Am I An Impostor?

There’s nothing scarier than sitting down to look through job postings online, not finding anything in the first 15mins, and having this pit start to grown in your stomach.

Over the past couple years, I went through a very dark time in my personal life, which ultimately lead to me seeing a psychologist. Among the things I learned about myself in those weekly sessions, I came to terms with the fact that I have, what is generally called, “catastrophic thinking”. In simple terms, this is defined as “ruminating about worst-case outcomes, leading to increases anxiety and lack of progressive action”. This way of thinking has often put me in paralyzing situations leading to panic attacks. Hence why these two stories come hand-in-hand. 

The Catalyst

On a lazy Monday, bored out of my mind, I thought I’d do something productive by starting the job hunt for post-graduation. 

I did a couple Google searches, clinked a bunch of links and found absolutely nothing. Nothing of value to me. None of the job I found were near my pay-grade (aka I wasn’t qualified for them) or they entailed work which I was not interested in. That’s when the panic set in. 

"I can’t find anything."

"What if I’ll never find anything. And if I even do find one possible job opening, what if I don’t get it, or what if it’s doesn’t end up being what I thought it was based on the online description?"

"What if I find the perfect job, but in a different city across the country?"

"Do I move across the country, but I may not even get it so it doesn’t matter anyway."

"And if I can’t find a job, how will I pay for anything!"

"How am I supposed to move out of my parent’s house without money?"

"What am I supposed to do with my time if I don’t have a job?"

Do you seen what I mean? This is my brain's internal thought process. I try to stop the spiraling but it’s easier said than done, and if you’ve gone through it, you know. So this is where the “impostor syndrome” comes in. 

What if I’m actually not good enough or smart enough for any of these jobs? Say, by miracle, I get one of these jobs, what if, after they hire me, I’m not the employee they thought I was? What if I am a disappointment? What if I don’t do my job properly? What do I do then? What if I get let go, or my reputation if tarnished before my career has even properly started?


Please Make it Stop

The worst part of this “syndrome” is that there’s no solution, there’s no “cure” and there’s no real escape from it. The only solution is self-learning by teaching yourself to stop the stream of negative thoughts. The problem for me is that this honestly hasn’t happened in a couple years, so I haven’t (thankfully) had the chance to "practice" teaching myself to stop the spiraling thoughts. 

What I do have going for me is that I can recognize what’s going on and I know to step away from the situation and do something else to change my mind’s focus.

Obviously, I don’t have it all figured out and I still haven’t found THAT job I’ve been looking for, but I am not like most people. Decisions and action plans for me to take time, I can’t do it all at once and expect to happy with the work I did. 

This also relates to my academics; I mentally cannot do assignments the night before because it will cause panic attacks. That’s just the way I am. So to avoid it, I work on whatever project or test I have to do a little bit at a time well in advance. I force myself to follow the same strategy for any deadline or task in my life. And that’s what I have to for this job search: A little bit of research at a time. 

Ultimately, I may not find what I’m looking for immediately, or even after a couple months of searching, but that’s the process I have to trust.

Mental Dialogue 

This doesn’t solve the "impostor syndrome", but what will is the common exercise of cognitive thinking. Mental dialogue is so crucial to solving and understanding the issues I’ve listed. I struggle to adequately practice this, which is on me, and I have no plausible excuse. Something that shouldn’t be taken as an excuse, and instead a plain fact, is how hard it truly is to practice cognitive thinking. 

Constantly being aware of your thoughts and omnisciently analysing your thoughts constantly isn’t easy. And we shouldn’t only be doing it when our thoughts turn negative, we should be going it especially in our happiest times. By doing so we can recognize when we feel happiest and cognitively include elements of that time, into our everyday life in order to avoid the stream of negative energy.

I know this has been a pretty long post, and you’ve read through it all then thank you for your support. If my story, or my point of view on this matter can help anyone in anyway, that’s the reason I started writing this “blog” in the first place.

If I haven't said it before, love to hear your point of view on whatever I write! So message me or come talk to me in person if you can! Dialogue is the most important thing for self-care, and I would love to talk to you about anything and everything that's on your mind.

Talk soon 

Marie