The Imposter Syndrome

I have been sincerely trying for several years now to create the “right” type of content for LinkedIn, but I abandoned the idea of writing articles at the draft stage. At the first glance, the perfect ideas never truly materialized.?

And yet, this one did. But, as you may understand, it is not about what is “right”, but about what really worries me. It is about the issues I encounter in myself and discover in other people that I maintain more or less contact with.

?A strong and keen desire to succeed – a desire to showcase results and earn praise in intrinsic form along with admiration. That is the external part. The internal, on the other hand is helplessness, exhaustion, burnout, and fatigue. The fear of being caught red-handed in incompetence and inferiority. These are the murky, internal demons embodying the banal fear of losing.

?Wherever I go, whatever I do, I seem to be doomed to look at life through the eyes of a little imp, overtaken with all-consuming pain, drowning in my own quagmire of unrecognition. This is my personal hole, a pit into which all achievements tumble and where successes depreciate. A side of my inner self that I hide from everyone else while trying to avoid situations that would risk exposing it.

?Deeply-rooted dissatisfaction is the eternal engine of my “disturbing success”. An escape through career growth and new projects are not salvation, because one is incapable of rooting out, scorching one’s self out of one’s own self (unless you are dealing with a corpse:). Years of psychotherapy, various practices of research and self-deconstruction have all plummeted into that same bottomless pit.

?The time has come to personally take the plunge in as a well.

?Look around, dust yourself off and confess:

- not all scribbled notes can turn into articles;

- not all startups grow to become corporations;

- not all dreams morph into goals and come true;

- not everyone will like this material. Some will consider it “unprofessional verbiage” and will rush to prove their righteousness, but others will meet their own selves in it. Better still if they not only meet their own selves, but treat them to some sympathy and acceptance.