Sean Swaby writes about his experience with the Imposter Syndrome.
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Awakemare – a recurrent nightmare-like dreamy state that occurs in the daytime. You swear you are not high, not on any anesthetic and there is no hazy consciousness to protect the innocent. When it is over, you are left with sense that life-is-over-as-we-know-it.
Do you have a favorite Awakemare?
My awakemare terrified me. I envisioned that my boss would kick open my door, shove her finger in my face and shout, “You don’t know what you are doing! You are a fraud!!”
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My awakemare terrified me. I envisioned that my boss (her name was Ann) would kick open my door, shove her finger in my face and shout,“You don’t know what you are doing! You are a fraud!!” Then it would all be over and she would fire me. I never told her about this and the awakemare played over and over in my mind.
As an introvert, I have worlds in my head. Some real, some fantasy and some awakemares. Sometimes my emotions and imagination seems to conspire against me by hacking my mental home screens. I suspect that because you have read this far, you can identify.
The Imposter Syndrome effects approximately 70% of us, embedding recurrent fears and anxiety onto our personal screen savers.
“Having to live with a nagging fear of being “found out” as not being as smart or talented or deserving or experienced or (fill-in-the-blank) as people think is a common phenomenon.”
An Overconfident Stereotype?
Psychology Today has written about the Imposter Syndrome and it’s impact on women:
“Many highly accomplished women suffer from the feeling that they are imposters and they do not belong where they are and they don’t deserve what they have accomplished through their own talent and hard work. Why do these women feel this way?”
To me, attributing any psycho-social experience from a single gender lens reinforces a destructive stereotype. The piece wrongly assumes that men are immune to the syndrome, “Why do so many highly accomplished women feel they are frauds, imposters, and phonies when their male counterparts don’t?”
In my experience, anyone can experience fear and crushing self-doubt. My Imposter Syndrome twists an article like this and I hear “Most men are confident alpha-leaders who are rarely afraid. There must be something wrong with me or with with my leadership style.”
The best leaders I know are honest and move forward in spite of their anxiety and self doubt.
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Underlying this article is a stereotype that rolls around our various leadership sectors: Men are confident and impervious to leadership anxiety and self-doubt. This is nothing more than leadership bias, reinforcing comparison and ranking against other people. The best leaders I know are honest and move forward in spite of their anxiety and self doubt.
Imposterzombies
Our beliefs can become our Zombies; what we believe we can do, making our world expand or expire.
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As an introvert, part of me loves the comfort-zone-bubble. Staying inside of my strengths, inside of what I know and can control is comfortable. But it suffocates. Our beliefs can become our Zombies, making our worlds expand or expire.
We have to push against the resistance if we want to get stronger.
The New Fear on the Block
Whenever you or I step out of our comfort zone, our Imposter Syndrome will demand our attention.
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Whenever you or I step out of our comfort zone, our Imposter Syndrome will demand our attention. BECAUSE we are stepping out of what is comfortable, we WILL face fear. When we face that fear again and again, the intensity diminishes and it is not as new and not as scary. It is no longer the new fear on the block, our stranger-danger alarm bells quieten a little. We build skill and slowly our anxieties subside because we expand our zone, we grow.
My awakemare Zombies crowded me for too long. When I finally owned the courage to speak about it to a friend, he reminded me that we all feel it. He said that when you work with people there is always more than one way to accomplish something. This kind of uncertainty can fuel our Imposter fears.
One person can make a situation work out to their advantage but when I try the same approach, I flop. With practice I learned that there is one fear-busting strategy that works every time: Step out and keep stepping out.
We have to push against the resistance if we want to get stronger.
Every time you or I speak openly about our fear, the Imposter Syndrome loses ground. Join us and have the conversation that no one else is having.
If you like this piece, you will enjoy The Quiet Leader Manifesto.
Keep it real
Photos by Alan Levine and Gianluca Ramalho Misiti