Feeling Like An Imposter
I’m a fraud… a total fraud.
Ok, not really. However, there are times when I feel this way.
I’ll be at work planning out a web application and suddenly I’ll feel a wave of anxiety. A voice inside my head will start telling me that I’m not really good at this stuff. After all, the voice says, there are people much better at web development than I am. Therefore, the voice concludes, I must be a total fraud who will be found out and fired soon.
The truth of the matter is that the voice is right in a small way. There are people whose web development skill dwarfs my own. However, that’s true of any pursuit. No matter what you choose to do, there will be someone better at it than you are. Very few people can point at an accomplishment and say "Nobody is better at this than I am."
The voice takes this grain of truth and skews it… spins it until it is proof positive that my web development skill is zero because others surpass me. All of the websites I’ve coded, the applications I’ve written? They’re dismissed by the voice as no proof whatsoever. It must have been luck that enabled me to do all that but one day my luck will run out and I’ll crash and burn.
The voice isn’t just limited to my vocation, but to my parenting skills. It will tell me that I’m not good enough to parent my boys. I lose my temper too much. I don’t know how to handle certain circumstances well enough. I rely on my wife for things that I should know how to do myself.
Again, there’s a grain of truth in this. I do lose my temper more than I’d like to. This mainly takes the form of my Asperger’s butting heads with my NHL’s Asperger’s. Working on controlling this is one of my biggest parenting challenges. I also can be clueless when it comes to handling some circumstances such as navigating school politics. Finally, I do rely on my wife for a lot, but this is true of any marriage. Marriage should be a partnership. Show me a marriage where one spouse does everything and the other does nothing and I’ll show you a marriage that is doomed. Besides, my wife has some strengths in areas where I am weaker and vice versa. Each of us supports the other so that together we are stronger than we would be individually.
Thanks to a pair of humorous tweets by @muskrat_john (of Apples To Apples and Munchkins fame), I now know that this feeling has a name: Imposter Syndrome.
Most days, I’ll push the voice out of my head easily, but other days it is tougher. I’m pretty used to it by now. I’ve battled this for decades and it likely won’t stop anytime soon. I’ve just got to keep my accomplishments in mind and know that I didn’t stumble upon where I am today. I worked hard, made mistakes, learned from them, and gained much knowledge along the way.
Have you ever had to battle feeling like an impostor in your own life?
A few days ago, NHL lamented about how rough his life was because I was sending him to bed without him having dessert. (Dessert isn’t an "every night" proposition in our house, but the kids keep lobbying for it to be a required part of dinner.) This "hard knock life" moment was contrasted with a program we attended at the New York State Museum. During the various components of this program, NHL got to see just what immigrants (especially Jewish immigrants) who came to America in the early 1900’s had to deal with.
Once the weary travellers arrived in America, they would be processed at Ellis Island. Many would get through, but sometimes individuals would be identified as being ill. (After all, crowded boat + "no facilities" + no medical care + long trip equals illnesses running rampant.) If you were marked at sick, you would be put on a boat back home. It didn’t matter if your entire family had gone through already. Children would be sent home by themselves while their parents would be let through.
If the travellers were admitted into America, they didn’t face "streets paved with gold." Instead, they would get to share a tiny apartment with 6 other people. Four of those apartments would share a single bathroom. There would also be a language barrier (which one presenter simulated by speaking to us for over five minutes in fluent Hebrew while we looked puzzled).
This presentation led to NHL and me talking about how he would feel about being forced to work like this. NHL is a big early bird, frequently waking up at 5:30am, but were we living in this time, he would need to wake up as much as an hour earlier. In addition, while he goes to sleep at 8pm now, were he working like the immigrants did, he wouldn’t get to sleep until after 11pm.
After this presentation, NHL not only came away having learned about a big part of our history. Perhaps even better, he left with a renewed appreciation for his own life. He gets to sleep in a comfortable bed, the extent of his "work" is homework for school, has toys to play with, and has plenty of room to move around and play. His life is infinitely better than that of our immigrant ancestors. Of course, were it not for them leaving everything they’ve ever known behind and braving unimaginable hurdles, our lives would not be as good as they are.
I’ve had to deal with hatred and bigotry two times in my life. The first time was in high school when a friend of a friend began telling me about how he idolized Hitler and wished he had finished what he started. To say that I was upset is an understatement. I’m not violent by nature, but I honestly wanted to punch this person in the nose.