Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop
PhD Imposter Syndrome and Trusting God’s Goodness
About the author: Sara recently submitted her dissertation at the University of Aberdeen on the concept of divine personhood in Karl Barth. Sara is passionate about theological study, especially modern and contemporary doctrines of God, and its import for the life of the church and world. She currently lives in Aberdeen, Scotland, with her husband and two daughters.
The words my Ph.D. supervisor spoke after reading my first piece of writing became a mantra that he would hammer away at for the next four years:
“This is wonderful work, but we need to deal with your confidence issues.”
I felt exposed and was shocked at his perceptiveness. He immediately identified from my writing the struggle that marked my whole Ph.D. experience: imposter syndrome. I am certainly not the first Ph.D. student to struggle with the feeling that I am not good enough and the fear that someday everyone will discover that I fooled them—that I am an imposter.
Imposter syndrome is a pervasive problem among Ph.D. students. According to Psychology Today, those who suffer from imposter syndrome “believe that they are undeserving of their achievements… They feel that they aren’t as competent or intelligent as others might think—and that soon enough, people will discover the truth about them.” Recognizing and understanding the social, cultural, academic, and familial patterns that contribute to the struggle with imposter syndrome is vitally important. Undoubtedly, the greatest obstacle I overcame during the Ph.D. process was my lack of confidence. However, I want to reflect on the theological challenge imposter syndrome forced me to grapple with over the past four years: do I trust that God is good?
Despite a wonderfully supportive and encouraging Ph.D. supervisor, I describe the past several years as a constant waiting for the other shoe to drop. I felt a looming sense of dread: Is this when everyone will realize that I duped them? Before my viva—the examination of your dissertation that determines if your Ph.D. is awarded in the UK—I still felt this way: This is when they will realize that I am not good enough—at the worst possible time!
My constant battle against the anxiety of not being good enough was compounded by the choice to move my whole family from the Pacific Northwest to Scotland in the middle of a global pandemic to pursue my Ph.D. The albatross around my neck was the fear of letting my family down. I took a monumental risk by moving to pursue a Ph.D. in theology fully alert to the state of the job market in higher education in the humanities and theology. I was keenly aware that this risk affected my daughters, husband, and our family and friends in the United States. Was I really good enough to take a risk of this magnitude?
Throughout my Ph.D., I learned that when I was questioning if I was good enough, at the heart, I was questioning if God was good. Although my decision to pursue a Ph.D. and move across the world was undertaken with great care—immersed in prayer and the wise counsel of trusted friends, mentors, and family—I had lingering doubts that maybe what I thought was God’s calling was just what I wanted to hear. I needed to be “good enough” because I did not trust that God was. I feared that maybe God allowed me to make a stupid decision that destroyed my life and my family’s lives. I worried about being “good enough” because I needed to be the best in my field since I did not really believe God was working for my good. There is nothing quite like taking a big risk to reveal that state of your faith.
It is easy to pay lip service to God in worship and acknowledge God’s goodness revealed to us in Jesus Christ. It is entirely different to live out trust in God’s goodness when you have made a life-altering decision, which comes with zero guarantees about the outcomes. I needed to grasp that even if my PhD journey and future did not end the way I hoped, God’s goodness never faded. I do not mean some abstract, disengaged concept of goodness. It was precisely that abstract, distant “good” God (a cool and cruel deity) that led to my anxieties in the first place and is the one that Karl Barth firmly stood against. Barth rejected any conception of divine goodness that was formed apart from God’s self-revelation. He refused to separate the goodness of God from the love of God, which is God’s eternal fellowship as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and God’s eternal love for us that seeks and creates fellowship with us:
God is not, therefore, the Good first, and then the One who loves, because He does not keep this Good to Himself but communicates it to others. God is the One who loves, and as such the Good and the sum of all good things. God is good in the fact that He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that as such He takes us up into His fellowship…Loving us, God does not give us something, but Himself; and giving us Himself, giving us His only Son, He gives us everything.1
God’s goodness is the divine love that God is. It is a love that includes humanity. God wants fellowship with us; God’s love “has no satisfaction in this self-satisfaction [God’s all-sufficient triune life], but as love for another it can and will be more than that which could satisfy itself.”2 God’s love and goodness are lavish—they overflow and create the bridge between us and Godself through Christ in the Spirit. God’s goodness does not abandon us even in our sin. God’s goodness calls us to fellowship with God, our fellow humans, and ourselves.3 When I constantly doubted myself and worried about being “good enough,” I did not have peace and fellowship with myself—I was a fractured and divided person. God’s goodness and love extended to every part of my life—including my studies.
My Ph.D. struggle with imposter syndrome forced me to face that God’s love for us was also God’s love for me. I had never truly accepted that God’s love and goodness included God’s intention to create fellowship with me. I had no problem accepting the general version of God’s love and goodness for all humanity but never came face-to-face with God’s particular concern for me. Instead, I ran myself ragged trying to be “good enough.”
When anxiety and worry were crushing, I would stop my work and take long walks. On those walks, I would spend my time praying and crying out to God and it was then that the still, small voice of the Spirit would speak words of peace and hope: Do you really think I would abandon you? Do you think that is what my love looks like? The Spirit speaking through the Word reminded me of God’s goodness, and this brought immense joy to my studies and instilled confidence in God’s goodness and myself.
Through my time as an insecure Ph.D. student, my faith came to a crossroads where trusting God’s goodness no matter what my future held became a necessity to grow and thrive.
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4 vols. in 13 pts, ed. G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956–75), II/1, 276.
Barth, CD II/1, 280.
Barth, CD II/2, 708–32.