Today I thought I’d talk about my experience with Imposter Syndrome as in the past year this has been something that I’ve felt so strongly. As someone who has throughout my life had some great achievements I’ve always had a self doubt that it could be luck or in most cases that I singularly don’t deserve these achievements because there are people out there far more talented or creative than myself.
“This psychological phenomenon, known as imposter syndrome, reflects a belief that you’re an inadequate and incompetent failure despite evidence that indicates you’re skilled and quite successful. In short, it’s a hot mess of harmfulness. It can also take various forms, depending on a person’s background, personality, and circumstances. If you’re familiar with the feeling of waiting for those around you to “find you out,”
If I’m honest this is a feeling I’ve has since before my a-levels, when I achieved highly I would always put it down to luck or coincidence, and not the 40+ hours of revision that I was doing every week. When I went for my university interviews, I honestly put my unconditional offer at the university I wanted to go to down to the fact that my family member who accompanied me to my interview, knew my interviewee. Even those this wasn’t something that was correlated until I had gone back to the waiting room with the guy who interviewed me and we had a gathering with my family.
When I was at university this feeling was even worse, every time I got a high grade I’d always compare it to my boyfriend at the time grades as I saw him as a higher standard of artist than myself, when I did better I would put it down to a fluke, or think that the tutors had given me a higher marks due to circumstance or illness. Which is such a bad way of seeing it because in hindsight I am a good artist and I worked so hard on my degree. After getting a lot of rejections on my masters for applications and opportunities I struggled so hard to continuously apply for things because the rejections I did get made me feel this sort of fraud like feeling, but I feel like the reality of is that I was applying for things far above what I was ready for because I felt like I needed to prove to myself that I could do it.
I had only noticed how bad it had got recently when I was looking at jobs that I am on paper n ore than qualified to do as someone with a first class degree, MA and in my first year of PHD. Even looking at the email for the job made me question if I was in-fact good enough to go for the job, that there are way too many talented people out there for me to even apply because I most certainly am not in the league of people that they should be employing.
It’s still something I working towards now I want to be better, and I want to put myself out there for more things but the constant comparison issues I have for other people in my friend of art based writing or blogging sometimes is absolutely dire and so hard to get around. I’m not sure that I’m capable of putting myself out there and being able to cope with the imposter syndrome I feel around it.
I’d love to know your experiences with Imposter syndrome if you’ve ever felt it or if you know anyone who has. Thanks for reading guys!
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