Feel Like Imposter as a Transgender Person? Here is How to Deal With It!
Dr. Z talks about impostor syndrome—a phenomenon that's probably very relevant and familiar to many of you because it's a very common thing to experience in transgender community.
Impostor syndrome is a psychological pattern of fearing your own accomplishments. It leads to internalized self-doubt that you're going to be discovered at any moment as a fraud. It's this feeling that what you've done is not really yours, doesn't really belong to you—sense of accomplishment, sense of achievement. You're constantly sitting on the borderline, afraid somebody's going to discover you're really not that great after all.
Apart from transgender people, a lot of famous people who accomplish everything in life have experienced impostor syndrome at some point. Maya Angelou has been quoted expressing that every time she sits down to write, she's afraid somebody's gonna discover she's a fraud and has been lying all along. Brené Brown has also spoken about impostor syndrome.
It's incredibly common in trans community—Dr. Z sees it all the time, especially with people who've gone through transition and start dating. There's internal fear somebody's gonna think "I'm not woman enough, not man enough, not non-binary enough."
Watch to find out what causes impostor syndrome (society not fully inclusive, bigger part of you hasn't fully accepted trans identity) and how to break the cycle.
