Impostor Syndrome: Why I Can Blog For Others But Not Myself

Ever feel like you're just winging it and you're about to be found out as a massive fraud? Me too. It's called impostor syndrome, and it explains why writing your own blog can be so tricky (even for someone who provides blog writing services for businesses).

Imposter syndrome is about your deepest fears of being discovered as a fraud

I feel like a fraud.

For a living, I take on the persona of others and write about various topics from their perspective. I don’t necessarily masquerade as other people - ghostwriting blogs tends to be a bit less overtly deceptive than that. For the most part, I write as a representative of a company rather than an individual.

Still, every time I ghostwrite a blog I put myself in someone else’s shoes. From a surgeon’s blue polythene covered clogs, to a landscaper’s muddy wellies or a financier’s polished leather dress shoes. Every day I write from someone else’s point of view, and I have absolutely no issue deciding what to blog about.

Then I sit down to write for myself.

Blank.

The worst kind of writer’s block. Just white space and an mockingly blinking cursor boring into my empty mind. When I am offering blog writing services, I can simply research my way out of writer’s block… I need to look deeper for the way out in this scenario.

What makes it so difficult to write from my own perspective? There’s just this sense of vulnerability and risk that can be paralysing.

What if people don’t like me? Why should I blog? Why should they take what I have to say seriously? I am, after all, a fraud...

So what does my reluctance to blog for myself say about me?

I think I have discovered that I suffer from impostor syndrome. This is a psychological phenomenon where we internalise our achievements and capabilities as fears. We fear that people are about to call us out on being frauds. We fear that our previous successes have been down to luck and the compliments we have received have been no more than disingenuous flattery.

We fear that we are about to fall flat on our faces in front of the whole world.

Maybe it is some kind of false modesty. Am I actually a good writer? I clearly think so, since it would be foolhardy at best to attempt to forge a career out of something I was simply so-so at. How confusing then that my internal monologue even as I’m writing this is “they’re going to find ouuuttt!”

Apparently, I’m not alone

Some 70% of us experience this sensation at some point in our lives. We can take comfort in the fact that we are in great company with many of the world’s overachievers (if your impostor syndrome will really let you believe that).

Even Einstein felt like a fraud

I watched this brilliant TED talk on impostorism by Valerie Young, author of The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women. Not only does she sound like she is impersonating Jodie Foster (she *really* does!), she feels like she has been impersonating someone who has it together her whole life.

Young believes that people who have feelings of impostorism and those who don’t only have one thing that differentiates them - how they think. Neither set of people is intrinsically more talented or successful than the other, just those who do not feel they are frauds frame their thoughts differently.

The key is that they don’t feel shame about not being the best, or not having the right answer: It doesn’t matter to them that much.

Impostorism and perfectionism go hand in hand

Valerie Young suggests that the fundamental change we need to make to improve our experience of impostor syndrome is to simply accept our limitations, and talk ourselves into not being ashamed of them.

There isn’t a quick fix to this mentality, and a lot of it is just practice and winging it. Just as during my workout videos I am told to smile through the pain to fool my body into thinking I am enjoying myself, Young suggests a similar attitude towards facing our fears.

“You don’t need to feel confident to act confident,” Young tells us in this TED talk. She talks about re framing our impostorish thoughts in the way someone who isn’t afflicted by impostor syndrome might.

This is fun!

There, I did it. That was me reframing my thoughts. My thoughts of "nobody wants to hear what I have to say!"

It won’t be the best blog post you have read this year, or even today, but that’s ok. It doesn’t need to be. Apparently.

Do your feelings of impostorism affect your professional life? Do you ever feel like you’re just winging it and about to be found out any second? Or are you one of that lucky 30 % who never experience these feelings of being a fraud?

I’m interested, let me know.