IMPOSTER SYNDROME
Sitting amongst classmates listening to another lecture from a highly respected professor or clinical academic, many of us often wonder who allowed them to be a part of this impressive cohort of people. Not every John or Jane Doe would be permitted to be an active member of the University of Liverpool School of Medicine, yet here we are. Why were we, out of the hundreds of applicants, chosen to become doctors in training? This question can lead to many spirally thoughts surrounding our aptitude and life choices up to this point. A huge dip in motivation and mood is prone to follow this line of enquiry, and it has been the cause of many tears, worries and desperation. I’ m sure that most, if not all the people reading this have felt some subtype of this emotional onslaught.
This feeling is often described as imposter syndrome, the belief that you are not qualified enough to belong in a certain profession or educational establishment, for example. You have been allowed to slip through the gaps and somehow worm your way into a collection of professionals and successful individuals. The checking system has made a mistake, you have no right or background that gives you sufficient standing to say that you belong there. You are an imposter, a fraud.
Why do we feel like this? As human beings, we constantly compare ourselves to the people around us, and in this situation these people just so happen to be deemed clever and well-rounded enough to be categorised as a suitable foundation for a doctor to be built upon. We know ourselves better than anyone, and it is far too easy to put forward our own self-perceived negative attributes and failings when conducting this comparison. We see our bloopers reel and other’ s highlights reel. To omit a significant chunk of your identity when pitting yourself against someone else is not fair and will never reap helpful results. Many of us are more qualified than we think, and have just as much right to sit in that lecture theatre as the top-of-their-field speaker has.
The bridge in status between a first year and fifth year medic, for example, can be impossible to fathom. When putting them side by side and looking at their various responsibilities, abilities and expected level of competency, it can be exceedingly daunting and a supposed fruitless endeavour to even make the effort to become them. They seem like different people to us, widening the gulf even further.
One important reason that we rank ourselves below our peers in this manner is that we fail to realise that they are just like us. We can see every flaw and forthcoming that are a part of who we are. However, when we look at other people we can only see them from the outside, a far more edited version of what they see in themselves. The truth is, they’ re trying to figure out how they’ ve succeeded where seemingly more remarkable people have failed, just as much as we are. The features we see in ourselves that we don’ t imagine our heroes could ever battle with are not as unique to us as is sometimes feared. These attributes are universal, every single one of us has some myriad of them in various combinations.
So how do we get through this? How do we move on and learn from these qualms we burden ourselves with? We lean on each other, we vent out our anxieties and we pick each other up. We rely on the comfort that others are feeling how we’ re feeling; it’ s important to know that you’ re not alone, you’ re not the odd one out. The realisation that our minds work through worries and anxieties in much the same way as someone else, cures us of this syndrome. The cultivation of self-confidence is something to progress towards, a goal to be sought. It is a leap of faith and takes impressive mental acrobatics to rewrite your own way of seeing yourself, the world and the people in it, but it is very possible. In the words of Stephen King,“ you can, you should, and if you’ re brave enough to start, you will”.
Catherine Needs- 2nd Year Medical Student