How often do you feel like a fraud?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Maybe not to the extreme of Impostor Syndrome but I low-key struggle with this constantly when it comes to work. All signs point to the opposite: I work for a well-known company in a fairly relevant (always debatable I suppose) management position and get generally good feedback and am compensated accordingly.

Nonetheless, somewhere in the back of my mind I’m always thinking that someone is about to say “yeah, but what does that guy actually DO?” It’s fair to say I’ve had self-confidence issues throughout my life, but it’s pretty much only where work is concerned that I often feel like a fraud.

2

I reminds me of this scene in office space:

Well-well look. I already told you: I deal with the goddamn customers so the engineers don’t have to! I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can’t you understand that?! What the hell is wrong with you people?!

I feel what you are describing all the time.

I felt it for a long time in my old job until I was there for like 8 years and become “the expert” that everyone went to for issues and questions. I didn’t feel it as much then.

But then I got a new job, so it is back!

3

I shook off imposter syndrome once I realised that almost everyone else felt the same way and we were all in the same boat. And those that have never suffered it are probably the least effective people.

However I’ve no doubt that the insight that helped me doesn’t work equally well for everyone.

4

Wow! I never knew the way I felt all the time has a name and Wikipedia page!

I think this condition evolved and became stronger as I aged. When I was younger I felt a lot more confident in my abilities and strengths, and was rewarded at work with promotions and acclaim. I always attributed that early ease of success with hard work, luck, being in the right place at the right time, as well as the flexible entrepreneurial environment I was part of. I have been searching for that same feeling for years but my work life plateaued years ago and I have sort-of been drifting along with the current, not making many waves.

Anyway, I do feel like a fraud and undeserving of the things I have. Add the sense of responsibility for my family to that and you can see how trapped I am - trapped and chained by my own thoughts. What makes it worse is seeing my peers rise while I stay-put. I justify it all by telling myself I can afford to have some freedoms and hobbies they don’t.

Anyway, thanks for sharing that link. I have some thinking to do!

5

I went through a similar phase, and also suffered from low self-esteem (I think the two go hand in hand).

First off, follow your instincts - keep doing what you’re doing. If you feel you are doing well at your job, you probably are. If others give feedback indicating this is true, then there may be something to it. Conversely, if you feel you are doing well but you really aren’t, someone will/should tell you about it. Nobody is perfect, and it is not realistic to expect that of anyone.

Next you need to come to realize there is no “absolute truth”, only perception. There is the perception of your co-workers and your management. And there is your own perception of yourself, your work. None of these may necessarily be “accurate”, and also less likely that they match up. But more importantly, when you realize that it is “all” perception, then you can start to understand why it really isn’t all that important. Feeling like a fraud is a sense that what others perceive is different than what you really “are” (without you deliberately trying to present a different person). But given that it is “all” perception, does it really matter that these views don’t jive ?

Lastly, you are a manager. First, recognize that “managing” is a skill/ability that not everyone possess/has the ability to do. In fact, I think the percentage is pretty low (there are a LOT who think they can, but are actually pretty bad at it). Secondly, recognize that managing is harder to “evaluate performance” on. On the one hand, if a project is successful, you share in the accolades. But if a project fails, you take the brunt of the blame. Yet here’s the thing: you don’t really participate in a “hands on” way in the project. Managing is all about enabling/directing/motivating your team to do their jobs/tasks. Your “tasks” to enable/direct/motivate on a day to day basis, may not seem like they always directly contribute to the overall project - things like sitting in meetings to discuss the status of your project and issues you are facing. When you look back at the day (of meetings) it is easy to wonder “just what (productive) did I do all day ?”. Yet this is part of your job, and someone needs to do it. It can also be the means by which you “enable” your team (asking for more resources, schedule adjustments, etc.).

Hope this helps.

6

That third paragraph, boy I could’ve written that myself. My salary has steadily increased over the years but I’ve been in essentially the same level of middle-management for a long time and it does bother me to see other people get promoted when I’m still here.

Functionally it shouldn’t matter. My bills are paid, I’m happily married, I have free time. But when Joe Schmoe gets promoted above me after only being in role a short while, I can’t say it doesn’t sting-- even though it’s probably not even something I want. I very much appreciate my work-life balance.

At some point you have to make peace with the fact that your work doesn’t and shouldn’t define your value as a human being. I do think in America moreso than many other countries, the priorities are pretty wacky.

7

Absolutely, everything you say makes sense and I’m in full agreement intellectually.

Trouble is, feeling like a fraud rarely has much to do with logical thinking :slight_smile: So even though all signs point to me being just fine, I’m still troubled by these thoughts.

8

I feel like a fraud on a daily basis.

I am a teacher in a boarding school. I’ve been teaching for 4 years, I’ve been at the boarding school for 2 of those. I teach reading and literacy for the GED, so I teach a very specific skill set designed for a very specific test. Useful, to be sure, but still a narrow set of skills.

My degrees are in history. I know next to nothing about theories of learning, pedagogical approaches or methods, or how to best teach students with learning barriers such as ADD or dyslexia.

I have two supervisors and both have complimented me on my “approach” in the classroom and my students were meeting their benchmarks and passing their GED tests (well, they were before COVID). So by all measures they are succeeding and I am successfully teaching them. But often I feel like a glorified babysitter. When I was doing F2F teaching I would come home mentally and emotionally exhausted every day. I’m not just a teacher, I’m a counselor and a therapist and a life coach and a mentor and ersatz parent and and and… actual teaching is only a small part of what I do.

Maybe it’s the unique environment I am in. I wouldn’t last a week in a traditional high school environment. And as such, I feel like a failure as a teacher.

COVID, of course, has changes the entire dynamic in very fundamental ways. We are “teaching” via distance learning, and at this point all we are really doing is trying to keep our students engaged, and that has been an absolute, total, and colossal clusterfuck. Many of our students are homeless. Many are doing the sofa circuit. Something like ¼ of our entire student population – dozens and dozens of kids – do not have reliable computers or laptops or Chromebooks or even phones and so we are trying to teach them using paper lessons akin to the old-school correspondence courses: we send them a month’s worth of work at a time, they are supposed to send back weekly modules in a pre-stamped envelope we provide. Of course, very few do so. Their situations are such that committing to that kind of engagement isn’t feasible. For many of them, determining the theme of a text or learning how to cite textual evidence is pointless when they have no home.

Several weeks ago a student called me at midnight. Literally, 12am. I just happened to be glancing at my phone when the call came through. I answered it, and she told me she had just been kicked out of her house for spilling a bowl of Froot Loops. Holy. Fucking. Shit. She was sitting on a bench in a city park, blocks from home, cold and scared. I was the only person she thought she could call. There was nothing I could do for her of course, but I sat there for probably an hour talking her down and trying to get her calm. Eventually her phone went dead.

She’s now living in a tent somewhere outside of Bend. An 18 year old kid. A fucking child. No education, not even a way to get an ID because her birth cert is with family that hates her. When I was 18 my biggest worry was how I would afford gas for my car while still being able to buy CD’s. And she’s living a tent.

It’s become disheartening and at this point, 5 months in, I have no idea what to do or if this ridiculous model is even sustainable. I want to see my students, I want to know they are safe, and goddammit even if I am a crap teacher I want to see them make progress toward their GED – something they are certainly not doing now – and get on with their lives. This whole thing sucks shit.

Sorry. I’m in a ranty mood I guess. TLDR: Yes, I feel like a fraud.

9

You are making a difference. The fact that someone thought they could call you, and the fact that you took the call and spent time talking to them, means you are making a difference.

I literally just commented that the feeling is irrational, so I get that. But as an outsider to your situation, all I can say is: bravo. In my own life, having a teacher who gave a shit had ENORMOUS impact on my life. Obviously it’s incredibly different and infinitely more difficult with COVID so I don’t envy you one bit but please don’t become too disheartened. What you do matters.

10

I have almost been crippled at times by self-doubt brought on by imposter fraud feelings. Knowing others feel this too has been the saviour! So this post, and the responses is so valuable.

I write books about memory systems, Indigenous cultures and new theories for ancient monumental sites - all of which could have people point out the massive faults and humiliate me - especially during media interviews or reviews. A good few books later, and I am starting to feel it again with a new book due out soon. But now I can look back over the previous books and know that it is a feeling, not a reality.

Your timing on this post was perfect for me, amaguri. Thank you!

11

I’m also a teacher. Math at a community college, going on nine years. At least one student each quarter tells me something like “I took your class because I heard you are such an awesome teacher.” I always think “Really? Because I feel like I’m standing up there babbling like a moron, and no one can possibly be understanding what I’m ‘teaching.’”

I know my name appears on RateMyProfessors, but I’ve never looked at it. Students have told me they’ve taken my class based on my reviews there.

I don’t really know how to deal with praise when I get it. Some years back, I had a young woman in a class who was autistic. The college doesn’t tell me that, of course; they just send me a “special accommodations” notice. But since my daughter is autistic, I recognized it in this student immediately. Even though she was a legal adult, her mother was her legal guardian, so part of her accommodations stated that her mother and I were allowed to communicate regarding her.

After the quarter was over, the mother wrote my department chair a glowing email about me. The chair shared it with me and praised me, and forwarded it to the division dean. The dean then wrote me and praised me, and forwarded it to the Dean of Instruction. The Dean of Instruction forwarded it to the campus president, who then made a campus-wide announcement about what a great guy I am.

Jesus. I mean, part of me was proud of myself, but mostly I was embarrassed. I didn’t feel like I’d done anything special towards this student. I just followed the accommodations, like I would for any other student. I thanked the president, but said I was just doing my job. She never responded, which made me wonder if I said the wrong thing, like I came across as ungrateful or something. Sigh…

12

@Lynne-42
This is exactly what I flashed back to in my memories of a childhood similar to your student’s. What an incredible difference one teacher made in one moment of her caring that literally saved my life and I never had a chance to tell her. I don’t remember that she said any words, but I do remember that she knew, she cared and she was a safe person to trust. That is what you did. You knew, you cared, she was safe for a while. She won’t ever forget. I didn’t, even 59+ years later.

13

The ability to accept praise is a learned skill that is more difficult for some of us than for others. I’ve been in situations very similar to what you’ve described, and for years ignored or, more frequently, actively deflected the compliment. My parents were not at all abusive but they were not very forthcoming with kindness so that obviously had a lasting impact.

Anyway, I’ve tried very hard to resist the urge to DEFLECT and at least say nothing. lol. It is so hard for literally no discernible reason to just say “Thank you!” and move on.

14

Hardly ever. I can think of one occasion, but that was decades ago.

15

Yeah, I have really worked on this recently as well. I have to stifle myself from interrupting the one praising me and let them finish, and then carefully say “Thank you, that means a lot!”, whereas earlier I would have jumped-in as they were finishing and said something like “…yeah that was a difficult project, but we managed to get thru…”

Right now I am dealing with a finance miscommunication on a project and I just want to tell people “I suck at accounting”, but I remind myself not to tear myself down as someone will be along soon enough to do that, so why help them.

16

If I had applied myself more and gotten a degree, I would probably have earned several times more money doing something I had little enthusiasm for. I certainly would have been a fraud. Instead, I flunked out, lived by my wits alone, had jobs that prople envied, traveled and played a lot in between, and feel good looking back over it all. So, even though I was a fraud, I was a good and contented fraud, not just a guy in a cubicle with a diploma on the wall, a “human resource”, like coal or timber, being exploited.

17

I feel my reputation (god-like font of wisdom is one not so tongue-in-cheek title I’ve been given) is massively overblown at work. It’s derived more from just being present regularly at work for nearly 2 decades and being willing to put forth some good orderly directions for most situations that arise, even if it’s not necessary the best (or even correct) directions. Having that rep is more often stressful than nice.

At home, my wife knows me better than that, so I’ve no illusions to live up to there. I’ll see if my ego survives the blow when I retire.

18

A lot less lately. Not that I’ve got everything - or anything, for that matter - figured out, but I spent the better part of 30 years trying to be what I thought I was suppose to be … slapping on those khakis, making sure I had a fresh polo shirt for every day, getting that TPS report in triplicate so the Party Committee can order the right kind of plastic cups for Barb’s retirement lunch ‘n’ learn.

Now, of course, I’m basically unemployed (I’m due to be called back to the warehouse next month) and I’ve spent the summer working on me. If that sounds wussy and new-agey, well, go fuck yourself, I needed this. I’ve grown my hair long, I’ve adopted a full-time full beard, I’ve focused on getting my finances in some kind of order and of course I’ve got Bob T Dog. I feel a whole shit load more like myself than I did when I was staying in my cubicle until 8pm because the data file was corrupted.

Basically, that puts me at square one at age 55, but, whaddayagonnado?

19

Funny, in a thread that I recently started regarding my pending search for a new IT job, HMS_Irruncible said that I appeared to be experiencing Imposter Syndrome myself. After reading his comments and the responses in this thread, I think that may be correct.

Long story-short: my company is in the process of shutting down sometime soon and I’ll be out looking for a new job after 26 years at this one. I’m currently the manager of our IT department, which doesn’t really count if you consider I’m the only one left in this “department”. Anyway, I’m trying to get back into programming, so I’m taking some online courses to get back up to date skill-wise. My problem right now is that I’m trying not to self-sabotage myself by discounting my on-the-job experience when I go on the job hunt. I will feel like a fraud by saying that I’m an IT manager when the fact is that I only gained the position due to attrition.

I’ve felt like this for a while but didn’t know how to describe the feeling. It’s almost comforting to know that I can put a name to it and maybe find ways to get around it.

20

I had tons of anxiety that I would not have the ability to do the next job. It’s more complicated than that, hard to describe, but in the end it amounts to on any day thinking I might lose the ability to code, to analyze, to debug, to design, to simply answer a technical question, to do any of the things I was getting paid handsomely for. So it was sort of developing Imposter Syndrome itself that worried me, that tomorrow I would feel like a fraud because I could no longer do the job, that I would no longer know how. I’m retired now and it is fantastic to have that problem out of my life.

At times I also did have that Imposter feeling. I think those were cases where I was uncomfortable with how much faith people had in my ability. I felt like they were putting pressure on me but that was my own doing, mostly they were really telling me to relax because they had confidence I would work hard and find a way to get the job done. I can see in some of the other responses how this manifests. I remember some relief at first hearing about Imposter Syndrome and learning I wasn’t the only one.