Does anyone else feel a degree of imposter syndrome with work, like it’s only matter of time until you can’t work around your ADHD enough to avoid problems and everything falls apart?
I’m currently provisionally diagnosed with ADHD, pending further testing. I managed to get a degree and was working for a few years when someone recommended I get tested where I proceeded to finally pass this one test with flying colors…
My experience with work is that in the beginning, my attitude and enthusiasm to learn tends to give my bosses the impression that I have so much potential.
Then, cue the slow car crash that is me failing to meet that potential, then the cracks starting to show due to disorganisstion or task paralysis in my work, eventually putting me in a position where my competency is questioned and I’m falling behind on work because I’m struggling to meet (imo) great expectations that might seem realistic to neurotypical people, but is a struggle for me.
Then I jump ship to a new job, and the cycle restarts.
I thought I had a handle on my latest job. Stayed for just over a year. I thought this was it, I wasn’t an imposter, I was finally fitting in. Then cracks, and everything fell apart and I’m now at risk of losing my job again. I tried my best, and I just feel disappointed in myself, like even I can’t trust myself to do things right even at max effort.
This sucks.
Every single day I think “today they’ll finally realize what a hack I am” and that it’s just a matter of time before an astute boss finally recogizes that I’m wasting the company’s time and money.
Been there for 9 years now, but the feeling never, ever goes away. I doubt it’s impostor syndrome . I’m pretty sure it’s good ol’ incompetence in my case.
Yeah, I feel weird about “imposter syndrome” cause sometimes I know I’m genuinely doing a bad job, forgetting important things, or fucking soemthing up and causing me / others a bunch of stress. But I’m also aware that there are somethings I do well, that not everyone else does, but because they’re easy for me I don’t value them as much as the things I wanted to do right but screwed up anyway.
Something that sometimes helps, and sometimes just disturbs me, is that I think about all my colleagues who are (mostly) “neurotypical” and how often they make stupid mistakes and fuck ups because they are old and computer illiterate, busy with other commitments, slow, or just apathetic. When I spend four hours getting angry at myself until I can manage to finally spend 5 minutes to send an important but straightforward email… Well, it’s obvious that I’m useless / terrible. But what the hell are all these other supposedly competent people doing? Because often they’re as behind with things as I am. Or doing shit job of a presentation because they can’t be bothered rather than because they only have twenty minutes left before the big meeting.