My Impostor syndrome

Inspired by one of my colleagues who shared his story, I realize people might benefit from our experience with Impostor syndrome (IS). Therefore, I would like to share mine.

Impostor syndrome (IS) could impact you in different ways — personal life, relationship, career, … etc. But it’s not a disease which you seek for a cure. It’s a part of me, like I’m bad at remembering numbers. To me, IS are akin to the small light (スモールライト) in Doraemon, one of my favorite manga in childhood. A small light is a device with a shrink ray to minimize objects.

IS makes me feel I’m small, and everything I did is little.

However, is it the fact?

The way I’m facing Impostor syndrome is to get along with it by practice and recognize the tricks it plants in my mind. Then I can reduce the scale of the small light and eventually see the true scale of myself.

Let me share my story organized in the following sections.

• Recognition: How I recognize Impostor syndrome is with me?
• Reflection: How Impostor syndrome affects my life (so far)?
• Actions: Regardless you are the one with IS, or you would like to help, what could you do?

Recognition

The first time I consciously heard of Impostor syndrome is in the 10th year of my career, the 2nd year when I moved to the US from Taiwan. I’m sure I saw some posts about it before but never took the time to understand it.

It was from one of my data scientist colleagues who was introducing herself to the women social group that just formed. She mentioned IS to raise awareness and would like to help folks with the same symptoms.

After the meetup, I looked it up online and realized it is exactly the insecure part deeply in my heart. A little fairy lives in your head (holding the small light borrowed from Doraemon) and always says — “You are lucky” for every achievement you had made.

My first impression is to relate it to Asian/Chinese/Taiwanese culture.

Growing up and finished my master’s degree in Taiwan, I’m taught to be humble and never blow your own trumpet. The overachievement of “staying humble” could result in another small light effect.

After research further online, what surprised me is that the little fairy isn’t bounded to culture. People around the world have the same feeling as mine. The commonality is an interesting characteristic. When you have a ‘common’ skill, it’s a negative thing; when you have a ‘common’ symptom, it’s a positive. Knowing the diversified impact of IS somehow gives me the strength to believe I can handle it, like everyone else.

Reflection

I got my bachelor’s degree as the top one (GPA ranking) student of the year (among 100 students) and a master’s degree from the top one computer science colleague in Taiwan. Still, the feeling of “Good GPA doesn’t mean I am a good coder. I’m just lucky.” was haunting me.
To reflect now, the IS fog on my glasses start to fade away.
It takes determination, self-discipline, forward-looking, and risk management to keep the best performance for more than three years. Not to mention the numerous time I spent in study. They are my forte, even though I don’t have a coding competition medal like my classmates.

When entering the professional field, IS is still with me all the time. But it acts differently. IS has become a filter — an invisible tool that will minimize or remove people’s praise of me. The IS fairy whispered, “They are trying to be nice with you.”, then applied magic dust to make the good words disappear. Until one of my manager spot this behavior and consistently work with me, I can be frank to myself and acknowledge my accomplishment.
We should not rely on others to define ourselves, though we should also get help if we deny ourselves.

Actions

These are the actions I took to deal with Impostor syndrome. In my opinion, the key is to grown self-awareness.

1. Listen and write feedback down — Listen to feedback provided by others, both positive and negative. For each input, try to isolate fact from emotion. Write the fact down with no judgment. Write down your comment separately.
2. Regularly review feedback and comment — Observe any trend or pattern from your notes.
3. Periodically evaluate your strength and improvement area — In my experience, the more weakness I exposed, the higher chance I will ignore my success. Hence if I keep improving myself, the less chance the little IS fairy would resurface.
4. What failed is the thing, not you as a person — When something didn’t go well, remember what failed is the thing, not you — nourish yourself from the failure.

For those who would like to help, this is what helped me.

1. Share your story — There shouldn’t be one rule to measure people’s success. Regardless of how big or small role you perceive yourself, your experience could help others. Like my colleagues helped me to know Impostor syndrome, recognize it, and inspired me to write this story.
2. Give sincere compliments — Say something good when you see it, and say it from your heart. Playing nice will not help others but reduce your credit in the long term.

Finally, I didn’t conquer my Impostor syndrome. I’m still practicing to live along with it. Hopefully, you would find this article helpful.

I would highly recommend doing research online for alternatives. Feel free to leave your comment below or share your story with us.