The Imposter Complex Wants to Keep You Alone
Of the three primary objectives of the Imposter Complex, the one that seems to cause us the most suffering individually and collectively is this:
The Imposter Complex wants to keep you alone and isolated.
(By the way, here’s why you’ll see me saying Imposter Complex instead of Imposter Syndrome).
The other two objectives: keeping you out of action + doubting your capacity are also exceedingly damaging, to be certain, in that they preclude you from getting your brilliance out into the world. On the stage it deserves. That YOU deserve. But those objectives don’t seem to churn up the suffering in the same acute way that this one does.
The Imposter Complex wants to keep you alone and isolated.
Yes. It does an excellent job of that.
This often results in you feeling like you are the only one who experiences the Imposter Complex. Even as your entire Instagram feed seems to be ripe with pithy quips about how “everyone” experiences it. Quips that feel satisfying in the moment, but can’t quite seem to scratch the deep itch you feel about just how alone and isolating the experience actually feels. Maybe even my own pithy quips.
Let’s be clear: the truth is there is no one who experiences YOUR exact, particular brand of Imposter Complex. It will be as unique to you as your DNA, your conditioning, and, most of all, the intersections that you inhabit and the way you are perceived and TREATED by the dominant culture.
And there may even be times and places in which keeping quiet about your experience of fears HAS KEPT YOU SAFE.
I’m holding that space wiiiiiide open for you. My Ready Enough podcast focuses squarely on some of these intersections with experts who KNOW those places intimately well, in ways my white, able-bodied, cis-gender self cannot speak to.
So, what I want to say here NOW is there is no one size fits all solution.
But. AND.
When we ARE dealing singularly with the Imposter Complex, its success requires it to keep you alone and isolated. To keep you quiet in your suffering.
I’ve been ironing out the edges of my thinking on this for years and I think I’ve landed the plane on how it has gained such fabulous traction.
Desire for Connection AND Independence
As my reader, I know a couple of things about you. Connection is a strong value of yours. Very strong. (I see you.) AND? So is independence. You like to do things YOUR way. Sometimes these two values are in tension. (How’m I doing?)
You crave the connection, the belonging, but feel if you ASK for it, it makes you appear weak. Or you feel you will not get the support you desire. It’s complex, to be certain… so why bother? Suffering in silence won’t hurt anyone.
Except you and your activation.
The Myth of Individualism
“We” bought into a myth of individualism that doesn’t actually exist. My thinking on this is very much informed by the brilliant mind of Nilofer Merchant and her body of work on Onlyness. In an article she wrote that invites us to consider the three questions: “Who are you? Whose are you? Who am I for?” she names it as such: "American society tries to isolate the question to the first one, “who are you”, celebrating a kind of individualism that defies all logic.”
But the truth of it, she goes on to say, is this:
“We do not exist in isolation. We do not conceive of ourselves in isolation. We are social.”
Precisely.
So when we buy into the Imposter Complex’s lies that try to keep us alone and isolated, in particular Lie #12 — asking for help is for suckers — and Lie #5 — you must not tell anyone about this — we are colluding with our confirmation bias that seeks to prove, on the regular, we are alone, we do not belong. No one gets us. No one cares.
The paradox, of course, is this:
NOT asking for help and NOT naming the fears KEEP you in the stasis of the Imposter Complex. And keep you from your top value: CONNECTION.
I call bullshit.
If the Imposter Complex wants to keep you alone and isolated? Don’t let it.
When you experience the Imposter Complex, I want you to NAME it.
To the whole world? Naw. There are indeed people who do not endorse, nor support your activation. And worse.
You’ve seen it.
You’ve felt it.
You’ve been cut back and down.
You’ve committed the sin of (out)shining.
So, nope. Do NOT name it for the whole world.
But name it for YOUR people.
Because as I’ve said, hundreds of times in thousands of words, in front of thousands of people and from every stage, in every conversation and interview:
“YOUR people want you to succeed. Let them help you.”
This is my most fundamental belief.
How do you know who YOUR people are?
I have yet to come across a more searingly clear rubric for discerning who YOUR people are than the poetry of Nayyirah Waheed from her book Salt.:
some people
when they hear
your story.
contract.
others
upon hearing
your story
expand.
and
this is how
you
know.
Yes. Here’s to the Expanders in your life.
The ones who are not afraid of your power.
The ones who encourage you to know your self.
The ones who encourage you to show yourself reverence.
THEM.
They are your people. They are your CAST.
Assemble the Cast
Call them in.
Call them forth.
Tell them when you are struggling with the Imposter Complex, or any one of the six confidence killers it presents with.
Allow them to reflect back to you your brilliance, your radiance, your shine.
Dare to believe them when they tell you how truly remarkable you are.
And then say the two words the Impostor Complex hates above all others. Thank you.
In one of her MarieTV episodes on the subject of the Imposter Complex, Marie Forleo champions calling in your #fraudsquad.
I call those same people your cast, and I sure am grateful for the cast I’ve assembled for the production that is my life and my work.
Because it’s like Michelle Obama said:
“We all have to find the people who believe in us”
I know who to turn to when I am feeling the spectrum of comparison.
Or when I am having a tryst with diminishment.
Or when I’m stuck in perfectionism.
Or I’m out of integrity with my boundaries.
I may be fortunate... but not lucky.
Assembling my cast has been my JOB. And it’s yours too.
Because it is an illusion that I need to go any of this alone.
In fact, it is nearly impossible.
I’ve tried.
And I’ve failed.
And I’ve learned.
So yes.
The Imposter Complex wants to keep you alone and isolated. Don’t let it.
Click here for my free training:
Five ICONIC shifts leaders use to overcome Imposter Complex.