On Feeling Like a Fraud, Episode 37
Here's episode 37 of 'Turning Towards Life', a weekly, live 30 minute deep dive into the bigger questions of human life, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of thirdspace coaching.
This week 'On Feeling a Fraud', an experience common to most of us but which we keep hidden for fear of being found out. But what if being 'found out' is a path to discovering our own capacity and entering into the kind of life-giving relationships we long for?
On Feeling Like a Fraud
The feeling that I will be found out one day. That someone will come and lift the facade and see me for all my faults and inadequacy. That the powers that Be will expose me, exile me, shame me. That finally and once and for all I will be outed for all the things I don’t know, all the ways I’ve been half baked. All the ways I have made it look like everything’s ok when I am really like a duck on the water, (looking like water does indeed run off a ducks back), and my little legs are going wild beneath the surface of the water trying to stay afloat and keep this whole thing going.
My little legs are going ten to the dozen because
I have to go this fast just to keep up
If I don’t keep momentum then I will fall behind
If I don’t paddle hard I will be seen for what’s really going on inside
If I let up I will be cast out for my uselessness
If I stop and be real and admit it’s hard, I will be outed as the shameful creature I really am.
This duck, like any other duck.
Who feels incapable, ineffective, confused, sad, grief filled, flawed, lacking in confidence. Who is doing their best to be loved, to be good, to be successful, to be worthy and to be noticed.If anyone could see the flapping, the freak outs, the procrastination, the laziness, the incompleteness, the disorganised, the short cuts, the mistakes, the arguments, the lack of knowledge, just how much I’m winging it.
I would surely be cast out. The worst of human shame. To be lost and exposed and raw in the surety of being faced with my own brokenness - fully acknowledged by the world and the people who are powerful and important to me.And yet.In the sharing of my inadequacy, I gently find out that I am not alone. And it turns out that all these feelings, all this fear is a universal thing. It’s not actually mine. It’s a general consequence of humanness. And we all had parents and cultures and education systems that used shame as their main source of power. Because they didn’t have anything else at their finger tips when faced with the human in front of them.
So each time we share, each time we open and each time we join one another and undo the shame by seeing each other and accept the unacceptable. We heal and we grow in confidence that we are good, we are worthy, we are loved. We are vulnerable and that’s how it should be. Unfinished, messy, lovable, doing the very best we can. And doing that alongside our fellow humans in connection, in warmth, in kindness.
And together we journey. All flawed, all broken, all holding one another in the great web of life that is human community.