The Imposter

I am an imposter. I freely admit it.

How embarrassing.

All these years I’ve thought I was something I was not. I hear your collective gasps. I know, I know. How can this be?

I didn’t realize it until I read the description of an imposter in the book, Abba’s Child.1

An Imposter:
• Is rooted in fear of human disapproval.
• Is afraid of abandonment, losing support, and not able to cope on their own.
• Is preoccupied with acceptance and approval.
• Needs to please others.
• Is often incapable of direct speech, hedging, waffling, and remains silent out of fear of rejection.
• Demands to be noticed and craves compliments. (I don’t care about compliments so much…just hand me a stage and a spotlight).
• Draw their identity from achievements and interpersonal relationships.
• Operates out of a fear-based center.

It explains a lot actually. Manning goes on to say, “The false self was born when as children we were not loved well or were rejected or abandoned.” My imposter was born that fateful day at poolside when demanded to unclothe.

Most of the time, my imposter covered itself/herself by means of chronic day dreaming. Now I’m really confessing my youthful sin. You see, this was my coping device. Like an alcoholic uses alcohol or a drug addict their drug, mine was getting lost in a world no one could see. No one could hurt me there. I created a wonderful place that I was in complete control.

I’m a big girl now (with a little girl still hiding in me) and I still haunt my old hidden world. Only now I try to use it for the good of the writer in me in the form of fiction. So, in a way, I took what the enemy used to keep me bound and I brought it into the light for the Lord to use for His purpose.

I guess you’d say I redeemed it.

Manning also states, “When we accept the truth of what we really are and surrender it to Jesus Christ, we are enveloped in peace, whether or not we feel ourselves to be at peace.” I covet this new world of peace. For decades I’d rebuked myself time and again for running to my trusted vice as if it was an evil sin. But now, I believe it was a gift from the Lord. I actually had a therapist tell me, after hearing my life chronicled in a painful diatribe, that my coping instrument probably kept me out of the looney bin (that is a medical term).

I must embrace this imposter as a part of myself and accept her for the place she held all these years. I think we should make friends with these imposters as they are a part of ourselves. To continually rebuke them is a form of self-hatred. Perhaps titles and imposters do have a place for a season…until we find our true self that is.

1Abba’s Child, Brennan Manning, NavPress, 2002.