Imposter Syndrome

There's a good chance you've seen this by now, if you're around the internet enough to have found my little blog. It is, however, a good story, and worth resharing.

Some years ago, I was lucky enough invited to a gathering of great and good people: artists and scientists, writers and discoverers of things. And I felt that at any moment they would realise that I didn’t qualify to be there, among these people who had really done things.

On my second or third night there, I was standing at the back of the hall, while a musical entertainment happened, and I started talking to a very nice, polite, elderly gentleman about several things, including our shared first name. And then he pointed to the hall of people, and said words to the effect of, “I just look at all these people, and I think, what the heck am I doing here? They’ve made amazing things. I just went where I was sent.”

And I said, “Yes. But you were the first man on the moon. I think that counts for something.”

And I felt a bit better. Because if Neil Armstrong felt like an imposter, maybe everyone did. Maybe there weren’t any grown-ups, only people who had worked hard and also got lucky and were slightly out of their depth, all of us doing the best job we could, which is all we can really hope for.

 Direct quote from Neil Gaiman's blog.

And now for my own experiences on the topic.

A couple of years ago (a few months after my ex left) I started this group therapy program for depression, run through a hospital. The purpose of the group was to inform us, give us good strategies, and be able to share with our peers how things were going. Also, they were collecting data on us. The data may have been the official purpose. The data itself actually helped me a lot.

I've mentioned before the BDI thing. I gave you links, but I don't believe I actually explained how the thing works. Basically, there are a bunch of multiple choice questions, each with four choices ranked 0-3. Each question is about a symptom or sign of depression (ie. sleeping and eating habits, enjoyment of hobbies, etc.). Each time you answer 0, you're saying you haven't struggled with that thing at all for the past two weeks. 1 means you've struggled a bit, 2 quite a bit, and 3 is pretty much nonstop. (I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea). It's got 21 questions, so a minimum score of 0, and maximum 63. The scores are interpreted as follows:

0-9: minimal depression / not depressed
10-18: mild depression
19-29: moderate depression
30+ : severe depression

If you're remotely aware of what you're doing and how it works, it's easy to figure out your score without being told. Yes, it's also easy to skew the results, but who benefits from that? Certainly not you, as you're now getting treatment based off of lies.

I had never heard of it, and didn't know how it worked, so I filled it out with the other mountain of intake questionnaires and surveys and that was the end of that.

My first time walking in to the group, I noticed right away that I was a bit younger than anyone else in the room. I was mid twenties, and (I'm terrible at judging ages) I believe the next youngest person was at least 30. I immediately felt like people weren't going to take me seriously. Like "wait until you grow up and have some real problems."

I felt like I had no right to be receiving treatment.

There was a second phase to this program, which was shorter visits 1-on-1 with a staff member; no more group. In this phase, we did things like discuss survey scores. (I should probably mention, we took multiple surveys every week for about 4 months.) I found out what my scores were, and what they'd meant.

I'd been severely depressed, and thinking that didn't deserve help, because my life had been too easy.

True, my parents are still married, my family is very loving and supportive, and school was never much of a challenge. I am, in that sense, incredibly lucky.

However, depression and anxiety are in my family's medical history. I have a genetic predisposition towards them. My brain will take the worst case scenario and try to convince me that that is the only possible outcome. Back then, it was usually successful.

Mild aside: this right here is why I've said that I was raised Christian, but not that I am. I'm not anymore. It's complicated and personal, but the biggest thing I struggle with in that is the idea of a loving God creating someone with a genetic predisposition (read: not a fallout of free will) to truly believe that the world is better off without them. I won't mention it much like this, and I'm not trying to offend, just provide a bit of backstory and reasoning for where I'm at. Anyways....

Life situation can make depression more or less likely, but it is not fucking possible to look at someone and determine whether or not they have mental health problems. I've seen a number of analogies for this. My two favourite are:

• What do you mean you can't breathe? There's plenty of air in here! (to an asthmatic)
• There are people with more money, more friends, and overall better lives than you, so how on earth can you claim to be happy?

I think we can all agree that those are ridiculous.

So is saying (to yourself or someone else) "Your life is too good for you to be depressed."