5 Steps to *SILENCE* Imposter Syndrome & Self Doubt

so I have a very very very very very big bones pick with every single high-powered brilliant successful woman on social media because you guys were no help like no help whatsoever in my first few months of being a doctor I feel failed every single piece of advice I found about imposter syndrome when I needed it most was a load of trash not only did it not help a single bit but I have actually come to the conclusion that the majority of advice about imposter syndrome room makes it worse makes it worse guys don't worry you

are forgiven your brains were lying to you just as much as they were lying to me but I am here methodically I'm going to break down exactly what we have been getting so wrong about impostor syndrome and my five Frameworks inclusive of stories and action points to end impostor syndrome for the entirety of womankind forever more if you're new here then my name is Fay this channel tends to focus on a lot of the mistakes that I have made in my life in order for you guys to not make those mistakes yourself so if that

all sounds like something that you would be interested in or could benefit from then the Subscribe button is down there so what is going wrong I hear you ask for all of us to have this Universal experience well the first realization I had about impostor syndrome was that it didn't start when I went to medical school when I spoke on a panel or when I started my first job as a doctor it didn't even start when I was born imposter syndrome is the result of years and years and years of evolution of our brains lying

to us with our best interests at heart to try and protect us I think a really important realization that I had when it comes to my mental health was recognizing this evolutionary bias towards negative thinking and how that affects our perception of the world and although many many many many many moons ago that was meant to protect us in today's society it can have severely negative effects a lot of the time our brain lies TOS in order to protect our ego so we don't acknowledge our short fallings we find it really difficult to take criticism

from other people or if a situation arises we find it really difficult to apologize and we get defensive all of these natural human instincts to protect our ego ultimately result in a breakdown of the trust between you between you and your brain now this is where it gets a little bit confusing and kind of contradictory because surely the issue with imposter syndrome is not rec recognizing your ability and underselling yourself not not being able to take criticism but I think what's really important to remember is that over the years and years and years and years

and years of been alive the breakdown of trust that exists between our conscious mind and our brain when we recognize how differently we experience the world in comparison to reality this could be when someone says a comment to us that brings us crashing down to earth and shatters our perception of reality for example if we think that we've done something something really really really well and then someone comes along and they aren't that impressed our perception of reality shattered or if we interpret someone's Behavior as a certain thing and then it doesn't turn out to

be that thing perception of reality crashed a series of events of conversations of situations that just chip and Chip and Chip and Chip and chip away at the trust we have in ourselves like imagine that in any of your human relationships with your parents your family your friends when someone consistently lets you down and that trust is broken Time and Time and Time and Time and Time Again it becomes close to irreparable and we don't believe anything anything that that person says ever again the same happens with our brain and for me that is the

true cause of imposter syndrome not being able to trust in oura in our abilities in our perception of reality and for me that is the basis of impostor syndrome and thus when all all the advice I was getting around imposter syndrome seemed to center around positive selft talk and hyping yourself up and standing in the toilet with your hands on your hips doing the Superman pose which I I do do I I do still do that none of it got rid of the unshakable feeling that I was not where I should be that I didn't

deserve to be there and it was only a matter of time before I got caught out and told to go back to medical school now I was a bit harsh at the start of the video by saying that there was no advice actually helped this realization actually came from one of my favorite favorite favorite podcasts called do you [ __ ] mind and the podcast episode that really really really helped me get my head around this was her episode on self-awareness and I want to read out a quote from the host if you can't own

the bad you can't own the good this began my journey to actually fixing impostor syndrome with the grounding and humbling knowledge that sometimes you are just crap now I am in the prime position to fully understand the importance of this as a first year doctor I can hold my hands up give myself a pat on the back and appreciate I've done something good I've done something pretty cool by finishing medical school but I'm also at the Bottom Rung of the doctor hierarchy and I have so much to learn and not only do I have so

much to learn not being able to put my ego aside and admit when I have a lot to learn would literally end up in people receiving poorer care I've never been someone who's that great at taking criticism apologizing or honestly like pushing my ego to one side full stop and being in this position where I am now where people's lives kind of depend on me being able to push my ego to one side has forced me to learn this hugely hugely hugely important skill that too many of us neglect now before I get on to

my five principles I do have something really quickly to say about impostor syndrome and being a woman I did recently just watch a really interesting re by Sheen GB where she spoke about bicycle face which was this medical condition that doctors literally made up to stop women riding bicycles and she was comparing it to imposter syndrome as this thing that had been made up to limit women and put them in a box conversely I do also remember my mom in her mid-50s getting so so so so so anxious the night before she started her first

job in like a managerial position and watching imposter syndrome play out in someone who's been in their career for decades and decades and realizing that whether it is something that has been made up to limit women or not it's something that affects a lot of us and it still does also affect a lot of men too but there is a story I want to share about how subconsciously it could be affecting more of us a lot earlier on than we realize there was a tweet that I saw where it compared the writing on little boys

and little girls clo clothes in MNS Tesco lots of popular British High Street clothing retailers and the girls clothes had words like manifest dream always grateful very passive words whereas the boy clothes had words that were a lot more active Adventurer Explorer I think as a young girl it seen as quite unattractive to fight for what you want to work hard for what you want it's seen as aggressive and manly and and it's so much more attractive to be the Damsel in Distress and chill and everything just comes to me naturally and I have made

a video on manifestation and I'm a big manifestor but I do think that this is something that can be quite toxic in how we look at hard work as women in comparison to as men we work ridiculously hard but I do think as women we are so much more likely to try keep that hard work in the shadows and pretend like it's a god-given talent rather than hard graft and then when someone says to us well done we are so much less likely to say thank you I worked really hard and a lot more likely

to say it was only this or oh it's nothing oh well it was this person who helped me and the more that we do it around other people the more that we do it to ourselves and then suddenly you're a doctor in a hospital and people are asking you for help and you have no idea how you got there if I hadn't made such an effort to disguise my hard work for the past 25 years maybe when I got to that place where I was a doctor and I could fully recognize the amount of hard

work that it took to get there maybe my imposter intro wouldn't have been so bad so I'm nearly onto my five strategies I promise but my challenge to you is the next time that someone says well done or compliment you acknowledge his hard work that you put into something thank you is a full sentence before we get any further into the video video I really have to share the offer that you guys can get from skill shares the first 500 people to use my link will get one month free trial of skillshare if you are

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you did want to make use of the offer available to you then I will leave the link in the description finally your five steps to ending impostor syndrome forever more we are going to start with the sanren of the sww so my first week as a doctor I was apologizing for everything and I mean everything despite this being the first time that I had ever worked as a doctor and the I system that we were using I had never used ever before either I was apologizing so much that it got to the point where the

doctor that I was shadowing literally said to me you apologize for everything you need to stop apologizing I wasn't apologizing for my short fallings because no one expected me to understand the system no one expected me to be this experienced doctor who knows everything that's going on it was my first week it is completely fine to ask questions the question questions that I was asking were completely understandable questions to ask imposter syndrome often arises when we're not being honest and thinking objectively about what our strengths and our weaknesses are and what is acceptable for being

in the position that we are in so the action that I want you to take is to only ever use that sacred sacred sacred s word when you truly mean it learning how to apologize is such a skill and I think that a lot of us do apologies really bad I think at the age of 25 I'm still learning how to apologize properly and truly be able to put my ego to one side and own up to my mistakes I think we say sorry far too often for things that don't matter because they don't hurt

our ego but we struggle a lot more saying sorry for the stuff that actually needs a proper apology only say sorry when you have genuinely fallen short of what is expected of you and make it genuine next is the puffer fish fallacy on my long shifts at the hospital so these start at 8 and finish at 8 I Clark new patients in so that means that I take a history from them find out what's brought them into hospital then I write up say like a working diagnosis and initial management plan and then my consultant sees

them one to two hours later I present the case to my consultant and the consultant sees them and then the consultant may add or may take away certain things from my management plan now as a first year doctor what is expected of me as the bare minimum is to do enough for that person that they won't imminently die or if I do think that that person is at a risk of imminently dying that I get someone senior and then obviously when the consultant comes along they might add in more of the Nitty Gritty meat to

the bones to help that patient that I may not have thought thought of as someone with a lot less experience now as I have already made clear I hate criticism and I found those first few shifts very difficult actually especially in the first few weeks when the consultant would probably add a lot to my plan I blew up like a puffer fish despite knowing that many of the doctors sitting in front of me had been doctors literally since before I was born my immediate reaction was defense I'm so baffled at how my ego was managed

to convince me that I could be defensive towards some of those criticisms as someone fresh fresh out of med school but as I said I'm in this position where unless I learn how to push my ego to one side people's lives could be at stake which forced me to learn how to take criticism pretty quickly and when I did I had this realization that blowing up like a puffer fish in order to defend myself used up energy and that energy could be far far far far better spend being honest with myself taking criticism rebuilding that

trust with my brain meant that actually when the consultant didn't add anything onto my plan I was able to celebrate and trust that feeling of proudness and not have it shrouded by anxiety and imposter syndrome no one likes criticism and I'll tell you why because as soon as we admit a deficit in ourselves it forces us to change and no one likes change no one lik stepping outside their comfort zone because it's scary actually there's so much reward to be found when we step outside of our comfort zone we prove ourselves wrong and we do

these things that actively help build our self-esteem not only will you be able to push yourself even further but you will also bypass the anxiety that you normally experience when you reach your destination so the action I want you to take away from this point is the moment that you start feeling yourself get defensive the moment I want you to take a step back and think of at least one learning point number three the value exchange Epiphany in my first few weeks of being a doctor I basically always felt stupid and understandably so again I

was getting used to this new job these new systems to the unspoken rules of hospitals that I just wasn't used to and I was constantly asking questions constantly feeling like I was going to other people for help after taking what I learned from the last Point thinking more objectively I actually realized that objectively speaking I was literally almost always the most stupid person in the room and that was okay but just because objectively most of the time I was the stupidest person in the room that didn't mean that I was useless or that I didn't

deserve to be where I was this is how value exchange plays such an important role in impostor syndrome all relationships involve some form of value exchange and I know that is definitely a very cynical way to view the beauty of our friendships of our family everything but it's true parents tend to have children because they want a baby and in exchange those parents are supposed to provide safety nurturing and love or our friends we hope that there is mutual support and of course our employees the value exchange is pretty straightforward for employees so thinking about

value exchange when I was feeling stupid I'm the stupidest person in the room most of the time yes I am the stupidest person in the room but also they are paying me like I'm the stupidest person in the room technically as a junior doctor I'm in a training position which means that the trust that I'm placed in is supposed to train me in exchange for me providing a degree of service now okay I came to a lot of people for a lot of questions but I also did a lot of stuff myself that that I

didn't really notice and had I not been there a lot of extra work would have fallen on the people around me I realized this the first time that I called in sick because I felt so so so guilty that I was going to be leaving the team with extra work even though for the weeks leading up to me calling in sick I'd been calling myself useless and stupid and a waste of space and I wasn't contributing anything so how did that make sense that on the day that I had to call in sick I suddenly

felt guilty and like I would be letting the rest of my team down the bottom line is just because you have areas that you want to grow in it doesn't mean that you're no use at all so the action I think is really really really important to take to tackle imposter syndrome in regards to this is always always always if you start to feel like you don't belong you don't deserve understand the value exchange taking place in that situation mainly this relates to professional situations if you don't feel deserving of being in a job recognize

that as a junior you probably will be getting paid paid less strategy number four the road rage reminder so early on in my first few weeks as a doctor I noticed that I would read other doctor notes and I would be silently judging them like if their notes were really really really crappy and bare minimum I was like which by the way a couple of weeks since my career I really really really had no business doing that I was silently judging and then we got this new system in our hospital and the hospital was chaos

everyone was getting used to this new system there was constantly patients to be seen everyone was constantly busy fighting fires it was a hectic few days and during those few days I know for a fact that most of my notes were bare minimum the road rage reminder is all about showing patience and Grace with everyone not just to be a nice person but because we recognize it could just have easily been Us in that position road rage is a perfect example because so many of us are so quick to beep use profanities or even give

a little middle finger to someone for doing something that we ourselves have done I think we've also all experien maybe a friend coming to us to talk to us about another friend and them having a little [ __ ] about something that they do and think to ourselves for a second hey you do that as well and to be honest I am pretty sure that I've done that to friends so many of our concerns around imposter syndrome stem from us worrying about what other people are thinking about us whether they think that we're not capable

or whether they think that we deserve to be where we are simply by being less judgmental of other people we will train our brain to be less judgmental of ourselves so the action from this point is whenever when ever you feel critical of someone else I want you to ask yourself and answer honestly have I ever done the same thing strategy number five memory hooks so every time someone calls me a doctor I feel like a complete fraud I feel like I have blinked and I have gone from the girl sat at home in Wales

on her Gap year getting rejective from medic schal left right and Center to now people coming up to me referring to me as doctor and asking me questions and expecting me to know the answer and I have almost like no recollection of what on Earth has happened in between those two points in time so what I have started doing and it has actually helped a lot taking my mind back to a very specific feeling that I would feel year after year after year in exam season and that is the feeling of I reckon maybe two

or one week before my exams in medical school that I'd sit every year I would be sat at my laptop and I'd have the same feeling without fail every single year I'd be looking at at the screen and I would be thinking to myself why why why are you putting yourself through this it's so easy to forget how hard we've worked but in that moment when I'd be sitting answering question after question after question for hours and hours and hours and hours on end trying to get my head around renal physiology for the seventh time

my brain could have felt like it would spontaneously comers at any point so in those moments where I I feel like a fraud I feel undeserving I feel impostor syndrome I close my eyes and I take myself back to that moment to remind myself of all the hard work that I have put in the years of exams that I went through the years of education The Blood Sweat and Tears and unlearn the female instinct to suppress our memories and our acknowledgement of how hard we've worked I may be a first year doctor but I passed

all my exams and by definition of the General Medical Council of the United Kingdom I am a practicing medical practitioner so the action that I want you to take is to visualize a point in your life where you were fighting tooth and nail for what you wanted to remind yourself that whatever you've achieved you didn't just pluck it out of thin air oh no no no no no you grafted for what you got I want you to close your eyes I want you to smell the smells I want you to Envision where you were what

it smelt like how it felt who was there what drink you had by you all the tiny tiny tiny little details that create this vivid memory hook for you to cling on to every single time you feel like an impostor again I think this may have been my favorite video that I have ever filmed ever please let me know which one of the strategies you found most useful and if you use them please come back and let me know how you got on I'll leave a vlog here if you want to see a little bit

more of my life and I'll leave a video here all about my habit systems that you might also find interesting I hope you have a wonderful wonderful wonderful week and I will see you in the next video m