Overcome Self Doubt & Imposter Syndrome Once-and-for-All
We’ve surveyed a motley crew of fierce guardians that can easily take over our identity and prevent the things we most want out of life. But none of them is quite so convincing as the doubter.
When the doubter is at the wheel, it becomes Capital-E Everything and speaks for capital-R Reality, which is that we’re capital-D Doomed!
This imposterish chap does not feel at home in the world. It is disconnected from the emotional core that is the true source of confidence and is armed to the hilt with rationalizations that “prove” our inferiority. It sees reality through the cold harsh lens of a Monday morning and is happy to call off plans, tear up the sketchpad, and deflate the birthday balloons. In full flight, the doubter becomes unfettered panic.
What is ironic, is that the doubter calls everything into question, which includes even it’s own pronouncements. How can we trust the position that everything is untrustworthy? It leaves no ground to stand on.
What the Doubter is really up to is hiding in smallness which is a heck of a lot safer than being big. It is an old protective strategy that developed early on when we were continually being told, either explicitly or implicitly, that we should not be TOO MUCH or it would cause problems for us. Some doubt is clearly appropriate, especially when we are getting valid feedback from the world, but the doubter attacks us insidiously, often when the outside facts don’t even merit it.
In the healing process:
The doubter attacks the credibility of the work. The usually unsaid objection is that the doubter doubts its own ability to change. It has been through too many hope-despair cycles. It will try to destroy the therapist to see if the therapist can survive its attacks. If the therapist comes through unscathed, there might be hope for it as well.
The doubter is virtually always polarized with another part in control of our system that the doubter has valid reason to suspect. Let’s call this other part, the schemer. The schemer is an egoic shell that is not connected to our emotional core and is not serving our highest purpose. Maybe it is trying to get rich quick, or get laid, or get one up on the universe in some other way. The more we can acknowledge and accept what the schemer is really up to, the more the schemer updates to accommodate our deeper authenticity and the doubter relaxes. This update is usually a combination of choosing deeper needs over superficial ones, widening our perspective to include the collective, and accepting our own needs that may not be socially sanctioned. We can then operate in authentic connection with our emotional core and in alignment with our higher purpose and the doubter stops sabotaging us. Over time, the doubter becomes a valuable team member, giving us useful feedback without sinking the ship.
To overcome:
There is no way to think ourself out of doubt. There is an old somatic therapy adage from Deb Dana that story follows state, i.e. the story we are telling ourself follows the state of our nervous system. We are doubting because we are alienated and disconnected from our emotional core. To shift this, we must drop deeper into our somatic experience. When we feel dropped in and connected, self-doubting thoughts feel trivial and we experience our deeper power.
Embrace being a beginner and don’t oversell ourself. Maybe we feel like an imposter because the claims we are making do not ring true. Maybe we can right-size our grandiosity and scheming.
Embrace failure. The doubter needs to learn that we can survive and thrive even with a high degree of failure. As Scott Adams put it (before his diving into the political deep end), you can fail at almost everything and still win big.
Embrace being of service to something greater. The doubter is a lot kinder when it senses that we are not serving a vanity project.
As the zen proverb goes, “sit, sit, walk, walk, don’t wobble.” Enough said.
When you go all in with embodiment without bypassing anything, the doubt quietens, the wobble diminishes, and you stop bringing piss to a shit fight. You can then be like Tupac who said:
“i have no patience for anyone that doubts me.”
