When things start to go wrong -- either mundane things like persistent messes or less-than-optimal personal interactions, or bigger things like an entire day where I don't get my work goals done -- I tend to feel much worse than I think the situation warrants. How to explain this?
I think it feels like my brain is in danger mode -- like my brain thinks my life is on the edge of total collapse, and one thing going poorly could push things over the edge. This could be in terms of my own happiness (that my personal life satisfaction could be pushed from positive to negative because of one mishap), or in terms of success at my various projects (that my work or relationships could fall apart because of one mistake). This is strange, because I get a lot of evidence regularly that things are going fine, and positive feedback from bosses, co-workers, and loved ones that I'm doing well.
More specifically, it feels to me like I'm on the edge of failing to fulfill some roles, like the role of Good Boyfriend, Good Employee, or Competent Adult. This focus on roles, along with the positive feedback I'm obviously getting, suggests to me that what's actually going on is something like imposter syndrome.
Imposter syndrome fits: I get a lot of positive feedback because I can keep people fooled, but just a small number of slips could let someone see through the façade. I didn't think about imposter syndrome before, because I usually associate it with doubting abilities, and I'm pretty confident in my abilities; it's my ability to fit these roles, or maybe something like my virtues (diligence, conscientiousness, general competence at being adult) that are at play here.
So what do you do about imposter syndrome? A few obvious options:
- Get better calibrated, and come to appreciate that I'm actually fulfilling these roles pretty well (my performance is higher than I thought).
- Decide not to try to play these roles.
- Find out that I have the wrong idea about these roles and what they imply (the requirements are lower than I thought; the thing I'm an imposter of is imagined).
I think I've actually had the most success with option 3. The main thing that's happened lately is that I've found out that hardly anyone fulfills these roles the way I have in mind -- nobody (or almost nobody) is the Competent Adult or Good Employee that I'm thinking of, and I'm actually well within the typical distribution of performance. This has just come from talking to people more openly about my difficulties and hearing that they have similar difficulties. My high standards were mostly imaginary.
Another thing that's helped is finding out that when people see my problems, they don't conclude that I'm an imposter. A big example is when I recently had a really bad work week. I logged like 10 hours of actual work, and dreaded having my weekly check-in with my boss. Instead of firing or (more likely) lecturing me, he said "eh, that happens to me sometime -- I'm a pretty high-variance worker", and asked whether anything was going on in my personal or work life that was affecting my ability to get work done. That was awesome!
I do worry that getting over this will lower my standards and result in worse performance, but I actually think it's more likely to improve my performance -- I waste enough energy worrying about this stuff, and being frozen / de-motivated as a result, that I think avoiding this kind of situation will more than offset any drop in performance from exorcising these imagined roles (and I haven't actually seen that kind of effect in practice at all yet, so I'm not sure it'll really happen).
Final note: this expansion of the applicability of imposter syndrome also provides a nice explanation for my difficulties with vacationing successfully -- I'm worried enough about being a Good Vacationer that I'm not paying attention to what I'd like to do in the moment. This suggests that option 2 -- abandoning the idea of playing roles -- might be the best solution here. I'm excited to give it a try!
Ah nice - this makes sense to me, and definitely seems like it builds on my understanding of what's going on in these kinds of situations (rather than being a conflicting explanation.) In the kind of situation I described it definitely feels there's something like a fear of not living up to the "competent person" role going on.
ReplyDeleteI like the distinction between imposter syndrome about abilities vs. failing to fulfil certain roles. I've been confused by the fact I feel a lot of imposter syndrome around my PhD/academia, but at the same time it doesn't really feel like the problem is doubting my abilities (sometimes I have this almost contradictory feeling of immense self-doubt in a certain sense, while also almost arrogantly believing I'm more competent than many other people who have PhDs.) Thinking about the impostor syndrome as fear that I'm failing to fulfil a certain role - of "serious PhD student/academic", rather than actually doubting my abilities, makes a lot of sense.
Separately, it's kind of reassuring to know that you have unproductive weeks ;) I've pretty consistently failed to do more than 3 hours work/day this week, which I've been feeling bad about... I definitely think I tend to think the requirements of roles are higher than they are, or that other people are fulfilling them better than they actually are. Though I also have the fear that if I start to adjust my expectations I might achieve less...
Glad it was reassuring! I wrote it in a hurry, and in retrospect it's slightly scary to say :)
DeleteI wish there was more data or anecdata on how people's standards and expectations influence their performance, or what mental stance one should take to increase performance (in terms of raw output instead of in terms of increasing abilities). It feels like a mystery to me.
yeah! I totally get #3, and in my experience, that's usually it. I thought for years that I was terrible at academia b/c I hadn't published anything. turns out that's not actually a requirement, and they're gonna let me graduate anyway.
ReplyDeleteTati pointed out sometimes that I get a little huffy when I'm not easily winning a game and I sometimes decide not to play. One example game is "learning to mash data tables around and make good graphs", aka "how to R and ggplot2". I get really riled up by how bad I am at that when I feel like I "should" be good at that. The more I get out of the mindset of "I gotta be the best or I quit" (which is how I react to a lot of games) and get into the "ok I'm learning, just like everyone else" mindset, the better I feel. ... which is not at all data that shows that I'm more effective, but it does feel better :-/
#2 sounds appealing but impossible and might get you fired. I don't think I could decide "meh, I don't even care about being a Good PhD Student" even if I wanted to. (maybe a "good vacationer", ok.)
I like that you are blogging more. Keep doing that :)
Thanks for the encouragement, Dan! Jess and I took a Blog Pact to blog every other day at least, so that helps :)
DeleteI feel you on those programming examples; they usually feel like "it's ridiculous that this is so hard / it should be easier for me", and I usually quit (luxury of the hobbyist!).
I kind of like #2; maybe I'll blog about why in the future!