Imposter Syndrome

Hi Friends!

I write this blog post on a slow morning - as I sit here and it's past 11 and I still haven't finished my first cup of coffee.

I've been doing a lot of reflecting about undergrad and medical school these past few days and I wanted to share with you the basis of my thoughts - and Imposter Syndrome basically sums it up.

The first time I heard this term I was in PSYCH 100 in undergrad - winter semester of my first year of undergrad. Back then it was more or less a definition I had to memorize for one of my midterms and nothing more. Now it's definition has a lot more meaning in my life.

For those of you who are wondering what I'm talking about:

"According to Joan Harvey, the impostor phenomenon (IP) is a “psychological syndrome or pattern. It is based on intense, secret feelings of fraudulence in the face of success and achievement. If you suffer from the impostor phenomenon, you believe that you don’t deserve your success; you’re a phony who has somehow ‘gotten away with it.’” (Harvey, 1984, p. 3). “Syndrome” may be too strong a term, but many of us experience these feelings with varying strengths and frequencies."

https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-teaching-excellence/teaching-resources/teaching-tips/planning-courses/tips-teaching-assistants/impostor-phenomenon-and

I think that website from Waterloo sums it up pretty well!

But that's basically what every medical student deals with at one point in time.

I think about all the times my friends and I talk about medical school and making it off the island and I can never forget how I explain myself getting through medical school "under the radar - letting me slip through the cracks and hoping they don't find me". If that's not textbook Imposter Syndrome I don't know what is.

As I've mentioned before - as medical students we're PHENOMENAL at bringing up our classmates and believing in them but we always fail at believing in ourselves.

The amount of times I've found myself telling my friends or thinking, "If only you believed in yourself as much as I believe in you". For whatever reason I, and I'm sure many other students, cannot transfer those feelings to myself.

I've been struggling to find a way to fight those imposter feelings - that website I posted up above has some ideas that I'm going to try to implement into my daily life.

I am sure I'm not the only student who has been experiencing this so I'm opening up about them on my blog hoping to maybe kick start a conversation about this and maybe share some ideas about how to fight Imposter Syndrome.

- Jen