Today I’d like to answer this question: does emotional abuse or being in an emotionally abusive relationship lead to imposter syndrome?

Imposter syndrome is this feeling where you feel so inadequate, you doubt yourself so much. Even when you have huge accomplishments, you might be ambitious, you might be highly competent in your career. Let’s say if you are a doctor, an engineer, or an IT expert, you might be very competent in your career. Like all the logical evidence points, you are someone who’s really standing out.

You might have gotten A’s and all those things, but on a deeper level, you feel like a fraud. You feel like people are going to expose you. You feel like you don’t deserve the success. You feel like you’re just faking it or you’re just an imposter as the name says. You feel that you’re not fit for that role. Yes, you might have done this role for 10 to 20 years, but you just feel like you’re not cut out for it. That’s where emotional abuse comes in. You may be making great strides or steps in your career, even receiving praise and earning promotions but on a deeper you still feel like you’re not supposed to be there or you’re a fake. Which of course doesn’t make sense. Right?

This can lead you to feel anxious, stressed, and even try to look for more challenges, which will never work. How does emotional abuse lead to this?

Actually, when you are in an emotionally abusive relationship, one common thing is you’ll always be called out for not being good enough. And these emotionally abusive relationships can be with your family or your dysfunctional family where you are being compared to your older kid, or you’re being scolded for not getting A’s or even when you do get A’s, you are being praised, but when you don’t get any A’s, you are scolded. So when you’ve really ingrained this belief that the only way to receive acceptance and approval is to be the best, of course, you’ll never really get to those heights.

You’ll really want more and more, thinking that by doing more and more, you will get recognized, which never really happens. That’s why in your career, you may really feel like an imposter.

Not because you are performing poorly in your career, but because on a deeper level, you’ve developed toxic patterns or a negative belief system that you’re not good enough or you’ll never amount to being good enough in whichever space you’re in.

It’s because you’ve internalized those voices of your parents, those voices of your abusive partners. When you internalize these voices, they form your belief system. And the common belief system is “you feel like you’ll never be good enough or you’ll never be adequate”. Everything you do will always feel like you’re an imposter because on a deeper level you don’t really believe it.

That’s why Imposter syndrome is dealt with by going inwards and working on the root causes which make you feel that you’ll never feel or you’ll never be good enough in life. You’ll never be good enough in relationships. You’ll never be deserving of good things in your relationships or in life in general without working on these things. Even if you are the best, logically speaking, you might be top of your class, top of your workplace performance, but still, as long as you don’t believe it on a deeper level, it means that this problem is lodged in your subconscious mind.

Or this problem is more like you believing it. It’s a belief kind of problem. It’s not an action kind of problem. That’s why the only way is to work on processing or understanding the root cause of the problem. Once you understand the root cause of the problem, you are able to release what’s holding you back to that root cause. It’s more like building new associations or new thought patterns with regard to what happened in the past or coming to terms with what happened in the past and realizing that what people say doesn’t matter if it’s your parents or your friends. It’s not a reflection of who you are.

You think it’s a reflection of who you are because that’s how you’ve been conditioned, that’s how you’ve been wired since you were a child. So you are not an imposter, you just need to work on those deep, negative beliefs about yourself.

Note from the Author

If you’re ready and you’d like my help with healing, finding peace in life and breaking free from these toxic patterns, then you can book a FREE BREAKTHROUGH CALL with me HERE. Happy healing 💙💙. Feel free to share and comment! Use this information with caution, it comes from my own thoughts & bias, experiences and research😊.