Imposter Syndrome and Anxiety

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To be clear, I know everyone deals with impostor syndrome, and I do not have clinical anxiety. As far as I can tell, I tend to think about things in many of the same ways as my friends who do, and have many very similar thought patterns and obsessive thought cycles, but mostly I don't find it distressing. I also don't seem to get hit by rejection sensitive dysphoria the same way that a lot of my ADHD friends do. I think some of this is real, and some of this is very long established coping strategies.

But I want to express gratitude to all of you who are following these posts, and seeing yourself in them and comparing experiences. I have a Ph.D. and a good job, and successful relationships. I'm happy and have had the right combination of privilege, luck, and a lot of hard work, to build a life that I love. I also have never had any diagnosis for any of the things I'm describing. 

The fact that I don't have a professional diagnosis and that I've done so well for myself makes me feel a lot of impostor syndrome around these issues. Like I'm not actually allowed to talk about it, and I certainly shouldn't use diagnostic terms to refer to myself, because I'm appropriating from people who need the space. Writing this up has reminded me of what I actually struggle with and seeing people connect with it has confirmed for me that it is real and meaningful, and that my struggles can help other people.

Now, part of the reason I say all of that is that it's how I do cope with rejection dysphoria and anxiety. My strategies around this are starkly divided into two groups: people who matter to me, and people who don't. When I was in high school, I had to deal with high school social dynamics, but it was a very cliquish school, and I had a strong group of friends. This helped me to start establishing the idea that what most people thought about me didn't matter. This doesn't give me permission to hurt people (or ignore them if they say I have, even if I don't understand how), but it does give me permission to ignore their opinions about my behavior if it isn't directly harming them.

On the other side, when dealing with people I do care about, I've mostly found a magic bullet for dealing with my anxiety about their responses to things. I just say everything I'm thinking, and talk about it explicitly. If I'm freaking out because I'm afraid I screwed up or I'm overstepping, I just tell the person everything I'm concerned about and ask if any of this is real, and, if so, how I can fix it. Mostly, I find real apologies are incredibly effective.

This does require believing the person when they tell me that things are ok. I'm incredibly blunt, and get really annoyed when people don't believe what I say, so I try to extend the same courtesy of assuming other people mean what they say as well. Fundamentally, I have worked very hard to make myself believe that if I ask you if you have a specific problem or concern, and you say no, but it was a problem, that is just not my fault anymore. I have to let it go. 

So, all that ties back to why I'm writing this. Saying all these things about the impostor syndrome doesn't make it go away. But it does put it out there in a way that might be helpful for other people, and just saying it makes me more aware that it's really in my head, and a Truth.

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