Journalling for Imposter Syndrome
Recently, I was struggling with intense feelings of inadequacy whenever I showed up to work. It hit me hard because it seemed to come from nowhere. I was really enjoying my role and was getting great satisfaction from the new challenges the work brought. Nothing new had happened in my life which would cause me to be having a fresh crisis of confidence. My team are friendly, encouraging and supportive, and there's a good amount of psychological safety. It just wasn't making any sense.
Since these feelings were so disruptive, I was eager to try something new to get a handle on them. Journalling was a hot topic on my content feeds, as the new year had just turned and everyone loves a good self-improvement trend at that time of year. I'd never had much success with journalling before - it felt unnatural to pour out my thoughts without turning them into something useful, but I figured I'd give it another go.
To give myself the best chance of success, I wanted to try to work with my weaknesses instead of against them. Scheduling a slot to do journalling activities tends not to work for me, as my day can be quite varied and I'll likely forget where my head has been at by the time the slot comes around, so I promised myself I'd just write whenever I felt anything particularly overwhelming.
My journalling prompts were simple:
- When did I feel imposter syndrome feelings? Describe them briefly.
- What have I actually done today?
My thinking was that the juxtaposition of the negative feelings and my achievements for the day would be useful to see, as it would hopefully demonstrate the disconnect between the two. There was a vague hope that it would uncover any triggers coming from the type of work activities I was completing or the interactions I was having.
The first few days were like a torrent of angst just rushing out, like all these awful thoughts had been fighting each other for the limited space in my mind and now they could just roam free. Patterns started to emerge - I’d written nearly every entry after speaking to a colleague, always with the same themes: that I’d said the wrong thing, sounded incompetent, or should have known more up front. No wonder I was feeling the way I did, with these feelings building up in the background for months and months, with no outlet. Interestingly, no matter how much I achieved in a day, it had no effect on how negative I felt.
One practical step I tried after recognising these patterns was to pretend that I belong. Not just tell myself I belong, which never works anyway, but actually embody the feeling that I deserve to be there, just like everyone else. But even with that mindset shift, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being different. Even though my workplace does have other femme-presenting folks, I'm still always very aware that I am in a minority. It shouldn't matter, but given I'm self-taught, ex-QA, femme-presenting, blue-haired and AuDHD, I do tend to feel like the odd one out most of the time.
Stereotype threat is a very real thing for me as well - the fear that I'll confirm negative stereotypes about the demographics I'm part of if I make a mistake follows me around like a shadow. Just recently, our team's tech lead caused an outage and he's owned his part in it with a grace I really respect. He's demonstrating that everyone can make mistakes or miss things and he's not making any excuses. It's really important to me to see someone "fail" in public and know that it's ok to do so.
So, keeping all of that in mind, I turned up to my stand-up the next day and tried to give an update without apologising for my existence, without being afraid to make a silly joke or go off topic a little, and the world did not fall down. Every day I still consciously practice this, trying to remind myself that I have as much right to exist and take up space as everyone else. As much as it feels silly, I also inwardly congratulate myself every time I ask a question, or contribute an opinion, or complete a piece of work, in the hopes that I can start to undo the automatic negative thought pathways I've forged over the years.
Journalling alone won’t "fix" my imposter syndrome, but I hope it will be a useful piece of a long-term strategy to rebuild myself after everything I’ve been through. The hope is that sharing how it helped me might help others find their own way toward a bit more inner peace. If you're struggling with imposter syndrome, maybe try journalling again with a fresh mindset. Don't be afraid to tweak your approach to make it work for you, as there's no "right way" of doing things. Even if it doesn’t change things overnight, it might help you notice patterns, challenge negative thoughts, and carve out space for yourself.