Why I’m unhappy with “Imposter Syndrome”

So, I may have mentioned that this blog is likely to be a pile of contradictions – and that I might end up changing my mind, or refining ideas about things as I go along.

Well, this is one of those times …

I wrote a blog recently about how I feel that my autism diagnosis makes having confidence in my ability to do my PhD really hard (it’s here if you’d like to take a look). In the post, I mentioned how frequently the term “Imposter Syndrome” was used to describe how often people don’t feel like they ‘fit in’ in academia – that they don’t feel good enough. I tried to explain how having an autism diagnosis, with all that this involves, makes this even more tricky.

Well, my blog was picked up and retweeted by Susan Oman, who is researching wellbeing, including in relation to PhD experiences (you can check out her work here). What was particularly interesting was that in retweeting the blog link, the phrase that Susan picked up on was “I feel like an imposter, but not just that, I feel like an autistic imposter.”

And this is really how it felt to me when I wrote it – like all PhD students experience ‘imposter syndrome’ but being autistic makes this even more of a problem.

So why am I questioning this now?

Well, since I wrote the blog, I’ve been thinking about, and speaking to others about how the notion of ‘imposter syndrome’ actually works, and it occurs to me that the phrase, and what it implies, might not be helping.

What I mean by this is that I had been thinking of ‘imposter syndrome’ as something that affects individual PhD students – and that my individual experience of autism meant that my version of ‘imposter syndrome’ was different/worse/whatever than that of others. Well, the thing is that I do still think this might be the case to an extent – and I don’t think that those who aren’t autistic can understand what it’s like, or can know about it. I do still feel that, but in the past that’s made me quite protective of it, and quite “parochial” (I guess) about the specialness of autism and of autistic experiences.

I didn’t want it to be lumped together with other types of individual experience because how could others possibly know about autism? (Which was my individual experience, and the overriding cause of my ‘imposter syndrome’). So it shut off my thinking about other types of individual experience – people who experience ‘imposter syndrome’ because they are trying to do PhDs and balance childcare commitments, because they have come to academia via a ‘non traditional route’, because they are older than the ‘typical postgraduate’ – or all the other hundreds of thousands of ways that people can feel that they don’t fit in with the model of what a ‘proper PhD student’ should be.

It set me apart from them because the term locates ‘imposter syndrome’ in the individual. It sets it up as an individual ‘problem’ for the individual to overcome.

But I’m not happy with that. Because locating the issue within the individual makes it into a ‘personal’ struggle and creates some kind of hierarchy (“my experience is worse than yours because I have autism” or “your experience is worse than mine because you’re from a Working Class background”). It also has the potential to locate the cause of the trouble in individuals – individual supervisors, individual departments. And this in itself is something that makes raising these issues very problematic for those of us who actually have good relationships with supervisors or with our departments. Indeed, this concern makes it feel troubling for me writing this now, because it feels like it would be so easy to infer from my attempts to absolve myself of any individual ‘blame’ for feeling like an ‘imposter’, that I am attempting to lay the’ blame’ on other individuals. But it’s absolutely not that. I have a really great supervisor and I like the department I’m in. The issue is a far deeper cultural one than that, and I think it goes beyond individuals and is historically and culturally rooted.

So I think that this individualisation of ‘imposter syndrome’ lets the wider systems and structures that lead people to feel that they don’t have a place within academia ‘off the hook’. And really, seriously, if this phenomenon is so widespread, across so many different types of student, different institutions, different academic disciplines – then maybe, just maybe the problem is not an individual ‘syndrome’ but a structural issue. Maybe the focus for change needs to be on the concepts and practices, the systems that are creating the conditions for people to feel like outsiders in a place where they have earned the right to be.

And I don’t feel that talking about ‘imposter syndrome’ really gets us to a place where that is our focus for change.

I don’t pretend to have definitive answers for change, but I do want to be part of something that makes change happen – that makes academia a more inclusive place to be, so that those of us who are ‘non mainstream’ can make meaningful, recognised contributions in a way that does not push us to the brink of breaking, or beyond.

My reasons for this are clear and unashamedly partisan – as an autistic woman, I feel that I need academia. I need to be able to go beyond my own personal experiences and understand how the world works around me. I need to learn, and I love to teach. I also feel that I have something to contribute. I’ve worked really hard to get where I am, and so many people have helped me along the way. But being part of a community means you have a responsibility to it, and to help to shape it, and that’s what I’m trying to do from my autistic perspective.

So the one thing that I feel like I can offer at this point is the suggestion that maybe we should reconsider the language of ‘imposter syndrome’ and begin to talk about something that locates the problem outside of individuals so that we can begin to work within and change a system that actually makes the majority of us feel like ‘imposters’ at some point. Maybe we need to shift our focus much more firmly to ‘hostile spaces’ or ‘hostile cultures’ in the PhD experience and in academia more widely (of which the PhD is a formative part). Because that’s where I think change needs to happen.

 

Autism – a Diagnostic Quest (Stage 2): Gatekeepers

So, last week I began to write about my experiences of Asperger diagnosis (it’s here if you missed it.)

I wrote about how painful and frightening the world is if you don’t know who you are – how you can be caught between “normal” and “freak” and not feel like there’s any way out, until the possibility of this word comes into your life that suddenly makes sense of it all. How suddenly “autism” can switch a light on and offer possibilities for understanding and validation that you didn’t know were there before.

I wrote about the process of beginning to research the word “autism”, and how much I needed it – needed to know.

But it couldn’t stop there. For some people that is enough – they can read and study and decide that they are enough of a “fit”to be able to assume that identity for themselves, and they are quite satisfied with self-diagnosis. For me that wasn’t an option though, for two reasons – the first was quite pragmatic in that I was struggling with academic work and needed a formal diagnosis in order to access disability support. But fundamentally, I needed external confirmation. This was so, so important that it couldn’t rest on all the contradictions and subjectivities that I’d found in the literature that I’d begun to read about autism – the bits that fitted me so well they could have been written about me, but then the bits that were absolutely the very opposite of everything that I am.

So,  I began to try to access diagnosis. As was routine at the time (though I think other options are beginning to be available now), this began with a visit to the G.P for referral to a clinical psychologist.

At the time, it felt like autism was a “thing” that was fixed and measurable and could be detected by a clinician as if they were doing blood tests or x-rays. I wanted it to be that simple. I really thought they had that power – so probably, in our interactions, I gave them that power. And that’s why I ended up feeling so let down.

It took two G.P. visits to get the referral, and they were both unremittingly awful.

I don’t remember much of the first part of the first appointment – I think at that point, I was still thinking that this was going to be easy – that the G.P. would know about autism, would have read all of the stuff I had, and a whole lot more. I think I explained what I wanted, and a little of why, but to be honest, that bit is all quite hazy.

The bit that stands out – that still burns and makes me feel prickly – is when he told me that he wasn’t going to refer me, as it was highly unlikely that someone without a learning disability, someone at university, would have Asperger syndrome.

“I think they are usually learning disabled.”

The surgery was a mile away from home, and I cried for the entire walk back. I usually try really hard not to show emotion in public – especially crying, as this generally leads to questions that are hard to answer. But it was so incredibly painful to be so sure that the G.P. was wrong. I’d found many contradictions about autism, but the one thing that seemed fairly consistent was that it was entirely possible (and indeed very common) for people with Asperger syndrome to be of average or above average intelligence (whatever that means). I KNEW this – I had the knowledge and the G.P. didn’t, but I was a teenage student and he was a doctor and I was utterly powerless.

It’s probably another indication of how important this was, that I carried on. It might have been easier to put the idea back in its box and carry on trying to fit in with the “you’re normal, you’ll grow out of it” narrative. But I couldn’t stand failing at that anymore, so I carried on.

This time, I went to the university disability support service and spoke to a support worker. They were really helpful, and this meant that the next time around, I was able to access private diagnostic assessment as it was paid for by the university (Access to Learning Fund – this has been ‘replaced’ now, so I don’t know if I’d be eligible today) but still required a G.P. referral. So back to the doctor –

I remember a lot of this appointment really clearly. I was waiting in the waiting room for twenty two minutes after my scheduled appointment time, before my name was called. I’m really not great at waiting if I don’t know the exact reason for the delay – I get really fidgety (not sure if it’s panic or anger, I often can’t really tell the difference). So when I got to see the doctor, I already felt sick and like my pulse was racing – then two things happened that made things worse, and these might seem odd to those who think that autism means not being able to understand social rules in any pure sense:

Firstly, the doctor didn’t give any account for the delay – no reason and no apology. And that’s hard, because lateness is not what’s supposed to happen, and it should be accounted for.

Secondly, he didn’t make eye contact when I walked in because he was reading notes and didn’t look up. Now, I’m actually fairly “typically autistic” in finding eye contact intense, painful and violating (as if someone’s trying to touch you in a ‘private’ place), and I have all the usual strategies for looking at foreheads, interesting jewellery, noses – anything to make it look like I’m ‘doing’ eye contact while I’m not. But the thing is, when you’ve been told so many times, for as long as you’ve been able to understand, to “look at me when I’m talking to you”, it becomes an important rule – you EXPECT eye contact, even though you hate it, so when it doesn’t happen, it spoils the script and you don’t know what’s supposed to come next.

So, I was feeling quite confused and stuck when he asked “How are you today?” This felt strange because it wasn’t the type of question I was expecting – something more functional would have helped, I think – “What is the issue?”. “What can I do for you today?” etc – but “How are you?” is one of those types of question that people ask for social reasons and it doesn’t usually demand an accurate answer, so I couldn’t work out conversationally how to get from that to what I needed from him. This led to what I generally think of as a “rabbit in the headlight” moment – I couldn’t work out what to say, I felt hot, sick and my pulse was racing. I didn’t have the words, so I didn’t speak. And I hate those moments, because conversation has its own rhythm, and if you miss your turn you have to account for it, which means finding more words, when words are precisely the thing you are lacking – panic leads to lack of words which leads to more panic.

A thing worth mentioning is that people had told me before the appointment (having heard about the first disaster), that it might be a good idea to make notes to take with me, to help me get my point across. And I had notes. The trouble was, that I had thirteen pages of notes from all my careful research – so much distilled information, so many hours of work, so much of my heart in it,  but absolutely no idea of what was important and what wasn’t. And thirteen pages of notes are in some ways less useful than no notes in the context of a five minute G.P. consultation. What I would have needed was someone to make notes for me from all of the masses of stuff in my head – something I can do for others, funnily enough, but not for myself.

Anyway, this time, I already had funding for the assessment through the university, so the G.P. agreed to make the referral (felt like he was ‘rubber stamping’ it). To be honest, I’m sure there was more interaction, but I can’t remember it all. And I think it’s significant of itself, that what I’ve written is what has stayed with me – that’s the stuff that hurt so much it left a lasting impression.

An ‘Autism’ thing?

One thing that comes to mind, having written this, is that it’d be quite easy to frame many of my issues with interaction in terms of the social-communication ‘deficits’ that are said to be inherent in autism – rigidity, problems in planning and problem solving, literal receptive processing… I could easily adopt that script to give my experience the legitimacy of a clinical diagnosis, but I wonder how other people feel in doctor-patient interaction, and whether/how the need of the patient to access what is within the doctor’s gift, and the power imbalances in clinical relationships affect neurotypical people too.