#oneaday Day 252: Impostor Syndrome

Today's post was inspired by a Daily Inkling posted by Normal Happenings. You can find it — and plenty more writing prompts — here.

Matt asks us:

Do you deal with Impostor Syndrome, the concept of assuming you are unworthy of your accomplishments and will be exposed as a fraud?

Short version: Yes, but not as much as I used to, and only under certain circumstances.

For me, impostor syndrome is something that primarily rears its head when I'm doing something that isn't 100% what I "want" to be doing. In other words, I tend to find that I don't fall foul of it when I'm working on stuff like MoeGamer and YouTube — even though there are plenty of things I want to improve and learn more about over time, and my whole creative process with those is one of constant discovery and experimentation — but rather, I feel it at… a significant proportion of other times, including my daily work and… well, general daily life, to be perfectly honest.

Rationally speaking, I know that I'm good at my day job. I have specialist knowledge that my immediate superior doesn't have, making me valuable and useful to have around. I don't get involved in drama and office politics; I just generally keep my head down. But as I wrote in my anxiety and depression post recently, I worry sometimes that this is "not enough". Questions come up in my head, and they don't always have answers.

Should I be talking more to the people around me? Should I be trying to socialise more with work people outside of work? I don't want to do either of those things, not because any of the people I work with are especially unpleasant, but because I've been severely burned by getting too "close" with people I've worked with on previous occasions. (Nothing sordid, I hasten to add; just a case of being rather too trusting and thinking people were actual friends when in fact they were absolute bastards.)

I worry about the frequent occasions I get bored, too. I worry that having nothing to do and being bored — usually because I've got stuff out of the way quickly — makes me look bad, and I hate asking people for things to do, particularly if I have to ask them several times, which I usually do. But then I look at the people around me who are just as bored and frustrated with what they do at times and I wonder if I'm worrying over nothing.

In my personal life, I struggle with impostor syndrome when dealing with anything "official", particularly if it's stuff I don't understand like insurance or financial matters. I worry that anyone I have to deal with under those circumstances will recognise that I don't know what I'm doing and will take advantage of me. I'm pretty sure that I have been taken advantage of on a number of occasions because of this, which doesn't help my own anxiety over such matters. But again, there are things you need to be able to do as a (mostly) functional adult, so I do my best to try and tough it out when possible.

This even extends as far as interpersonal relationships. I can be with people I've known and loved for a long time — friends and family — and find myself at a loss for words because I worry about something I say making me look stupid. Perhaps this isn't quite impostor syndrome in the same way as other things — it's more social anxiety and/or Asperger's — but it still stems from a basic lack of confidence in myself; the fear that I'll be seen as someone who is incapable of doing basic things like, say, having a conversation.

So yes. I do suffer with impostor syndrome. Just… not necessarily at the times you might expect someone like me to!