I Am Not The Imposter

Fake It Till You Make It is over!

I have had some feelings of self doubt recently, and as I teased them out I pulled on a thread that led me to think about how I have handled self doubt in the past. It unraveled a story for me about imposter syndrome and took me back to “fake it till you make it.” No shade to anyone using that life philosophy, but it got me into deep trouble. I can’t tell you in one blog post how to fix this problem. But when I was living my life that way it would have been nice to hear someone admit that it even was a problem.

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I am not sure if I didn’t understand “fake it till you make it” or if I understood it too well. It was the battle cry of the Woman of the 90s that I proclaimed myself to be. “Fake it till you make it” (let’s call it FITYMI, because I am tired of typing it already and I’m only a few sentences in). The way I understood it was that if you want something that is out of your reach, you just pretend you have the skills and confidence necessary until you do. Maybe you then acquire it by magic. Maybe you just get enough practice to make doing The Thing easier. Maybe muscle memory kicks in. Maybe you receive an award and are suddenly recognized and validated as being Capable of the Thing. Perhaps you wait for a Download From the Universe. I can’t say for sure, because FITYMI never got me anywhere good. Dug into a hole I couldn’t get out of, yes. Out of my depth with nowhere to turn, yes. Successful at something I hate, yes.

 ...looking at myself all those years ago, at peak FITYMI, that wasn’t a syndrome. I was an actual imposter. I was actually faking it.       

And it’s not as though I head faked my way into trouble all on my own. I was given the advice to FITYMI plenty of times, so I figured it must be working for someone. I acquired the belief that successful people were all either faking it or just perfectly comfortable. So, the way I implemented FITYMI was to figure out what I wanted my life to look like, pick a path I thought I could get there with, and do whatever it took to be the kind of person I thought I needed to be to reach my goal. I really thought that I could just create an outside life that I would grow into. Imagine building the front wall of your house and trying to live in it while pretending to the world it was a real whole house with a roof and everything. But every choice I made was serviced toward that goal, and faking it meant disregarding how I felt about the path as it evolved. I had to disregard the discomfort I felt, fake comfort, and move ahead. Faking increased my faking burden. And you can't invite anyone into your fake movie set facade of a house, so it's also pretty lonely.

I faked being an extrovert. I faked loving my work. I even faked liking people (that’s the one that haunts me most). I actually remember the moment that I realized how badly FITYMI had painted me into a corner. It wasn’t that exciting, I was just standing in a hallway doing my regular life stuff. I realized that trying to craft an ideal and then live in it until I was it was insane. It was making me insane. I had moved so far away from myself that I had no idea who I was at all. I didn’t know what I wanted, what I liked, what would make me happy, what I even believed. There was just the puppet me that the world saw, and an anxious driver, trying to pretend to be the puppet. I had faked it so hard I didn’t even know what my favorite color was. I mean, I thought I did, but I realized I couldn’t tell the difference between what I had convinced myself to like as part of my FITYMI and what I would actually choose only to suit myself. It was a major life change to walk away from faking it. It was a long journey of healing, recovery, therapy, study, reflection, all those things we associate with resocializing. It feels like there’s a line drawn through my life at the moment I realized I could no longer sustain the façade.

I have long considered FITYMI to be the worst advice I was ever given. If you have read anything I’ve written in the last few years you already know that I bang on about authenticity quite a bit, so my indictment of FITYMI is implied in all that, if it’s not explicit. Faking it in this way is all about doing and being what others want, or what you think they want. Which is all kinds of trouble, just read any book on codependency. It is a bit of a wonder to me, that with all the discourse out there about imposter syndrome that there aren’t more people pointing fingers at faking it. Yes, imposter syndrome might be unjustified self doubt. Imposter syndrome can be the result of not seeing others like yourself in similar positions. But looking at myself all those years ago, at peak FITYMI, that wasn’t a syndrome. I was an actual imposter. I was actually faking it. And after that I was so used to being a fake, that I just always felt like a fake. I was always wondering if I really deserved to be somewhere. It didn’t matter how many awards I got. In college at 40, I had a 4.0 for the first two years, got scholarships, made the Chancellors list, and still wondered if I should be there. I still would sweat before speaking in class. But I didn’t just fake my way though it. I built a new path.

Through practice I learned to trust myself. I learned to figure out which discomfort was from growth and which was a signal that I was off track and then responded appropriately. When I got it wrong I acknowledged the mistakes and adjusted. I learned how to evaluate whose opinions about me mattered and how to take on their advice or critique. Now, when I have feelings of self doubt I sit with them. Sometimes they are plain fear. Other times, I realize that the feeling in my body is excitement, and my mind is reading it as nervousness and explaining it as self doubt. It takes a lot of patience to sit with the discomfort long enough to read it like that. Then it takes self-compassion to understand and forgive that soft animal that you are for trying to protect you. And then there are the times when the feeling of self doubt is founded. My gut, mind, body, intuition are all just telling me that now is not the time. I sit and tease it out and find that I already have as many obligations as I can handle. I have to leave myself time for rest. The most satisfying of all is when that discomfort shows me that what I am being presented with, I simply don’t want. Saying no to things that I don’t want and have the power to refuse is really satisfying.

Let’s look again at my old FITYMI philosophy: decide what you want your life to look like, pick your path to get there, do whatever it takes to be the person you need to be to accomplish your goal. It doesn’t even sound bad! Maybe it is exactly what some people need to thrive. And yet, I could write a whole book on how wrong that was for me. My life philosophy now is upside down from that: accept myself as I am, make decisions as they come that will cultivate virtue and promote the wellness of myself and others, choose a direction to take my life and adjust as needed. Now when the self doubt creeps in I can sit with it. I know I am not faking anything. I am no imposter. If my skills, ability, stamina, etc. are not up to the task at hand I can adjust and deal with the consequences. It’s not an easy path, but compared to the one I was on it’s practically coasting.

I am here right now giving you permission to put down the mask. There are of course consequences. I hurt myself and others by pretending. You’ll have to face up to that, make amends and learn new ways. For example, there are tools for keeping you from telling people exactly what you think in a harmful way, while still being honest and authentic (the four gates of speech is indispensable). It’s going to be hard and you are going to feel vulnerable. It’s an adjustment, like getting your sea legs, learning to drive, or moving to a new climate. You learn to do it. You get used to it. Then you love it. And some days you still don’t, but it’s worth it.