# The Curse of Imposter Syndrome
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## Metadata
- Author: [[Susan Orlean]]
- Full Title: The Curse of Imposter Syndrome
- Category: #articles
- URL: https://medium.com/creators-hub/the-curse-of-imposter-syndrome-21ff9cc4efa8

## Highlights
- It’s that feeling that you’ve pulled a fast one, that you’re faking it, that you aren’t entitled to be treated as a real writer, that other writers are real writers but you aren’t, and that one day you will be found out.
- Imposter syndrome afflicts everyone, especially people in the creative field, although I’ve had friends who have professional degrees who also suffer from it.
- People doing creative work are probably more vulnerable because there is no benchmark (an educational degree, a license, etc.) that at least gives you the mild comfort of feeling you’re legit.
- Most of us scribblers and word wrestlers just declared ourselves writers and started writing. No title was conferred upon us; we had to believe ourselves to be writers and sally forth accordingly.
- I wrote for a living. Writing was the only job I had. And yet…and yet… I couldn’t bring myself to fill in the blan
- It felt like boasting, coupled with some unearned confidence about what and who I was.
- First of all, I had always dreamed of being a writer, so asserting that I have achieved something I’d dreamed about feels bold, almost dangerous, that I’m naming something that had only seemed woven in the gossamer of dreams.
- Secondly, writing (or doing any creative output) is an act of sheer confidence
- It assumes that you have something to say and that you are somehow in a position to say it
- That’s a big leap, emotionally, and it never gets easier. Each time you publish you’re puffing out your chest and saying “Listen to me! I have something you need to hear!”
- On our good days we ignore it; on our bad/insecure/imposter days, we poke the pin ourselves and mumble, “Who am I to declare I have something to say?”
- This is where imposter syndrome can be destructive. If you give in to that feeling of not being entitled to do the work, you can’t do the work
- The way to defeat feeling like a fake is to fake it, which is a wonderful, weird logical fallacy, but it’s true
- one, and nothing — no measure of your success, no award, no amount you’ve earned — will permanently erase that sense of being an imposter
- You have to defeat it by being a better, more wholehearted fake.
- You have to embrace the pretense of being a writer (or painter, or whatever your chosen medium) and fake it harder and better.
- Remember: We’re all faking it. We fake it as parents, as teachers, as whatever we’re doing, and we manage it by accepting that and seeing it as a challenge: How well can I fake being a writer/teacher/painter/parent? I don’t love the tired adage, “Fake it until you make it” because it suggests that you’ll cross some marker that says you’ve made it.
- Waiting for it just enforces your insecurity. Accept that faking is performance, and if you’re performing, you’re doing what you need to do
- I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t have a stubborn streak of insecurity about doing this work