PARTICULARLY to folks who have been overlooked, underestimated and systemically excluded.
ANDDDDDD…when I first started the exploration back in 2012, I confess, I saw it everywhere. I had a bit that I would do about being like the father in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” who could tie every English word back to Greek origins.
But instead of Greek to English, I could tie certain behaviours to the Imposter Complex. The behaviours being people-pleasing, diminishment, perfectionism, procrastination, comparison and leaky boundaries.
All along, I was open and committed to exploring WHAT ELSE was contributing to these behaviours, but I still saw the inextricable link to the Imposter Complex. How they were tactics to avoid feeling like an imposter.
AND that these behaviours in and of themselves were not just avoidance tactics, but potentially ways of staying safe. If anyone reading has been told they don’t belong, committed the sin of outshining or was hypervigilant as a stress response, you’ll know what I’m talking about.
Over time, I continued to see that only talking about the experience of imposterhood and NOT talking about what the WHAT ELSE was going on kept the focus on the toxic positivity I abhorred and wasn’t acknowledging the effects of systemic oppression.
The “WHAT ELSE”, of course, being patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy culture.
Y’know…no big deal.
/s
(I was yesterday years old when I learned that “/s” meant “sarcasm” given how written text doesn’t always translate…but I digress.)
My podcast series, Ready Enough with Tanya Geisler aimed to address some of this.
In the intro, I said:
“To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
I’m Tanya Geisler...a pretty seasoned expert at hammering back at the Impostor Complex. For myself, with my clients and with my readers.
But sometimes it’s not a nail. Sometimes it’s microaggressions. Or racism. Or homophobia. Or fat-phobia. Or alcohol. Or anxiety. Or discrimination. Or systemic obstacles by patriarchal structures designed to keep women, women-identified people, women of colour, LGBTQI folks and other marginalized people from climbing to the top.
This is The Ready Enough Podcast with Tanya Geisler. And with my guests, we'll be discerning when it's a nail, and when it's something else. These conversations about the Imposter Complex won’t be perfect, but we’re Ready Enough to have them.”
(FWIW - I don’t talk about marginalized folks any more…I talk about folks being systemically excluded. More accurate.)
Every day, as the idea of the Imposter Complex gains more and more traction in general, the misinformation and misdiagnosis named in the New Yorker article becomes more and more absurd.
And reductive.
The other day, I listened to a podcast that said that Imposter Syndrome makes you lie and swing out with more audacity. Nope. That’s the exact OPPOSITE experience and that’s called the Dunning-Kruger effect (where folks have high confidence and low ability/skill).
Now, at times, the Imposter Complex MAY insist that you “fake it ‘til you make it” but as my pod guest Janelle Allen pointed out, that is some super privilege nonsense right there. Like, who GETS to the opportunity to “fake it ‘til you make it”?
In our conversation, Allen said:
There's something that we say in the Black community: of you have to try twice as hard for half the reward. And that's absolutely real. There's not always that opportunity to just be good enough. That a lot of people who are not POC particularly, you know, white cisgendered men have this [experience where are just brought on] without having a portfolio or showing any results and it's just on [their] word that [they’ll] figure this thing out.
“That is why it, it grates at me because it's just not the reality for many of us. Many of us have the expertise, we have the experience and yet we are constantly questioned at every turn.”
In the same vein, Jamison cites ANOTHER important article I’ve shared in the past:
In “Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome,” published in the Harvard Business Review, in February, 2021, Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey argue that the label implies that women are suffering from a crisis of self-confidence and fails to recognize the real obstacles facing professional women, especially women of color — essentially, that it reframes systemic inequality as an individual pathology. As they put it, “Imposter syndrome directs our view toward fixing women at work instead of fixing the places where women work.”
Yes. Right.
Dr. Kevin Cokley, an African-American counseling psychologist whose research and work focuses on folks in the global majority who are navigating predominantly white spaces said this in this important piece:
“Can we say discrimination causes impostorism? No, but we know there’s definitely a link between the two,” he said. “Feeling like an impostor can exacerbate the impact of discrimination. This is what we found with African-American students in our study. I suspect that discrimination can also exacerbate the impact of impostorism.”
And where you have been overlooked, you are more susceptible to the experience.
Did the aforementioned systems create the Imposter Complex?
I’m pretty sure they did.
Do these systems exacerbate the Imposter Complex experience?
100%
Do we need to find ways to navigate the experience so we can speak up enough to dismantle the very systems that created and uphold said experience?
Most definitely.
I shared a reel exploring this paradox born out of this powerful quote here:
“What if imposter syndrome is a precursor to realizing you are here to disrupt and revolutionize the status quo? What if being an imposter to an oppressive system means you are here to tear it down?” Bunny Michael
Oof.
Jamison closes the article with this:
“The phenomenon names an unspoken, ongoing crisis arising from the gaps between these various versions of the self, and designates not a syndrome but an inescapable part of being alive.”
Right.
And in this crisis, if unattended, we may find ourselves hedging on calling out injustices; stopping from using the privilege we have to stand in the gaps of those who have been systemically excluded; and NOT working to build better, more inclusive tables that serve everyone, not just whiteness.
Listen…I am the very first person to admit that I do not have the silver bullet.
And my explorations and recommendations may be indeed be simple, not easy and MOST definitely not for everyone.
But I do know that narratives need to be rewritten.
Collectively.
AND individually.
Both/and.
If you are clear that you are experiencing the effects of Imposter Complex and you want to — really and truly want to — take the (metaphorical) stage with your message, your vocation, your calling, I’m certain it will be worth every moment of tension.
It will involve you being brave and decisive enough to confront (ALL) the reasons you have stayed out of action (both internal and external factors) and address the resistance that is keeping you from what you say you want and what matters to the collective.
It will require you to look at all you have done, without the red pen of editorializing and discounting the efforts you’ve made and the outcomes you’ve created.
It will demand that you not go this alone. It will mean you will need to divest from the rugged individualism that has been deeply conditioned, that you gather your people, assemble your cast, bring your fans in close and trust in them.
But above all, it will demand that YOU trust in YOU.
Again, simple, not easy.
If you’re ready to get to work on this and want some support, we should talk.