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.