Okayyyy, maybe the title of today’s post is a tad misleading as no person living with imposter syndrome goes through the same things, although many of us do. So, let’s try thing this again:
MY truth about living with imposter syndrome
Many people don’t speak to their friends or family about this feeling (not even me), and I think therefore there is a grave misconception on what it is and how it affects day to day life!
Being a law student has caused me to dislike any information from Wikipedia so I was quite relived when I found a simple definition of Imposter Syndrome from The University of Warwick’s website:
“Imposter Syndrome is a psychological phenomenon in which people doubt their accomplishments, having instead persistent feelings of intellectual inadequacy and fear of being exposed as a ‘fraud’, despite evident success or external proof of competence.”
It’s a crazy thing to think that many persons who suffer with these feelings are quite successful! Yet, the world doesn’t really see what’s going on inside their heads.
Personally, I think the first time I experienced this gut-wrenching feeling was when I was asked to be part of Sir Arthur Lewis Community College’s televised panel discussion during Nobel Laureate Week in 2014. It was about youth issues, if my memory serves me right, and by then I had been an active member of my community youth group, Youth On Fire Movement (YOFM) and spoke freely in class discussions about youth and community work. My lecturer at the time knew I would be a perfect fit, but it took me at least two days to give her a response because I thought I wasn’t qualified enough to speak on TV about this. Can you imagine that even while the discussion was going on I was still doubting myself? I thought that if I said one thing wrong people would realise that maybe I’m not all for youth and community work as I claim to be, and it would eventually lead to this massive downfall. I KNOW – drastic but true. I could feel my voice tremble when I spoke, yet when I asked the other panellists during a break if I sounded like my voice wasn’t stable, they all said I sounded normal and not nervous at all. So here I was, doubting my words when I should have been enjoying the experience after being afforded such an opportunity.
In 2017 when I moved to the UK for uni, my transition was going well, I remained involved in school like I always was, I was voted as the first-year representative to the Law Society and tried to make friends. The feeling of being an ‘imposter’ poked its head again when I got the email from the Queen’s Young Leader (QYL) Advisory Panel naming me as one of the 2018 QYL Highly Commended Runners Up. I remember feeling so strange. I was excited to tell people but at the same time I felt two things: the first – the YOFM After School Assistance Programme (ASAP) which was revamped by Gabriella Bellegarde and myself in 2014 to serve secondary school students of my village, Anse-la-Raye was such a small project. I felt that we didn’t deserve this recognition spanning all Commonwealth countries. The other feeling was almost one of fear. Fear because I thought that if they found out I was no longer physically running the ASAP and was so far away, it meant I wasn't genuine about my quest for helping student and the recognition would be stripped from me and by extension YOFM. I felt so relived when I eventually found out that I was not the only one who was thousands of miles away from the project they started or like me, revamped. As part of our leadership course, we had this thing called Random Coffee Trials (really hoping I remembered the name correctly here). We were paired with a QYL from one of the Commonwealth countries, so we could just chat about our projects and get to know more about each other. When speaking to many of them, I felt like HOLY COW! THESE PEOPLE ARE LITERALLY DOING THE MOST AMAZING THINGS AND JUST WOW – here I am with a lessons programme only serving my little haven on the west coast of St. Lucia. Time and time again after I told them about the ASAP they were so impressed and commended our efforts. Some of them loved it so much, that I ended up creating a start up manual for those interested in starting their own ASAP.
Dealing with these feelings did not subside when I ended up doing the absolute MOST during my second year at uni. I still don’t really know how to deal with face to face compliments - I mean who does anyway? If someone comments on a post of mine, I can easily hit them with a “thanks a million”, but when done in person my heart literally starts to race. I can promise you I’m not just saying this for this post. THIS LITERALLY HAPPENS TO ME. I start playing to my hands and at some point, stop listening to the person. It’s crazy that despite deserving the praise, it makes me feel so anxious. But because I don’t want to make this blog post a short story, I'll try to round up.
Imposter Syndrome as I said in my sort of preamble is different for everyone. What I think everyone who suffers with it can agree on is that IT SUCKS! We work so hard to produce great concepts, start projects, run businesses, get awards, YET we think we’re a fraud and that our hard work doesn’t need to be praised. Honestly speaking, I think that majority of the time we don’t do it for the recognition which is why it feels strange when we get it and don’t know how to act. You think I revamped the ASAP for the QYL recognition? NOPE! I revamped it because there was a need for it and I was able to do something about it. I think education is SO important – but that’s for a separate blog post. One of my friends, Wilton, literally had to hassle me into doing the application – again, he saw the greatness of the programme, and I kept on telling him, we’re so small and the QYL thing is so big, blah, blah, blah.
This ‘phenomenon’ still haunts me but I’m still trying to figure out how to let it go and constantly remind myself when I’m in certain situations that I WAS MEANT TO BE THERE! I recently attended a Summer Garden Party at a law firm and all on the way there, I kept saying this to myself. I was invited because I was meant to be in that place at that time. Hopefully the feeling subsides someday, but until then, I just have to keep telling myself that I was meant to be there.
So even you, even though you may be feeling like you’re a fraud for coming up with an idea that wins a prize, or you were invited to a stakeholder meeting and think they invited you as a mistake, THINK AGAIN. Tell yourself, time and time again ‘I WAS MEANT TO BE THERE. I DESERVE THIS BECAUSE I WORKED HARD’
Not so fun fact: I wrote this post all while with a lump in my throat thinking that it will be misconstrued because Imposter Syndrome is not ‘a real thing’ and is just a façade some successful people use to ‘prove’ their humility.
-- Your favourite Unicorn
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