Welcome to The Impostor Syndrome Files! We’re doing something a little different in this episode of the Impostor Syndrome Files. This week, I share my never-before-released story of how impostor syndrome derailed my lifelong dream of becoming a clinical psychologist and how, in hindsight, that became the greatest blessing of my life, leading me to the work I do today. I also share insights to help you re-frame times when self-doubt may have held you back from pursuing your dreams.
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Transcript:
Kim Meninger
Hello, and welcome to the Impostor Syndrome Files. Thank you so much for being here. It has been such a pleasure to lead conversations with so many talented, so many smart and capable people who have all been courageous enough and vulnerable enough to share their stories with me over the past couple of years, I could not be more grateful. And as many of you know, my personal mission is to de-stigmatize this conversation around impostor syndrome to make it safe to talk about so that we can get access to the resources and support that can help us to better navigate this pretty universal experience. There are far more of us who struggled with this than not. So it’s really important that we understand that we are not alone.
This week, I want to do something a little bit different. I want to take some time to tell you my story. Now, you may have heard snippets of this in conversations that I’ve had with various guests who have appeared on the show. But I wanted to take a moment to tell you a little bit more about how I got here and how I manage impostor syndrome.
I grew up wanting to be a clinical psychologist. That was all I ever thought about. I knew that I loved psychology. And I knew that I wanted to help people. And so I went to college, and I overloaded on-site courses. And I was really thinking very, I would say systematically about how to prepare for a clinical psychology Ph. D program.
I had had it drilled into me from the very beginning, that clinical psychology programs were very competitive, more competitive than medical school, the number of slots available was very small, that you had to have really great GRE is that you had to have really great research experience, you had to have papers published that, you know, you had, you had to have all this huge track record of success before you even applied to the Ph. D program in order to get accepted.
And I remember thinking of how daunting that was, you know, I can, I can still picture being in one of my classes in my undergraduate days listening to them talk about this and thinking, Oh, my god, how am I ever going to do this? So I knew that I wasn’t going to study for the standardized tests. While I was still in college, I thought I don’t have time for that. I want to make sure that I get the best grades possible. I’m going to finish my academic career into my undergraduate term. And then I’m going to spend a couple of years really focusing on building out my resume, so to speak.
So I studied so hard for the GRE. So I took the psychology one and I took the general GRE. I studied so hard for the psychology GRE I can remember going to used bookstores, and buying just tons of paperbacks, tons of old books that were on, you know, psychological theories, everything you can imagine I would read constantly, I took practice tests. I did everything I could to prepare for that test. And when I took the test, I’ll never forget, I remember I called this was before you could check online. This is before you could, you could see your scores instantly. And I call this the number where they would tell you what your score was. And they told me I had scored in the 98th percentile on the psychology GRE and I almost dropped the phone. I couldn’t believe it. I was so excited. I thought oh my gosh, this is amazing. All of my hard work has paid off. I’m celebrating it was great.
I went on to take the regular GRE. And I scored very high on those as well. At the same time, I was working I was I spent the first year doing clinical experience. So I was working in a residential facility for people with very severe mental illness. And that was a really good opportunity for me to get a clinical perspective. You know, it was very hard work. It was in that working holidays. It meant working evenings. It was incredibly underpaid. It was very emotionally and mentally draining. You know, but it gave me some really good experience.
And then I spent a year doing some research experience with a psychiatrist out of Harvard. And I was working with him on a project. And, you know, I was just learning how everything worked. And then I reached the one-year point after that. And I thought, okay, now’s the time, I did what I set out to do, right, I got this experience. And I’ve got my scores ready to go, I need to apply. I’m gonna start applying to Ph.D. programs. And I froze. And I couldn’t do it.
And for years now, I have been telling the general public every time I go, do a presentation, every time I talk about impostor syndrome, I tell this part of the story, as though I just made this very practical decision to pivot, because I was not positioned to commit to a five year Ph.D. program, that, you know, I was just not in the right place, and decided to go into the high tech industry, as well. It was only recently, when I’ve really started to get honest with myself, that I realized, you know, what, the reason I didn’t apply to grad school is because of impostor syndrome. I didn’t think I was good enough. I, like I said, had worked so hard. I had an excellent GPA. I had excellent test scores, I had a great experience. But because I had been told for so long, that you had to, you know, jump through so many hoops to get into these programs. I convinced myself that I couldn’t compete. And I walked away from my dream.
And I joined a tech company joined in Corporate America, which I never thought I would join. I didn’t have any business background whatsoever. I never took a business class, because like I said, at any opportunity, I had to take an elective, it was a psych course. And as I’ve mentioned before, I was really pleasantly surprised when I got into the workplace that my psychology background served me well, you know, I started to realize that understanding psychology was beneficial in a lot of different settings. You didn’t have to be a psychologist in order to leverage those skills.
And I can remember, to this day, the GRE is, for those of you have taken them, you know this, they expire after five years. And I’ll never forget the five-year mark when my psychology GRE expired and thinking there’s no turning back now. Because I could never replicate those results. It had been too long. You know, obviously, I when I got that really high score, I was right out of college, everything was top of mind for me, I was doing all this studying, there was no way I was going to do that, again. There’s no way I was going to go through that studying process. And you know, if you don’t use something for a while you forget.
So it was a really, really big moment for me in my life. And I remember thinking, okay, well, you made the decision. It’s over. And of course, I went on and I continued in my high tech career, and I went to get an MBA, I went back to grad school just for something different. And I studied leadership. And that to me, brought me back to my psychology roots. It helped me to think about what motivates people what makes a good leader. You know, how do you motivate other people, and it just really reenergized me in this powerful way. But I also felt like I couldn’t use those skills where I was, it wasn’t in an organization where I had the kind of influence that could change how leaders were selected, how they were developed. I wasn’t in HR, I had no I never worked in HR, I was always in the business side, I was always on the sales and marketing side of the house. And getting to HR seemed impossible. It seemed impossible to cross over from the business side to HR without starting over. And I certainly didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to take a pay cut and didn’t want to go backwards. And so, you know, I, I became a manager. I used my skills as a manager. I did the best I could to support my team to be the change that I wanted to see. I’m incredibly proud of the work I did as a manager. I had amazing, amazing people on my team, they were, the vast majority of them were right out of college, they weren’t sure what they wanted to do, they joined a sales program thinking it was going to give them good experience, it’s going to give them a foot in the door to a great company.
But a number of them realized pretty quickly, that’s not what they wanted to do. They weren’t cut out for sales, they had other aspirations. But they didn’t really know what that was because they’d never been in the workplace before. They didn’t know what they didn’t know. And so I took them under my wing, my wings, and I asked them lots of questions, I got to know them, I tried to understand what they enjoy doing. And I tried to give them activities and tasks that best aligned with their strengths. And so many of them, all of them have been extremely successful in their careers ever since they’ve moved on, they’ve moved up there, you know, way further ahead now than I ever made it when I was in the corporate world.
I left, I left my career after about 11 years. But that’s what came naturally to me, not the work itself. And so I’ve been coaching now for over 10 years. And I get to be the resource to others that I wanted and didn’t have when I was in my own corporate career. And I feel like I’ve come full circle, I use my psychology background, I’m not a therapist, obviously. So I don’t behave as one of my business. But my understanding of people and human behavior has been instrumental in my experience as a coach.
And I get to work with extraordinary people, people who are capable of amazing things and help them to get past the obstacles that stand in their way. And I feel so blessed to be able to do that. I feel like this is what I was meant to do. And had I gone into a Ph. D program, can I become a clinical psychologist, I would have taken a very different path, I would have been working with a very different population of people. And I’m not sure that I have the, the makeup to be able to deal with the stress, with the sadness and the frustration that comes with working in that system. But I feel energized every day by the work that I do as a coach.
And so when I look back on that story, and I now openly and honestly acknowledge, for virtually the first time, that my career path changed as a result of impostor syndrome. And not that, you know, I wasn’t ready to go to grad school. I see it as a gift.
I didn’t know what I didn’t know back then. But I ended up exactly where I was meant to be. And it took a long time for me to get here. I went through therapy to manage my anxiety and a lot of the other challenges that I had faced as a result of my upbringing. Like I said, I had a lot of experience in the workplace. And I could not be in a better role. This role was tailor-made for me. And so I tell you this because I want you to know that if you struggle with impostor syndrome, that if you have made decisions not to pursue certain paths, to hold yourself back from a dream or a goal, that it’s okay. That it’s not the end of the world that you can get to where you’re meant to be, that with some self-awareness, some self-reflection, you know, some, some courage, you can get to exactly where you’re meant to be to. And so please don’t despair. As I said, impostor syndrome strikes more of us than not. So many of us have been put in situations where we wanted to raise our hands and we didn’t, and we look back with regret. But at the end of the day, we have to trust that we made the right decision for us at that particular moment. We didn’t have the same skills, we didn’t have the same confidence. We didn’t have the same resourcefulness that we have today. There’s always a new opportunity to make a different choice to show up differently.
So please hear my story as inspiration to you to do what you’re meant to do. And if I can help you get there, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I would love to partner with you on this. Thank you so much for listening. I hope this helps. And I am so thankful to you for your support.
The post My Story appeared first on Your Career Success.
