Over the weekend, I went to the DFW Writer’s Conference (I’ll be posting a video about this later in the week). My last class of the conference was about imposter syndrome, led by two intellegent and successful women who also deal with this phenomenon.

While I’ve known for several years now that the cause of my self-doubt and insecurities was imposter syndrome, it helped to see it talked about and broken down in a room full of writers like myself.

My imposter syndrome seemed to have manifest most strongly during the first year I was a department head of English, while still in my graduate program. Suddenly, after only a little over a year of teaching, I found myself promoted to leader of a team of English teachers. I had no idea what I was doing, and “oh my god, what if somebody found out?!”

Insecurities as a Writer & Creator

Flash forward four years and I have zero imposter syndrome for my career as a teacher or a teacher lead. I have mastered skills I didn’t even know I could master and have such a strong grasp on the subject of English that I could do a full semester on auto-pilot (if I needed to! …not that I do).

But once again, the imposter syndrome has reared its ugly head this year as I buckled down and got super serious about my writing career.

I went from being the only writer in my life to joining a writing group and making friends with people who have swaths more experience and knowledge than I do about writing, even with two degrees in English and teaching writing for half a dozen years. Culture shock! Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!

My Imposter Syndrome Archetypes

At this class, I learned that my imposter syndrome shows up in three different archetypes:

1) The Perfectionist: Someone who sets their standards incredibly high and is never satisfied with their work. This is the type of person who will rework a chapter or scene over and over and over and over… never feeling like things are every good enough.

2) The Superhero: Someone who compares themselves to others, particulary those who are already leagues ahead of them. Unfortunately, this is one that’s super easy to fall into nowadays with social media because I can scroll for ten minutes and see dozens of writers who are WAY ahead of me. While I’m happy for them, I can’t help but sometimes feel bad about my progress.

3) The Genius: Someone who thinks they should just know or be inherently good at something and are shocked (spoiler alert) when they’re not. This will often happen to people who’ve gone awhile without using a skill or have only learned an idea theoretically and try to put it in practice for the first time.

I tend to float back and forth between the three of these. The good news is I’ve been making big strides to decrease the severity of how each of these show up in my life over the years. Usually, my imposter syndrome gets the best of me when I’m already feeling stressed or depressed, or it will show up when I am getting a lot of feedback from people at once.

Since I started posting content online and reading my writing outloud to groups of mostly published writers, this has been happening a lot.

Coping Skills for Managing Imposter Syndrome

Not only did I learn about the different ways my imposter syndrome manifests in this class, but I also learned coping skills for managing it. The big one I need to work on is using the “compassion voice” as a way to flip the script on what my imposter syndrome is telling me.

For instance, if it tells me “I’ll never be as successful as Brandon Sanderson,” my compassion voice would be to say, “It took Sanderson 14 years to get his book published, but he stuck with it. If you stick with it, too, you’ll get to where you want to go.” Easy peasy, right?? No… but the more I do it, the easier it’ll get.

Another couple of important coping strategies I need to get into the habit of using are mindful reflection and celebrating my accomplishments. I need to keep track of all I’ve been able to accomplish in just short bursts of time and remind myself of where I started.

As an example, I could look at my 170 subscribers on YouTube and think that I’m failing because someone who just started their channel has over 1k, or I could think, “Wow. I started with no subscribers six months ago, but now 170 people want to hear what I have to say each week!” The latter option sounds way more fun, in my humble opinion.

Going Forward

Unfortunately, I don’t think I will ever be completely cure of imposter syndrome (the sneaky bastard is going to try to find a way back into my brain at some point), but I can do a lot of things to be kind to myself even when it does rear its ugly head. Being able to identify and understand the different forms of imposter syndrome will also help me watch out for it and stop it in its tracks.

Suffice it to say, I learned a lot from this class, and so much more from the DFW Writers Conference as a whole. I’m excited to see what’s to come from all I’ve learned and will continue to learn and all the great things I’m going to be able to do in the future because it.

Thanks for reading!