Dear Imposter Syndrome
or, an incomplete musing on everything stuck in my throat
We don’t end up in rooms that we don’t belong in. At least, we don’t stay in them for very long.
We either change ourselves, grow ourselves into belonging. Or we leave out of the sheer discomfort of trying to force our square beings into a round hole.
And yet, whenever I’m surrounded by women who have found their IT, who are living in alignment with who they are, that’s where my voice gets caught in my throat. I’m inspired to the point of falling, putting my head in my hands, and saying I. JUST. CAN’T.
But, dear imposter syndrome of mine, WHAT HAVE YOU EVER DONE?
I don’t understand why you’re so hellbent on defining me as someone who spends every day crushed by the unbearable weight of never having broken out into being who she’s meant to.
I’m struggling to identify what I want this digital space to be. I guess deeper than that, I’m struggling to find my voice.
Historically, writing has always been something I gravitated towards. It was something I excelled at in school, so I naturally studied journalism once I started college.
And yet I don’t know who I am anymore when it comes to creating. I don’t know how to reflect myself back to me anymore. I’ve lost my mirror.
I have an image in my head right now from Disney’s Mulan, where she’s serenading into her family’s reflection pool about having to wear a mask.
I won't pretend that I'm
Someone else for all time
Damn, Christina Aguilera really went off on the Mulan soundtrack.
Imposter syndrome is just another way of pretending, paradoxically enough. It paralyzes you from being who you truly are, who you’re truly meant to be, and encourages you to continue pretending to be this other thing.
That’s actually safer.
I’ve been trudging halfway through Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way over the last few months, and even in saying that I know I’ve already missed the entire point. The point is commitment, tenacity, grit, showing up even when you don’t want to. The point is in forcing the stone of our inner creative to bleed day after day.
And I’m reminded of the creative resistance Steven Pressfield writes about in The War of Art, with all its various manifestations. Resistance, Pressfield posits, is the most toxic, destructive force in existence. Each creative project, then, is akin to fighting for independence from this tyrant.
“Resistance is directly proportional to love. If you’re feeling massive Resistance, then the good news is that it means there’s tremendous love there too.”
Steven Pressfield
Both Cameron and Pressfield, albeit in their own individual ways, portray creation as a battle, as an endeavor that demands our entire selves and takes no prisoners. These philosophies take the creative process and transmute it into a fight for survival.
But what if creating doesn’t have to leave us bloodied and bruised?
“Enjoyment is the best metric for efficiency,” writes career coach Joe Hudson (I first heard him say this on the Modern Wisdom podcast). I think about this every day.
Finding joy in the process is what will get us to where we want to be.
So here’s to the joy.