I am extremely grateful to the many people who have worked to give this concept a name and language we can all use in discussing it.
Impostor syndrome can affect subs or doms, but for the purposes of this article I overcame it as a dominant and wanted to discuss it in detail from that perspective because I know other dominants struggle with this silently. Even amongst each other we don’t often discuss it.
Part 1 of 2: Dissecting Impostor Syndrome
It is always important to start by defining the topic of discussion:
Impostor Syndrome is a feeling that we’re in a position in life, in love, in our career, or in BDSM that we have not in fact earned and that if others found out we’d be exposed and humiliated for pretending to be someone we aren’t.
I’d say 2017 was the last time I was feeling impostor syndrome pretty severely. I know not everyone reading this will know who I am, so I’d like to discuss my background and bonafides not as ego on my part but so that you the reader can weigh that against the background thoughts in my head.
At the time I'm writing this, I'm 37 (almost 38 years old). I’m a Dominant.
I’ve had two mentors, one I paid for his mentorship over the course of about 8 months culminating in an in-person workshop at the end. His name is Eric Pride, he’s an excellent mentor, I strongly recommend his services if you’d like to pay for some mentorship (a simple google search will locate him as a dom out of NYC).
My second mentor is the inestimable Papa Tony of San Diego. A man of heroic proportions whose physical size is only outmatched by his warm, loving heart and hearty laugh. He has had 40 years of experience with kink and he taught me a lot about BDSM, BDSM skills, and what it takes to be a good man. Papa Tony has retired from mentorship at this point in time so while I encourage you to google him as well, he is not available to assist students in need.
However, he DOES maintain the Kink Mentoring Archives, containing over 750 articles, instructional videos and audio recordings.
I ran a tumblr with 35,000 followers between 2012 until the day tumblr ended. I was interviewed on a podcast called The Masocast with a wonderful submissive out of NYC. I’ve attended Mid Atlantic Leather here in DC once a year, every year it’s run since 2014. I’ve attended both Dore Alley and Folsom Street Fair and played publicly, with an audience at both. I estimate that over a hundred submissives have served me since the beginning of my BDSM career...
... and, I still have a little bit of impostor syndrome. If you’re reading this and thinking “WOW! He’s accomplished. How can he not see it?” That’s exactly the nature of impostor syndrome. We judge ourselves more harshly than others and have difficulty stepping outside of ourselves to see what we look like to others.
So, what does my impostor syndrome look like? I’ll start that list in a moment, but I first want to state that as near as I can tell the thoughts that make up impostor syndrome stem from issues of self-esteem and self-comparison. As I spell out each issue below, I'll make a note next to it to illustrate where it falls.
“My flogging skills are trash. I once saw a link on recon to a man ten years younger than me who was able to individually flog the petals off a rose. And the only submissives who serve me are simply unaware there are better floggers out there.” (comparison)
“My husboy is only with me because I was his first boyfriend and his first Dom. He never had the experience to know me from a better man. Our open relationship will inevitably lead him to find a man he’s more compatible with and then he’ll leave me for that dominant. I’ll be a failure and all my friends and submissives will pity me.” (Comparison and self-esteem)
“Even though I want to play with experienced submissives. If ever actually invite one of them over, they’ll see right through my amateur attempts at playing a Dominant and will not only laugh their way right out of their apartment… they’ll make sure no other submissive ever wastes their time with me either.” (self-esteem)
“Given the great grand world of BDSM and the myriad of more accomplished Doms to play with, no submissive is ever going to choose me over a chance at fat fake over someone actually worthy of their submission.” (self-esteem plus a dash of body issues)
“Every success I have with a submissive is actually some sick trick I'm playing on him because I don’t feel like I know enough to actually BE the dominant I pretend to be. I’m constructing a house of cards that must inevitably fall apart on me in spectacular fashion.”
So having written them down (and yeah, it’s tough knowing that will be out on the net for all to see) I’d like to actually explore some of these until I reach some true (but actually ridiculous) conclusions they point to. This list is in no particular order:
“I’m uniquely bad in some way.” This is patently ridiculous on multiple fronts. First, the chances of me being a uniquely crappy dom out of the billions of humans that exist today (not to mention those who passed already) is so small, I'd have a wildly better chance of winning the lottery. Even if I was somehow truly uniquely bad, that would in fact simply be a reason to keep at it, to learn more, seek mentors, and practice my skills. Because “bad” at something is not set in stone, that status can change just like I do.
“I’m starting from behind others.” This one is insidious because there is a bit of truth to it. My mentor Papa Tony has a 40-year lead on me. By virtue of having been born first he will always have a 40-year lead on me. But does that mean I have nothing to provide a sub? Does that mean he is the pinnacle of creation and all would rather worship him and settle for me? Absolutely not! Men have different tastes and different needs. Setting that aside, what DOES comparing myself to Papa Tony accomplish? Does it give me a measurable and achievable goal to act towards? Does it give me a bulleted list of quantifiably provable skills that would make me his equal?
No. It in fact provides me with nothing but bad feelings. Even if I wanted to quantify Tony’s skills as an outside observer, there’s no way I could know everything he’s capable of and definitely no way it would help me.
“Others will find out I’m starting from behind and uniquely awful at being dominant.” We’ve already disproven the first two, so what if someone were to “find out.” If my friend Andre came to me and said, “You know our mutual friend David? I played with him as a submissive, and I discovered he has no idea what he’s doing! He couldn’t make me feel submissive if his life depended on it! He’s the worst dom out there and I’m going to tell everyone!”
After I picked my jaw off the floor, I would a) Immediately make sure this was the full story and that Andre had not been abused or victimized, then b) immediately defend David and c) chastise the fuck out of Andre for speaking about a fellow kinkster in this fashion over a matter of personal taste. There are real submissives out there that you can talk to who will actually tell you I'm a terrible dom. That they had a bad experience with me and think poorly of me as a result.
I’ve played with men I had poor connection to, and who had in turn poor communication skills to let me know what they needed from their dom. But I have more men here in Washington who will tell you with their full throat that I am a GOD among men and anyone who gets extended an offer to my bedroom should take the longest tour of my sheets I offer. We’re all going to have good and bad experiences, if we behave ethically and with safety in the forefront, we have nothing to fear.
“I don’t deserve any boy’s submission.” Who decides who is worthy of submission? Submissives do. If a submissive decides that he trusts me, I make him horny, I’m sexy, I push his subby buttons, and signal no red flags… he’ll choose me to be his dom for at least a few hours. I don’t need to be concerned with the why. Just whether or not he gives a yes, and I'm feeling up to providing him a fun time. From here, it’s just a matter of making peace with the realities of getting rejected in our modern gay culture.
“I am scared I’ll never know when or if I’ll ever reach a point, I’m worthy of my own title.” Writing this, I couldn't suppress a smile. You see, part of the actual process for me in getting through my impostor syndrome came when I was telling a submissive who asked what my experience was like. I wrote something pretty similar to the “bonafides'' above.” I realized in the middle of writing it that in looking back at the path I have travelled, just how far I’d come. How many YEARS it had been, how much I’d learned.
My mind snapped to the future, “there’s so much I don’t know.” Yep. That’s definitely true, but it’s a journey. It’s a trip that has a beginning but no end. I’ve simply put one step in front of another not realizing just how much distance is travelled. And when I looked at my own accomplishments, I felt sick to my stomach. Not because I was unworthy of them, but because in thinking of myself an impostor, I had let “me” diminish myself and accomplishments that ARE genuinely worthy.
I hope that using examples from my actual life and dissecting them in this way illustrates part of the process of understanding yourself and your unique sense of “ways in which you are an impostor”.
Part 2 of 2: How I Overcame The Impostor Within
I don’t want to call anything in this article “the answer” or “the cure”. If you have impostor syndrome the very best thing you can do is find a therapist you work well with and get treated for it. I’m going to talk about what I did to overcome impostor syndrome and hope that any of it helps others.
You’re going to need to internalize some new ways of thinking. You’re going to need to do some self-work. Without careful thought and care my words are just words. You saw in the previous article how I was able to put my internal thoughts to paper and examine them and consider their origins. Not only did I figure out where they came from, but I carefully thought about why they aren’t true. I constructed arguments in my head that satisfied me, that made ME see them as the lies they are. You’ll need to do the same because your specific fears have to be addressed in order to overcome your issues.
Remember, fear lives only in unexamined places in the mind. Fear cannot stand interrogation; it counts on your discomfort to stay away and give it life. Because if you can clearly articulate a fear, you can plan the best way to overcome a threat or see how silly it is when it’s written down on paper. Examining fear is TOUGH work. You will want to give up. Don’t give up. Take it a little at a time till you beat it.
The first bit of new thinking you need to internalize applies broadly to sex and dating and it has to do with why people sleep with you. The experience of being with you is a unique experience. It cannot be replicated. It cannot be replaced. It can only be given by you. What the hell does that mean? It means when you’re reading this and you fear your boyfriend will look for a more capable dominant (I raise my hand here). He isn’t just looking for the most capable, skilled man out there when he makes decisions. He’s considering the joys, the inside jokes, the smile, the smell, the insight, the… everything that you are.
It all makes up YOU, it's why you’re intoxicating to others. It’s why being a good person and treating others with kindness and dignity is always a predictor of lasting relationships over being a beautiful vapid ass. Take some time, think about your good qualities. Give yourself ALL the credit in the world. Make a list, be egotistical if that helps you. But in the end, that list is something you need to not only believe, but you need to know it so well you could recite it by heart to others and convince them that you mean it.
This next bit of thinking is unique to the Doms out there. You need to know your source or sources of power. Your source of power is what brings submissives to you. Do men line up around the block because of your great beauty? Do you have a fucking huge dick? Do you have a mind that thinks circle around doe eyed boys? Do you have a charm about you that would make James Bond quirk an eyebrow? Are you so skilled with your body or your tools that you can reduce a boy to a quivering mass?
Whatever your source or sources of power are? Don’t just say “dick”. You need to think of it in the same enticing terms above, because when you meet boys, this is what you’re whipping out to distinguish yourself. Thinking of yourself in these terms, knowing you have a secret weapon or weapons in your back pocket is going to do wonders for your self-image.
So now that we’ve changed our thinking about ourselves, it’s time to change how we think about impostor syndrome itself. I had said in the previous article that the two big contributors to impostor syndrome are self-esteem issues and self-comparison. And as you could see it is a useful framework for diagnosing the issue, but not for resolving it. Here’s a short list on how you should think about impostor syndrome when you feel it, because it’s telling you something and what it’s telling you is the question.
For illustrative purposes I’m going to briefly tell a story and tie it into the points below. I think it was about 2012, a friend asked me if I'd go with a friend of his to a local dungeon. When I went, he got pretty drunk, turned to me, and said “Tie me to that X thingy!” (it’s called a “Saint Andrew’s Cross” by the way). Up till that point in the night a bunch of attractive men had been buying him drinks and hitting on him and I'd felt like no one noticed or cared I existed. So, I certainly wasn’t prepared or skilled enough to do much with the cross.
He insisted and against my better judgement I decided to TRY. I struggled to get him tied to the cross and when I went back around in front of the cross, all the men who had been feeling him up suddenly backed away about 20 feet and formed a semi-circle. I’d barely had four subs submit to me and I had an audience of sixty men. Every guy in the club was watching. I felt terrified, I didn't know what I was doing yet, I wasn't ready for this. The boy I was with said “just do it.” And that’s exactly what I did. I did the best I could TERRIFIED someone in the audience would call me out for my pitiful display and humiliate me. Instead, at the end of the scene, I had gotten some friendly laughs when I cracked a joke and four submissives lined up and said “me next!”
From this story we can examine three elements of what impostor syndrome is telling us when we feel it:
• “I’m out of my element.” Impostor syndrome can crop up when we’re feeling out of our element. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t skilled. What we’ve learned has abandoned us. We’re in a space and time where we can (and probably will) make some mistakes which will lead to learning and growth as a person. Being out of our element isn’t easy for anyone, but it’s also necessary to get out of our comfort zones from time to time and do something that scares us a little.
• “This is a chance for me to grow” In the above story, I was confronted with a situation I’d never done before. Instead of backing out altogether. I chose to give it my best (and honestly quite meager) shot and I actually didn’t do as bad as I was afraid I would. Looking at moments where we’re not feeling secure in our skills as a way to grow as a person helps take some of the edge off of an uncomfortable situation.
• “This is a chance for me to learn.” So, when I had to tie that boy to the cross? I didn’t actually know HOW to tie a boy to anything. I had no clue. I tied the knots like I would my shoes and if you couldn’t guess, it didn’t work very well. I didn’t learn to tie someone to a cross properly that night. I bungled through it till the rope was an immobile mass. I did however learn the importance of understanding at least rudimentary bondage for moments like this (and yeah there’ve been more).
As corny as any given reader might consider it? You need to practice some self-love.
You need to learn to love and appreciate yourself for who you are, for your strengths and even your frustrating flaws. You’re going to spend your entire life with yourself, the sooner you come to a place where you like yourself, the faster some really great consequences of that love will manifest. I’ve said it before, and I'll reiterate it one last time. This is HARD WORK but it’s work worth doing.
Have a question or need a friendly ear?
Ask me anything about BDSM at BDSMadviceAlex AT gmail DOT com!
And please, repost my answer if you liked it so others who need to hear this can find it.
