I have officially decided that I will be working remotely until this semester is complete. I REALLY need the peace and minimal distractions for this last month – literally 30 more days until the last thesis class!
Last week I attempted to put together my interpretation of a literature review which was a complete fail. But that’s okay because it allowed me to ask questions and fix what needed to be fixed. Just as a FYI being a communications / broadcast journalism undergrad we never had to do a literature review, so I was pretty green prior to Dr. Nelson’s class. Since this piece is creative I had a hard time trying to connect my story to research, so I am hoping I got it right this second go round. I have below my Lit Review Part II -All comments welcome – but mostly how can I improve this, or is it good as is.
Imposter Syndrome
Sciangula, Antonella, and Marian M. Morry. “Self-Esteem and Perceived Regard: How I See Myself Affects My Relationship Satisfaction.” The Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 149, no. 2, 2009, p. 15. ProQuest Central.
“High self-esteem individuals generally feel worthwhile as human beings and respect themselves, yet they are aware of their faults. However, low self-esteem individuals feel deficient, unworthy, and inadequate as human beings and allow their perceived weakness to dominate how they feel about themselves.” (Sciangula and Morry 144-145)
Self esteem is something people will automatically associate with relationships, whether it be healthy or unhealthy. How we feel about ourselves is a true reflection on how we allow others to treat us, and the bases on what we will and won’t tolerate in a relationship. This article has allowed me to view a new perspective on the connection between how I view myself vs. what I choose to display about myself to my partner. This has me questioning myself if I have experienced being an imposter while in my romantic relationships. According to this research I should almost expect my partner to view me in an extremely optimistic way, when in fact that isn’t how I always view myself.
I dated a man for a few months, we met through mutual friends at a social event, he was in his last year in college and I had taken a break from academia. Our relationship seemed healthy and I was under the impression that he and I would become serious in the months ahead. We didn’t have many arguments, we would hang out often and we got along very well. Him and I stopped dating due to him not being honest with me about another woman he had also been dating. A few years had passed by after our separation and he was now ready to take accountability for the cause of us no longer dating. During this conversation he was able to express that he was extremely insecure about how popular he perceived me to be. He wasn’t secure enough with himself enough to be comfortable with the amount of platonic male friends I had. He also felt like my nightlife, which at the time was equal to his, was too much for him to handle. This article allowed me to understand that at that point in my life I had extremely high self esteem, assuming that my partner would treat me as such, but in actuality my partner had a lot of insecurities that withheld him from taking our relationship to the next level.
What I believe this article lacks is the scenario where you have a person who appears to have high self esteem, but really they are just covering up how they really feel about themselves, which would internally be low self esteem. As I was dating the man mentioned, there were absolutely no signs of insecurities or low self esteem, which led me to believe him and I could be equally yoked. However, years later it was expressed to me by him that he was able to hide who he truly was although he was fully aware. This makes me question how long does imposter syndrome actually last in a relationship?
I also believe that the article contradicts its own ideas. “Both high and low self-esteem individuals may be accurate or inaccurate in their beliefs about their own worth, success, or competencies and in their beliefs about how positively their partners view them.” (Sciangula and Morry 145) although throughout this article it states that negatively is associated with low self esteem and positivity is associated with high self esteem, it is also stating that these individuals may or may not be accurate about their own self worth. This leads me to believe that the authors could have just described this study as being situational, opposed to leading with putting high and low self esteemers into a box of how they actually view themselves.