Matt Waldron

I’ve unknowingly endured imposter syndrome for most of my career. It’s only in the last few years I’ve understood this and found that other people have the same experience.

There’s a lot of really useful information about this already so I won’t rehash it. I wanted to take note of an interesting observation during the Coronavirus lock-down; the difference it has made to my social interaction.

For me, I’ve noticed intrusive thoughts associated with imposter syndrome can be externally triggered by participating in technical conversations with colleagues - which is a very common event. Even when I have value to contribute, it can result in a crippling social anxiety, inhibiting any ability to contribute. This becomes a thing to internally obsess over for a while, effectively refuelling the process.

Then the lock-down happened and overnight all work-based social interaction is being done via Meet - for us at least.

This had a few impacts on my social function.

• Firstly, I started making a more concerted effort to interact with members of the team - including people I haven’t spoken with face-to-face - this is likely because the barrier to entry is lower and not doing so would result in complete isolation. In reality, there was a level of isolation prior to the lock-down, it just wasn’t as obvious.
• Secondly, for me, conversing is apparently easier with less feedback. By this I mean, there is a substantial weight in some aspects of face-to-face interaction that results in over-analysing what I have said, rather than what others are currently saying and what I will say.

Personally, I’ve since found the same interaction with colleagues a lot easier. Even talking to people I haven’t met face-to-face is relatively easy. From this it’s fair to hypothesise that eye contact or body language are likely candidates.

The change in social capability has been noted. When the current situation returns to something resembling normality, it would be useful to focus on some of these aspects of social interaction, though that requires a level of real-time introspection I’m not particularly accustomed to.

End note - To practice and understand this better, it could be useful to have a framework and a forum where participants can actively think about what they’re saying and the impacts of how it’s being received. I’m not sure how this would work in reality, but it could offer a multitude of benefits.