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.

Speed Wobble

We've all had them. That shopping cart with the wobbly wheel. An unbalanced wheel, perhaps some loose bearings or dirt in the mechanism, and you have the wheel that wobbles as soon as you reach walking pace. If you're not in a hurry, it's not that big a deal. The wobble only happens when you reach a certain speed, i.e. when you are in a hurry, creating noise and slowing you down because you simply can't make the cart go any faster.

As I mentioned in the video of my Sick, Not Weak talk, my older sister suffers from bipolar disorder. My mother thinks that it's possible that my father did as well, though to a lesser degree. His aunt was hospitalized a number of times while suffering from manic depression, as it was known then. So, when I finally came to terms with the fact that I was suffering from depression, I seriously wondered if I was bipolar as well.

When I discussed it with my doctor and therapist, they didn't believe so mainly because I didn't have the traditional manic episodes. I haven't had those times where I stayed up for days doing a bazillion things. I didn't have the messianic feelings, like I was the Chosen One and had a mission to complete. So, I thought that I was dealing with 'just' depression and generalized anxiety disorder.

A recent incident, though, has me wondering.

I absolutely do have cycles where I'm down and ones where I'm more up. Actually, I think all people do and the 'bipolar' aspect simply means that you experience extremes of those. In this case, I had been down but I could feel myself coming back up. My energy was building and my mood was improving.

What happened next was intriguing. I've been making a point to pay attention to how I'm feeling and as I started to come up I noticed that I had a flood of ideas. A bunch about work, a bunch about home, a bunch of writing ideas, etc. There were so many ideas, I had no idea where to start! I actually felt overwhelmed by this explosion of thoughts in my mind.

I had a mental version of speed wobble!

As I thought about the phenomenon, I realized that it was something that I had experienced many times before. I can look at my blogging patterns and see peaks and valleys. What readers of my blog don't see, though, are all sorts of posts that I started or jotted down notes, but never completed. At home there are partially completed projects, although I've long coped with that by only taking on smaller things.

So, this last left me to wonder if perhaps I actually do suffer from bipolar disorder, but the manifestation of the mania results in an overload in my brain that prevents me from moving a whole lot faster on things that I do even when I'm down. It's not that I'm trying to be diagnosed as bipolar, but more that I find it interesting that I have this state, and that it might help me create some better coping mechanisms.

Abuse Has Many Forms

When I was a kid I was the target of bullying. I'm short and was downright tiny then, and I tend to march by the beat of my own drum. So, I may as well have had a flashing neon sign saying "Bully Me!!".

What I experienced was humiliating, but I didn't follow the Hollywood model of taking on the bullies directly, with that one punch that suddenly brings respect. I was bullied by people who were much larger, and really wasn't interested in getting the shit beat out of me in order to make a point. The opportunity did present itself once, but I clearly remember thinking, "No, I'm better than this." I chose to rise above their level rather than stooping down to it.

That sort of abuse is relatively easy for me to talk about, and for the first 27 years of my life that was the worst that I had faced. What isn't easy to talk about, though, is the emotional abuse to which I was subjected in a relationship that started when I was 26.

I'm a relatively normal North American white male. I have my quirks, but who doesn't? I grew up with the idea that abuse in a relationship is something that some asshole of a man does to a woman, and tragically that's true in many/most of the cases. Because men are "strong", they don't get abused by women. I was wrong.

I was never physically abused, save for one instance when a TV remote was thrown at my head. I was, though, subjected to a slowly debilitating form of emotional abuse that had me questioning everything about myself. I questioned if my family really cared about me. I questioned my ability to be a parent. I questioned whether I provided anything more than a paycheque to the relationship.

It wasn't until afterwards I finally started to realize that someone was placing a distorted mirror in front of me that some of the confusion started to clear, and I eventually ended that relationship. I can't say for certain how long I still believed that our problems were mostly my fault. Indeed, I may still carry that with me. I remember defending her long after we separated when others would say how badly she had treated me. "Hey, I'm no angel", was my euphemism for, "Hey, I deserved it".

That relationship ended in the summer of 2002. We had two children who I love more than anything, and have had a constant struggle to assert my role as a parent ever since. I wish I could say that time has healed those wounds, but really all it has done is create scabs that are picked every so often and continue to fester and bleed more than a decade later.

For more than a decade I have tried to live by that same core tenet that got me through the bullying when I was young: "I'm better than this." I've risen above the name-calling, and I cannot adequately express how difficult that has been. I've risen above using the kids as pawns in the "game", though there have been countless times I would have loved to say what was really going on. But what worked when I was in my early to middle teens doesn't necessarily work when you're in your 30's and 40's. I knew that there was a finite amount of time that I'd be bullied in high school before they & I would graduate. I don't have that luxury now, and it has been a significant contributing factor to my depression, and sure as hell plays into my anxiety issues.

I'm not perfect. I've made mistakes just like every other human being on this planet, but I don't deserve to be bullied or abused. No one does.

I recently read an article called "Am I Imagining The Abuse in My Relationship?" by Kellie Holly that really hit the nail on the head for me. Yes, the abuse I've faced is absolutely nothing like that faced by countless millions of women at the hands of men. But it's still abuse.

And it's still wrong.

Wake Turbulence

When I was working on my pilot's license, I was flying out of Ottawa International Airport's North
Field. Even though we were separated from the main terminal by nearly a kilometre, we were close enough that the interactions between our tiny 2-seat aircraft and the large airliners had to be taken into consideration.

The reason for this is that all aircraft disturb the air in which they fly. In particular, the wings produce a vortex that forms behind each wingtip. This is a horizontal formation of spinning air - a sideways mini-tornado, if you will. The small aircraft I flew did form these vortices, but they weren't large or powerful enough to have much effect on other small aircraft. An Airbus A320 or Boeing 737, though, produce vortices that are strong enough to toss my 1600 lb. Katana around like a leaf falling from a tree in a strong breeze. There were many times when the air traffic controllers would warn pilots either taking off or landing that they should wait momentarily for this wake turbulence to dissipate before they continue.

When we interact with other people, we create a similar "wake turbulence" effect. The things we say and do (or don't say/don't do) can dramatically upset other people without any intention on our part, or even without realizing that we've done it. That Westjet 737 taking off has no intention of ruining my day by slamming me back onto the runway like a bug on a windshield, but the potential for just such an occurrence exists.

Over the past few months I've been spending a lot of time reflecting on how I interact with not just the immediate people around me, but with the entire world. I'm attempting to become more mindful of the wake turbulence that I'm creating, and also of watching out for the turbulence created by others. I'm not always successful at either, but I'd like to think that just watching for it is progress from where I was before.

I'm trying to constantly think about how something I say will be perceived, and if there's a better way to say it. I'm trying to think about how something I do will be perceived, and if there is a better way to do it. I'm, admittedly slowly, starting to speak out about how the words and actions of others affect me. This last point seems to be the most difficult, since I have a decades-long pattern of avoidance around doing just that.

At the very least, I'm now conscious of these effects and I'm trying to work with them rather than deny that they exist. I'm trying to be the small aircraft that doesn't have a large effect rather than a massive Airbus A380. What size aircraft are you?

Damage Assessment

Photo by the Massachusetts Dept. of Environmental Protection

I've always been a bit of a weather geek, and tornadoes have fascinated me for decades. They're simultaneously the most frightening, most awesome and even the most beautiful weather phenomenon in existence. I live vicariously through storm chasers like Reed Timmer and Canada's Dave Patrick, watching as they get up close and share the excitement and awe they express as much as I can via an Internet connection. Something I find interesting is how their excitement can turn very quickly to dread when they realize that a tornado is about to or has hit a populated area and people or animals may be hurt.

When I started to come to terms with my depression, I spent some of my time thinking over the relationships I've had over the years. It wasn't pretty. What I saw in my mind was the type of damage you would see from a powerful tornado - only a narrow strip of land affected, but complete devastation within that strip. Buildings were leveled, trees stripped of foliage and bark and people wandering around wondering how they would rebuild.

The question I asked myself was, "Did the lives of any of those people improve in any way as a result of knowing me?" At the time my immediate answer was no, and even now I struggle with the answer after finding medication that helps control the depression and with a few months of therapy under my belt.

For the longest time I thought I had been holding onto the guilt of how I acted during those relationships, but recently I realized that what I was holding onto was shame. The light bulb moment came while listening to an audio CD of Brené Brown. Something she said hit me like a freight train:

Guilt is, "I made a mistake". Shame is, "I am a mistake".

I felt completely eviscerated when I heard that... I am a mistake. It captured in four words what I had been feeling for close to 30 years but couldn't articulate.

The shame that I've felt for leaving that strip of total devastation has been overwhelming, and has seemed to compound itself like interest on a maxed credit card. It's as if the tornado has done nothing but grown larger and stronger over the years and no matter what I tried to do differently the damage still occurred. I have wanted to think that I was a good person, treating other people well, but my shame was preventing that. To me, the damage was visible to anyone just like in the picture above - a scar across the landscape that may take a lifetime to repair, if ever.

Now that I'm being treated, I can't say for certain when if ever I'll feel better about all this. I suppose the transition from shame to guilt means that what I perceived to be permanent, irreparable damage can indeed grow back just as the trees will in that forest. That transition probably also means that I can move from a place where an apology for how I treated someone would seem so grossly inadequate that I couldn't do it, to this:

If you were among the people who I didn't treat well for whatever reason, please accept that I'm truly, deeply sorry.

The Mask

Picture by Greg Williams (gerg1967)

In June 2013, the massive, decades-long juggling act I had been performing came crashing down.
While I had suspected for a while that I had some issues, to use the cleanest euphemism possible, I resisted accepting that they really existed. I'm sure those closest to me knew that all was not well, but even with them I tried to hide what I was feeling. To the rest of the world, I presented (or tried to present) a persona of that was always joking, making light of any and all problems... except possibly crappy software development but that's a topic for a different blog!

In short, I spent decades wearing a mask.

I wore a mask that attempted to project someone who was always happy, finding humour in any situation. I wore a mask that attempted to project someone who was comfortable in their skin. I wore a mask that attempted to project someone who hadn't stumbled their way to a pretty good career in the software industry. I wore a mask that hid enormous pain that had been accumulating for many years and wasn't going away by simply ignoring it.

Certainly there were plenty of times that I was genuinely happy. I have been fortunate in so many ways, and my depression hasn't been anywhere as severe as that experienced by many people. I have been blessed by having had relationships that allowed me to grow. I have been blessed to have watched the birth of my two kids. I have been blessed to have a fantastic family who would go to the end of the Earth for each other. I'm especially blessed to have a wife who loves unconditionally and, despite my resistance, encouraged me to finally seek help.

But despite all those great aspects of my life, I wasn't feeling good. In fact, I was feeling worse. My work was starting to suffer. I was experiencing issues with many things due to the anxiety of dealing with them. My relationships with friends had all but evaporated because I was isolating myself.

The mask was starting to crack, and this past June it finally shattered. I couldn't deny my problems anymore and was forced to deal with them.

What I didn't expect was that the impassable wall of anxiety I had built was much more difficult to scale than any of the problems. Those are more like mountains, needing a slow and steady climb but still surmountable. Indeed, some have been mere hills easily conquered with a day hike.

In the end, the carefully and elaborately constructed mask that was intended to hide the real me from the outside world was working in reverse. It was hiding the true nature of that world from me.

Sick, Not Weak

As my introductory post to this blog, I'd like to start with a video of a talk I gave at my work in September 2013 called "Sick, Not Weak".  It's my story about finding out how I actually had depression and generalized anxiety disorder, and the effects those had on my life in the nearly 48 years prior to that diagnosis.

The title was borrowed (the polite term for "blatantly stolen") from Michael Landsberg of TSN in Canada.  Michael, who suffers from severe depression, has been a very outspoken advocate of making mental illness visible so that we can deal with it like we do physical illnesses.

If you like this video, please share it with others so that we can encourage more people to tell their stories, even if it's to themselves in a mirror.