Do you ever feel like there’s someone else wearing your skin? Taking over your thoughts?
I think it’s something that everyone feels from time to time, and the feeling often takes the form of self-doubt.
For some people, the feeling is frequent, for others, an occasional occurrence. The weird part is that you can’t always tell when someone is feeling self-doubt because, for some people, it becomes incredibly easy to seem confident and/or charismatic.
The truth is that even though someone may seem like they ooze confidence in one way or another, there may be a voice in their head screaming “you can’t do this” or “you’re not good enough”.
I’ve had a lot of self-doubt creep in recently, mixed in with a lot of excitement and confidence. I’ve gone back and forth between “I’ve got this!” and “was that good enough?” about 100 times in the last 24 hours alone.
Today I recalled an article I read during my fourth year of university (only 1 year ago) about something called “Imposter Syndrome”. The article specifically talks about “The Imposter” who takes over your mind in new or tough situations, and installs a lot of self-doubt. This particular article by Jennifer G. Craven talks about “The Imposter” in relation to teaching, but really, “The Imposter” can make its way into many areas of your life.
Randomly, I thought about this article today when I was experiencing a rather annoying moment of self-doubt in regards to a recent short-film I was in. “What if the director goes through the footage and decides he doesn’t like it?”, “Was the crew judging me for having to repeat that one scene a couple times because it wasn’t coming out right?” It went from there to: “Holy crap what if I start to continuously forget my lines in future projects?” and “did I bomb that audition yesterday?!”
I had to talk myself down by reminding myself that, realistically, who cares? Every single role, every single audition, every single thing in life in general is all an experience, and an opportunity to learn. There’s no use giving myself premature wrinkles on the subject just because my brain won’t shut up.
I’ve had the self-doubt loads of other times too. Having endometriosis, chronic demon that it is, has made me question a lot of things about my life and what it was going to look like after graduation. I also overthought whether or not I WOULD graduate. What could I realistically do for work with an illness that makes it difficult to stand up some days?
I got through university by sleeping or hanging out with my hot water-bottle when I should have been in class, and doing most of my work from bed – either my own or the hospitals. And I may or may not have had a low-key dependency on pain meds and anti-nausea drugs which didn’t help with day-to-day function.
For a while I let my imposter win the argument. Not with everything, but in regards to what I could physically do, the imposter almost always won out. It said: “you will get even more sick if you go to class every single day, it’s germ ridden and your immunity sucks” – I agreed. It said: “you need to rest because you have to be able to get your homework done later. You can’t go to class/out with friends” – I agreed. It said: “you’re in pain, take a painkiller because you need to be able to walk/sleep/read or write today/tonight”.
It wasn’t all bad because I DO have a chronic illness and I DO need to rest sometimes, but it became too easy to go from “i’m not feeling well and I need to rest” to “I can’t do this because I need to [preventatively] rest so that i’m not in pain [later] and don’t get sick [in the future]”. There was a line that shouldn’t have been crossed, but I listened to “The Imposter” putting self-doubt in my mind, and the line was crossed. Especially when it came to taking pain-killers (narcotic or otherwise) and anti-nausea medication.
It caused a change in my level of motivation and ambition for a while, as well as a giant amount of self-doubt in terms of what I could physically and mentally accomplish in my life.
The little voice inside your head’s like:
Listening to “The Imposter” is a little like joining the Dark Side. The minute you start giving into the thoughts of self-doubt, you’ve become Darth Vader – stuck on a path to the Dark Side because you may believe it’s the right thing to do, but you’re actually doing more harm than good.
Re-reading the article about this “Imposter Syndrome” reminded me that self-doubt happens to everybody, and that everybody is capable of beating it.
Overcoming self-doubt and anxiety can be incredibly difficult, and scary, and it’s not always something you can do quickly, or on your own. But it doesn’t matter if you need help to do it. That doesn’t make you any less badass.
The important thing to remember when the self-doubt creeps in is that every single time you doubt yourself, you have an opportunity to reflect and say “ok why am I feeling this way?”, weigh whether or not the feeling is a rational one, and whether or not any [real] good will come out of you listening to the doubt.
Will listening to the doubt help you achieve what you want out of the situation?
In my case, it won’t.
In fact, listening to the little doubting voice in my head will get me the exact opposite of what I want, so finding [healthy] ways to silence the voice is key. And it’s hard as hell but I’ve learned the hard way how I feel when I do listen to the doubt. I personally prefer the feeling of NOT listening to it much, much more.
It’s also good to note that each time you DON’T listen to “The Imposter”, you get stronger.
*P.S* Stay in school kids! You never know when something you’ve learned in school will come in handy, sometimes in unexpected ways.
And a great big THANK YOU to Professor Alicia McKenzie of Wilfrid Laurier University for assigning the article!
If you would like to read the article on overcoming the Imposter Syndrome by Jennifer G. Craven, you can find it here.
You can also follow me on Instagram and Twitter where I post whatever I want to, and try my best to advocate for endometriosis.
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