Impostor Syndrome keeps coming up on Facebook, so I thought I would share my thoughts on it today.
I may have shared some of these thoughts here already. If so, sorry.
Impostor Syndrome refers to the feeling that some successful people get that they are a fraud, that they’re not nearly as great as their accomplishments suggests, and that it only seems that way because they have everybody fooled.
Superficially, this seems paradoxical. I mean, if you do great things, you must be a great person, right? After all, you’re the one who did all those great things.
But it goes deeper than that. This phenomenon stems from a conflict between someone’s accomplishments and their low self-image.
If the accomplishments – aka reality – wins the fight, then there’s no problem. The person thinks more highly of themselves, and life goes on.
But for some people, their low self-image is a vital part of the very core of their identity – and in the human mind, identity reigns supreme. To actually change the self-image to reflect these accomplishments, therefore, is impossible. It would be too profound an injury to their fundamental sense of self for them to endure. Simply can’t happen.
And yet, they truly have done these impressive things. What must happen can’t happen. This creates a powerful state of cognitive dissonance in the individual. One that absolutely must be resolved.
The only way out is to somehow nullify the accomplishments. The individual creates ways of convincing themselves that their accomplishments or high status are false, That they don’t count. That they are not the result of the individual’s true worth, but merely the result of them having everyone “fooled”.
And as anyone familiar with celebrity biographies knows, this can go all the way to the top. You might be a gold medal athlete, an Oscar winning movie star, or the top scientist in your field and still think you are a fraud who doesn’t deserve any of the accolades or credit for your deeds.
In other words, you feel like an impostor.
I’ve felt this myself. Not in quite that straightforward manner, though.
My low self-esteem is more…. nuanced than that.
Like I have said before, on the one hand, part of me has self esteem so low that I think of myself as a massive liability to humanity in general and that the world would be a far healthier, cleaner, and happier place without me.
On the other hand, if someone showed up and declared me to be a super genius and handed me a whole lot of money in recognition of this fact, I wouldn’t be surprised.
I’d be like, “Oh, good. Thanks. ”
And on the inside, I’d be thinking, “Finally!”.
No, my impostor syndrome is a little more complicated, and mostly manifests in my tendency to instantly nullify and discount any of my accomplishments.
Like all those stellar grades I got in school. Meh, big deal, they don’t count. Grades don’t mean anything. And it’s not like they ever did me any good anyhow, right?
Besides, it was all too easy for it to really matter.
But that’s not how an outside observer would see it. They would see someone who effortlessly achieved an A average and think, “Wow, that guy is crazy smart!”.
And they’d be right. I am. The evidence is clear and overwhelming. By all rights, I should have a fairly high opinion of myself.
But I don’t. I declare that somehow all those grades and things “don’t count” instead.
At least I don’t think I have everyone fooled.
Mostly because as a lifelong smartass, if I truly had everyone fooled, I’d be proud of it.
More after the break.
On not being pathetic
Relax, it’s not as bad as it sounds.
What I am talking about is my own learned helplessness and how to overcome it so that I can have a little fuckin’ dignity for once.
Man I am having trouble focusing right now.
Anyhow, learned helplessness is a survival strategy adopted by powerless children who feel they have no ability to directly influence their own lives and therefore must fall back on a child’s last line of defense : hoping someone will take pity on you and help you.
And if pity is your survival strategy, that is very sad.
It also means that you must then make yourself as pitiful as possible. Your strategy is to broadcast your helplessness in hopes of attracting nurturing responses and offers of assistance from those with whom you associate.
This is inherently infantile.
And I mean that literally. It’s exactly how an infant survives. For anyone beyond that age, it can be interpreted as a sign that something has gone drastically wrong.
Enter yours truly.
It’s clear to me now that when I was raped, I reverted. My journey into selfhood was cut off at the knees and I reverted to my previous successful life stage, infancy.
Makes sense. I figured out that I was oral retentive a long long time ago, and infancy is the oral retentive stage of life.
Oral retentive people tend to be passive, manipulative, messy, fixated on getting pleasure through the mouth (eating, drinking, talking, oral sex), and can be extremely selfish people who see the world as existing only to meet their needs.
The archetypical fat cigar-sucking amoral businessman is a common example.
And the thing about pity as a life strategy is that it is inherently inimical to growth. Any move to become stronger and more independent makes one less pitiful – less pathetic – and that means surrendering the only kind of power you have.
This explains so much about me. Like how I have never had any faith in my ability to survive on my own. What infant can?
And why I have a crystal clear pattern of attaching myself to stronger, more motivated people. Whether it’s my parents or my roommates, there has almost always been someone around to do the adulting for me.
And I just have to keep being my charming, adorable, pathetic self.
Clearly, that shit has got to stop.
But it’s all I know. Moving beyond it will mean going into the unknown on a existential level and that’s about as scary as it gets.
I just have to keep telling myself that I can help myself.
Repeat until believed.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.