The Personal is Political
Feeling Like a Fraud? Survivor Guilt and the Imposter Syndrome
Undercover, Stealthy, Always Lurking Under Impostorism
Sarah, a successful tenured professor of psychology, told me she feels like an imposter, a phony. “I’m a fraud.”
Suffering from chronic writer’s block, she never writes as much as she thinks she should. She told me that when she sits down to write she freezes; “A heavy curtain descends upon me. I can’t write anything.”
She says she makes excuses:: “I still haven’t read enough.” Or “I just don’t know enough.” Or “I don’t have anything new to say, everyone already knows the same things I know.”
I’m her therapist. I’m not supposed to say “Me too”. But ME TOO.
This is a cry for help, this is a desperate move. A therapist is not supposed to go public with their psychological angst.
I’ve been sitting on a book — that I’ve written twice — about human nature, how we get fucked up, and how to be a therapist who helps fucked up people get better: “How to think like a clinician: Essays in Prosocial psychotherapy.”
I’ve been sitting on a long article about how overpopulation, overuse of fossil fuels has rendered our planet close to…
