The True Costs of Imposter Syndrome

 

It’s an interesting thing to watch the reactions when I talk about Imposter Syndrome.  There is normally this light of recognition that comes in to someone’s eyes as they easily agree that this is something they deal with in their life.  Then you can watch them mentally putting it on a shelf marked “work on this someday” and move on.  It makes me sad in that I don’t feel they fully understand the true costs of relegating this “issue” to the “someday” shelves of self-care and love.

When you suffer from Imposter Syndrome (and I don’t say “suffer” lightly), you are experiencing it in EVERY area of your life.  It shows up in all personalities, all walks of life and all roles that we take on.  It takes up a supply of your energetic self by using it to protect you from beliefs and emotional pain that you have carried likely your whole life.  It depletes you, and dims you, and keeps you playing small.  These are not little consequences… these are massively impactful to your health, wealth, happiness and success.

In simple terms, Imposter sufferers wear masks of protection.  These masks are made up of all of the coping mechanisms we have designed to protect us from anyone discovering the emotional spots of pain underneath.  I see the masks as heavy, solid and yet brittle enough to be at risk of shattering, whereas the emotional spots under the mask are soft, sore and tender to the possibility of being exposed.  The sore spots are all of the negative things we believe about ourselves… you know… I’m not good enough.  I’m not smart enough.  I am alone.  I’m not lovable.  Once we have created this belief (and yes, we create them ourselves as kids), we then spend the rest of our lives protecting ourselves from anyone discovering that we feel this way.  Enter the masks of protection that consist of our thoughts, behaviours, patterns and actions that we live every day.  By using our energy in these protective ways, we are taking that energy away from self-care, self-love, expansion, gratitude and every other positive emotion available to us.  To put it bluntly, it is a waste of your energetic resources… especially given that there are amazing ways to heal those sore spots and take off your mask.

Here is a really basic list of some categories of people and how their suffering commonly shows up:

Entrepreneurs

You are your business and if your business is not growing, it’s because you aren’t.  Especially for those of you that are service oriented – you are selling yourself and essentially your energy.  If you are using lots of your energy protecting your sore spots, clients feel the “lack” available to help them.  So grow, heal and up-level personally and the professional will follow.

Moms

You are the superheroes of giving.  Seriously – it is a HUGE emotional output in your life. The most important cost to you is that you miss the magic of what you have created.  You miss the magic moments, the magic feelings and the magically quirky growth of your little humans.  You miss it because you are so busy making sure you look like you have it all together.  Or managing EVERY TINY aspect of your entire family’s lives.  Or you miss it because you are too busy castigating yourself for not knowing how to do the 10,000 things demanded of you in a day in the properly perfect manner.  You frigging miss so much when you use your energy to protect yourself from all of the inferiority feelings instead of using your energy to soak up every bit of magic on your Mom journey.  This one is heart-breaking for me.

Professionals

How much are you running on fear?  Fear of screwing up the pitch or presentation, fear of not getting that client, fear of being by-passed by someone smarter than you?  It is absolutely exhausting having to pretend that “business is business” and feelings are for your personal life.  That is crap – you are having the feelings at work… you just take the energy to stuff them in to a box, then more energy to pretend they aren’t there, then more to unpack them at the end of the day (if, in fact, you do this at all).  More than likely your relationships at home suffer too because you have used so much of your energy stuffing and pretending, that you have run out at the end of the day.  This road leads to physical sickness, mental health issues and, in lots of cases, pure burn-out.

Care Givers

Nurses, teachers, doctors, paramedics, social workers etc.  I am talking to you here.  Like Moms, you give of yourselves ALL damn day.  Like professionals – you have to stuff your personal feelings.  When you are also hiding the fact that sometimes you are scared, sad, unsure, rejected and overwhelmed – you will just plain run out.  You will run out of compassion, out of empathy, out of emotions because out of necessity, you go in to lock-down mode.  You especially, need to care for yourselves more diligently than you care for your patients, students or clients.  You HAVE to make the conscious choice to clear your energy so that you can continue to be a care-giver at all.  You HAVE to.

The cost of not addressing your Imposter Syndrome can be devastating.  I don’t want that for you.  I want you to know that there are ways to heal the sore spots so you don’t need a mask to protect them.  I want you to know that you can feel, think and behave in a way that makes you even better at your chosen role, while at the same time making yourself a priority.  I want you to be wildly happy and enormously successful in your life.

So if you are struggling, reach out and start to heal the sore spots.  The cost of not healing this is just way too high.

To your wild happiness and enormous success,

Deb