I’d met up with a friend in Taupo, New Zealand and we were kayaking Lake Taupo while talking about life and everything in between. This was and still is a person that I look up to, especially for her positive attitude, warm and bubbly personality and winner mentality. At some point we started talking about work and career. At the moment I was working as a physiotherapy assistant despite having graduated as a physiotherapist and I told her that I feel inadequate and afraid that I´ll be “detected”, that my colleagues will realize I’m an amateur and that they too would think that I’m not good enough to work as an actual physiotherapist. Because she’s a good person I knew that she wouldn’t judge me for having these thoughts, but when she also said the magical words “me too” it felt so wonderfully uplifting. Hearing that such a winner can feel that feeling too, what I later in life found out is called impostor syndrome.
Impostor syndrome means doubting your abilities and feeling like a fraud despite external evidence of your competence. You’re convinced that you don’t deserve your accomplishments and signs of success are dismissed as pure luck, good timing or having tricked others into believing that you’re more competent than you think you are. According to research it’s common for high achievers to experience this. 2 out of 5 successful people and 70% of the population feel like frauds now and then. It’s weird how something so common is spoken about so little in society.
I officially graduated as a physiotherapist early 2017, but didn’t start working as one for real until late summer 2019. Partly because I lived overseas and the process to start working as a legitimate physiotherapist (physio assistant was fine) was harder, but big part of it was due to this impostor syndrome and performance anxiety. I was completely convinced that I wasn’t good enough and completely sure that I would fail, if someone was “stupid enough” to hire me that is. So instead I chose to work jobs under my skill level, inside my comfort zone, not having to deal with that uncomfortable feeling when believing I wasn’t good enough.
Finally I managed to get myself out of that (un)comfortable work situation and started working as a physiotherapist for real. I tried to stay calm and I kept a straight face around others, but on the inside I often struggled with self-doubt and feelings of not being good enough when approaching new challenges. Dealing with new challenges and sometimes not being able to speak my first language (Swedish) and having to speak Finnish instead, would make me panic just thinking about it. I felt so much shame.
Luckily the worst part is over. Somewhere along the way I realized that I am good enough. I started listening to the positive feedback and allowing it to make me happy when receiving it. I might not know everything that I think I “should” know, but I always do my best and what more can you expect from a person. I realized that sometimes I need to be imperfect and fail in order to grow and that I learn so much during the process. I also learned that in my field of work, I can come a long way by just really listening to my clients and genuinely wanting to help. I love working with people way too much to let idiotic thoughts stop me and the feeling of making a change in someone’s life feels absolutely wonderful and that’s a feeling I want to keep feeling.
You can be super competent in your field, but still feel like a fraud at times. When I get stuck in that feeling it tends to help to relax, smile and think “I got this” and e.g. visualize how happy my client will be after I’ve helped him/her. At first I might not believe it myself, but once I get started I get into that flow and it just feels so good afterwards when I did after all. Sometimes we get stuck thinking that it has to become perfect in order for us to do something, but nothing in life is perfect so don’t let your inner perfectionist stop you from growing and developing. Your potential is endless if you only believe in yourself.
[The photo is taken in 2018, that time we were kayaking I wrote about at the start of this post]