The Tale Of My Recent Imposter Syndrome Spiral

Do you struggle with imposter syndrome?

(If your answer is genuinely no, I want to know your secrets — it honestly feels like the further I advance in my writing career, the worse my imposter syndrome gets 🙃🙃🙃)

It’s super common for creatives to struggle with feelings of inadequacy or imposter syndrome,

And, at least for me, even the slightest trigger can cause a significant self-doubt spiral to materialize seemingly out of mid-air.

Literally, something as small as an errant Google Doc comment coming into my email inbox can set me off on a vicious spiral these days — which is exactly what happened to me earlier this week.

(WHY DO I LET THESE NOTIFICATION HAUNT ME SO???)

Allow me to set the scene

Over the holiday break, I always like to to give my body some much-needed R&R by allowing myself to sleep in as long as long as I can,

(Rest is important, and if you can, getting extra sleep can be so cleansing!)

So, as I was groggily waking up from a luxurious 11-hour sleep, I instinctively reached for my phone to reconnect with the real world (ew).

Without even thinking about it, I opened my work email (a force of habit and honestly my first mistake) and saw a Google Doc alert.

I immediately opened it (another mistake!) and was greeted by a very out-of-pocket, blunt, and honestly quite condescending comment from a new editor on one of my recent articles.

(Side note — editing etiquette is such an important part of the creative process. Always use compassion when editing another human being’s work, it goes a long way for preventing stress and building an actually beneficial working relationship between you and the writer!)

Upon reading this comment, my heart rate spiked to like 180 bpm, and I could feel my entire body getting warm and stressed.

Before I knew it, my spiral had begun — and there was nothing I could do about it until I let the initial wave of emotions work their way through my body and mind.

For me, these spirals often start from a place of indignance (not great, I know, but it is the vulnerable truth)

Laying in bed, I started to experience thoughts like,

“Ugh, this editor has NO IDEA what they are talking about!”

Or

“This is such unhelpful feedback are you kidding me?”

Not awesome I can admit, but these types of thoughts are usually within the first few intelligible thoughts that I experience during an imposter syndrome spiral.

This short burst of anger is the first wave of response I usually experience, but it quickly fades to something much, much more damaging.

Next, my self-doubt emerged, and this is where everything started to fall off the rails.

Panic started to set in, and I noticed my thought pattern changing to more negative and self-deprecating themes:

“Well… maybe the piece you submitted wasn’t your best work.”

Or

“Maybe you are out of touch with what your client is actually looking for.”

This is the beginning of the dangerous zone for me historically, and is usually when the big, bad, ugly, scary feelings of deep-rooted self-sabotage begin to rear their head.

From here, the only clear direction that my mind sees is down — and as I set myself careening on a path for complete mental overwhelm, I hit the question that is buried deep in my psyche:

Am I even a good writer?

Yeah, it’s a big ol’ yikes

So yes, literally within a span of minutes, I went from righteous indignation that the editor had no idea what they were talking about to feeling like I needed to quit my job and change my career forever.

(Yes, it is overly dramatic, but this is literally a spiral that I visit way, way, WAY too often).

So, what are the key takeaways from this story?

(I think there are quite a few!)

The takeaways

#1 — Imposter syndrome affects everyone, no matter how much experience you have in your craft

#2 — Friends who validate and support your feelings are so, so important

#3 — Your feelings are not always the truth, and, in most cases, you are actually more capable than you give yourself credit for

I tell you all of this not looking for compliments or reassurance, but just to normalize this experience.

It’s normal to get these feelings of self-doubt and stress when you create things for a living — but it’s also important to find ways to manage these feelings so they don’t take over your life and affect your work.

I’m still learning how to deal with imposter syndrome, so there is no sugar-sweet cooking-cutter ending to this story (for now).

Instead, I ask you this:

Do you struggle with imposter syndrome? If so, what does it look like for you?

Reply and let me know, I’d love to hear more stories so we can further normalize this natural (yet shitty) part of being a career creative.

Hope this helps — imposter syndrome is the worst!

P.S. For this particular spiral, I chose to deal with it by reaching out to my fellow writing friend just to get the feelings off my chest (something that I find really helps contextualize them in real-time). After I left her a lengthy voice memo just word-vomiting my feelings to her, she responded:

“I don’t have any magic advice, but I do have validation.”

And honestly, those words hit me like a G-dang brick wall.

Get yourselves some good creative friends, folks — they honestly will change your life.