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The Doubt About Your Doubt About Your Doubt
Welcome to recursive doubt phenomenon and the mess inside our heads.
Today I spent thirty minutes debating whether to send a Slack message that just said “Sounds good!” Because what if “sounds good” was too casual? What if it needed an exclamation point? But then what if the exclamation point seemed manic? But then again, what if NO exclamation point seemed cold and dismissive? But then what if overthinking a two-word email was the real problem? But then what if not caring enough about communication was ACTUALLY the problem? But then what if…
And so on, until I was essentially having an existential crisis about a stupid message thread sign-off while my breakfast went cold beside me.
This, my friends, is not garden-variety imposter syndrome. This is what I’ve started calling Recursive Doubt Phenomenon — a term I made up because “My Brain Is a Russian Nesting Doll of Self-Loathing & Chaos” was too long for a Medium headline.
Beyond Just Thinking You Suck
We all know imposter syndrome, that persistent feeling that you’ve somehow conned everyone into thinking you’re competent when you’re somehow a fraud seconds away from being exposed. It’s practically a professional requirement in certain fields. Got a job…
