Lenten blog series: impostor syndrome (week 1)
I come face-to-face with self-doubt on a weekly basis. More often, it’s daily. (Ok, ok, multiple times per day.) Why should churches or other ministers think I can help them? Who am I to think I can speak to [insert complex issue here]? What do people think when they look at my rate sheet?
Impostor syndrome is feeling like a fraud, moments away from being exposed, despite having a verifiable track record. When you are your own employer, it’s easy for impostor syndrome to make itself at home in your psyche. After all, your ability to work in your field depends on constantly putting yourself out there. And in my case as a coach, I am not so much offering a thing to purchase as I am myself: my presence, experience, and gifts. That feels very tender and risky if I think too much about it.
Certainly impostor syndrome is not limited to those who run their own businesses. I felt it in congregational ministry as well. Who am I to speak on God’s behalf? What if I hear wrong? Does anything I say or do matter, or am I yelling into the void? I know from talking with coachees that many pastors wrestle with these questions and many more, despite feeling confident that they have been called to ministry and are continually being equipped by God.*
Humility is a good thing. It helps us stay in our own lanes, and it reminds us that we need God and those around us. But when humility mutates into something corrosive, it is no longer a gift of the Spirit. It becomes an obstacle to right relationship with God and God’s beloved.
That’s why I’ll be spending Lent - the season when we focus most intently on removing all that comes between us and God - on impostor syndrome. How does it manifest, and what kind of spiritual reflection can we engage in to step back from self-doubt into a humility rooted in being made in God’s image?
I invite you to join me.
*Some of these struggles are prompted by internalized structural inequities and the prejudices of others. Even so, we must learn how to maneuver through them as we seek to dismantle them.