What My Impostor Syndrome Feels Like

I, like many others, suffer from Impostor Syndrome – where in some facet of my life, I cannot internalize my accomplishments (for me it’s playing table top RPGs which is one of the silliest things to have panic attacks about). There is something that is always making me afraid that someone will look at me and realize that I am a huge fraud, and that I have no idea what i’m doing. Or that maybe I’m not as good as the other people at the table, or that because I’m so much worse than them, I’ll be detracting from their fun. NONE OF IT IS TRUE. But no matter how many times I play, I have this very palpable fear.

There are lots of pages dedicated to the topic, but after last week’s podcast where Nick and Jon pretty much jumped off the diving board to try and swim in my brain and figure it out, I thought I’d share what this fear actually feels like for me. (And writing this isn’t intimidating at alllllll….. ha ha hahahahahaha ha ha….)

First of all, how incredibly ridiculous that I’m terrified about playing a magical elf wizard and roll some dice? My shame about this fear is almost as bad as the panic I have leading up to a game. For years my friends ran table top games every weekend, and despite my love of playing, I didn’t jump in. These were people who had been playing together for a while now, and because I had far less experience with them and wasn’t as close of friends with them – I’d totally bring that game to a screeching halt. My brain marches right on past how I’ve known these people just as long as they’ve known each other and they would be at my house for all sorts of hangouts and I got along wonderfully with them all. Or that some of them actually had less experience than me at RPGs, just more recent experience. Didn’t matter. I stopped myself from jumping in the fun in the first place.

When the opportunity came for me to start playing with a small portion of the group, it took some monumental convincing from Jon for me to join them at the table. I only signed up because we were gaming at the office that I was working in so I’d already be there; it was a new system that no player at the table had experienced and the DM had never run before so we were all new; it was a small group of 4 total. While I took comfort that none of us knew what we were doing, I held back from asking the zillion questions I had because obviously they were dumb, everyone already knew that stuff, and I’d just be wasting their time if I asked or would look so foolish for something that HAD to be on my character sheet. Never mind that the DM asked at every turn if there were questions, or that the others at the table asked the same sort of questions that I had so we clearly we were all at the same place – my brain was having none of that understanding. But, I still had fun. I enjoyed the playing even with all my fears, so I kept doing so.

I moved into a larger group playing 13th age – where we played together for well over a year with my feeling that I was “doing RP wrong”. Again, no one at the table had played this game before, the DM was new (though very enthusiastic about it) – but I was terrified. Every. Single. Week. Two players would hatch schemes together and try elaborate stunts with their powers. One player would go so far for an extra bonus, craft a rhyming song and sing it for the whole room (and sometimes those in the hallway) to hear, much to our delight and amusement (Song Master – When you attempt to maintain a bardic song, if you describe it in a fashion that entertains the GM, or at least a couple of the players, you get a bonus of +1 to +3 to maintain the song). I on the other hand, no matter how many times I had rolled the same power, I had to triple count my bonuses, armor, stats, all to make sure my math was correct. I was terrified that I’d do something wrong in front of these people that I felt unsure of every move I made, no matter how many previous times I had made them. Again, I still had fun. I enjoyed the playing even with all my fears- so I kept doing so.

And this next part is not me calling out my friends, because this is entirely my brain getting in the way. A few days before I was to play a one shot Dungeon World campaign with some friends, two of them tweeted at me this:

.@totallyarogue just described @Meganisrad as a Woobie when she plays table top #rpgs. http://t.co/vCK67x4QIV 100% accurate 10/10 S+

— Jon Spengler (@jspengler) January 14, 2015

It’s not even bad, but to me two of my friends were talking about me playing this game that we all did together, and laughing about how I played. It felt like the wind had been knocked out of me, and I cried. (I’ll be honest, I’m crying just writing this.) It felt like every fear I ever had was validated. They weren’t saying I played it wrong, they weren’t saying that I removed their fun – they pointed out a trope, but it didn’t matter.

Three days after that, it was our Dungeon World one shot, and up to about 15 minutes before I was supposed to leave for game, I was plotting any excuse imaginable to not go. I got incredibly drunk the night before, because I was anxious about my game the next day. I put on my big girl panties and I went. I made sure to duck out while people were selecting their characters, so I wouldn’t pick something someone else wanted and then play it wrong and ruin their fun, and I made sure to play something that was ENTIRELY DIFFERENT than I had before, because obviously I was doing it wrong (per the tweet above).

And I had fun! I was still scared, I didn’t confront my friends (because I know my fears are my problem and not something I wanted to weigh them all down with), and we all thought it was a great game and fun together.

There isn’t really a point to this post – other than for my friends and others to understand what it feels like to have that sudden, crippling, and inescapable fear, about anything! I do enjoy playing tabletop RPGs with my friends. I like playing something new, and I like contributing even if I don’t sing a song at the table. I’m not doing it wrong, I’m not taking away the fun, no matter how much my brain tells me I am at the time. After discussing with Jon, he summed it up like this: “…(S)omething is blocking all that data you’ve gathered these last 2.5 years about you understanding and executing what’s needed to play games with your friends… Confidence is being undermined by something because literally every experience you’ve had with gaming you’ve done it right. LOL. I’VE BEEN THERE FOR ALL OF THEM MEGAN. 100%. THIS GUY ACTUALLY HAS THE SAME DATA.

So I end this post with the following sentiment: If you’re scared of gaming and you know your fears are invalid – don’t let it stop you. The fun is worth it. If you’re scared of something else in your life, please keep trying. I’m lucky enough that my fear is about games with friends, but I’m always happy to have made the effort to show up and push past my fears. There are ups and downs, but it has always been worth it.

I’d love to hear from anyone with similar experiences, or any suggestions!