My fight with Impostor Syndrome (part 1)
While sitting at my laptop deciding what to write only one thought came to mind:
What does one write in their second blog post, when they feel they have nothing to share?
I realized after sitting at my computer for nearly an hour that the reason I thoguht I had nothing to share was due to a character defect. Impostor Syndrome. Caltech’s Counceling Center has an online resource that describes impostor syndrome as:
…a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persist even in face of information that indicates that the opposite is true. It is experienced internally as chronic self-doubt, and feelings of intellectual fraudulence.
I remember reading these words for the first time after hearing about impostor syndrome on the Ruby Rogues podcast.
It was as if I was reading the memoirs of my thoughts. There haven’t been many times, in my introspective life, that I have had such a deep connection with a set of words written by another. Ususaly it is a small poem or persons emotional sharing of thoughts. But these clinical sentances took my mind by storm.
I simultaniously felt exposed, understood, comforted, and afraid. I was listening to my coding heros explain how they faced a challenge I could not only comprehend but lived with on a dialy basis.
Now that I could name it, I could tame it.
To be continued…