Many of us are personally and painfully familiar with the imposter syndrome – the pervasive sinking feeling that you really don’t know what you’re doing and any minute someone might find out.
It’s associated with self-consciousness, self-doubt, second guessing and a hefty dose of comparison where you always come out feeling second best. It’s not helpful to anyone, least of all the people we support.
We joke that we need to “fake it til you make it!” We are encouraged to be kinder on ourselves, take an inventory of our strengths and capabilities, see growth as a process and seek support on the way. The aim is to build our confidence and find firmer ground.
But what if we’ve got it the wrong way? Maybe it’s the brittle veneer of conviction that is the real imposter. We might well be chasing a false confidence that reassures us but isn’t necessarily accurate or warranted.
We are taught what to know in our training. Far less attention, if any, is given to what we don’t know, let alone how to have a healthy relationship with the reality that our professional knowledge is limited, flawed and constantly evolving.
What we are taught to believe is true now might be dismissed, ridiculed or condemned in the future. We know some of it will, even if we don’t know which bits, because we currently dismiss, ridicule or condemn what was taught in the past.
When we can hold our acquired learning more lightly, we can enter a more equal partnership with the people we support. Less certainty creates more room for curiosity. Conviction gives way to more collaboration. So perhaps making friends with uncertainty is the goal, not the problem to be eliminated.
Helen Mentha 