For many of us knowing we were different was just something we grew up with. As we aged and progressed through school it was only ever amplified as those around us grew in ways that we didn't, as the ways in which we were trying to grow were highlighted and more often than not vilified. When they were known. Because many, perhaps most, of us grew adapt at hiding those differences, masking our confusion, our difference in justified fear and from our perspective then, shame. For those of us who are older the shame came from having no explanation for ourselves, no means of explaining or learning what it could mean. Pre-internet all we had was tv and films, books and magazines and no where in them did we see ourselves, or at least not in any away that was positive or could even be considered a role mode or a guide for what we could become. Our difference became only the evidence of how broken and wrong we were and something to be hidden at all cost. A dark and terrible secret that must never come out.
So when we finally began to learn what we could be, what our difference could mean, there is a history of hiding and of shame, to overcome. A lifetime of feeling wrong and broken and unjustified. Is it any wonder then that we fear to do this, to accept the truth of who we are. So common is there the need to seek external verification for this, in official diagnosis, in the confirmation of others who we think might be like us. A fear of taking a place that we are not qualified for. Because in the past this has never gone well for us and we fear now for a repeat. We fear also being wrong. Of finally finding an answer, but for it only to be a mirage. Perhaps our final hope extinguished. To have to go back into the darkness of hiding, feeling even more broken and hopeless than before.
And so everything has to be proved over and over again. Each step forward tentative and fearful, fulling expecting it to be the last upon this journey. Each doubt, point of difference between us and others and example of individuality amplified and proof only that we are wrong. That we do not belong here anymore than we have belonged anywhere and that we are truly the imposter we secretly fear ourselves to be and people wonder why imposter syndrome is so common amongst us and so hard to defeat.
