Relational Therapy in California
Vanessa Setteducato, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist #119184
THF Therapy
You're not sure why it's easier to doubt yourself than it is to trust yourself. You work hard, you get positive feedback, and even some part of you knows you're awesome at what you do.
Still, anxiety lingers that someday soon you'll be "found out" as someone just pretending to be all those good things.
Your friends, loved ones, business partners, customers -- at any moment, they're going to discover you don't actually know what you're doing, and you're not who you say you are.
Feeling like an imposter is overwhelming. It makes us hypervigilant about how others perceive us, it detracts from motivation and excitement around what we are actually good at, and it runs on negative self-talk about how little we deserve our success.
Therapy for Imposter Syndrome
You deserve to stop succumbing to imposter anxiety.
As a millennial who experiences imposter anxiety, I know intimately the narratives and emotions that accompany this self-appointed condemnation. But I also know something else.
The truth is: in some way, we're all imposters. Authority is more arbitrary than that nagging voice inside you wants to admit, and you're not doing anything wrong by taking up space, claiming your expertise, and trying to find purpose and meaning in this life.
But even if you know that, your Imposter Syndrome holds you to a higher standard, and asks you too be perfect lest a mistake reveal you.
I understand.
What is Imposter Syndrome?
Imposter Syndrome often indicates the presence of a negative core belief about worth; about belonging.
I relate it to The Good Place, a TV show about the afterlife and the assumed protection of "good behavior."
In the first season, the protagonist of the show knows she's in the "good place" by some miscalculation. She's not supposed to be there, and bad things keep happening around her that prove it.
She's trying to earn her place there by changing her ways, but she fears being discovered and sent to the "bad place" where she really belongs.
With Imposter Syndrome, in our every day lives we make correlations between the bad things happening around us and what we did to cause or deserve them, and we fear that what's most important to us will be taken away if we're discovered as being in the wrong place. We try to earn our spot with good behavior but ultimately fear we'll be discovered as someone who doesn't belong.
How to Heal Imposter Syndrome
My goal is to work with you to uncover the beliefs that inform your Imposter Syndrome. Through a combination of psychodynamic therapy and CBT for Imposter Syndrome, we change your relationship with the part of you that thinks you don't belong, that you don't deserve success, or that you're not "good enough."
This work is best done with an openness to new thinking, a desire for self-compassion, and a curiosity for how we are impacted by various levels of consciousness, including what we inherit from our family, how we're socialized based on our gender, and how we unconsciously absorb messaging throughout our lives.
Ready to do the work?
Browse the FAQ for answers to your preliminary questions.
Then contact me to set up a free initial consultation call.
Get Started with Therapy
Online therapy in California from the comfort of your own home.