Imposter Syndrome

I had these thoughts all my life and around my mid 30s I started thinking, it might be that I have ASD. Since then I obtained a place on the waiting list for a full assessment but before I have self diagnosed myself. I was endlessly searching the net for answers about why I am so weird, sensitive and different. Then I found a self diagnostic test on the NHS and there you go. I scored high but even then I wasted long months before actually act upon and get a referral. As the waiting time is ridiculously long, I still have a few years left to live in the uncertainty. I have always doubted myself and I am not sure if I would ever stop doing so.

Hello NAS37554. I appreciate that I have butted in here long after this conversation has ended and possibly been forgotten. However, on the basis of "better late than never" I would like to offer some thoughts that came to mind whilst I was reading your post and which Imade me feel familiar with what you have experienced in life - albeit in a very different way.

I was diagnosed with ASD Level 1/Asperger's at the age of 59, after 40 years of "adult" working life struggling to cope with my differences from other people, and their frequent exasperation with me. I always seemd to have been a borderline misfit, eccentric even, socially. Despite being (told I was) perceived as unusually bright by most other people, I really struggled with doing simple and easy things - like a disconnect between understanding a task, and having the ability to do it. There were other ways in which I seemed to "get" certain types of thing like a flash, and found myself in a very natural state doing those things.

The contrast within myself between between being mystified at simple common things but quickly grasping a small number of fairly narrowly defined areas of activity didn't help me in the eyes of most of the people who were influential in my life, for example, at work (but with one or two very contrasting examples). Thus I can honestly say that I mostly suffered at the hands of many of these people, who treated me as wilfully making the wrong decisions and failing to be bothered doing the right things - as if I had a perverse, deliberate and concsious tendency to go against the flow of what worked or was right.

As I read your post, I felt that much of my experience feels similar to the inconsistent and misguided - culpably misguided, perhaps - way you have been treated. I just felt that I was always fated to fail, because I could never learn these rules of life that everyone else seemed to unerstand naturally. You must have felt absolute torture if I am anywhere near right.

For me, the diagnosis od ASD L1/Asperger's felt like a "Not Guilty!" verdict on how I had lived my life, but of course it didn't reverse all the setbacks I had endured. However, it did enable me to let go (well, mostly let go) of my feelings of anger and frustration that had accumulated. More importantly, it started me on parallel journeys of (a) re-aligning my self understanding and realizing that I'm not broken, but I AM different; and (b) not trying to fix or cure myself, but learning to live my life in a way that makes use of my strengths, and work around my deficiencies.

There is much more that I could - and want to - say, but before that I will see if you get to reading this and, if so, you would be interested.

Best wishes, Piers.

Hi Fuchsia...

psst... there is a lot of self doubt going on here... and a hell of a lot of bravado.... 

i feel that I’m a good person... it just doesn’t always translate well x

hope you are well btw... x

I'm sorry you're feeling so negative about yourself Ellie. You've been such a positive force for good for so many people in this community.

Cassandro said:

When I've gone private, I've had double impostor syndrome, because I'm paying someone for attention, and they've a continued professional stake in me attending so that I don't feel I can trust their judgement that I'm 'ill'.

I get that.  I spent a short time seeing a counsellor (referred by work following a 3 month elastic-snap of self)...the shame of having to "buy" company, someone who would listen.....

I am someone with too much pride! Not in an arrogant way....it is just a sense of shame and fear of falling.

it is a vicious cycle that I work overly hard to over compensate for my own lack of self worth...and then get even more hurt when I feel that i still haven't hit the required benchmark..... 

Endymion said:

think ASD explains things better than me being 'broken', 'inherently bad', or 'just not trying hard enough'.

Very true Endymion and also 'imposter syndrome' is an apt way to explain to others how you identify with yourself.  They key is that being in the treadmill of a largely NT world I constantly feel like an imposter and rarely feel that I "fit" or am good enough.

I am being to identify that I am not an imposter to others, but an imposter having hid my TRUE self for so long.

It is a sad fact that we seem hard wired to prove our worth by comparing ourselves to others.....society must start celebrating that everyone is unique and everyone has something to offer.... Progress cannot happen if we are all exactly alike.

Yes, part of this sounds familiar, although I'm not feeling like it right at the moment. I was expounding recently to people about recently 'imposter syndrome' in the context of doubts I'm really autistic. It's been said that anyone who is a success at anything sometimes feels they don't deserve that success and worries that people will see through them, and that's one type of imposter syndrome.

But it's pretty similar for other identities or roles. I've had something like 'am I really clinically depressed or am I just using it as an excuse for laziness?' Well, it's not just that I don't want to think of myself as lazy, I really don't want to be and don't enjoy it. I am also sometimes called on to represent autistic people, and there too I worry about saying something that is just about me, or of repeating some myth about autism, and that since I don't have certain autistic traits, I may just be some unclassifiable thing there's no diagnosis for, and someone else should be doing that job.

Maybe the way over all types of imposter syndrome is to associate with other people of the same kind and talk stuff through with a sense of humour.  If you're a chef, say, and accepting an award, you may be thinking of dishes you've never mastered and disqualify you from being a 'real' or 'worthy' chef and shortcuts other people don't know about. If you have a lot of friends who are chefs you're more likely to realise they do the same thing. Whereas if you're always competing to be top in chef magazines, you're almost bound to feel you don't deserve the award. So my conclusion is that the way to escape from it is learning, not 'unlearning', whatever that is. I also think the idea of being 'in denial' - such that you are lying to yourself - is meaningless Freudian psychobabble that has infected everyday language. Like most psychoanalytic ideas, I don't think there's much evidence for it as an explanatory phenomenon, and it's just a way for professionals to make their 'patients' feel insecure and keep power over them, an ingredient in why the business has been so successful. (It is also sometimes used entertainingly in fiction to give characters 'depth'.)  Oops, sorry, bit of a rant there.

Back to your question, which I will try to answer in my abstract, unhelpful way. I don't think the only thing you (or I) need to learn following an autism diagnosis is acceptance, although that is very important and talked about much here. You've learned the calming exercises. If you do them when you are getting overloaded, do they help? If so, do them more. I don't think you need to accept (things that you interpret as) external judgements about your behaviour. You will have things in common with non-autistic people, and that's a good thing because so much more is known about non-autistic psychology. Can you see the positives in what your expensive specialist is saying? Is it that you can become aware of the spiral of negative thoughts? Becoming aware of them, can you accept them? Can you find ways to challenge the thoughts, or divert yourself into behaviour that is more constructive? Maybe ask this professional how many times you have to practise something positive before it becomes a habit.

To be honest, I'd feel better if I were seeing someone like that in the NHS, as then one's more likely to get the treatment that actually has an evidence base. When I've gone private, I've had double impostor syndrome, because I'm paying someone for attention, and they've a continued professional stake in me attending so that I don't feel I can trust their judgement that I'm 'ill'. I'm not saying to stop seeing this specialist, just that when it comes to mental health, the NHS is still unfortunately in the grip of special interests (aforementioned psychoanalysis being one, psychopharmacology another), and it's going to take a lot of work to get it to provide autism-friendly 'therapy' and training.

I hope some of that was helpful in between the rants.

I experienced similar types of thoughts (many years ago) prior to my ASD diagnosis, but since my diagnosis I think ASD explains things better than me being 'broken', 'inherently bad', or 'just not trying hard enough'. You say that you too feel that ASD explains things more fully for you so I wouldn't start second guessing it again now. Especially as, in agreement with lostmyway, I don't think that's what your Doctor meant to imply. 

It does seem overly simplistic for him to say "you have to stop that" but if he's also offering coping strategies on how to recognise your destructive thoughts for what they are, then maybe he meant for you to try the strategies rather than believing these destructive thoughts about yourself?

Maybe he meant that destructive thoughts happen "whether you are autistic or not" rather than expressing doubt about your ASD diagnosis? That's how it sounded to me anyway but it's easier for me to say that as a third party than it would be if I were in the room with the Doctor at the time, because I too tend to overthink my conversations and interactions with people to the point of exhaustion sometimes - and THAT I believe is an ASD trait. 

I have occasionally thought, re. some of my ASD traits, 'Just TRY' or 'Just DO IT' when I've been frustrated at myself but once I've calmed down a bit I realise that 'Just' isn't that simple. If it were 'Just' a matter of trying harder then I wouldn't have been diagnosed with ASD at all. It takes a long time to work out what ASD means to each of us as individuals, I'm still at the start of that process and I think maybe you are too. I've no idea how long it takes but I do think the first step is accepting it and ourselves. I'm still trying to do that but it's certainly easier than all of those years I believed I was somehow 'broken' or 'wrong'.  

The doctor may have just meant that everyone gets stressed at times, not that you have no worse problems than an average person. In any case, you said you were diagnosed at with ASD at 13, so why worry about what this doctor said?