Imposter Syndrome

I realize how toxic it is to have this kind of mindset, but the truth is that this feeling that I’m not good enough has been lurking in the shadows like cancer throughout my entire life. It’s shifted and changed and morphed over the years, but it’s always, at some level, been present. However, I think I might have finally discovered where this toxicity stirring within me may be originating from. Like the water forever flowing down over the edge of Niagra Falls, I have a never-ending fear of failure, and it’s been with me since I was just a child. Allow me to set the scene…

Every Summer between the age of 10-12, I would go to a Christian Summer Camp. The thing lasted about a week or so, during which we had several events that we would take part in every day. Some of the events at the camp included Go Kart Racing, Archery, Paintball Shooting, Sculping, Bible Study (naturally), and many more. One year, they decided to mix things up by adding a new activity: Acting Class. Originally, I was super hyped. I was a pretty outgoing child, something that would radically change going into my teenage years, so I thought that this would be a great opportunity to explore my potential future as a famous actor. During the short 5-minute film, I would get the opportunity to show off just how much of a child prodigy I thought myself to be. This overconfidence turned out to be a huge disadvantage for me as I signed up to be the film’s main antagonist, Satan.

We had one week to prepare and practice our lines before we would go on stage and perform. During Day 2 of the class, the director tried giving me some constructive criticism, stating that my voice wasn’t creepy enough. My confidence shattered. Obviously, I didn’t know what I was doing. If I did, the director wouldn’t be giving me a grocery list of things I needed to work on, I thought. If I wanted to pull off a convincing Luci, I would need to make my voice deeper, rougher, more defined, and sound more like my dad does before getting out of bed and getting his morning coffee. I had a lot to do and not a lot of time.

Seeing as I was playing the Devil himself, I placed a huge amount of pressure on myself to not mess up. Being that I was twelve years old, I didn’t know how to deal with this intense pressure, so I did what anyone who doesn’t know how to cope with their intense, undesirable emotions does: I fucking buried that shit. I shoved those feelings into the corner, locked the chest, and tried so hard to keep it locked. If anyone asked, I was fine. I was “All good to go! *thumbs up*” But that feeling of dread loomed over me only growing stronger by the minute. Any chance I got, I would pop down to the lake and watch my reflection as I practiced my three whole lines of dialogue. It still sucked. The closer the inevitable performance got, the blurrier the days get in my memory. I don’t even remember performing on that final day. I think the overwhelming stress and anxiety of it all grew so powerful that my childhood brain blocked those memories out because I cannot, for the life of me, remember how the play went on that terrifying Friday.

I wish I could say that was the end of the story. That it was a bad week during one random summer, but I went home and the fear went away. Sadly, this is not the end of the story, for this looming fear of failure stayed with me like a virus all too well versed in the act of evolving. When COVID-19 broke out in early 2020, it was rough. Society literally shut down GLOBALLY. The entire world dealing with the outbreak of a deadly virus. Immediately, different governments all around the world started working on different solutions, trying to create some sort of vaccine or cure to try to mitigate the damage and protect as many people as possible. Similarly, I started working on different ways to solve or at the very least lessen the impact this fear had on my life. My first step was to try to ignore it. I just started hyping myself up. Arguably, a bit too much. If you’re too confident, nothing will stop you, right? I started trying to learn guitar (quit after two weeks because my ADHD got bored of it, but still.), I started teaching myself programming, I started making silly, stupid YouTube videos, and many more experiments of potential interests. As you can imagine, an overconfident kid who thinks he’s better than everyone else–Not good. Not good at all. I was snobby and the idea that someone else could know more than me simply did not compute (kind of weird to think about how this is all because I have a fear of failure). I was hated and bullied by my peers, which you know. Fair enough. I probably deserved it. And so, I moved on to try to hide my creative habits.

I started unlisting old YouTube videos and I even deleted a couple of them. For anyone reading, please never throw away or delete any of the art that you do. That’s a time capsule for your personal growth in your craft. You will want to be able to look back at that a few years from now, and you will be amazed by how far you’ve grown. This, again, is a lesson I learned from my mistake of thinking it would be better if the art I made never existed at all. I stopped being super outgoing in school. I started self-isolating. Whenever someone asked me how I was, “All good! *Thumbs up*”, but deep down there was this pit, this emptiness.

At some point, I said “f–k it” and decided to give content creation another go. I revamped my channel and started editing again. Over the last two years or so, I’ve been trying to be more comfortable with accepting that failure is the natural way we learn how to grow and become better. By allowing my fear to control me, I’m disallowing myself from the opportunity to learn from whatever lessons a potential mistake could teach me. However, COVID-19 evolved from the vaccine with the Omicron variant, then again with Delta, and then again with the Alpha variant. There is a reason germ-killing disinfectants say they kill “99.9% of all germs or something. There’s always that 0.1% of germs that mutate and survive. In the same way, it seems my fear has also learned to adapt to my new mindset. Instead of being afraid that I will be a failure, I’ve now become afraid people will see behind the facade and see me for the failure that I am (or at least the failure that my brain wants me to think of myself as).

I have this fear that all of the past mistakes I made as a teenager and as a child are going to be sprung back up on Twitter or something and that I will have to deal with the drama of all of that. You could say “Oh. This is a Cancel Culture rant,” but I would argue that while Cancel Culture definitely does not help make things any better, it has nothing to do with Cancel Culture and everything to do with feeling like my actions are never good enough. Every time I post a blog or a YouTube video or go live on Twitch, the voice in my head says “You don’t see it now, but two years down the line you’re going to look back and see how horrible this is. And if you can see it two years from now, anyone else at any time could also see how bad this is. You should just stop trying and save yourself the embarrassment of others realizing your complete and utter incompetence on the subject.”

At the beginning of this post, I mentioned that I tweeted about all of this swirling around in my brain. Soon after sending out the tweet, I got so many messages from friends and other content creators telling me that I had nothing to fear and that I am good enough. While this fear is still looming (and probably always will be), hearing people’s honest opinions about me and seeing that others believe I’m worth enough for them to spend their precious time complimenting me– Made me feel so much better. It ended my spiral into utter depression. More than that, though, I think it may have finally shown me the cure for a fear of failure: Words of Affirmation.

I know I’m not alone in having this fear, and I know that it will never truly go away. You may find better mindsets or vaccines to help mitigate the damage, but variants will always exist. The big thing to remember is that you are not alone. There are people who love you, care about you, and believe that you bring value. Fuck the haters. Whether it be your art or you just trying to be the best person you can be, you are doing the best you can do right now. It’s not perfect because no one ever is, but as long as you are trying to do better and know more today than yesterday, I’d call that a success. Lastly, and most importantly, make sure to compliment others for the good things you think about them. What may seem like a quick 10-second text saying “You are amazing” to you, could take someone else out of a spiral of depression and existential crisis. Make sure you’re always doing your best to lift other people up. Thank you for reading :)