I walked into the classroom full of first-day-of-school optimism, shiny new notebook in one hand, water bottle in another. Ready to take on my History PhD program. The seminar started, and the professors and my classmates began a discussion. A fast-paced, laced-with-jargon discussion. At one point, I had trouble following the conversation.
And something like this began happening in my head:
Uh-oh. I haven’t contributed to the discussion yet.
What do I say? No, that point is way too obvious.
I have NO idea what they’re talking about. And I’ve never read anything by this Foucault person they keep mentioning, either.
I don’t deserve to be here.
Hang on. (Cue the record scratch sound!)
Did I, or did I not, get into this program just like each of these other students? Hadn’t I proven my intelligence, or knowledge, or whatever else they needed to know about me?
On that day, I didn’t think so. And I started to get very, very nervous.
What is Impostor Syndrome?
Impostor syndrome is the feeling of not believing you deserve a certain achievement, position, or distinction, and that you’ll be “found out” as a fraud and lose said opportunity.
Studies show that about 82 percent of individuals experience it at some point, and that it disproportionately affects high-achieving individuals on whom there is intense pressure to excel, especially in environments where it’s easy to compare oneself to others.
It’s a fear-driven response to being in a situation where we are expected to do well, but in which our confidence has–for whatever reason–taken a hit. And it can lead to stress, anxiety, burnout…in short, it’s terrible for our mental and physical health.
How Have I Experienced Impostor Syndrome?
The most pronounced experience of impostor syndrome I had was in graduate school. It’s happened in other situations before, but this was my worst and longest-running bout with it, so I’ll use it as an example here. During those years, I constantly feared someone discovering I wasn’t smart enough to be in a PhD program, and then asking me to leave.
This feeling persisted throughout every stage of graduate school, from fearing my research topic wasn’t worthy enough for a dissertation committee to award my PhD, or fearing that I wouldn’t succeed in general. (This feeling was exacerbated when, after presenting at a history conference in Mainz, Germany in 2015, my paper was the only one excluded from the published volume of conference papers because it wasn’t deemed “academic” enough, or something like that. It still stings when I think about it.)
While completing my program helped lessen my impostor syndrome, it didn’t disappear entirely. I had to take a full-on break from being a historian after finishing my PhD because I was completely burned out. And as I dip my toe back into that world these days, I still feel impostor syndrome lurking below the surface (cue the Jaws theme here).
Yet after that long-term struggle with impostor syndrome, the metaphorical sharks have started to seem a bit less threatening this time around. Because I know I can succeed despite my impostor syndrome.
How Has Impostor Syndrome Made Me Stronger?
Experiencing impostor syndrome forced me to take a good, long look at my self-esteem in relation to my competencies and credentials. And I realized there was a discrepancy there.
I thought about why I was experiencing impostor syndrome, and saw that it was a combination of comparing myself to others, feeling like I was the least-smart or the least-accomplished person in the room, and of fearing others didn’t think I was enough.
So–to continue with the Jaws analogy–I think what I needed was to get myself a bigger boat.
(The “boat” here is self-esteem, by the way.)
And somewhere along the way, from tough jobs (including a stint in business development where I had to have a thick skin), to surviving my dissertation defense, I realized that I had put myself in situations where I had to challenge myself and make the most of my potential. If I hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t have developed impostor syndrome in the first place.
But I also wouldn’t know what I was capable of.
Do I want to be in situations like that all the time? No, definitely not–it’s exhausting. But facing my impostor syndrome by realizing why it had developed in the first place has allowed me to see that I should be damn proud of what I’ve accomplished. And that includes any failures where I dared to dust myself off and get back up again. (That conference paper? It became a key component of a dissertation chapter.)
How Do I Still Experience–and Deal with–Impostor Syndrome?
These days, I’m refusing to let impostor syndrome win when it comes to my favorite creative pursuit–namely, writing fiction. Knowing how toxic impostor syndrome was for me during graduate school, I can’t let self-doubt poison the fiction-writing that I love so much.
And, on the historian side of things, as I slowly work toward revising my dissertation into a book, I’m keeping tabs on how I’m feeling. If I have a moment of thinking “This isn’t scholarly enough,” or worse, “I’m not qualified to write this,” I remind myself that it’s just my impostor syndrome talking and that I’ve more than proven myself.
And then I try to tell myself the following:
Think about everything you’ve accomplished.
You wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t earned it.
You are a strong, intelligent woman.
That’s how I tell my impostor syndrome to shut up. (And it’s the moment where–dun-dun–there’s a record scratch on the Jaws theme.)
Feelings of self-doubt are a normal human reaction to situations in which we’re expected to meet a certain intimidating standard. But focusing on our strengths and accomplishments that got us to the point of experiencing it–rather than on the fear of what we may or may not be lacking–is one small way to fight it. So if impostor syndrome has started to creep in for you in whatever situation you’re in, take a moment to think about what you’ve accomplished so far that’s gotten you to this point. And then take another moment to be proud of yourself.
Image: 0fjd125gk87, Pixabay.
