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Nancy Barricklo's avatar

So resonant! I want to share this one with so many people I know who struggle with this feeling. For me, I think I’ve possibly held myself back in someways due to a complete paralysis to try/do anything I didn’t feel in my bones I could do (oh, I do things with a learning curve that I don’t know how to do starting out, but if it feels out of reach, I don’t even try — thus to avoid that imposter thing; oh,well). Thanks for the history and analysis, too. I’m curious about how the phrase morphed from phenomenon to syndrome?

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Adam J. Blust's avatar

When I was a reporter, I constantly felt like a professional fraud. I used to actually have nightmares about men in suits coming into the newsroom and saying to me, "You don't belong here. Come with us."

When I got back to Wisconsin and I was taking tech/web jobs at a temp agency, I felt confident and the nightmares stopped.

When I was a reporter, my heart wasn't in it. I loved the research and writing, but not the "ask a widow about her dead husband" stuff.

Recently I was putting together some documentation for a job I was applying for. And I stopped and thought, "I've actually done a lot of stuff! And it was good!" So the self-questioning never really goes away.

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