How do I stop suffering from insecurity & Imposter Syndrome?
A friend recently called me to bemoan her feelings of insecurity: The voice of her very own personal Imposter Syndrome. “Am I good enough? Who am I to say I can help others? What do I know that’s any different? How much ego is involved in my work?” The voice that undermines her efforts even as you tell yourself how important it is to step forward into vulnerability to level up.
Together, my friend and I took a closer look.
It turns out that when we put the energy of her Imposter Syndrome “on the couch” for some good old-fashioned Couch Talk, all it was really feeling was the frustration of not having reached its goal yet of working in an office outside the home where she’d be free to spread out, grow her business, and reach more souls in need of healing. This was no imposter! This energy was not one of fear and lack of self-esteem, but of my friend’s Future Self reminding her of her strength, power, and readiness masquerading as the energy of “not good enough.”
Imposter Syndrome or Energetic Imposters?
Misinterpreting energy is one of the most common traits of being human. In other words, what looks like a duck and quacks like a duck is often not a duck at all, even if it has practiced and loudly proclaims that quack to convincing perfection. It’s a case of what we don’t know can keep us stuck—stuck in a place where we keep using the same words to describe the conditions in which we find ourselves, even though they aren’t helping to guide us out of the muck.
When I talk about “down-to-earth” spirituality as the foundation for a Celestial Life, I’m making a statement about what I feel is the importance of being able to apply new ways of thinking to old beliefs and new ways of being and feeling to old ways of navigating through the world. This includes using words differently to describe what happens as energetic experiences rather than ones that use the tried-and-true labels we’re used to.
It’s an approach that opens the door for a different kind of self-exploration, one that asks you to hit the pause button and refresh each page of your life. Recently I joined a guided meditation that focused on the way waves of the ocean ebb and flow. We were asked to be the wave and focus our attention on the pause that occurs at the moment the wave shifts direction…in essence, to feel the pause, be the pause, and reside in the pause.
It’s the space between the physical in- and the physical out-breath; the space where your mind takes a breath that frees it to expand through thoughtless awareness.
By the end of that mediation, all I wanted to do was live in that pause, in that deeply peaceful nothingness.
Hitting the Pause Button
“Hitting the pause button” invites us to open to new sensations, which invites us to see the world through different eyes and consider new ways to express and describe that world. While calling something good or bad—passing judgment on it—can be expedient, once we choose to experience our experiences energetically, we no longer feel the need to label them as good or bad.
Our experiences are only as good as the descriptors we give them. If I say that someone annoyed me at the market, in one fell swoop I have named, qualified, and designated an emotional response to that experience. The very use of the word “annoyed” takes me to a place that assures my reaction, which can be anything from minor frustration to a major triggering.
Returning for a moment the discussion I had with my friend about how, as healers, we are collectively experiencing similar energies, let’s see how we can apply such an approach for a potentially different outcome.
While it’s perfectly natural to look for reasons that we feel a certain way, attributing emotions to occurrences in our external world can be dangerous because it leads us around by an emotional leash without a way to disengage. Can a dog remove its own leash? We are like that dog, tied forever by our emotional necks, waiting for someone or something to come along and remove the ties that bind us.
We say we want to be in control of our lives, but really all we really want is to find reasons for feeling the way we feel. Finding reasons ultimately translates into rationalizing, which ultimately translates into victimization. Find enough reasons to feel the way you feel and it’s easy to stay exactly where you are.
Are our emotions valid, valuable, and important to self-awareness, growth, and introspection? Of course they are! Yet emotions are only the tip of the iceberg. And it’s the energy of what lies under the surface that matters the most.
So, the next time you find yourself reacting, perhaps that’s the time to take a step back into a nice long pause…and then forward into the present to unveil the true nature of the energetic components of your experience. You never know what’s going to happen when you do!
And remember, you’re an HSP and you have the inner wisdom to thrive!