Imposter Syndrome

Who or what are you still trying to save?

I am loving the systemic constellations work and what the knowing field can show us. More often than not, we have lots of younger versions of ourselves who have taken on our parents burdens in order to either belong and/or stop them from being hurt.

Even into adulthood we subconsciously still try and 'save' others and take on things which are not ours to carry to 'keep the peace'. This showed up for a client recently where she had unknowingly took on at a young age the hurt of her mother and fathers abusive trauma that they had experienced, leaving the client overwhelmed, going through the same abuse and not feeling supported herself no matter how much she asked and reached out for help.
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The field showed that she was ready to receive that information and awareness of the burdens she took on and how that impacted herself and her family. She was able to lovingly hand that back to source.
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You do not have to re-live or re-visit your traumatic experience. You CAN make a change, no matter what the story is.
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Here is a poem that was shared by one of the amazing facilitators on the constellation conference. “Imposter Syndrome” by Suzi Tucker (one of the 1st generation trainers of the family constellation work)
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Do you recognise yourself in any of this poem? What more is possible for you now?
#systemicconstellations #ancestralalchemy #healing
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"Okay, it didn’t matter how many gold stars I collected when I was 5 years old. Pleased (puffed up) and then ashamed (deflated) was already in place. Because, you see, I’d pulled one over on the one doling out the gold stars, the teacher or aunt or baby-sitter, and I would be caught at some point.

The relationship with my imposter, was well established, maybe at birth — not a syndrome, a relationship. The little one who understood belonging, who understood love, to be highly conditional. I see her clear as day, putting on a smile that doesn’t quite mask the fear in her eyes. She whispers, I will earn my belonging in order to survive. I will do it well (as defined by other) … though it is too much for me.

So, imposter syndrome? No, imposter is a part of me, the one who tried to take good care of the big ones who were frail and angry or sad, the part of me who your kept secrets even though she didn’t understand their meaning, who answered the door when the big one was drunk, or who lay perfectly still in the tiny bed not making a noise when strangers visited — or who became the smartest in the class, the best at, the most entertaining, the strongest, the truth teller and lie detector, everything, anything, except for the tiny girl simply skipping freely in the breeze of childhood, stomping through the mud, scraping her knee on the rough sidewalk of 181st street, and tearing her pretty dress.

The important ones needed tending to, and though she was unable, had no idea what she was doing, how to make up for or fill in, she did it. To survive. To keep from falling into others’ sadness, to keep from being punished, from being banished, forgotten, disappeared.

You see, the tasks came to her through the bloodstream, only rarely words, and the words were usually of guilt not of freedom. These roles were impossible, unbearable. It is not possible for the little one to hold the weight of those behind her, directly at the kitchen table, Mother, Father, Grand or Great, or in the back fields in Poland or Hungry or Indonesia, Nigeria, Turkey, Honduras, the United States. It is not possible, and still we take it on because it is there, the thick rope of belonging that we are given or pick up or are entrained by. And then we know, immediately and forever, that the promise we make, we cannot — and should not have to —fulfill. I will do it for you is not in the mirror but in the faces of others."

In this way the Imposter has deep roots, is not simply a weak part of us, but reflects a vulnerable part of the familial community for which we think we can compensate, and which we cannot abandon. We are under the impression, suffocating under the impression, that do it differently is to abandon. The Imposter forges ahead even as she stays behind.

The truth is, my Imposter from long ago has no idea that time has past, that I have grown. And, not knowing this, when life shows up at the door, a fresh image at the threshold, she comes out, my sweet reflex. She drums at my heart. It is too fast, the little one’s beat, anxiousness thrumming throughout my chest. I must tell her, It’s okay, you can rest. Sit beside me. I have room for you. Look with me: mirror, mirror on the wall, here I am after all." - Suzi Tucker (www.suzitucker.com)

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