Am I having an Imposter Syndrome?— A Series of Self Development

So there’s a little story behind my desire to start writing again.. Maybe some of you could relate or giving an advice to it:)

I’ve been feeling a little emotional and lost about myself lately since I’m in Korea. It’s not my first time to live away from home and lonely, but things just going a little bit different lately. I start to feel this way when I have so many things going on my mind but I can’t make it work nor let it out. Yes it’s my bad actually🙁🙁 and because of it, I often feel like I have least of achievements, and think that I might have chosen a wrong decision. Being here in Korea means I skip a semester in my home university, so I felt like left behind on working my final paper and worthless for not having an ability for completing my degree. Although I’m a very goals oriented person and actually I’ve just achieved one of them ; study abroad. Those things are freak me out and drive me to cry almost all night.. Have you ever feel the same?

I guess we’re all, because we’re often being too hard to ourselves without even realizing what we actually deserve. As I can’t see things clearly, I decide to talk about what I felt to my pal and he told me to read about Imposter Syndrome, he said maybe if I’m suffering it I could found out a way to combat it.

After reading several articles and watching TED Videos I found out that imposter syndrome can be defined as a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persist despite evident success and behavior where people doubt their accomplishments or fear of being exposed as a fraud. Signs of people suffering imposter syndrome are usually found as :

1. Having difficulty accepting praise.
2. Have a tendency to relate their success to external factors or attribute it to somewhere else entirely.
3. Overworking — a tendency to keep investing energy and effort into a project, long after it has reached the point where it would be more than acceptable to someone else. Imposters recognize this pattern, but they’re essentially powerless to stop it.
4. Obsessive and compulsive to live with a driving need to be the very best.
5. Fear of failure but feel anxious about success because their drive for it often distances themselves from their family and peers.
6. Avoiding display of confidence and convinced that you’re “not good enough”.
7. Comparing other struggle and focusing on things haven’t done because imposter set for themselves are so high, they rarely meet the milestones they’ve created.

A diagram of an Imposter

Imposter syndrome expert Valerie Young who is also the author of a book on the subject, The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women, found patterns in people who experience imposter feelings:

• “Perfectionists” set extremely high expectations for themselves, and even if they meet 99% of their goals, they’re going to feel like failures. Any small mistake will make them question their own competence.
• “Experts” feel the need to know every piece of information before they start a project and constantly look for new certifications or trainings to improve their skills.
• When the “natural genius” has to struggle or work hard to accomplish something, he or she thinks this means they aren’t good enough.
• “Soloists” feel they have to accomplish tasks on their own, and if they need to ask for help, they think that means they are a failure or a fraud.
• “Supermen” or “superwomen” push themselves to work harder than those around them to prove that they’re not impostors. They feel the need to succeed in all aspects of life — at work, as parents, as partners — and may feel stressed when they are not accomplishing something.

So how is it? are you thinking that you suffer imposter syndrome? I would also attached a great a video I watch from TED that made me feel better to educate myself about this syndrome :

What’s imposter syndrome and how you can combat it? (Ted Ed)

Realizing that I’m having those signs, I thank my pal for telling me and made well educated about this. Fortunately, Imposter syndrome isn’t an actual disorder or abnormality and most of us would have suffer it. Knowing that I’m having this syndrome, I start to change my mind and find a way to combat this. The most effective way that work for me is :

1. Get educated😉 It’s important! whenever you feel that something wrong with yourself, you need to find out about what’s going on and get yourself educated about it.
2. Telling how you feel! Being an Introvert would be hard to start talking about things, but whenever you recognize this feeling, make sure you share it with your 911:)) seeking support and talking about the feeling could help us recover.
3. Be kind to yourself. Suggest yourself to be grateful for what you’ve done and believe that you deserve what you fight for. Soo you need to believe that whatever your goals is, it would be achieved gradually and it’s a milestone to another goals!
4. Escalating self-esteem, those would help you convinced yourself that you’re worthy and stop comparing yours and others’ struggle.
5. Yupps start writing, suffering this syndrome it’s one of the reasons for me to start writing again.. in case you can’t tell bout your feelings to anybody, you still could write it out!

Despite all of its negatives, I think this syndrome could also have a positive impact if we could handle it wisely. Due to the sign of overworking and tendency to have least of satisfaction on work, this syndrome could be a motivation for us for not being effortless and procrastinate. But at the end of the day anything excessive won’t be great, so we need to control and don’t overdo this feeling! We need to believe that we could make it all happened.

-d-

References :

Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

The Reality of Imposter Syndrome

How To Tell If You Have Imposter Syndrome

Learning to Deal With the Impostor Syndrome