Coping with Imposter Syndrome

As I mentioned in my Sick Not Weak talk, I experience a lot of difficulty dealing with Imposter Syndrome. Ironically, the wonderful reception I received from co-workers, friends, family and even strangers was a trigger for a huge case of it! I couldn't help feeling that I didn't really deserve the praise being thrown my way.

That aside, this past week I ran face first into a veritable snake pit of imposter syndrome - the self-assessment part of our bi-annual reviews.

As part of it, I had to explain all the wonderful things I did since my last review and how that has positively affected the company. I essentially had to brag about myself, and if you've ever experienced imposter syndrome you'll know that's about as easy to do as chewing broken glass. So, I started and stopped the process several times. I felt like I should just say, "Why did you even hire me?!".

Finally, on deadline day (of course), while in the shower I was wondering what to write. After some thought and some arguing with myself, I actually said out loud in the shower, "I did X and it really helped with Y, damn it!" Then I did it again... "I did A and it really helped with B, damn it!". In a few seconds I came up with three or four things I could put in the "accomplishments" section.

I finished my shower, got dressed and went right to my computer to enter what I had thought of. I started to think of all the sentences I could finish with ", damn it!", while pounding an imaginary fist on the table. The result was a good number of accomplishments that I was confident made positive contributions to the company.

Those things spawned thoughts about what I needed to write in other parts of the assessment, and completing it took about 20-30 minutes. That was after feeling blocked for a number of weeks.

So, if you're having a tough time coming up with good things that you've done, try that little trick. Try thinking of all the sentences about what you did, ending them with ", damn it!!".  This could be for self-assessments like mine was, for your resume, when prepping for an interview, and probably many other areas way beyond just your job.

If you do use it, please let me know how well (or not) it worked for you.