"How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought independent of experience, is so admirably adapted to the objects of reality?"
— Albert Einstein
Impostor Syndrome
Every effort to shake the negative feelings tends to push me even deeper into the darkness. The feelings of phoniness and self-loathing are so negative, so destructive, that I am motivated to do anything possible to mitigate or erase those feelings […] in the hope that doing so, and the external rewards I might obtain, will help drive away the terror and isolation I feel.But of course they do not. I am not immune to the genuine pleasure that accomplishments and successes bring, but they ultimately do not ameliorate my fear. Indeed, they frequently make it worse, given that such accomplishments mean that the scope of my fraud has grown larger and more difficult to control, and my increased visibility could, in theory, lead to a wider audience of knowledgeable experts ready to point out all of the laughably elementary flaws and mistakes in my work.
