EP112 What If You’re Not an Imposter… Just F*cking Exhausted?

You’re not a fraud.

You’re not lazy.

You’re not behind.

You’re just tired of performing a version of yourself that doesn’t fit anymore.

In this week’s episode, I go all in on one of the most overused (and misunderstood) labels in the online space…. imposter syndrome.

Because for most high-functioning, high-achieving women… imposter syndrome is not a mindset problem.

It’s a nervous system response. A leftover reflex from years of over-performing,  shape-shifting, and internalising the belief that worth must somehow be earned.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why imposter syndrome doesn’t exist (at least not the way it’s been sold to us)
  
  
• The connection between burnout, emotional safety, and the fear of being seen
  
  
• How performing power can actually drain your real capacity
  
  
• Why “rest” isn’t a reward…. it’s a necessity
  
  
• What to do when confidence feels fake and “enoughness” feels out of reach
  
  

This isn’t another pep talk about believing in yourself. This is a nervous-system-safe reframe of what your exhaustion is really trying to tell you.

Whether you’re in a burnout loop, questioning your path, or quietly crumbling under the weight of your own expectations, this one’s for you.

Listen now and DM me on  Instagram your favourite line (or the one your body wasn’t ready to hear @queenofreinvention

Loads of love,

Sarah x

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Transcript

Hello, hello and welcome to the reinvention era podcast. Welcome. Welcome if you're new here, hello. This is where we help high achieving women live an unapologetic as fuck life after ticking all the boxes yet still feeling like something's bloody missing. You know? Now I'm Sarah Elizabeth. I'm your very own queen of reinvention and loving bitch slap in human form, very loving obvs, which may be extra kind of needed this week. We might need a bit of extra love this week, because if you're listening to this with tired eyes, tired bones, tired fucking soul, this one's for you, because this week, we're going in on a topic I've wanted to talk about for actually quite a while, and that's burnout and the absolute bullshit we call imposter syndrome, Not because you need fixing, but because somewhere along the line, we've given your fear a freaking diagnosis. We called it air quotes imposter syndrome, and wrapped it up in pretty language so you'd stop questioning it. Oh, it's because I've got imposter syndrome. Oh, I can't possibly do that. It's imposter syndrome. You know, I'm literally crippled with imposter syndrome. Well, today we're gonna question it all love. But let's start with this. I don't really believe in imposter syndrome, at least not in the bullshit way that it's been sold to us, like did a doctor diagnose you? What's the prognosis for this syndrome? It's a medication you can take? Is it a freaking cure? You know, it's made out to be this thing we just have, like we caught it. Is it a pandemic? Are we back in the panny D and like, it's all prettied up to almost give your freaking FOMO, if you haven't got it. But actually, most of the women I work with, and maybe you and all, they're not dulu, they're exhausted, they're not broken, they're fucking burnt. Imposter syndrome is not a condition. It's a symptom. It's a symptom of a goddamn culture that praises your exhaustion and then gaslights yourself fucking doubt we've normalised this world where you're expected to do more with less, whether that's resources, time, money, you have to do more and more and More and more and more you're celebrated for performing power. Oh, you're crumbling inside. You're told to rest up, take a rest. Oh, but hang on, only if you've earned it, only if you've earned it. You can't rest if you haven't earned it. So when you finally just stop for even a minute. You know when you sit with your thoughts for nought point two seconds and you get that voice coming in, going, Who do you think you are? Who do you think you are? You assume it's something wrong with you, not the system, not the speed, not the bullshit stories that's taught you that rest equals weakness. It's crap. So let's talk a bit about burnout, right? Not the corporate HR version, the fucking real version, the kind where you look absolutely fine on the outside, but every part of your life feels like it's being powered by resentment and a bit of caffeine. You know, the kind where even a little bit happy feels like. Are almost like a to do list where your mornings don't feel like a clean slate. They feel like an emotional hangover from a life you're not even sure is yours anymore. And the thing that nobody tells you, burnout doesn't always look like a breakdown. Sometimes it looks functioning as fuck. Sometimes it looks like over scheduling yourself because you know being still doing nothing feels a bit unsafe. Sometimes it looks like doubting every yes you've ever bloody said, or it might be creating magic for other people, but second guessing your own. You know, burnout is clever. It wears lippy? It posts affirmations. It can look like success even when it feels like a fucking collapse. You know, I hit burnout in a day job earlier this year, and on the outside tell you it looked like I was absolutely fine showing up to the office, professional outfits, hair done, face full of makeup, always, you know, I'd go into the leadership meetings, I'd make decisions, sometimes some really fucking complex decisions. Shit got done, you know. And then over Easter, I took a break, and I went to Cornwall to see my brother and his family, and had my great nephews christening, which was beautiful, and niece asked me and the other two aunties to be godmothers, which was so fucking touching, I can't even tell you. But anyway, I took the rest, I took the week, and I rested and I slept, and then when I got home, it's like, it's like I stopped functioning. Completely stopped functioning. I was lying on the sofa with my phone in me and trying to remember why I even cared about any of it anymore. But you know, you still have to keep going, didn't you? I still had the book club, the podcast, people have expectations of you, don't they? I had expectations of myself, but allowing myself to take the break made me really question, whose fucking expectations were they? I was always raised by my dad with this very, very, very, very high expectations, huge. And my dad was old school, you know, like in as much as he'd worked his way up in the company that he stayed in for over 35 years. Even got the fucking carriage clock, you know, as they did then. But the expectation was this hugely, massive, strong work ethic that, whether I like it or not, was drummed into me only once I completely burned out. I just started to question and like I realised, like, at what cost, what fucking cost, but what came with that and those expectations was also this level of almost shame and embarrassment. I can't cope. I couldn't cope. I'm not good enough that everyone else would be able to cope just fine with everything I was doing, the job, the business, the Crohn's, the menopause, just fucking life. And you think, well, everyone else can do it. Can't they? Everyone else can fucking manage. Just not me. And when you start going in that spiral, you're then told you've got fucking imposter syndrome, you know what? No, I fucking haven't. I had emotional receipts. I'm not ungrateful, I'm not useless. I'm not cray. Cray. None of that, none of it. I'm exhausted, I'm undernourished. I've put everyone else's expectations above my own, kept my strong work ethic right, kept that going. And it's not that I didn't know what to do, it's that I just didn't believe I was allowed to do it differently. Fuck that. Fuck it again. I kept asking myself like a What fucking cost? Who even am I? You know, is this what I really.

Sarah Elizabeth  10:00

Really want, or is it that I'm just not good enough, and shit going round and round and round and round in my head like that, over and over and over, like, Am I an imposter with my own fucking life? You know? But when we strip it right back. What even is imposter syndrome? Like I say the phrase itself sounds bloody medical, doesn't? It sounds like something that needs treatment, but really it's fear. It's a nervous system on high alert. It's a woman, inevitably, a freaking woman whose power got buried almost under so many years of being nests, people pleasing. It's survival mode dressed as ambition, trying to live up to society expectations. It's almost like the patriarchy going, Oh, okay, you want equity, you want equality. Here you fucking go then. And it has screwed us because we fear we can't keep up with all those expectations, and we've dressed that fear up in some clinical coat, and now we treat it like a personality flaw. But imposter syndrome, for most women, is actually the emotional echo of every room every man that made you feel small. It's the mental residue of perfection dressed up as professionalism. It's the survival mechanism of a woman who's had to earn her fucking place her entire fucking life. Yeah, you ever look around at your calendar and think none of this actually feels like me, but it all looks good on paper. Looks so successful on paper, you don't feel like you're a fool because you're unqualified. You feel like a fool because you've never been allowed to just exist without having to fucking prove it, and talking of fraud. Actually, that's another thing that pisses me off about this imposter syndrome being coined for this. When you look at the actual definition of imposter, right? It means, and I quote, it means a person who pretends to be someone else in order to deceive others, especially for fraudulent gain. Going to say that a bit louder for those at the back, a person who pretends to be someone else in order to deceive others, especially for fraudulent gain, is that what you're doing is that, is that what you're doing when you believe you have this awful imposter syndrome you've caught, That's what you think you're doing. You're deliberately and intentionally doing something you're not qualified for in an attempt to manipulate financial reward from a company. Is that what you're doing on purpose? Really? Is that absolutely fricking true? Of course not. It's just your fear your discomfort. I can blame tricks on you. And rather than address that core feeling or fear or discomfort or whatever it is, which are never fucking as you believe. By the way, rather than do that, we label ourselves with a freaking syndrome, and we do more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more to try and keep up, and then we just end up burning out rather than taking a break, giving ourselves rest. So let's talk. Rest. Shall we? God? Rest. How radical has it become to just stop, not justify it, not turn it into a content strategy. Not earn it through burnout. Rest is not a fucking reward. It's getting back your bandwidth, your body. Your ability to listen to yourself before all the bullshit kicks in. And sometimes, when we ignore all that, our body freaking does it for us. I remember years back when I was married and the ex and I went to the Maldives, we had this gorgeous, dreamy water villa in this island, kuramathi. We had a hot tub. We had all the luxe stuff. It was gorgeous, right? But before going I'd overworked so goddamn much, I ended up sleeping solid for the first three fucking days this dream holiday, and I'm sleeping my way through it, my body and my brain just completely shut down, much like it did again earlier this year after I've Been to Cornwall. It's like my body demanded it like I had no choice. I'd ignored all the warning signs for too fucking long. So my body was like Enough, enough, you know. So let me say this loud and fucking clear. If you are tired right now exhausted, you don't need a productivity hack. You don't need more time. You just need permission to stop, pause, take a break, not literally, like I did with my arm, which, again, actually, I'm sure was a sign to Slow the fuck down even more, because I still wasn't listening to myself, and the warning signs like give yourself permission to unravel, to meet yourself under the version of you who's kept going and going and going even when it hurts so much. Burnout recovery isn't a freaking checklist. And you know you don't need to become some kind of minimalist monk to rest and reset. You just need to stop waiting for a breakdown to fucking justify it, because ultimately, let's flip this whole bloody narrative, right? You don't need to air quotes. Feel more confident. You need more capacity. Because confidence is a feeling, it's a practice, it's a muscle. Capacity is a choice. Confidence says I'm ready. I feel so ready. Capacity is like, I don't feel ready, but I know who the fuck I am, and I'm doing it anyway. And the more capacity you build through rest, through nervous system, reset, safety, through saying no, without fucking TED Talk, without explanation, the more that confidence finds you without you having to chase it. Burnout doesn't happen because you're weak. It happens because you've been strong for too fucking long in the wrong places with the wrong people in the wrong environments. So the truth that nobody puts on a pretty Instagram quote is that you're not behind, you're not an imposter, you're not broken, you're just in a cocoon right now. You're in the middle of a reinvention no one else can even see yet. And, yeah, it's messy in this bit really fucking messy and murky. It doesn't look very cute, you know. But you're not meant to bloom on command. You're meant to rest, to reset, to come back to your power in your own goddamn time. It's what your body, your brain, your nervous system, it's what it was designed to do. So what if today all you did was breathe and not abandon yourself? What if that's all you did? That's enough. That's more than enough. Because in reality, the more you trust yourself through the fog, through the bullshit, the faster the clarity that you want faster. It finds you mate, and that version of you keep waiting to become someone else. She ain't on the other side of a journal prompt or a certification. She's already inside you. You're not an imposter.

Sarah Elizabeth  20:01

You're a fucking Phoenix. Love smudged eyeliner, maybe, but your heart is full and you're still fucking here, and that, that is the whole damn point. So if there's one thing I can leave you with today. On the other side of burnout, please rest, take a break, have some self compassion. Treat yourself as you would anyone else you love. You wouldn't treat anyone else like it. So why do you treat yourself like it? Would you treat your child like it? Course, you fucking wouldn't. But inside you, there's a little version of you that's going, please, just give us a break. I'm tired. There's nothing wrong with you. You haven't got a syndrome. You just need a bloody good rest. Love you know, so if you're really deep in the trenches right now, everything just feels foggy and murky, just know that the version of you that's coming doesn't need to be found. She's just waiting for you to stop abandoning her. Okay, so I'm gonna get off Sarah soapbox now. I haven't been on the Sarah's soapbox for a while. I hope that loving bitch slap landed. But honestly, you know, with softness and the world of love, you know the loving part of the bitch lab, because you honestly, please believe me, you deserve so much more, even if you can't see it yet. And you know what? Actually, if this bit of a pep talk has helped you today, why not download my six minute badass as pep talk for when you need another loving bitch like reminder at any time, anytime it's all free, it's on my website, www, dot the reinvention era.com. It's the dash reinvention era.com you just sign up and it drops straight in your inbox. You can save it on your phone for whenever you need the reminder, and also, then you'll get a few emails every week to keep you going through the week and get that extra reminder to look after yourself. You know, there is only one you you know all the cliches you can't pull from empty cup and all that, but it's true, you know. So please, please, please, please, just be kind to yourself and rest when you need it. Listen to your body, listen to your brain. Listen to the way you're feeling. Your gut knows, your brain knows, right. So I hope that's helped as always, as well. Please keep an eye on my Instagram. I add extra stuff on there all the time. At the queen of reinvention. It's not the now, it's at Queen of reinvention. I love hearing all of your takeaways, so do drop me a DM or tag me in your stories or whatever, because I love, love, love to hear that this is making a difference for you, right? And so that's all for me for this week, please, as I keep saying, just remember, there's only one you a new of a fucking badass love. So please see what I see and look after yourself. I will be back in your beauts badass earbuds again next week, I am sending you so much love. Bye.