favor of taking up less space. We have to understand why we have come to accept the idea that we simply don’t belong. And then, we have to radically denounce these beliefs in order to achieve a greater sense of self-worth.

I can recognize that I am lucky to have had the privileges that life has afforded me, AND know that I work very hard to remain independent and self-sufficient.

I can accept that some things happen by chance, AND appreciate that many other things have happened as a result of my careful planning and strategic mindset.

I can acknowledge my past mistakes, AND take comfort in the fact that no matter what happens, I have the strength and determination to pick myself back up after each failure.

I deserve to be here, and I don’t have to prove that to anyone.

*I regret to inform you of my opinion that Fearless (Taylor’s Version) just isn’t a vibe. Talk to me when 1989 (Taylor’s Version) is out. I’d even listen to “Shake It Off” on repeat for eight straight months if it meant that I never had to hear “Fifteen” again. Cry me a river.