Impostor syndrome

[denise]

I've been talking a lot at conferences this year about impostor syndrome, and if you're interested, the Ada Initiative has transcribed and captioned the talk I gave at linux.conf.au this year:

Kicking Impostor Syndrome In The Head: Lessons from AdaCamp DC and SF

This is the shorter version of the talk -- I gave the longer one at Open Source Bridge last week, and the slides for that one can be found at Kicking Impostor Syndrome In The Head. (The longer talk also includes a section on how you can help people around you with their impostor syndrome, especially if you're in a position of social or technical authority or status in your group or project.) I'm pretty sure video of that talk will be available at some point, too!

Comments

[beatrice_otter]

Thanks for posting! I'll have to watch the whole thing when I've got time. I've struggled with imposter in the past, although not so much at the moment (knock on wood). But right now the church secretary has a horrible case of imposter syndrome, combined with general low self-esteem and shyness issues, and I'm trying to help as much as I can. (I've worked with a lot of church secretaries, and she is hands-down the best. She'll do something that's perfect, and apologize because it's not good enough. Or I'll screw something up, and she'll apologize. I keep telling her: you're great! you're awesome! She says thanks, but with that look on her face where I know that in the back of her head she's thinking "she's only saying that to be nice/because she likes me.")

[havocthecat]

It's hard to be an administrative assistant. You end up reflexively apologizing for other people's mistakes because you're lowest on the office hierarchy, and people really do demand constant perfection from you. It contributes to raging imposter syndrome, which is even harder to overcome in a situation where you don't have any actual power.