It's not fucking imposter syndrome, you just worked with assholes.

Work trauma is a thing and it sucks.

Some of you know I’ve been researching imposter syndrome and writing a book on the thing.

Which is fucking hilarious because I have so much imposter syndrome about writing a book about imposter syndrome. But I digress.

Here’s the thing that finally hit me harder than a wall of Axe body spray at Lollapalooza:

Imposter syndrome is really just career trauma in disguise.

Some articles have touched on similar themes here and there but one thing is really fucking clear when we kick over rocks and start asking why people doubt their abilities or wonder what the fuck they’re doing at the tables where they’re sitting: we are taught to feel like frauds.

Sometimes that’s fucked up childhood shit, like the way we run the rat race of stupid fucking academic achievement based on arbitrarily generic systems of learning. Or our parents being absolute garbage. Abuse. Trauma. We start second-guessing our worth and our capability sometimes at disturbingly fucking early times.

But since imposter syndrome tends to show it’s ugly face most once we enter into some kind of professional work (or sometimes the cesspool of high-level academia preparing for that professional work), I blame a lot of this shit on the way the work world chews us up and spits us the fuck out sometimes.

We don’t just invent random feelings of “who the fuck do I think I am?”, that comes from somewhere. So while imposter syndrome is a legit thing—as in yes, there are fucking studies and research and stuff—it is a symptom and not the cause of our feelings of inadequacy even while Chad gets fucking promoted despite his utter inability to communicate, complete a task competently without making other fucking humans do the work he was supposed to do, or treat people with a basic shred of fucking respect (see also imposter syndrome’s dickhead cousin, the Dunning-Kruger effect).

In short, we doubt ourselves when we are denied:

• Access

• Opportunity

• Empathy

• Honesty and clarity in expectations

• Belonging

• The safety to fucking feel things and say them out loud at work

• The ability to put work down for ten fucking minutes

• Grace in failure

• …and more shit that would make this post too fucking long.

My imposter syndrome started with lacking a degree and having so many fucking clownpunchers try to tell me that was why I wasn’t qualified to do jobs that were in no fucking way related to my music education and performance studies. Then we served up a side dish of insecure bosses who were so fucking threatened by me or micromanaging twats or some combination of the above that they kicked me down at every opportunity, verbally abused me, demeaned me, threw chairs across offices…GOOD TIMES.

Then there’s rampant sexism and harassment especially in my personal Disneyland of fucktacular assholery in the tech world, a fucking dumpster fire of an entrepreneurial venture that ruined me financially (yes, financial trauma is a thing also), a couple of layoffs including having to fucking sue one former shitgibbon of an employer to get my contractual severance…yeah.

How the fuck is anyone supposed to keep their self-worth and confidence in tact after the professional world seems to be full of reasons to set it the fuck on fire?

So I have some THOUGHTS on all of this because I’ve spent the better part of the last decade putting the shattered fucking pieces of my professional psyche back together and I’m going to fucking write about it. I’m not a psychologist or some happy fucking Harvard professor with a book deal. I’m just a random woman who’s seen the other side of some shit and I’m going to put what I know and have learned in a book and maybe some fucking people will read it and be able to dismantle some of their own shit. I’d like to include coupons for therapy too, but I haven’t found a sponsor for that one yet.

Anyway.

If you’re out there feeling like the professional world has run roughshod over you with a pair of stiletto heels studded with razor blades then dragged you through some minefields of broken glass and sewage…you’re not alone.

And yes you are fucking worthy and yes you are fucking capable and no you are not fucking faking it and we’re going to untangle some of this shit together. You better fucking buy this book.

Okay? Okay. That’s my revelation for the week. Fuck you or you’re welcome, I guess.

Fuck Yes Friday

I gotta be honest, kids. I don’t think I fucking have one this week.

I wish I did. There’s probably some hilarious meme or some charity or some shit that’s happy funball-esque this week but I can’t fucking find it.

The West Coast is on fire, the East Coast and the South are underwater, Texas is making The Handmaid’s Tale a reality and the Supreme Court is a shambles, people are eating larvacidal livestock dewormer to try and prevent a fucking virus but still won’t wear masks or get safe, effective vaccines that are a gift from the fucking science world, the Taliban is having a reunion tour AND fucking Twitter is making “super follows” a thing so all of the insufferable dickbags can now start charging people to read their hot trash takes and you know people are going to fucking do it. The idea that Gary Fucking Vee is going to make another pile of money for lobbing his weaksauce mental bro thought grenades into the universe makes me want to fucking punch things.

So if you’ve got something good, share it in the comments. Show us your pets or your vacation photos or your good news or you fabulous outfit or your fucking boobs for all I care (well, maybe not that because Substack might object to the boobage). At least that Jeopardy asshole got fired.

But give us something—fucking anything—that does not make me want to put my head in the oven this week and I’ll love you forever. Yes, that’s a fucking threat of violence. Sorry not sorry.

Until next week, fuckers.

With love and angst,

Amber