As children, if we have traumatic experiences, we create an impostor that we use as a defence mechanism. We hide our true selves and we become what we believe other people expect of us. We suppress our emotions and feelings and create a mask that we show to the world. I've been doing this since I was a child myself. Eventually, we come to believe that our impostor self is our true self.
The impostor is the false self that we create out of rejection and abandonment. It's the self we create to protect ourselves from future hurt. I was and still am to an extent preoccupied with acceptance and approval. I am unable to say no with the same confidence I am able to yes. I've come to realise that the impostor is a liar. The impostor is incapable of experiencing intimacy in any relationship. What do we do with the impostor? Pretend that he isn't real? No. We must accept the impostor. We cannot deny its existence. At the time, the impostor was invaluable to me. Without it, I would have been overwhelmed by dread and paralysed by fear. The impostor intervened and protected me when I needed it most but in the process, you taught me to hide my true self from everyone and started me on a life long process of concealment and withdrawal.
Although you enabled me to survive when things seemed incredibly difficult, you started to show a malevolent side. You shut down my feelings, memories, withheld my opinions, and developed a mask that would allow me to fit in wherever I am. So the game of deception began and because it worked, I raised no objection. As the years moved on, it continued to work and we concluded it must continue. Eventually, you needed to be stopped and tamed. I did not have the courage nor the perception to rein you in so you continued and you gathered momentum along the way. Your appetite for attention and approval became insatiable. I never confronted the lie because I was deceived myself.