Imposter Syndrome

[Dante]

This morning, I had to make a call to check on a bill that crossed in the mail, and I had this sudden sensation of being a fraud for pretending to be an adult.  I've had imposter syndrome my whole life when it comes to work.  Things that I have succeeded at - and am externally recognized for being among the best at - I feel like I'm just completely faking.  A lot of why I'm good at what I've succeeded at is a direct result of my CPTSD - I'm adaptable, so adaptable that I can assume any persona necessary to get through something.  And that makes me able to solve problems that stop other people in their tracks.

But this is the first time that I can recall feeling like I was pretending to be an adult (maybe, probably, it's happened before and I'm just becoming more aware of it).  I still feel like I'm 7 years old, and maybe parts of me still are and that's why. (?)

Sharing to see if others have this experience.

[BeeKeeper]

Dante,

Imposter syndrome is real and a consequence of trauma, not only reserved for those high-striving perfectionists among us. Many trauma recovery writers speak about this now and how it's part of the landscape. I've personally experienced it for over 30 years. My own awareness began as a consequence of mental health counseling in an academic setting, where I was desperate to "hide" all my past failures and weaknesses. Otherwise known as my real life!

It gets less over time, by consistently working at it and recognizing it when it happens. That's my experience anyway.

[Dante]

Thanks, BeeKeeper!  It helps to know I'm not alone!

[Armee]

It's very very real in my personal and professional life.

Just the other day I was getting ready to go meet with an attorney about my mom's estate and I'm looking at myself like I don't know how to dress decently or look put together I don't know anything about finances or estates or taxes or what any of this means and thinking this attorney knows where I live and it's a wealthy town full of people who went to ivy leagues and generally have their poop together. And I felt so small and ashamed thinking she would have this idea of someone who has it together and I don't.

Same at work. Like you. Top performer. Awarded the highest award at my agency nationally...one of about 8 out of several thousand employees a year. And feel like such an idiot and they don't know me and that I'm really stupid and don't have my act together.

At home when I walk with my husband down the street I feel ashamed that people think what is he doing with her and that I'm not good enough for him regardless of what people think.

Can't even wash laundry properly all that stuff. It's ugly.

I attribute a lot of it to the dissociation and how I couldn't pay attention or even stay awake in class so I seemed really stupid and lazy and got a lot of feedback along those lines. And then when I was out of that traumatizing environment and all the sudden excelling I didn't know it was because I was out of the trauma didn't know it was trauma in the first place i just thought well everyone seems to think I'm really smart and hardworking but I know I'm not so I must be being bad and tricking them. So I'd try to patiently explain, "thank you but no I'm stupid and unproductive" then they'd think i was humble and think even higher of me. Then the expectations were way more than I could manage so I'd have to work really really hard to not let people down because I felt guilty that I was tricking them. Then I got burned out and I feel like just sneaking away from work without a word to anyone except HR. Even though it's a fantastic job and great people and I've worked there for a couple decades.

So no, you're not alone.

[woodsgnome]

This discussion touches on some of my own insecurities. Mainly about just being myself, no matter where I am or who I might be with.

For a while, I made a living being a deliberate 'fraud', or so it might seem from the outside. One of my vocational niches was that of an improvisational (non-scripted) actor. The old expression of 'falling into' something fits perfectly, as acting of any sort was never on my radar screen, mostly for its requirement to relate to people. Short and sweet -- I was terrified of anyone and everyone, then and now.

The acting bit came along as a major surprise to where I seemed most drawn (jobs away from public scrutiny). However, in just a short while I noticed that I felt more 'myself' in the  role-playing skits I performed. Yet off-stage I also was still in the same old get-me-outta-here freeze state of mind. 

This has come up in reading the accounts of some current on-stage comics (my usual persona was on the edge of that genre). There were times, I must admit, when the character I was on-stage was far more appealing than who I thought I really was. At least by being a 'fraud', if that's at all accurate, I felt better about myself. It was like having a secret coping strategy, one I didn't realize was happening.

Thinking about it now, it was a good deal -- to have found that sort of outlet at that time in my life when I was in real danger of giving up entirely. I still have problems and hyper-vigilant fears involving people of all sorts, but I at least now know I was able to break free by 'acting' as myself, disguised as a character. In some regard, the character ended up more like 'me' than I was ever allowed to be.

Another realization for me was learning which was the real 'fraud' -- the dreary childhood or the strong, and funny, adult. Via the acting I learned how the two decades of childhood abuse was the real 'fraudulent' part of my life. Also how challenging it was to overcome it (still very much a work-in-progress!).

So maybe the bottom-line takeaway here is to strive to be one's best self as best they can, whenever and wherever they can. In my own case, in order to become more comfortable with myself, I had to literally wear the mask of being someone 'else' to begin to sense which was the more fraudulent -- who I was 'brought up' to be or who was really under it all.

So I'm not at all sure which was the fraudulent part -- my childhood spent in misery around people who identified me only as an unwanted troublesome useless misfit (which I began to believe) or someone whose gifts were yet to be found. So by being a 'fraud' I wound up discovering myself. Who'd a thunk it? I sure didn't.

Here's to retiring the fraud mask for all of us.

[Papa Coco]

YUP!!!!  Count me in. I'm a fraud too. Always have been. I learned young that I was not allowed, nor competent enough to stand up for myself, so instead I survived a world full of bullies by learning to become what they needed me to be so they wouldn't humiliate or hurt me. Somewhere along the way I lost track of who I was really meant to be as a person and became whomever I needed to be at any given time. I still suffer at the question: Who am I really?

Impostering (othewise known as adapting) worked well during my days as a standup comedian, and it really, REALLY gave me a strong and long lasting career at my job in aeronautics. But at what cost? I felt like I succeeded at living someone else's life, while somewhere in the dark old back rooms of my brain, my 7-year-old self was still sitting in the dark, terrified of being beaten up for being who I really am...whoever that is.

My inner child didn't receive the coming-of-age transition to adulthood that every child deserves, so he is also still very much alive in me. Still waiting to be told he's not an incompetent worthless little imp. Out of fear, he often still takes control over me when something happens that makes me feel unsure of myself. When triggers are pulled, my frightened, self-destructive little inner child takes full control over my entire body and brain. This is trauma. Period. During these times of trauma response, if I see a mirror, I expect to see a 7-year-old reflection and am almost shocked when I see a gray-haired old man instead...it's trauma!

I'm an imposter because I'm who you need me to be and I can't remember who it was I was supposed to be on my own.

The problem is that my 7-year-old self is still living in the trauma of my family teaching him/me that I'm completely incompetent and utterly useless as a human being.

It has taken decades of counseling just to get to where I understand that these episodes of being 7 again are trauma. Today, when the 7-year-old takes over my brain, I am sometimes able to access my adult self well enough to stage a virtual sit-down with my child self so the two of us can quietly relax and feel the stress together. (I think this is the result of what some people call a Somatic Exercise?) My goal, when I do this, is to let my adult, competent self, give the attention and compassion to my abused inner child who didn't get that when he really was 7. In this exercise, both of us can feel comfortable trusting my adult self enough to let him retake control and fix the adult situation at hand.

The way I understand PTSD, is that it causes a fragmenting of our brains. Our inner children and our adult selves both live in the same brain but are not integrated. In a healthy upbringing, a child would be accepted and loved and encouraged by the people (parents, teachers, siblings) charged with teaching them how to be their best self. As the child transitions to adulthood, the competence and acceptance transitions with the body. It's what is sometimes called a healthy act of coming-of-age. But most of us on this forum did not receive the love and guidance we deserved as children, so our inner child is still sitting there waiting to be loved, and is now living in one part of the brain, while the adult lives somewhere else. Not integrated. For me, these two personas take turns running my life. My job today is to repeatedly teach the two of us how to work together and how to trust each other, regardless of how non-integrated we are.

Like most of you have said, we all have amazing accomplishments under our belts that prove we are very competent and very useful adults. But we also have a past that gives us the opposite message in the form of a nasty lie we were once told about our self-worth. That lie was told so well, by the people in charge of teaching us who we are in the world, that it became a part of our fundamental operational wiring. So today, we have to respect our original faulty wiring, and manually overlay a new, honest message about the fact that we have each become amazing, compassionate, empathetic human beings today!

[BeeKeeper]

This statement by woodsgnome pops out for me: "So by being a 'fraud' I wound up discovering myself." Very good concept to mull over.

[woodsgnome]

I've mulled on that for at least a couple of decades. Another way I 'd say it might be something like: "In the process of adapting a role-play character, I discovered my hidden 'inner child'. The latter represents for me the person I wasn't allowed to be.

The so-called fraud part sort of flipped roles with the inner child. The latter felt more like who I should be than the adults around my child self tried to force me into. But I wouldn't have known this had I not accidentally discovered there was a niche for the character and I fit perfectly into it -- in a very real sense, I wasn't acting a part, I was just being myself. For me, of course, that was a delightful surprise. It's why I try to stay open to surprising twists on this recovery road. One never knows (even if it seems scary at first).

[jamesG.1]

very typical of c-ptsd I reckon. We've had waves of negative reinforcement, so anything we do is going to feel like, at best, we've struck luckiy for one silly instant and we will soon be back in the box.

The antidote, in my expereince, is to make sure you indetify the voice of the inner critic, and separate it from reality for the applied abuse it really is. People NEED you to fail, and they NEED you to feel like an imposter. Truth is  that you have as much right as any other person to be where you are, doing what you are doing, and failing and succeeding is not anyone's business but your own. All you are doing is living your life, learning your lessons, and how that measures against these tiny souled monsters is irrelevant.

When you feel it again, look around you and imagine everyone else feeling the same emotions and you get this sense of the pointlessness of this forcibly downloaded software that you just don't need to have inside you.

[Dante]

Thank you all for the thoughtful and supportive replies.  I've had - and been aware of - imposter syndrome for as long as I can recall.  I can't previously recall feeling like I was pretending to be a grown up, though I'm sure I must have.  It was kind of like a kid with candy cigarettes, blowing out puffs of smoke, pretending to be a grown up.  I felt good to be doing something grown-up'y, but like I was an imposter for doing it.  <shakes head>.