Yes. You work hard. You work hard and get a good degree from a good school. You work hard getting good grades. You work even harder to score well on tests. You study all those algorithms to do well in the interview. You spend countless hours on Hackerrank, Leetcode, or Coderpad, and more. You read countless interview books on how to "hack" the system. You do all this and more.
And?
You finally get a job at Google...or Facebook...or...enter big name cool tech company here.
You made it. You're done. You won. You are now one of the "ascended" right? All the happy. All the joy.
Wrong...
Yeah you made it but you know what? It took you 5 years of experience before you "made it" AND a CS degree. Heck, that one girl Kelly, she had a degree in biology than did that bootcamp...what was it called? Hackreactor! That's it. And she landed a job at Netflix right after finishing it. Did you see that comp package?
Damn man.
Your kinda garbage aren't you?
Fuck man. And wasn't her bio degree from Harvard too? Where was yours from? What was your GPA? Did you have a scholarship? Your still paying those loans...huh. It took you how many years to graduate?
Yes, clearly you and I are not garbage. We are both lovely beautiful humans with strikingly dynamic and complex lives. And yes, I may have been a bit hyperbolic there (or not) but this is an example of how regardless of where we are in life or what we achieve, we always can have that song in our head. The one that waxes and wanes poetically about how "not enough" we are.
I am not going to bore you. This is about the imposter syndrome and a bit of my thoughts on how I view and contend with it's seductive song. A song that can not only get in the way of our goals in life but also greatly hurt those we care about around us. A melody to be ignored at our own peril. But you likely know all of this. You content with it everyday just like I do.
Why do we even have this thing or more so this thought pattern? Where does it come from? What can we do? Self doubt.
Look, if you google a bit it stems from most other "mental" issues in that just about anything and everything from our lived and genetic experiences will have an impact. Which is to say, it is complicated and no singular simple answer.
What is true, is that it ties strongly into negative emotionality or what our tendencies are when responding to stimulus, which in the case of imposter syndrome is usually some form of a negative response to positive stimulus.
"Outstanding job you! We more than doubled our KPI here and it is all because of you"
New stimulus comes in the form of praise for past actions. We then disregard any past actions or come up for a reason to falsify the praise.
"Oh, but other person did all the work. I just did X, Y, and Z."
"I didn't really do anything. Anyone could have done it."
"It was good but we really could have tripled the KPI if I did a better job"
And on it goes. Regardless of the situation, or how obvious our success may be, it is never...enough.
Fair. I have no degree or anything authoritative other than what one can read from books and the internet. Take it all with some :salt: The key observation in what I have read on this and related topics is that how we respond to new stimulus plays an important role in our behavior.
To me, this is important because it gives us a much firmer starting point not on how to combat this issue but more so on how to integrate it or at the very least, cope with it.
Yes. Integrate. Integration is just a form of coping but I prefer to use the term "integrate" because well...I like it better and think it helps with framing.
To answer that we go back to the earlier point.
How we respond to new stimulus
When we are given new stimulus we tend towards either viewing it as positive or negative. Obviously context around the stimulus plays an important role on how we will respond. Our baseline emotionality is strongly tied in as well. And when there is less context, we tend towards that baseline. The baseline emotionality we have is complicated but the point is that we will default to our baseline when there is less information or context.
Imagine your boss slacks you with this but there is no context
Hey have time for a chat right now?
How would you interpret this? Good? Bad? Is there a promotion or are you getting let go? Even if you have a good relationship with your boss, without more context, it can be hard to know how to respond. The more negative our baseline the more negative we see this stimulus.
Imposter Syndrome is just one of many manifestations of negative emotionality which is complicated like mentioned before but we don't need to understand everything to make it better.
If you read anything on negative emotionality or the very dreaded bad word I have avoided using until now neuroticism, you would find that it is almost impossible to make it better. Yes trauma can certainly make it worse but making it better is somewhere between hard and impossible...
There is no magic drug or technique which makes our baseline permanently less neurotic. And note, we are NOT talking about depression here but the baseline we have even when not depressed. It is a spectrum not a binary and while we can move a bit with the peaks and valleys of life, there is a measurable baseline we all tend towards.
Yes yes, drugs, therapy, psychologists, essential oils, vegan diets, I am sure there are many things which can "help" but most boil down to helping with a damaged baseline or are not permanent. And once again, this is not about depression but our baseline.
To a point sure, maybe. I am not trying to explain some deep understanding of psychology. I want to make the point that neuroticism (which is complex) plays a strong role in Imposter Syndrome. I'd argue it is one of the primary players. It isn't said to simplify the issue. It is said to pull back the curtains a bit.
Great. This helps us because information related to neuroticism can be applied here as well. What I have found for myself from reading about neuroticism is that the best way of living with it is through integration or coping.
Yes. Most of popular culture today views negativity has toxic and neuroticism as "bad". Being happy all the time is good. Never feeling down. Kick people out of our lives who are negative. Etc. I couldn't even finish one book Power of a positive team not because it wasn't good but because I was not the audience of the book. I am far too neurotic. Of course it is "better" to never let failure or doubt get you down. Duh!
But is?
I highly recommend reading The Body Keeps the Score as it helped colour my perspective. The short of it, we evolved to be neurotic or more so to see potentiality of danger.
The rustling of a bush...is it a lion? the wind? or a rabbit we could eat!?!
A strangers smile...a murderer looking at the next victim?
A friendly person...the love of our life?
A random slack dm from our boss, "got a minute to chat"?
I use the slack dm because that does and has happen to me regularly.
Correct. They are not the same. They are related. One of the things they both have in common is that we cannot just turn it off...or even dial it back a few degrees.
But what we CAN do is integrate with it better.
Integration or coping will always be different depending on the person and if you have a serious problem it is likely better to stop reading this and look into therapy.
Honestly, even if you don't have a "serious problem" you should still look into therapy. Society does not teach coping or integration techniques but I digress.
Imposter Syndrome effects those more who are further along the neurotic spectrum than those who are not. This can be a good thing.
It motivates. It can help us focus on something that is important.
No. I am not. Go read about people and you will find doubt and feelings of being an Imposter everywhere across all walks and times of life. It is something that helps us push even further after reaching a goal.
Look, obviously if the imposter syndrome or anything for that matter is debilitating for you, that is a problem. But even if you have a high baseline neuroticism level like myself, it isn't all bad.
Yes, it needs to be managed and we should all come up with our own coping mechanics. For me, the way I integrate it, is to leverage it to motivate me to do more. I take the framing that it is a healthy part of my mind that keeps my arrogance in check. Keeps me in a place where my ego is small and my wonder at what new mountains I can climb high.
Yes and it likely won't work for you. Again, these are my thoughts and opinions based on what I have read and experience. My perspective is that I choose to view it as a useful tool and positive aspect of myself instead of something negative and undesirable.
Naturally, no one is perfect lease of all myself. However, so much negativity these days is around anything well, negative. It is as if nothing should have be uncomfortable and no one should ever have to feel bad.
Maybe this is crazy but I think negativity can be a good trait and an asset. A tool in our belts as we navigate life. I put neuroticism and the imposter syndrome in the same bucket of tools.
It is. And well...here is a little secret, it doesn't always work for me. But! It does work sometimes, which is more than I can say for most of the other strategies out there.
Well, I am glad you got to the end with me. Thank you giving me some of your time. Who knows, maybe you have a better perspective. I am always open.
Regardless, thanks for reading. I wish you a wonderful day. :)
I think viewing the imposter syndrome as a positive can help with managing it in life.