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I Cured My Imposter Syndrome Using This One Weird Trick

Caroline C. Blaker
October 25, 2018
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I Cured My Imposter Syndrome Using This One Weird Trick

This deck has been modified from its original version; it's been formatted to contain all presenter notes over (sometimes) multiple slide iterations.

Once upon a time, I cured my crippling Imposter Syndrome without setting out to do so. Here, I explained what I did do, what happened, and what other people may be able to do in order to engineer a similar experience in their own life.

Talk given at the ExpressionEngine Conference, 2018.

Caroline C. Blaker

October 25, 2018
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Transcript

  1. I Cured My Imposter Syndrome Using This One Weird Trick

    You won’t believe how much easier life is without it! Click here to continue. @carolinecblaker I’m here right now because I had this, and now I don’t. And I haven’t for awhile, so I’m pretty convinced it’s gone. And this presentation is intended to tell you about that process and the things I did, unwittingly, that I’m certain resulted in this awesome riddens - because while I didn’t ultimately take on the self-improvement project of getting out of Imposter Syndrome, I did do something really purposefully (that I’ll tell you about) that yielded an imposter syndrome cure as a side-effect. Some time during that process, it just got up and took a walk and never came back, and some time later, I noticed it still wasn’t there.
  2. Trigger Warning This talk contains mentions of the following possible

    triggers: Boundary Disrespect Alcohol Abuse Anger Personal Loss Gaslighting Trauma Feminine/Feminist leaning content @carolinecblaker Before we get started, I should let you know that we could be playing with a bit of fire here as far as possible triggers go. I have done my best with this list to identify them. If you don’t want to deal with this stuff right now, I COMPLETELY understand. You will not be judged for leaving.
  3. Hello, I’m Caroline. Person in the world who likes to

    be comfortable, fed, rested, and entertained. Likes the internet since the day it was born. @carolinecblaker I’m Caroline C Blaker - I run a small web studio with approximately 1 employee, called Petroglyph Creative, out of Albuquerque, New Mexico - the land of Roadrunners and Green Chile. I am an ExpressionEngine web developer business owner, partnered mom, person in the world who likes to be comfortable, fed, and reasonably entertained.
  4. Hello, I’m Caroline. Once wrote a bug report that got

    way out of hand. @carolinecblaker I am so excited to be here. My foray with EE started in 2008 - version 1.6.3, and I attended my first ExpressionEngine Conference back in 2011 when it was called EECI. And I don’t write ADD-ONS or give a whole lot back in the material sense, but I once filed this bug report that went totally off the wall. Expressionengine and its surrounding community have acted in amazing ways in my life, not the least of which was offering me a career that i love. To the Conference organizers for bringing us all together today to talk about topics difficult and vast, thank you. To Ellislab for keeping ExpressionEngine in the world, thank you. And to you all joining me today on what is my very first major conference talk, thank you. I am so so grateful.
  5. Hello, I’m Caroline. Is pumped to be here today. Is

    not a Doctor. @carolinecblaker I AM NOT A DOCTOR. And none of this talk is meant to be a substitute for medical care or to be taken as medical advice, and since it’s mostly a personal story, there shouldn’t be a lot of confusion. Still tho, the topic of this talk does uncomfortably breach the medical side of personal stories, and I am here advocating what can be taken to be one lay-person’s take on mental health strategy, so it would be ideal to make sure I check my facts.
  6. However, he is a Doctor. Dr. Travis Townsend has checked

    this talk for errors and misleading info. @carolinecblaker So I have! I’ve fact-checked this talk with a few key actual-scientists, including this one. He is a Board-Certified Psychiatrist who is serving as interim Behavioral health director at the clinic he works at in Albuquerque New Mexico, and up until recently served as chief of staff for 3 years at the same place. He is also my husband, and attending the conference with me, Dr. Travis Townsend. And I’m not trying to embarrass him, but his birthday is Sunday - and we’ll be here til then. So Happy Birthday, Travis! Maybe we can get dinner later ;)
  7. Taking a new look From an empowered perspective @carolinecblaker This

    talk is about my story, about your story, and about discovering the things it takes to unravel one of the tech industry’s biggest knots- one person at a time. It’s a knot that nobody is doing anything about because nobody CAN do anything about it, either because they are not empowered or not aware of how, but today, I can soundly say, I’m happy to be both. And so I will share with you what I know. By speaking out about Imposter Syndrome and how I got it to evacuate my life completely, I’m hoping to bring around, firstly the notion that it can be cured, but also the notion that every person who suffers from imposter syndrome has a role in its cure. To put together this material, I created a public, anonymous survey that procured 66 responses when spread around my network. Did any of you fill it out? Cool, thanks.
  8. Taking a new look From an empowered perspective @carolinecblaker The

    vast majority of respondents had imposter syndrome and worked in tech - so it in no way achieved its ideal objective of, say, thousands of responses allowing me to compare experiences with imposter syndrome symptoms and events between parties that have it and don’t have it, or even genders or age groups. But someone who I know did fill it out - they said “I was filling it out, and oh my gosh! I didn’t know I had this!” It may have only happened once on this go-round, and I don’t know if this person did report that they had it when they got to that question - because as we chatted, clearly she now feels like she does have it, but took the survey, initially, thinking she did not. The data isn’t perfect even in mathematical interpretation - but it did achieve one objective - the catharsis of telling the truth. The people who did respond, appeared to be motivated by the topic to engage, which speaks to the levels of which people are struggling with this.
  9. All respondents have been impacted. @carolinecblaker But check this out

    - the form started with 5 questions about having symptoms of imposter syndrome and then this question. Exactly zero people said they’d never experienced this. 9.1% So maybe 5? 6? people who responded feel this every day, even more than the “It’s been awhile” PEOPLE. Close to half of respondents feel like this is always lurking, and even more experience this on a daily or weekly basis.
  10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome “Impostor syndrome (also known as impostor phenomenon, impostorism, fraud

    syndrome or the impostor experience) is a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a "fraud".[1] Despite external evidence of their competence, those experiencing this phenomenon remain convinced that they are frauds, and do not deserve all they have achieved. Individuals with impostorism incorrectly attribute their success to luck, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent than they perceive themselves to be. [2] While early research focused on the prevalence among high-achieving women, impostor syndrome has been recognized to affect both men and women equally.[1][3] Impostor phenomenon is not a mental disorder, yet there is research describing various management styles for this internal experience.” Obligatory Wikipedia Quote - To get on the same page. ± @carolinecblaker Imposter syndrome is different for everyone, but as far as a run of the mill definition, this will do. It’s taken directly from Wikipedia, and that QR code should lead you to the right place, if you’re interested in reading about the official ins and outs of this condition. “Persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud.” Remaining convinced that you are a fraud, despite external evidence that it isn’t true. Incorrectly attributing your success to luck or deception - deception that you engineered over the people around you, having them believe that you’re smarter than you actually are. Out of 66 respondents, 57 say they have imposter syndrome. Out of the respondents that work in tech, all but two answered Yes or Maybe to having imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome in tech is a pronounced thing but it reaches across all industries. Most of my survey respondents worked in tech, but even more than that say that they have imposter syndrome.
  11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome “Impostor syndrome (also known as impostor phenomenon, impostorism, fraud

    syndrome or the impostor experience) is a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a "fraud".[1] Despite external evidence of their competence, those experiencing this phenomenon remain convinced that they are frauds, and do not deserve all they have achieved. Individuals with impostorism incorrectly attribute their success to luck, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent than they perceive themselves to be. [2] While early research focused on the prevalence among high-achieving women, impostor syndrome has been recognized to affect both men and women equally.[1][3] Impostor phenomenon is not a mental disorder, yet there is research describing various management styles for this internal experience.” Obligatory Wikipedia Quote - To get on the same page. ± @carolinecblaker It’s not a mental disorder, but a condition that presents a pile of complications, some of which may be diagnosable. People with imposter syndrome may also suffer from anxiety and/or depression independently from their imposter syndrome. This definition confirms what we all know about it, but taking one step back into the abstract - and into critical opinion - could you possibly design a better thing to defeat good people? Successful people who work hard to develop their character using their own experience in the world? Successful people who hold their observed truth of the external world accountable for how they see themselves? Seriously, if you were a strategist trying to keep down people who worked hard to be wonderful to others, useful in the world, self-fulfilled, empowered, and this was your implementation strategy; what would you change about it before you deployed? Like, nothing, right?
  12. @carolinecblaker And so the way that TECH knows to solve

    a problem, to dive into it, get to know its components, and think really hard about multiple moving parts at once doesn’t really help; in fact it kind of backfires, doesn’t it? This mindset we take to work every day, that we’ve developed over months or years to perfect and hone our competitive advantages as developers, may be setting us up unwittingly to stay stuck in imposterism or at least in the quicksand effect - where staying still isn’t helping but getting out the only way we know how only makes it worse. This is our catch-22, where we struggle against our own fears of inadequacy, which then leads to us feeling more inadequate or false. We’re solving problems for our clients; being marketable, useful devs but not letting any of the credit for that actually get in. And furthermore, it upsets us that we feel so lousy - so we’re getting upset at being upset.
  13. @carolinecblaker In attempting to figure out why we feel like

    imposters for succeeding, we do what tech people do - we break it down. The components and moving parts that we can trace in our imposter syndrome are emotional constructs built from some unknown amount of exaggerations and falsehoods, yet look like the truth, taken at face value. So the small components that we can identify reinforce the imposter syndrome, and so from efforts like breaking it down, we’re left feeling even more convinced that we are imposters and that there would be nothing to be do about it. We’ve managed to continue our charade over and above actually being smart or capable; we’re convinced that we are hiding out as frauds somehow managing to keep it a secret, and believing it, and being in a mind that filters out true believable positive feedback. Our hijacked feelings about ourselves can become worse than the feelings and convictions that set us up. Going deep into the reasons why we may not believe we deserve all the success that we have only just serves up more false positives that we don’t deserve it, as IS continues its self-service.
  14. @carolinecblaker It’s a struggle characterized by struggling, or struggling with

    our struggling. (our struggling with our struggling with our struggling, and so on.) No amount of professional success mitigates this struggle, particularly when you don’t feel like your success is deserved, or earned, or real. There is no struggling your way out of imposter syndrome, so like any good syndrome, it keeps you along for the ride with no self-evident way out.
  15. Some of us have sought conventional help. And that’s a

    good thing Good dog. Picture A @carolinecblaker Many of us have gone the conventional help route. Science, specifically counseling/psychiatry offers its typical behavior management strategies here, at least in the short term. There are therapies that work for things, and going to a provider with “imposter syndrome” will likely yield ideas for therapeutic behaviors and a strategy for changing your reactions to your thoughts. And it may help relieve the symptoms like fatigue or anxiety for awhile, but it may not stop Imposter Syndrome from spontaneously presenting itself and getting in our way when we’re blissfully not paying it any mind, for once. So with this approach we continue to struggle with it, just less intensely, maybe even trading stress for effort, which is still a struggle, just a slighlty more controlled one. Even if it’s made easier to bear, Imposter Syndrome will still have the upper hand.
  16. Fellowship gets a one-star review. H e l p f

    u l , y e t p r o b l e m a t i c Therefore, no matter how we approach this, we struggle, sort of at the whims of our imposter syndrome whenever we’re at a task where it likes to show up - usually in the midst of a real challenge that we may not have seen coming. We can lose hours or days of work at a time. We try to distract ourselves. We try to figure out why we feel like imposters - the struggle makes it worse. There’s some fellowship in the struggle, and sometimes we think about bugging our friends And all of these hijacked negative thoughts start to run free again - maybe they’re worse off than me and I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging or throw it in their face? Do they even care? If they deny my imposter syndrome truth, will I believe them? Do I even have Imposter Syndrome?
  17. Fellowship gets a one-star review. H e l p f

    u l , y e t p r o b l e m a t i c Suddenly we have Imposter Syndrome kicking up about our Imposter Syndrome. And fellowship helps, because it furnishes, at least temporarily, an alternate, refreshed reality; but do you know what else it does? It convinces us a little bit at a time that our imposter syndrome will last forever. And there’s a really good reason for this. If IT IS your reality, and your friends’ reality, and the reality of all these people around you, it stands to reason that this can be a condition of the work you do, the life you live, or actual reality - and Imposter Syndrome doesn’t need a prompt to take this reasoning to extremes.
  18. “Sometimes feelings of inadequacy, humility, etc can be helpful” -

    one helpful survey respondent But whatabout.. @carolinecblaker We all identify with this. This is true and real, and anyone who has ever grown from an experience has felt this like concrete. It’s the truth. With or without imposter syndrome, this is real. It’s important to make something really clear here - feelings of inadequacy that pervasively overload us with their presence, even when we were fine, 5 minutes before, are NOT HELPFUL. The moment they overtake that threshold where they stop being motivating and start being confusing, distracting, even heartbreaking or medically significant; well, suddenly we’re in the throws of the condition, and it’s not helpful. If you suffer from Imposter Syndrome, pay special attention to your tendency to weigh this sentiment against how you feel, because it’s exactly this that can enable IS to take its edge over us. Imposter Syndrome works on us because we believe it.
  19. Imposter Syndrome has access to your truth TIP: @carolinecblaker We

    believe our own thoughts and projections, and Imposter Syndrome takes the form of the truth, exaggerating it using our fears and doubts, bundles it all up, and offers it up as a thought, that we ourselves have, that we don’t notice is a fictitious construction created made up entirely of our fears and projections, with zero or only selective supportive experience. It introduces negative possibilities “What if?” That are seriously worth worrying about. It takes our personal narrative for a ride - replacing our neutral or growth experiences with negative-tainted memories and motivates us to act on those, instead. It capitalizes on our confusion and fear over what we’re now dealing with and opens the door to “you don’t deserve” and “you can’t actually do.” We believe it, because it has access to our truth, and we’re not aware that the experience isn’t authentic.
  20. And it has write privileges. TIP: “Repeat a lie often

    enough and it becomes the truth” - attributed to Nazi Joseph Gobels, and like 100 other people @carolinecblaker When you have Imposter Syndrome, it skillfully combines your truth with lies and exaggerations and can skew your perspective on your own memory - the same memory it draws on for the truth - it can write. This can become too much for anyone. If you don’t leave your work under the weight of being convinced by yourself that you are sub-par (which is a legitimate thing to do, because self-torture is still torture, and some survey respondents have,) you’re going to be sub-par in comparison to your potential, because you think you are, regardless of what you actually are or can be. It’s a self-fufilling prophecy.
  21. @carolinecblaker Beat Imposter Syndrome the problem A struggle characterized by

    struggling with struggling Exaggerations and lies that are indistinguishable from the truth Affects job performance and everything that depends on it Promotes harmful feelings and mindspaces Let’s break it down. Imposter syndrome is a struggle characterized by struggling. It creates exaggerations and lies out of our truth and can go all the way to reformulating our truth. It promotes harmful feelings and mindspaces. And it’ll take everything with it, starting with job performance, and going as far as it will.
  22. @carolinecblaker Beat Imposter Syndrome the solution No struggle whatsoever. Objective,

    reliable perspective that to ourselves is generous, forgiving, loving Convinced of the merits of our performance independent of shortcomings Reliably carry good, promotive or optimistic feelings. A struggle characterized by struggling with struggling Exaggerations and lies that are indistinguishable from the truth Affects job performance and everything that depends on it Promotes harmful feelings and mindspaces So let’s beat it. If we were to take this and flip it upside down in order to design a cure: Convinced of the merits of our performance independent of shortcomings ———Not just “see” or observe these but actually accept them as they are communicated to us or observed neutrally. Reliably carry good or promotive or optimistic feelings. Objective, reliable perspective that to ourselves is generous, forgiving, loving No struggle whatsoever. In my experience of curing my own imposter syndrome, this is exactly what it looked like. How you might ask? Well, not directly. I didn’t set out to cure it.
  23. Backstory Time @carolinecblaker Once upon a time about 18 months

    ago, my family was coming for a visit. I had always struggled with my relationship with them, particularly in the area of boundaries. It seemed that I was always on the losing side of the requests, the tensions, the exchanges. Things like what topics we can talk about, who gets to decide one thing or another, who gets to kick whom out of the kitchen, whose promises to whom mattered; These personal struggles were always on the table but never won by me. So on this time, I decided I would not set forth any boundaries for this visit, seeing as they were always the battleground, and take it from there. It didn’t take long for the trouble I was trying to avoid to start bubbling up. It seems like wherever there were no boundaries evident, they would be asked after, and when I would answer with the requested boundary, they would run them down. Each and every one. From the bounds of their personal space to whose opinion was valid.
  24. Backstory Time @carolinecblaker There were so many instances of this

    that it’s just impossible to describe them all while keeping this topic buoyant and optimistic. Suffice to say that I was insulted directly; my boundaries were expertly sleuthed out and stomped on; and my feelings were completely ignored. Over and over again, like it’s what fed their happiness; what made the visit good for them. They planned to leave at night and that last 45 minutes was a doozy. They hadn’t packed and were loudly crashing, banging, snarling at each other and I stood there grinding my teeth, squeezing a chair and in a half-hug from Travis, I listened as two angry people tried not to fight while they excchanged property, stubbed their toes, spilled things, made excuses for unkept promises, dragged heavy objects, and blamed each other all the way out the door with only a half- goodbye. And when they left i felt no relief. And as I took an inventory of my feelings, I realized that I felt completely trampled, which was the feeling I had been trying to avoid by not offering outright boundaries to my guests. The plan had succeeded in its mission - that it took one extra step for them to purposefully get what they needed. The trampled feeling itself was cause for defeat, as they had managed to do it again, whatever it was, and I had no power to stop it. All in the name of love, in the name of family.
  25. Backstory Time @carolinecblaker Why were they doing this to me?

    How could I make them stop? I reached out for help mostly to unqualified people but I did get a good bit from someone who followed up with the drunk/alcohol story byte. All the while during their visit, my family had consumed some crazy number of glass bottles worth of stuff, and it was strewn all around the garage, I complained. After setting me up somewhat perfectly she asked me if one of the parties involved was an alcoholic. I denied it actively for all of 45 seconds, or until all of my family-sanctioned excuses ran out and then I don’t remember the rest of the conversation, as a floodgate holding back old memories burst forth like a child’s surprise party. At the time, I knew that being an alcoholic was bad, but moreso I knew it was worthy of denial. And it was really more of a joke to me TO BE ONE than a very serious problem, so my intermediate denial was consumed by a memory of once telling one of them, their scotch in hand, when I was a tween, that they were an Alcoholic. I also remembered the denial storm and FAINTLY REMEMBERED the extended retaliation that followed. It was the last time I had looked at alcohol as a factor in our disagreements - but it supported the theory.
  26. Backstory Time @carolinecblaker Seeking out immediate support for this revelation

    was the right thing to do - I was in Al-Anon that night. Everyone has heard of AA, but Al - Anon is the same thing but for family and friends of alcoholics. It was here that I experienced a massive breakthrough - not only were these people alcoholics, but my reaction, my upbringing, my social problems, awkwardness, and abnormal needs - these were 100% normal for people suffering from the abuse of an alcoholic. Not only that, but It had a name. It has a name.
  27. Alcohol Disease I s R e a l . @carolinecblaker

    Its name is Alcohol Disease. Now, you might think that alcoholics would be as diverse in their abuses of their loved ones as they THEMSELVES ARE, but that’s not the case. The abuses of Alcoholics on their loved ones set them up with a unit (like a molecule) of uniform diagnoses such as; Depression, Anxiety, PTSD. You’re also increasingly likely to obsess over their behavior - keeping yourself safe, keeping them safe, scaling up from there. Compounded by each other while acting in concert with one another, ALL of these originate in THE RELATIONSHIP with the alcoholic. We obsess over their drinking or hurtful/embarrassing behavior, we get anxious about it, we get depressed at what appears to be their increasing distance from us or their indifference to our love. But over a longer period of time, this gets worse, and they become love languages.
  28. Alcohol Disease I s R e a l . @carolinecblaker

    Codependence takes over, and the longer we stay in there with this person, the more these awful interdynamics become measures of devotion. I’m sure you can imagine how difficult it is to break away from something like this, but it includes a complete redefinition of relationships in your life and, ultimately it redefines Love. And in this transformation, without the Alcoholic’s own commitment to recovery, you cannot take them with you. The first step for me was the first step in Al-Anon: getting to a place where I realized that I was completely powerless over their actions. This changes the lens of your relationship with the Alcoholic, and all relationships, fundamentally. All those ways you were weird, corrupted, cracked, broken, lost were adjustments you made to survive what was ultimately this abusive relationship - and THEN the moment you’ve been waiting for arrives - the first one you’ve possibly ever had where you can choose to never, ever live that way ever again. So, this is what I did, that May. By August, I noticed on the off-hand that my imposter syndrome had gone away, and it still has not resurfaced.
  29. Your Trauma Yes! We got to the good part! @carolinecblaker

    My trauma was Alcohol Disease - and treating it effectively BEGAN a cascade of healthy readjustment life changes with many symptoms - one being the ushering out of my imposter syndrome. Now it’s your turn. In my electronic show of hands, I got GREAT data from lots of you and a few more people in other industries. Let’s take a look.
  30. Have you ever felt like an imposter? Y o u

    r D a t a @carolinecblaker 93.6% 92.4% 93.3% 3.3% No - 4.5% Maybe - 3.0% No - 2.1% Maybe - 4.3% This graph is the question “Do you have Imposter Syndrome?” The one on the top is all respondents. The one on the bottom left is “yes, I have imposter syndrome” and “maybe I have imposter syndrome.” the one on the bottom left is “yes or maybe I have imposter syndrome and I work in tech.” These only vary by a couple of votes but you can see that the tendency to feel like an imposter increases if you have imposter syndrome, and if you work in tech. this doesn’t vary wildly from the narritive that is out there about Tech workers being plagued by imposter syndrome.
  31. Do People Praise You Too Highly? Y o u r

    D a t a @carolinecblaker No - 18.3% No - 22.7% No - 10.6% Do people praise you too highly? If you work in tech and have imposter syndrome, you’re more likely to think so. Take a look at that yellow ‘no’ segment - it shows a clear trend.
  32. Do You Sometimes Feel Undeserving of Your Success? Y o

    u r D a t a @carolinecblaker No - 43.3% No - 47.7% No - 42.6% Do you sometimes feel undeserving of your success? If you work in tech and have imposter syndrome, you’re more likely to feel this. Take a look at that red ‘no’ segment - it shows a clear trend.
  33. Have you ever felt like you shouldn't try to do

    something because you know someone else could do it better? @carolinecblaker Yes - 78.7% Yes - 75.8% Yes - 80.0% Have you ever not tried something? Finally tech gets a boost. Looks like Imposter Syndrome in Tech had slightly fewer yes’s - speaking perhaps to the empowerment granted by code and computers.
  34. How often do you have symptoms? Y o u r

    D a t a @carolinecblaker These charts are almost identical - they’re only a few participants in difference, but the green, turquoise (purple in the one at the very top,) and red panels along with green are more associated with IS than the orange, yellow, purple (turquoise on the very top)
  35. @carolinecblaker Trauma & Response Range The Traumas 9 Respondents didn’t

    answer or had no trauma In my opinion, the most important question here is Lived in an environment for any period of time that meets your standards for the characterization “unconditional love” it’s that big green bar with the number 24- In this primordial soup of human kindness, healing can happen - not only because you recognize that there’s such a thing in the world, but also because in this environment, you can take a break from your trauma which is the seed to seeing the trauma as other, as separate from yourself, rather than as your default condition. This graph was generated by Google Forms, and I’m not sure why, but it doubled these lines so the questions actually mostly appear twice. If anyone has a good lead on a data compilation for visualization course using Google Sheets, hit me up.
  36. @carolinecblaker Associated Emotions The Traumas 9 Respondents didn’t answer or

    had no trauma. The rest of the reported feelings are mapped in on this graph. I included some feelings here that I did not immediately associate with imposter syndrome, just to shake things up a bit, but as you can see, hope, happiness, encouragement were not very closely associated with imposter syndrome by the respondents. Out of 66 respnends, a whopping 37 associated fear and anxiousness. Sadness, discouragement, despair, apathy- jeez these are all very high counts for a group of people not filtered out by imposter syndrome or tech.
  37. @carolinecblaker 6 Respondents did not have Imposter Syndrome The Traumas

    6 Respondents didn’t have imposter syndrome ..still responded like people with imposter syndrome This isn’t a full set of graphs on this sector but I grabbed these because it shows you that this group, in some ways, responded like people with imposter syndrome, as evidenced on the top pie graph, yet almost exclusively never felt guilty for having too much, one of the lesser-opted symptoms, and all responded that they have felt at least one of the telltale symptoms of imposterism sometime in their lives.
  38. @carolinecblaker 6 Respondents did not have Imposter Syndrome Yes -

    0% 100% infrequent What I really dig about this is that I would be inclined to say that it shows a trend that some of the symptoms of imposterism are more normalized - like feeling like an imposter once in awhile, or leaving it up to someone who could do it better. I’ve definitely done that lots of times, and its easier to validate when you’re prioritizing time management over ventures - because we don’t have time to do everything we want to do and so leaving it up to someone who could do it better is kind of killing 2 birds with one stone. The data seems to say that feelings of being praised too highly, or guilty feelings associated with having too much are surer signs of imposter syndrome over some of the other symtpoms.
  39. Shoo! Talk about crappy companions. @carolinecblaker So now that we’ve

    looked at some data and broken down imposter syndrome, it’s time to relieve it from our lives- but this is going to take some planning and some conscientious effort. Understanding imposter syndrome as an individual battle despite the industry-wide affect it appears to have, is the first step. You have what it takes to cure your imposter syndrome. Nobody said it would be easy - but I promise it’s going to be worth it.
  40. “While medications can help with the reduction of symptoms a

    person may experience they do not cure the person or make them forget, they simply allow them to work through their symptoms. This can help people to reduce anxiety through exposure or reduce depression through allowing them to create a wider social network. Through with therapy, a person can work on that specific trauma though certain trauma focused therapies which can also reduce symptoms and help a person to cope with future symptoms, allowing them to become more aware of triggers, aware how their body responds, and to then learn how to take actions to keep these from progressing.” - Dr. Travis Townsend On therapeutic strategy: @carolinecblaker - Realize that you may have trauma. If this notion isn’t quite squaring with you, or you don’t know where it is or what it is, you may be like me. I had a major life-long blinder to the alcohol disease that affected me that was my trauma. Recognizing my trauma as real and deciding that I never had to live with it ever again was what set in motion a curative chain of revitalizing mentalities that cured my imposter syndrome on its break time. - Seek help for it, or if that’s too much, show interest in it. There are free, anonymous group therapies for just about every kind of trauma out there - cancer, car accidents, loved ones lost, violent trauma - and many of them are open. If you’re not sure that your trauma belongs to a group but the meeting is open? Just show up and listen - you don’t even have to say anything. Getting to know your trauma, if you have it, will change your personal outcomes, but also your treatment outcomes. Seeking treatment for just Imposter syndrome will yield sort of the same-ol stuff, but if you go into a treatment situation with a trauma, you get so much more. [Read Slide Quote]
  41. - Quit behaviors that reinforce Imposter Syndrome. - Pick up

    a new hobby. - Do someone a big favor. - Recontextualize “slacking off.” BUT I DONT HAVE TRAUMA, Lady! @carolinecblaker Ok, so enough about trauma, for the moment - what can you do if there’s no trauma that you can work on but yet you’re still suffering from Imposter Syndrome? Here are a couple of small hacks. Quit reinforcing behaviors such as lying. If you are in the habit of doling out untruthful statements as a means of dealing with people, you could be reinforcing your imposter syndrome. A commitment to stopping these behaviors could be in your best interest. Pick up a new, unrelated hobby. Actually suck at something - and see how much fun that can be. Compare that emotional landscape with your imposter work and notice that they feel wildly different.
  42. - Quit behaviors that reinforce Imposter Syndrome. - Pick up

    a new hobby. - Do someone a big favor. - Recontextualize “slacking off.” BUT I DONT HAVE TRAUMA, Lady! @carolinecblaker Do a big, free favor for someone who deserves it. This is one of the most effective ways to feel better about yourself and your skills. Does your imposter syndrome try to kill this joy, too? It has no right to be here. If it tries, you have, like, a bona-fide outlying situation where you can be absolutely sure that your feelings of inadequacy are manufactured by your IS. And so you can objectify it and practice telling it to take a hike. Recontextualize slacking off. Sometimes, without your consent, your body and brain will demand a break from all this thinking. Giving in, and planning to do so is not slacking off, but rather, radical self care - going beyond what our humanized work lives and story lines demand of us to take care of something that powers it all is not weakness, it’s strategy.
  43. ANXIETY! So I don’t have imposter syndrome anymore. I mean,

    it went away, but what it really did was something more like break up into its smaller parts beyond recognition. I manage anxiety on a daily basis and have 2 diagnoses of PTSD from independent parties. This sounds worse, but I gotta tell you, it’s been so much easier to deal with - because it’s no longer a skyscraper of co-hortive factors but a pile of rubble that can be swept away and around and dealt with a tiny bit at a time. The medical community also gives Anxiety a lot of attention and as such there are like 1000 different things to try to gain the upper hand while pursuing your favorite flavor of condition management. It’s not perfect, but it’s at least on its way.
  44. The good news. Not just the bad news in a

    good way. @carolinecblaker At the end of the day - or the talk - why are we all so overtaken by this force? Science doesn’t really have a reason, but if you think about it in the context of our timelines - you’ve sought out this web/app/coding thing professionally - and one of the reasons you’ve stuck with it may be the SENSE OF CONTROL you have - you can control your code, paired with the instant gratification of sending it live, to the Public, FOREVER!. You can control aesthetics, user experiences, AND you have full reign over your own learning and skillset. From the moment you learned what hypertext markup language looked like, you’ve been able to exert it to the public, wrapping it up with whatever you wanted to say, with none of your idiosyncracies out to stop you. It’s empowering! No matter what has happened to you in your life, where you’ve had no control, you found a thing that spontaneously restored a whole bunch of what you might have lost. And IF this kind of power is something you had been missing in your life and deep-down really wanted, chances are it’s sung to you like a broadway show with visions of the future - unlimited creativity, the ability to implement and grow any idea you want. Do you remember having that moment?
  45. The good news. Not just the bad news in a

    good way. @carolinecblaker If you do, you may have hacked your trauma response. While sort of already riding along in your default state, suddenly there was that left turn at Albuquerque that coding provided, and you left your trauma in the dust - but it didn’t lose you. We experience some success with our coding or creative work - we get a job, clean up a project, what have you - and there’s that moment of quiet. maybe it’s zen if you’re into that. It’s like we’re taking a quick inventory of everything we’ve done, and self-doubt emerges. Is it your trauma? Do you recognize it? Does it look completely different, now that you’ve lead the way for awhile? Maybe it is your trauma. Maybe it’s that part of you that had you by the neck that just wants to be acnowleged and dealt with. Now that you’re empowered, and in control of your life with your awesome coding career, it still doesn’t know how to ask nicely for you to spare some time to help it out - that may be all it wants, as you do: to move on.
  46. The good news. Not just the bad news in a

    good way. @carolinecblaker Let it be said in conclusion that if you have imposter syndrome and you’re struggling to deal with it - here’s a hack for you. Maybe gratitude is too strong a word, but notice, please, that this means you have success. Imposter Syndrome doesn’t show up for people who have achieved nothing and not overcome anything. This phenomenon belongs only to people who are fighting the good fight for their success despite personal history or trauma. Imposter syndrome’s convictions can’t be right - because without your success, it would have never become a thing.
  47. Hey, Thanks! @carolinecblaker @artnweb https://www.petroglyphcreative.com I am hiring! Artwork by

    me! Slide Design by TempLabs Thank you Dr. Townsend Photo credit: Alison Rae Design @carolinecblaker Thanks for checking out my slide deck on speakerdeck.com! If you have a need for this material, would like to make use of my research, or would like me to speak at your event, please get ahold of me via my website https:// www.petroglyphcreative.com I’d be delighted to hear about further opportunities helping others cure their Imposter Syndrome.