The Imposter in the room…

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Have you ever had a moment where you feel like you don't deserve to be where you are? After finishing an accomplishment and you don't feel like you should celebrate your victory? Learning something new, not understanding it, and going into a rabbit hole of information just to prove that you know the concept?

Yeah? me too. This series of feelings of self-doubt, perfectionism, and feeling of not belonging…Is called Imposter Syndrome. It is something that I have been dealing with recently and I want to share about it. I want to let you know that you aren’t the only one, you aren’t alone. A lot of people go through it.

Imposter Syndrome…It's a scary imposter inside your head. The thought of having an imposter inside of your thoughts is scary enough but it gets worse…that imposter is also a shapeshifter. The imposter can shape into different forms to manifest in different ways.

Types of Imposters:

• The Perfectionist: The perfectionist is an imposter who demands perfection in all aspects of your life. As you are working and completing the work you are doing, the imposter likes to give their own opinions. The Perfectionist will try to make you live up to their standard, they will criticize you for mistakes and overpower you with the feeling of being a failure.
• The Natural Genius: The Natural Genius is an imposter who learns very fast and is very smart…So smart that they feel like you should be as smart too and learn just as fast. Whenever you are learning anything new the Natural Genius feels like this is easy since he learns fast they feel like you should too, so they think that you should understand the concept right away. When you don't understand a concept or when you try to apply the concept you just learned and you failed on your first try the Natural Genius will come, they will come just to let you know how smart they are by telling you “Everyone understands this”, “This is so easy, you should be ashamed of not understanding”, and “you are a fraud”.
• The Soloist: The Soloist is an imposter who is very independent, they have been doing everything by themself since they were a baby. So guess what? The Soloist expects the same from you, they believe that you should be able to handle everything by yourself. Whenever you do ask for help or accept help when offered it angers the Soloist. They will tell you that “You are weak for needing help”, and “If you can’t handle it by yourself, you are a failure”.
• The Expert: The Expert is an imposter who knows it all. Let’s say you are learning HTML & CSS, you are building a project, and while you are writing out the code for your website you want to change the background of your website, so you type background-color = Red; you changed your background, and you're happy…but you do the mistake of hovering over background-color and you see that you can actually give it an RGB, HEX, and RGBA value. The Expert loves this because he realizes that you don’t know what those values are, so they will tell you “Pause your project, let's find out everything about those values” little did you know that means let's spend 4 hours in a rabbit hole about those values. Well, you're probably telling the Expert “I don't have time for that, I need to finish this project” that's when the Expert gets upset and they will respond with “Well what happens if someone asks you about it? That's so embarrassing, they will think you are a failure since you weren't able to answer the question.” Since you don't want to feel like a failure you end up in the rabbit hole and you have to turn in your project late.
• The Superhero: The Superhero is an imposter that likes to push you to the limit. They believe you should be able to succeed in any role you hold on: student, friend, employee, or parent. Whenever you feel like you can’t fulfill your role, the Superhero will push you until you succeed, even if that means spending sleepless nights, and sacrificing your work-life balance, and your happiness. They push you to the limit, expending all your energy. Even after expanding all that energy the Superhero pushes you more, and when you already gave all the energy you can they will tell you “You are weak, you should be able to do more”, and “This is so easy, do more”. The superhero usually pushes you to be a workaholic, which can lead to burnout, feeling bad about taking days off, or not being productive that day.

If you ask me that's a dangerous team of imposters…they work together to make you believe that you need to follow their ways or else they destroy your confidence. If you don't deal with the imposters it can lead to anxiety, depression, or even burnout. But luckily there are a lot of ways to deal with these imposters, but you may be asking where they come from. The scary part is that they just show up, but some researchers believe they appear because of the following:

While anyone can develop impostor syndrome, several factors increase the risk, including:

• New challenges: A recent opportunity or success, such as a promotion, can trigger a sense of “impostorism.” The person may feel undeserving of the new position or that they will be unable to perform adequately.
• Family environment: When a person grows up alongside a “gifted” sibling, they may internalize feelings of inadequacy that are not justified. At the same time, a person who finds it easy to perform well during childhood may experience doubts when faced with a task that is hard to achieve.
• Being from a marginalized population group: Research suggests that people from some ethnic groups may be more at risk. The experience of discrimination may play a role.
• Having depression and anxiety: These are common among people with impostor syndrome.

While many studies focus on females, research suggests that age and gender do not affect the likelihood of experiencing impostor syndrome.

Now that we know what imposter syndrome is let's talk about all the solutions to get rid of the imposters. The first and hardest step is identifying them, since the imposters can take different forms and call their other imposter buddies it’s hard to identify them. The easiest way to identify them is whenever you are feeling negative, like a failure, like you are a fraud. Once you identify the imposters there are a lot of ways to get rid of them. Let’s talk about them…

How to overcome the imposters?

• Talking to someone: it could be a friend, a mentor, or someone in a community. Just express how you are feeling, they will help you gain your confidence again. Maybe they will also share a time when they had to deal with the imposters, it will let you know that you are not alone.
• Avoid comparing yourself to others: Everyone has different experiences, when we compare ourselves to others we create expectations of ourselves. We create the expectation that we should know everything they know.
• Create a Pride collection: Whenever anyone gives you an accomplishment, or you build a project you are proud of, or when you have a day that you feel productive save it. Write them down, and create a folder on your desktop where you can store your accomplishments. Whenever the imposters come back go into the folder and prove all the imposters wrong.
• Meditation: Meditation has not only changed my life in other aspects but also when it comes to dealing with the imposters, meditation helps me acknowledge the imposters. It brings me back to my peace of mind!
• Daily affirmations: Daily affirmations are powerful, write down something positive about yourself such as “I belong here”, or “I worked hard to accomplish everything I've done”. whenever you have those imposters show up block them with your affirmations, and say out loud what you wrote down 3 times. Prove the imposters wrong.

There are many more methods to help with imposter syndrome such as taking breaks, going on walks, listing to music, going to pet your pet…and the list goes on. But those were my favorites, what works for me.

As I mentioned at the beginning I was also dealing with imposter syndrome recently, but thanks to these methods I was able to prove the imposters wrong. It wasn't a great experience, but from all bad experiences, something good comes out…In my case, it was this blog. I loved writing this, I hope you did too and were able to understand what Imposter Syndrome is and how to overcome it.

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Thank you for reading, Just a few reminders. You do belong here, don't let anyone or the imposters tell you otherwise; Whenever those imposters come back use all the methods above and prove the imposters wrong; And finally whenever you are feeling lost or down just remember that sometimes you aren't able to see the whole picture, that's because you are making the picture.

If you used the methods and they didn't work you are more than welcome to reach out to me to be able to hear your story and try to get rid of the imposters!