The Imposter

Me and my girlfriend have recently been watching the Netflix series Full Swing, a behind-the-scenes look at the PGA Tour. We got up to episode four featuring Joel Dahmen entitled 'Imposter Syndrome'. Dahmen is known for his self-deprecating attitude, lack of confidence and not thinking that he is amongst the greats of the game. And as we were watching this my girlfriend turned to me and said "That's you."

For those who do not know, imposter syndrome is "the persistent inability to believe that one's success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a result of one's own efforts or skills". In my case, others may think that I am competent, smart and skilled, yet I don't think that I tick any of these boxes. Any kind of skill or "genius moments" I consider are more down to luck or good timing than anything else. I always feel somewhat of a fraud or, as the name would suggest, an imposter - that at some point I will get found out. Again, it comes from having high personal standards of myself, that everything needs to be perfect. Though not an official psychiatric diagnosis, there are links between it and anxiety.

The first example I can think of feeling like an imposter was during my A Levels. I did Maths and alongside that chose Mechanics rather than Statistics or Decision - to this day I still do not know what Decision Maths even is. To my best knowledge, I was the only person doing Mechanics who was not also studying A Level Physics, thus a significant disadvantage compared to everyone else. Thus, I felt I was the weakest student in the class and did require further intervention during my last year. My degree at university was in Journalism and Media Studies, to which I had no prior experience and therefore was learning at a lot of things from scratch, such as types of publishing, using movie editing software, techniques such as semiotics and discourse analysis and so on. I was so out of my depth, to the point that I was even admitting that in marked pieces of work that I had no idea what I was doing. My lecturers would say that my grades were a result of hard work and committing myself to do well, yet I still think I got lucky. I might look back at the stuff I was writing back then and think "What was I thinking when I wrote this?"

It can be triggered by calling attention to one's success. I know I will constantly call back to my hockey life, but that is the best example I can think of. Yes, I have scored a few goals in my time but I will always say that I got lucky, that anyone could do it and there is nothing special about me. After every game, even the wins, I will always seem to focus on my mistakes and thinking how I could have done something differently, or in my words "better". It is again pushing myself to the best of my ability, putting pressure on myself for everything to be perfect, and when it is not I feel like I have let everyone down. I will watch others and wish I could be like them, measuring their achievements rather than my own. I have always felt that there are loads of players better than me and that I must push myself to merely keep up with them. Maybe I just concentrate too much on the statistics.

How can I overcome this? Accept that imperfections are common. Concentrate solely on myself rather than others. Of course these are all easier said than done. I do find myself more and more in the position of referring to a professional for guidance and support, having put it off for too long. Hopefully I can find a place where I feel good enough. That journey though may be long and take a few detours, but with luck it will be worth it.

Raising the bar TOO high

As I mentioned previously, there would be the occasional post about my mental state of mind. My anxiety does get the better of me at times and it has done more frequently over the last few years. Thank you global pandemic!

One major contributing factor is having high standards, even more so for myself. Yes, I set the bar high for myself, although to some extent too high. It probably started at school and continued university. I did not want to settle with getting by on the bare minimum, thus setting the tone and making people think that is your best. I wanted those marking to take note, almost blow their socks off and think that I am worth taking seriously. I put in the hours and never wanted to leave things to the last minute, when people were more than likely to make mistakes. And then the results came back and it was refreshing to know that all the hard work was worthwhile. But then came having to maintain that level of consistency and hard work...

The problem with high standards means that, to me, all mistakes feel at the same level. Those things that are simple, quick fixes, I will magnify them beyond belief, to the point that they could be seen from the International Space Station. I just feel as though easy mistakes should not be so easy to make, that they should not happen. I like routines and things to work like clockwork, to the extent that anybody can easily do it. Those easy mistakes can knock me off track/out of my stride. And that was a constant battle during my teacher training course, not anticipating certain pitfalls that would come up and it was difficult to recover afterwards.

During my teacher training course, there were moments when I would need to be self-reflective after each lesson I taught, focussing on "What went well" and "Even better if...". Each time, the "Even better if..." column vastly outweighed the other side. Even when I was observed by my subject mentors and the course leaders, when they asked for my feedback, I always seemed to start with the words, "It could have been better" and all the setbacks would still be on my mind. Mostly they would be stuff like behaviour, timing, appropriate activities and whether I was clear in my explanations. There were times when the lists of positives were non-existent; seriously, under "What went well", I did several time write "Nothing". As a result, I felt as though my placements were not the best experience and began doubting myself more and more. That coupled with COVID-19 and other unforeseen circumstances led me to withdraw from the course.

Consequently, I am sometimes in a constant state of worry. If you imagine that feeling of thinking that you have left the oven on when you are out of the house, it is like that 24/7. It is especially like that leaving work on a night. Have I locked the doors and set the alarm? Have I switched the lights off? Is everything that needs turning off turned off? It gets so bad sometimes that I will leave, get home and then have a sudden panic before going back to check. That seed of doubt is never a nice thing to have, always fearing than I have done something wrong and the worst case scenario for my actions.

I even have high standards in things that I usually enjoy in life, mainly hockey. I am currently playing in my 14th season and still after every training session or game I will scrutinise every little action that I do, mostly concentrating about the mistakes I have made and what I should have done. Did I make the right play? Could I have done better closing down the defender to win the ball back? Should I have done better with that shot? Am I too predictable with the plays I want to make? It feels like that sometimes.  I always find myself apologising after anything that goes wrong, thinking that it is my fault and that I should have done better. At our last tournament, I gave away a silly penalty and the opposition scored whilst I was in the penalty box. It turned out to be the game-winning goal and I blamed myself for it afterwards. I will always take responsibility for what I do and feel the need to apologise afterwards, because I want to do what I can to help the team.

Yes, this idea of pushing myself beyond what I capable of does not sound healthy. In the words of Radiohead: - "I don't care if it hurts. I want to have control. I want a perfect body. I want a perfect soul."

Not this again...

Those who know me will be thinking, "Hang on, I thought you already had a blog." Well, yes. But this is a new one that will hopefully be different.

I created that mainly to review films that I was watching at university and a few other minor bits and pieces. I was by no means an expert, not even in the same stratosphere as the likes of Siskel and Ebert or Mark Kermode. I did not have my own unique style, but did do much research beforehand. As the years moved on, posts became less frequent but my film viewing grew and grew from casual to near obsessive and my film collection expanded to the point that I could open my own version of Blockbusters. I began cataloguing all the DVDs I had acquired, in an attempt not catchup on those that I had overlooked so far. During COVID-19 and the lockdown, I attempted watching one film a day (I managed to get up to four or five months) and what helped was finally discovering the worlds of Netflix and Amazon Prime. But the major discovery was Letterboxd, a social platform for showing off your taste in films. I have wrote a number of reviews on there, some as long as some my university assignments and some merely one line. I have introduced others to it and I will continue to utilise its full potential.

The main purpose of this blog though is to put my mind at ease. I have had moments of anxiety for many years, being very self-conscious or myself and everything I do. University was an important time in this for me, as I did not agree with the idea of people squandering all the great knowledge and information at their disposal and getting by with the bare minimum. I almost wanted to put those who did this to shame and make those in charge to take note and be impressed. This mentality would continue with everything that I did afterwards, holding myself and others to a high standard and pushing myself to be the best. But maybe too much. Having high standards of myself has meant that even a simple mistake, even something that is easily be fixed, is a real knock to my confidence, knocking me out of my stride. Being self reflective is meant to allow you to focus on what you do well and how to improve, but in my case I have always seemingly concentrated on the negatives first and I will dwell on those for a long time afterwards. Needless to say, the lockdown escalated my anxiety somewhat and my confidence did take a wallop. I will not go into too much detail now, but may save it for later posts. I have a better understanding now of the importance of mental health, even if mine is not the best example. It is a constant state of mind that cannot be easily fixed.

Hopefully, this blog will serve as a way of easing my mind and focussing on something else. What may I write about? I am not 100% sure, but maybe a mixture of things - film, music, sport, my state-of-mind, etc. I do have to thank my girlfriend Emily for helping me get back into this groove. And for everything else in general.

Right, here we go again...