Imposter Syndrome and a Book about Healing

I feel like I have to have my shit together, in order to publish my book. I feel that in making a book about some of my trauma and healing, it's as if I have to be completely healed. What if I'm not, though? Does that make me full of shit?

No.

Healing is not something linear, nor ever complete. I think all we can ever expect is to make progress. As soon as you resolve past pains and triggers in one area, other ones will surface. Further, life is never over, you could lose your job, get into a car accident, survive a global pandemic, and end up with trauma and guilt. So the process starts all over again.

It's like I have this fear that the moment that I put this book out there, people will call me a charlatan. I know this is from a life long issue of various people blaming me for things that I never did. A wooden spoon to my skin because my cousins did something wrong, and I am guilty by association. A person doubting what I have to say because my emotions and facial expressions are slack or inappropriate due to how my brain works. A series of times where I would speak up for myself and people didn't listen or believe me. It's one of my larger traumas that still hang in the air surrounding me, the idea that I'm an imposter, no one wants to listen, no one cares what I have to say, and no one believes me.

It doesn't help that my book has such raw and emotional moments where I talk about things that happened to me, words that seem confrontational, but are not. I want to talk about the things that I went through, and where I'm at now, to inspire people to heal for themselves. Even if I'm not fully healed, and never will be. Even if they're never going to fully heal either. I want to see a world where we challenge ingrained ideas, behaviors, beliefs, and patterns, to improve and have more community and empathy. Yet I fear that people will read the book, not take that lesson, and instead feel as though this is full of hatred.

It is not.

While I have people I will no longer talk to, will no longer be around, I genuinely have no need for hatred. Anger, yes. Sorrow, yes. Disappointment, yes. In myself, and in others. But not hatred. How can I desire that someone heal and learn empathy and love, and then hate? I feel that emotion, sometimes, and then have to work through it like any other, because I don't want to hold onto grudges, judgment, and hatred anymore. Why do I want to ruminate over what someone did before? Why do I want to hate them when I have no need to, and instead can love them but with boundaries? It wastes my precious short time here, for me. This is not a judgment on what others feel, just how I feel about it.

I feel that people will read my book, and think that I hate my parents, when I do not. I am trying to heal, and heal our relationship. So far, I feel as though it is working with my mom, and that things are better every day. Maybe they won't be after this book, but if I don't tell these things, don't mention the wounds, how can I discuss how I have healed? Can you talk about what bandages do, without talking about what cuts, abrasions, and such are?

In this moment, as my book is edited, and I get ready to publish, I am learning to be ok with looking like an imposter. I'm not fully healed, and people may misunderstand what I say. They may hate the book, and me. That is something I have dealt with my entire life, being Autistic and navigating the world. It's a strange thing to know that these things that hurt will happen, that you have to weather it. That you have to find ways to cope when people judge, misunderstand, and fuck, the possibility that my book might be a problem. Maybe it's not good, maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm at fault, maybe I need an ego check. Or maybe it's great, helpful, and will be well loved.

I find myself more and more trying to learn to accept myself as I am. It's not that I want to stop changing and growing, it's that I don't need to hold myself up to perfection, or how others perceive me. I have to accept that I feel fear that I'm an imposter, a failure, a jerk, for speaking about what I've been through. And I have to accept that this is just that, a fear.

If I've learned anything in the last few years of therapy, self reflection, and my transition, is that fear does not always mean "don't do it". In fact, it often means something that you must do, in order to grow and heal.

Love y'all. 💕