Secondly, I’m a bit confused on what’s making you feel like you don’t deserve to be appreciated. From my perspective, there can be two reasons. One is that your colleagues and higher ups refrain from appreciating or acknowledging your effort despite you working hard every single day.
If that’s the case, I think the best solution would be to start a conversation with your colleagues. Letting them know how you feel might help you change certain aspects of their behavior towards you. Secondly, there might be people who feel the same as you do. Having someone relate to your situation can also be helpful and therapeutic. You both can help each other out to make the workplace environment a little better. Sometimes, people feel inadequate irrespective of what their workplace is like. This is directly related to our past traumas, especially the traumas we’ve dealt with as a child. Many of us have grown up in an environment where we were always told to do better, compared with others, and we weren’t acknowledged despite having certain accomplishments. Those are the things that push one to have imposter syndrome. That has an impact even when we become an adult. The trauma still lingers. Not getting appreciation from people growing up can make you feel like you don’t deserve to be appreciated at all. I hope you know that’s not true. I would suggest you figure out the instances that have pushed you to feel this way. Once you’ve identified that, just ask yourself this: How would you treat the younger you if you were the parents? You would be kind, compassionate, acknowledge their effort, never compare them with others, push them to do better while also making sure their mental health is good. You need to treat yourself the same way too. Accept yourself and give yourself the same acknowledgment as you would give to your younger self. Nurturing yourself and your mental health is the best way to deal with having imposter syndrome.
