I strongly recommend you aim to decouple your self-worth from your productivity and impact — to internalise that you have intrinsic worth no matter how productive you are or how much impact you have.
I was lucky to have a therapist who was able to help me internalise this, and I think it has been incredibly valuable in helping me break some of my negative thought patterns and self-deprecating tendencies.
Would love to hear about what worked for you! I think I feel that particular point much more strongly than the rest of imposter syndrome (e.g., I don’t notice myself avoiding jobs that seem too important) but I don’t feel like I’ve made that much progress in ~2 years of therapy.
edit: updated towards ‘maybe I do actually have imposter syndrome alongside general low-self-esteem’ after I took the screening tool & realized that I do have a bottleneck around ” putting your work out there”
I note down certain lines my therapist tells after a session. I look over them from time to time. One that’s stuck with me is “You don’t need everything to fall in place for you to be okay. You don’t need everything to fall in place for you to love yourself.” These act as good reminders for me when things aren’t going so well in my life.
But other than that, I’ve found reading things like what Luisa has put out to be very useful. For example, someone sent me this essay by a law professor that was super valuable to read.
I’ve also found self-hypnosis and meditation helpful but I think these can have varying degrees of usefulness for people.
Agreed, and I was going to single out that quote for the same reason.
I think that sentence is really the crux of imposter syndrome. I think it’s also, unfortunately, somewhat uniquely triggered by how EA philosophy is a maximising philosophy, which necessitates comparisons between people or ‘talent’ as well as cause areas.
As well as individual actions, I think it’s good for us to think more about community actions around this as any intervention targeting the individual but not changing environment rarely makes the dent needed.
Thanks for writing this! Especially this part:
I was lucky to have a therapist who was able to help me internalise this, and I think it has been incredibly valuable in helping me break some of my negative thought patterns and self-deprecating tendencies.
Would love to hear about what worked for you! I think I feel that particular point much more strongly than the rest of imposter syndrome (e.g., I don’t notice myself avoiding jobs that seem too important) but I don’t feel like I’ve made that much progress in ~2 years of therapy.
edit: updated towards ‘maybe I do actually have imposter syndrome alongside general low-self-esteem’ after I took the screening tool & realized that I do have a bottleneck around ” putting your work out there”
I note down certain lines my therapist tells after a session. I look over them from time to time. One that’s stuck with me is “You don’t need everything to fall in place for you to be okay. You don’t need everything to fall in place for you to love yourself.” These act as good reminders for me when things aren’t going so well in my life.
But other than that, I’ve found reading things like what Luisa has put out to be very useful. For example, someone sent me this essay by a law professor that was super valuable to read.
I’ve also found self-hypnosis and meditation helpful but I think these can have varying degrees of usefulness for people.
Agreed, and I was going to single out that quote for the same reason.
I think that sentence is really the crux of imposter syndrome. I think it’s also, unfortunately, somewhat uniquely triggered by how EA philosophy is a maximising philosophy, which necessitates comparisons between people or ‘talent’ as well as cause areas.
As well as individual actions, I think it’s good for us to think more about community actions around this as any intervention targeting the individual but not changing environment rarely makes the dent needed.