Shame on me

The irony of researching Imposter Phenonomenon.

Today’s blog was inspired by a trailer I saw for the latest Olivia Colman film Empire of Light, in its she’s talking about the shame her father held and how this held him back from asking for help.

Shame is a super interesting emotion that can lead to the devastating and global devaluation of ourselves, which you might recognise as thoughts such as ‘I’m wrong, or I’m bad at this’, and not only is it experienced in real-time, we anticipate and fear shame, and the repercussions of shame we’ve felt in the past come back to haunt us.  

The curious thing about shame is that it likes to hang around with our self-esteem, it’s a bad friend riding on the coat tails of the upward and downward comparison against others that forms our self-esteem, unsurprisingly, the shame self-esteem combo shows up in the experiences of people who have Imposter Phenomenon.

But it also creeps up on us when we least expect it, last year I had  a sudden and painful crisis of confidence (like many students) when I came to write up my research, ironically on Imposter Phenomenon.  I’d spent hours listening to women talk about their fear of speaking up, showing up and crippling self-doubt, only to be sat in front of a blank bit of paper wondering if my words were going to do their experiences justice.

I love language and I love analysing what is being said and how, but I don’t use an expansive vocabulary when I speak, and the last few years of absorbing academic papers have made me hyper aware of it.  I have a very dear friend who sends me Whatsapp’s scattered with the most delicious sounding words , we’ve been friends for long enough that I can be honest and say, let me go and ‘google’ that!, I enjoy and get pleasure from their use of language, or the way a fancy word sounds when it rolls off the tongue. But in a very different setting, where I was going to be judged on my ability to communicate, I felt like I’d lost my own voice, and I was ashamed of my corporate background where I would proudly handover writing tasks to ‘specialist comms colleagues’, I was being confronted with this overwhelming feeling I wasn’t good enough, and that it would be exposed in my final mark.

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Somewhere along the line I had decided I wasn’t a writer or good with words, I had what the psychologist Carol Dweck would describe as a fixed mindset, and possibly because of this (and a good dose of stubbornness) I didn’t ask for help immediately.  I probably believed it was something I would always just struggle with, but with encouragement from my supervisor to read everything out loud, I found my own voice became stronger, and a writing style developed that worked for me (along with lots of help from Microsoft Words built in editor). I can proudly say that I got a great mark and the distinction I had hoped for, and the research reflected the experiences of the women I spoke to, as interpreted by me. I hope that anyone who reads it can understand it without using google.

That Olivia Colman trailer, and my own experience of shame floated around in my head for a few days until it landed side by side with the news that Rishi Sunak wanted to make maths education compulsory until the age of eighteen.

I could hear the metaphorical groans across my social media platforms, social media was alive with the stories of people who had bad maths experiences as children, those that still feel shame or panic about their maths ability if they’re put on the spot, and, those who are adamant that algebra and long division has had no bearing on their adult life, and, psychologically speaking this makes sense,  several studies show that our attitudes towards maths deteriorate as we get older, and nor is this a modern-day problem, when I ran a literature search on maths anxiety I counted at least 50 journals that were quoting a 16th century verse about maths  which goes like this, “Multiplication is vexation … and practice drives me mad”.

I’m not sure how the UK government going to fix a centuries old problem, but the psychological research into maths anxiety is helping us to understand more about our emotional responses and differences in cognitive abilities. I was surprised to hear that teachers have Maths teaching anxiety, and this can be linked to pupil performance too.

There’s no doubt that developing ability and confidence with numbers brings benefits including privilege in earning power, but perhaps it’s not all about the education we receive at school. Last year I wrote a guest blog for Raised Up about the fact that girls have fewer ‘money moment’ chats with parents than boys, and are spoken to about money in very different way, this has very real consequences around money confidence and financial management in later life.

The intriguing thing here is that some of the beliefs we hold, either about maths, money, or in my case writing are unconscious, until we are faced with a situation where we need to use that skill, or believe in ourselves, they are quietly shaping key decisions we make. I really liked one description I read that our beliefs are like mental scaffolding, something that’s designed to be a temporary structure.

I’ve popped a link in to a BBC sounds interview , about maths anxiety, and a few more resources at the bottom of todays blog if your are interested in finding out more.

http://mathsanxietytrust.com

https://www.readandspell.com/us/dyscalculia-in-adults