I’ve been procrastinating on writing the 3rd in my short series about mental health. Not because I don’t want to write it, but because I’m in the middle of several other projects and I have other ideas of posts I want to write. Also, these days, with the news about Russia invading Ukraine, everything else seems trivial. However, I promised to write about Imposter Syndrome and I’m going to follow through. I decided to approach it by telling an abbreviated version of the story of my career in music.
From a very young age I loved music. We had a piano so I begged for piano lessons, and finally got to take them around age 10 (very late as these things go). My sister, Nora, already pretty accomplished at the piano, had been teaching me but eventually told our Mom that I needed a real teacher. A few years and a few terrifying piano recitals later, I gave up the piano in favour of the trombone. It turned out to be much more suited to my meagre talents. I mean, one line of music? One note at a time!?? So easy!!
Skipping ahead, I spent my first two years of university at L’Université d’Ottawa, where I played in all the ensembles available because there weren’t very many trombonists, which gave me an unrealistic idea of how busy trombonists usually are. The least interesting but most prestigious one was obviously orchestra, and little did I know that I would be playing almost exclusively in orchestras for my thirty year career. The amount of fun I had in those two years of playing every kind of music probably helped cement my idea that this was what I wanted to do. Also, people seemed to think I was okay at it.
I guess I have an innate talent for the trombone, but like everything else in life, you only get out of it what you put in. I ended up coasting for most of my life. Perhaps I could have been a great player but I settled for being simply a very good second trombone player. This lack of commitment or ambition to seriously improve probably had a lot to do with feeling that I was an imposter. Yes, I had done well at most of the auditions I had taken, but deep down I knew that I was mostly faking it, that it was luck or some sort of voodoo that was at work, and it didn’t represent my actual worth. Even my audition for the OSM has always been a bit tainted in my memory because, although I had worked hard to be ready, it was definitely not a perfect audition. I played well, but, to my mind, not well enough to win. However, the panel disagreed and they gave me the job. Of course I was happy and grateful, but for the next few years I struggled a lot with the feeling that I won the job because the panel guessed who I was (I had been playing with them for two years already) and they wanted to hire me no matter how I played. One could argue that maybe that’s just as good or better than winning it by playing the best on the day of the audition, but it still rankled. I’m not sure I’ve ever talked about this to anyone except maybe my husband and my therapist.
In the natural course of therapy, which I started a few years into my job (I would have been in my mid thirties) I ended up revealing these feelings to my therapist. Her comment was, “oh, so you feel like an imposter.” I was astonished. “How did you know? That’s exactly how I feel!” I’m not sure whether she told me at the time that this was a common syndrome with a name, but at some point I figured it out. It was a relief and an eye-opener to find out that I wasn’t alone, and that feeling like an imposter didn’t actually make me one. It took many years to get enough confidence to know that I was capable of doing the job and I deserved it. No, I wasn’t God’s gift to the trombone world, but I was a very capable player. Being the best wasn’t actually necessary.
Having Imposter Syndrome contributed to a lot of performance anxiety, which I got under better control in my later career, by meditation and other relaxation and mindfulness techniques. I found that emptying my mind of negative self-talk greatly helped matters. Any self-talk at all is a distraction, so I found a form of meditation that helped during concerts. I would focus on the music and let any thoughts I had drift away, always coming back to the music, much like focusing on your breath during most meditation. As time went by I also had a lot more experience under my belt, so I naturally gained some confidence and my nerves calmed down. It helped that I stopped taking most extra gigs or pursuing opportunities outside of the orchestra. My performance anxiety was always worse when I wasn’t in my familiar sphere.
The closer I got to retirement, the more relaxed I got about my job. I was also getting tired of it after 30 years, and I found it harder and harder to force myself to do even the minimum amount of practicing needed to keep my head above water. I didn’t want to get to the point where everyone around me was impatient for me to leave, so I decided to take my retirement at 60. A lot of people were surprised that I wanted to leave so early, but it didn’t feel early; I knew it was the right time for me.
So, Imposter Syndrome is a common issue, and it can be a result of Childhood Emotional Neglect, which I talked about in my last post. It makes sense that if your feelings haven’t been recognized or validated through childhood, that you have trouble seeing yourself clearly and have confused thoughts about your own value. Another reason could be that I fell into my music career because of my love of music, but also because of a natural talent that was not quite supported with enough practicing. Why couldn’t I be more disciplined? I’ve long suspected that it’s at least partly because I feared that if I really did “enough” work I would have to face that it would never be enough. As it was, I could always blame my lack of practicing if I messed up. It has its own twisted logic to it and it all comes around to that Imposter Syndrome.
I’ll leave it there because I doubt I’ll ever get to the bottom of my psychological processes. I hope that this post will be helpful to somebody. If you found it helpful and you enjoyed it, please think about subscribing to my blog so you don’t miss a new post.
I wish you well on your mental health journey. Please feel free to share your story in the comments below, or to write to me privately.
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