In a year of constant uncertainty and change something has grown inside of me. I have had strong feelings of inadequacy, incompetence, and fraudulence despite my objective success! It is not about being perfect, in fact it is totally the opposite of that!
It is something I had experienced
before, however, in the age of Covid-19 no matter how well I did, I always felt
that I wasn’t good enough. Trying to accomplish some activities that I am not
an expert just to be part of a group or cover a place of someone who wasn’t
there and that I felt important and wasn’t enough to others, playing roles that
weren’t mine before or being put aside after had been dedicated to same tasks
were some of the reasons I came to this point.
Even if you’ve never heard of it,
you’ve probably experienced “Imposter Phenomenon”. Often misnamed as ‘imposter
syndrome’, it’s the experience of feeling genuinely unworthy of your success.
According to scientificamerican.com, "Impostor Syndrome doesn’t
discriminate: people of every demographic suffer from feeling like a fraud,
though minorities and women are hardest-hit."
Imposter feelings represent a conflict
between your own self-perception and the way others perceive you. Some experts
believe people experience impostor syndrome due to personality traits—like
anxiety or neuroticism—while others focus on family or behavioral causes.
The best way for me to deal with that
was studying, so I decided to dive into it in order to learn about later I
could help my clients how to manage their own feelings. And here I am to share
somethings with you in order to help you as well.
An article from Harvard Business Review
mention some common thoughts and feelings associated with imposter syndrome as:
“I must not fail.” - “I feel like a fake” - “It’s all down to luck” - “Success
is no big deal”.
When feeling like crap you pressure yourself to
work harder in order to keep others from recognizing your shortcomings or
failures, become worthy of roles you believe you don’t deserve, make up for
what you consider your lack of intelligence, ease feelings of guilt over
“tricking” people.
One of the things that helped me a
lot about impostor syndrome was to get to know, it affects many high-achieving
individuals, some important and admirable ones, especially women like Jodie
Foster, Meryl Streep, Emma Watson. When 60 Minutes’ Mike Wallace interviewed
Jodie Foster after she won an Oscar for Best Actress, she said, “I thought
it was a fluke. I thought everybody would find out, and they’d take it back.
They’d come to my house, knocking on the door, ‘Excuse me, we meant to give
that to someone else. That was going to Meryl Streep.’”
So,
after living and learning impostor syndrome, her it is some of the things I do
to overcome impostor feelings:
·
Recognize how far you have already been and how important you are to
yourself and to your beloved ones!
·
Acknowledge the thought sand feelings and put them in perspective.
·
Reframe your thoughts, clarifying to yourself what is real about your
feelings and what is just part of a learning process. You do not need to be
perfect!
·
Examine your motives. How much you are working for attention, or to make
a genuine impact. As I teacher, as a mother, a woman, I keep my thoughts
countered by “there might be one person who finds this useful.” I make that the
reason why I keep at it.
·
Count on a support network. Share
what you’re feeling with trusted friends, other women or mentors.
The important part is
not to let that doubt control your actions. The important is to take care of
yourself and to get to know our feelings can be tricky! But when we are
together everything can be changed.
You can count on me to
share your experiences. Just stay in touch!
