Impostor Syndrome – My Experience and How I Cope With Mummy to Dex

Today I hand my blog over to Mummy to Dex who is here to talk about her fight with impostor syndrome and how she manages to cope with it.

Have you ever heard of Impostor Syndrome? It’s something that’s blighted my life for as long as I can remember, although I only found out what it was five years or so ago. I bet if I describe it you can relate to it in some way, most women will have felt like this at some point in their lives I am sure.

Impostor Syndrome is a phenomenon whereby a person doubts their achievements and accomplishments and has this constant underlying fear that one day they’ll be found out. Sound familiar? Since finding out that my feelings of anxiety that one day I’d be found out for being a fraud, I’ve spoken to lots of women about this who have told me they feel the same. From mothers to high powered doctors, so many of us have this overwhelming – and sometimes debilitating – barrel of emotions that makes us believe we are not good enough for the lives we lead. I’m not sure where it’s come from – perhaps growing up in a digital age and being subjected constantly to perceived social media norms and a barrage of perfect women in magazines or on TV – or maybe it’s just something that’s developed from childhood experiences; either way, it’s very real and with the right tools, can be managed so it doesn’t take over your life.

Experiencing Impostor Syndrome in day to day life

When I was eighteen years old, received my fantastic A-Level results and secured my place at University to read History and French, I first noticed that I had this overwhelming feeling that I did not deserve to be there. I had worked extremely hard to achieve what I did in my exams, but felt that anyone who had done the same amount of work I did could have achieved the same. I wasn’t particularly intelligent and the people around me on my course were looking at me as if to say, ‘why are you here?’.

I started skipping classes and by the time graduation rolled around, I’d dropped out with only a few finished credits to my name. I was right, I had been a fraud. 

I settled back into life in my hometown and got a basic retail job and worked hard for the next four years before being promoted into management. This is when the feelings began hitting me hard again and I wondered every single morning when I woke up when my manager would finally realise I was a fraud and send me crashing back down the career ladder to where I started.

Three years after stepping into management, I got a new line manager – a woman – and in one of my one to one sessions I opened up about these feelings in a moment of trust and security. This woman was extremely successful in what she had achieved in her career and has since gone on to even bigger and better things and she confided in me that she too had these feelings. 

I couldn’t believe that such a confident and successful woman was experiencing the same anxiety-ridden thoughts I had always had and felt even better when she gave me a name – Impostor Syndrome. I rushed to Google as soon as I got home and spent hours reading about how common it was and ways to understand and combat these feelings.

For a long time after that, I was okay. The feelings were still there – but I knew it was all in my head. After all, I was really good at my job and the results year after year showed this. Then I fell pregnant.

Becoming a mother is totally and unequivocally life-changing – not just physically but mentally too. You can never go back to being the woman you were before. As much as anxiety ruled my life before children, I was still a carefree person with very few commitments apart from my job and a husband. Once you introduce kids into the equation, everything changes. Every single choice you make, from the smallest decision of what you should have for breakfast to the biggest life choice of whether or not you should relocate to the countryside, doesn’t just affect you now, but also the little person in your life.

After my baby was born, I felt great to be off work, but also super overwhelmed that I suddenly had this tiny, defenceless child to look after. My mental health suffered greatly, as it does for many women and surprisingly the Impostor Syndrome feelings started creeping back in, to the point where some days I wondered if I was even my own baby’s mother. Yes, I could remember giving birth to him, but how could I be a mother? I had no idea what I was doing and sooner or later social services would find out and take my baby away. It’s scary and I felt so alone. It was one thing to know that other women suffered with this in the workplace – but did mothers feel this way? I highly doubted it.

Coping with Impostor Syndrome

How did I cope with this sudden increase of anxiety filled thoughts in my head? Weirdly enough, returning to the workplace helped. Having something to keep my mind busy instead of being stuck at home for hours on end with nobody to talk to (as much as I loved being with my baby) was the greatest therapy. 

I also found blogging which is the most amazing way to get your thoughts from your head and onto paper where you can either press publish and share to the world (scary!) or press delete and watch those feelings float away. However, the most amazing part of blogging is the community and finding like-minded people who you can chat to freely. Somehow, having friends online is a lot easier when it comes to opening up about mental health issues than having them in real life.

Most of all, I just have to keep telling myself it’s not real. I constantly read the performance results in work and am obsessed with numbers and figures. Whenever I feel like I’m going to get found out for being a rubbish blogger I sit and analyse my stats, reminding my brain how much I’ve achieved and if I was a faker, those results wouldn’t exist.

I think Impostor Syndrome will be part of my life forever and that’s okay because I feel like I can control it now. I know these feelings of feeling like a fraudster is just my brain trying to trick me and I take a deep breath, let the feelings leave my body and continue with my day. Some days I have to take more deep breaths than others, but on the whole, life is good.

Author bio – Nicola is the blogger behind Mummy to Dex and lives in the North West with her husband and two sons. She is a full time working Mum who somehow manages to fit blogging in wherever she can. You can also find her on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter. 

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