Does Imposter Syndrome Make You Lonely?
Do You Frequently Find Yourself:
On the outside looking in and wondering if you will ever belong?
Standalone all too often because that is how you made yourself strong?
Feel others don’t easily approach or connect with you, they assume you want to be on your own.
Crave their affection, want them to need you because you don’t want to be alone.
But asking for what you want isn’t easy, you’re afraid of being refused or disappointed.
So, intimate relationships become a non-possibility as you miss out on deep and loving care.
Imposter Syndrome is a value based system which focuses on the productivity – so what you do is your way to validate yourself. There are five Saboteur Personalities but since everyone’s life experiences are different so are their Imposter Syndrome manifestations.
Briefly, there is the Perfectionist who needs to be perfect 100% of the time and nothing else is acceptable; the Expert who judge their smartness on being able to know everything; the Natural Genius who must understand things or be successful at the first time they do it; the Soloist who must do everything themselves otherwise it doesn’t count and last the Superwoman, who must juggle multiple roles expertly.
Of these categories, the Soloist is least understood and the one that causes the loneliest of situations out of the 5 personalities and where the Key Mechanism is driven by the belief that “If I were truly competent I could do everything myself “ . This is okay when you are a 2-3 year old, who wants to do everything yourself because you are learning. Heck, you were praised for being helpful and so you did it more. Praise is like oxygen for a child and so, why wouldn’t you learn to do more of it. However, research shows us that humans did not evolve to be alone and while it is good to contribute and pull our individual weight, we are meant to share resources and uplift each other, for the collective. This is how civilisations succeeded. Moreover, research also shows that people are happier when they have a purpose that is shared and historically cultures thrived when people worked together for a common goal.
But there is more….
All habits, good and bad stem from learning that we gained from our experiences – this is a given, but there is another reason you might have learnt this behaviour of radical self-sufficiency which is; you didn’t feel safe. You built as a self-protective mechanism to help you survive complex childhood trauma because your parents of primary caretaker were emotionally unavailable. The may have been controlling, cold, cruel, demanding, intrusive, distant or dismissive and so, you needed to trust yourself and nobody else. This behaviour kept you safe and it became your default pattern, the prism through which you have lived your life.
So, ask yourself the question “How am I alone-ing myself. How am I creating the situations that keep me alone? What is stopping me from asking for help. Is it because I don’t trust that I will receive what I ask for and is that too painful to bear.
Let’s be clear here – You are smart and you quickly learnt skills and talents that you harnessed to become self-reliant and capable. You are good at what you do and you have high expectations of yourself and others which is a good thing BUT this can make it uncomfortable or unpleasant for other to be around you. They may not be at your level or think like you and so, when you ask them to do a job and they might fail and they disappoint you. To be honest, you are probably judging them quite severely and start having lower expectations for them which means they don’t rise up and instead they get resentful. Now, should this happen enough times and you are not aware of what dynamic you are creating, eventually everyone will either fail, disappoint or worse leave you.
This sense of disappointment and lack of trust doesn’t just stay at work, it goes into every aspect of your life. Trying to do everything yourself because “that is the only way a job gets done properly” is going to frustrate and turn people away from you. And even if you are loyal, slogging away, “alone-ing” yourself and not sharing you might not leave non-nourishing relationships until the moment you literally get “fed-up”. Then you leave without anyone being aware that you were that desperately unhappy.
Key shifts you need to make to interrupts this pattern is to:
- Recognise how you are “alone-ing” yourself – what are the actions you are taking to stay in this pattern. See what it is serving and name it.
- Take an overview of the whole context and see how you are relating with others and the situations in a 3-D paradigm. Remember you are not alone even if you think you are!
- Seek opportunity to connect and share with others what you want and need.
- Develop new skills of communication – have realistic expectations of what others can deliver, negotiated, create space and freedom for people to respond.
- Be empathic when they disappoint always seeking re-connection.
So, what would it be like for you, if you could…..
Easily ask of others in a way that encourages reciprocal acknowledgement, appreciation and support. Deeply feel connected, life pleases you, you have endless joy, happiness and fulfilment.
That you are included, people want you to be around; they openly cherish their time with you.
To know and trust deeply that whatever you ask for the universe will respond and give back to you.
If feel you need to be the strong one or doing everything because it you get help it doesn’t cunt and you want to change this click below for a chat so we can find out how I can help you.
