Managing Imposter Syndrome
Many things make me unique. My imposter syndrome is not one of them.
Imposter syndrome is the internal experience of feeling like a fraud, like your achievements are flukes, and any moment the collective population is going to open their eyes and see you for what you are: a phony.
Imposter syndrome knows no limits and can affect anyone, no matter gender, social status, career, or expertise. For some, imposter syndrome can be highly motivating, but constant anxiety usually accompanies this drive to succeed.
Characteristics of imposter syndrome include, but are not limited to: self-doubt; an inability to rationally assess your competence and skills; sabotaging your own success; fear you won’t live up to expectations; attributing success to external factors.
I experienced imposter syndrome long before I knew the term. I felt it any time I pulled out a journal. When I sat down at my computer, I heard it tell me I wasn't an artist. For over a decade, I allowed it to keep me from writing. And, I thought I was the only writer in the world who felt this way. No one’s work was as cliche and dull as mine.
Author Neil Gaiman shares on his website an anecdote about being invited to attend “a gathering of great and good people: artists and scientists, writers and discoverers of things” at which he felt unqualified to be included amongst the group of attendees. He describes a conversation with astronaut Neil Armstrong, in which Armstrong shared that he, too, felt like an imposter at the event. Gaiman writes, “… if Neil Armstrong felt like an imposter, maybe everyone did. Maybe there weren’t any grown-ups, only people who had worked hard and also got lucky and were slightly out of their depth, all of us doing the best job we could, which is all we can really hope for.”
Realizing that every artist struggles with imposter syndrome has helped me manage my feelings of inadequacy, but I still have waves of self-doubt that make it hard to press “send” on my weekly newsletter, that make me regret sharing with an audience that I consider myself a writer (who do I think I am?!). How do I forge ahead when I feel my anxiety rising? I’ve found the following three strategies helpful.
Name the feeling. Inadequacy is an all-consuming feeling that’s fed by fear. It’s hard to see truth through the chaos of self-doubt, which creates a vicious feedback loop between these feelings. Naming imposter syndrome takes away some of the power it has over me. I often remind myself that I’m not a “special snowflake” because I feel like a fraud. I seek blog posts and podcasts about self doubt, articles written by other artists explaining how they manage feelings of inadequacy. I throw logic at the feeling until it gets bored and wanders off to find some other artist.
Journal consistently. A few years back, I read Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, which completely changed my relationship with my artist-self. One of the main routines Cameron outlines is “Morning Pages”, the practice of sitting down every morning upon waking and writing three pages in a journal, no more, no less. Cameron recommends writing without stopping from the moment your pen touches the paper until you reach the end of the third page. I adopted this strategy and it’s become my favorite morning ritual. My Morning Pages journal is a space to release negative self-talk, to process my fears, to write poorly, to explore new ideas, to gripe about my life. And the best part is—no one ever reads it, including me! When I finish the third page, I immediately close the thoughts away and move on with my morning. This practice clears mental clutter that slows me down and makes me doubt myself when I work on my writing projects.
Give your draft permission to be bad. I spent several years polishing the first 5,000 words of my manuscript because I wanted my draft to be “good”. I assumed that my first draft had to be excellent, and this belief held me back from writing my story. I’ve come to see that the most important part of writing a book is getting the story on the page (duh), because without a draft, you have nothing to make better (double-duh). I set a goal to write 1,000 words every day until the book was complete. I lovingly named it my “sh*tty first draft” and gave it permission to be awful. Next to my keyboard I placed a post-it that read, “This is your sh*tty first draft. It’s supposed to be bad.” And slowly, my word count increased. I stuck with the practice of adding 1,000 words every day for about a month before I switched up my routines, but the element that stuck was the understanding that first drafts are allowed to be bad.
Creating art is a vulnerable process. Sharing it with the world can feel terrifying. Writing is my way of nurturing the sacred part of my mind that allows me to dream. I understand imposter syndrome as a natural byproduct of vulnerability. I may feel weak at times, but my ability to work with my insecurities, to face them head-on and continue to create, is what makes me a writer.
Blog photo credit: Mohammed Nohassi