Is This Old Shit or New Shit?

Impostor syndrome doesn’t come from nowhere — and it’s rarely about what just happened.

In this episode, Joe breaks down why your strongest self-doubt reactions often have very little to do with the moment you’re in — and everything to do with patterns formed long before your career even started.

You’ll learn how to recognize when fear is being triggered by the past, how to interrupt the panic spiral in real time, and why the goal isn’t to eliminate impostor syndrome — but to manage it. To remove its hands from the wheel and put yourself back in the driver's seat.

If you’ve ever wondered, “Why am I reacting this way?” ...this episode is for you.

If this episode resonated, consider subscribing to Making UX Work.

Each episode explores the human side of UX and product careers — confidence, power, impostor syndrome, boundaries and the challenges that never show up in books or conference talks.

No hype. No platitudes. Just honest perspective, earned the hard way.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:09

UX is tough, not because of the work itself, but because of everything around it. The pressure, the politics, the self-doubt. Joe Natoli has been through it all, and for more than 30 years, he's been helping UXers and designers find their way through the challenges that really make or break a career. Not the wireframes or design tools, but imposter syndrome, office politics, bad bosses, and learning to stand your ground. This is Making UX Work, where he tackles the battles no bootcamp, book, or conference ever prepares you for, and shows you how to come out stronger on the other side.

SPEAKER_02: 0:54

Well, hello there, and welcome back to Making UX Work. It's been a minute, so I want to tell you a few things before we get cracking here. First and foremost, this is not the interview show that it once was. If you're looking for interviews, you can check out episodes one to 19. Uh, but if you want to explore the more personal and possibly more difficult side of this career, stick around because that is what we're doing here. This is just me now, talking honestly about the stuff that rarely makes it into conversations around UX and product design, okay? Rarely makes it into podcasts or books or courses or conference talks or social media posts for that matter. Things like, you know, dealing with confidence issues, imposter syndrome, setting better boundaries, navigating corporate politics, surviving bad managers, uh, transcending difficult people, you know, turning combat into collaboration, growing into the UX or designer or person, quite frankly, that you want to be.

unknown: 2:00

Right?

SPEAKER_02: 2:00

This is about learning to accept what is and ending each day feeling proud of yourself, feeling proud of what you've accomplished, and quite frankly, feeling proud of the things that you've been able to deal with and manage and overcome. I guess, you know, what I want more than anything else, I think, is for you to feel less alone, to know that things are tough everywhere. All right, and that we are all most definitely in this together. So if you've ever wondered if it's just you, it's not. Believe me. Above all else, I hope to show you that nothing you face cannot be overcome. All right. The challenges you face every day are not a value judgment of your ability or your worth. I hope to show you that you have more power than you realize and that it is high time to start reclaiming and using that power. Okay, with that out of the way, let's do this thing. One thing I absolutely know to be true is that people who have imposter syndrome the most, the people who have that internal dialogue that makes them feel really unsure of themselves, are typically people who are wildly beyond competent at what they do. You know, their mediocrity is everyone else's standard of excellence. And part of what makes them excellent is that relentless lens that they use to look at everything, right? To say, do I think this is good enough? There's a streak of perfectionism that runs through anybody who is truly good at anything. All right. And I think that's quite frankly what makes us good at our job. Folks like us in the design and UX industry have this in spades. Think for a minute about the level of detail of what you do. All right. Think about the level of rigor that's necessary, the ability to apply yourself to that effort in a really intense way. That brutal self-examination that we have, the insistence on a really high level of excellence that we impose upon ourselves is part and parcel of the job. Okay, it comes with the territory. But no matter what your chosen profession happens to be, the thing I want to say to you up front is this you don't ever get rid of imposter syndrome. What you do is you manage it, you put it in its place, you develop mechanisms to deal with it when it comes up. And the biggest mistake, okay, the thing that will tie you in knots for a hell of a lot longer than is really necessary, is this idea that you somehow have to be totally and completely free of it. That you need to reach this point in your life where you'll simply never ever react this way again as long as you live. Here's the thing, folks. That's a lie. I really believe that to be a lie. I don't think it's realistic. I don't think it's healthy, and I think it sets you up for this very unrealistic place that you now have to reach. And then when you don't reach it, you feel five times as bad about yourself because, well, you know, I couldn't get my shit together. Okay, so fuck that. It doesn't go away. It's not gonna go away. Stop expecting it to go away. Free yourself of that unattainable goal. Instead, focus your energy on accepting it, managing it, countering it, lessening it, dealing with it. Over these next couple episodes, my hope is to get you to a place where, although that voice still pipes up in your head, it doesn't have any power over you anymore. It doesn't have the force or the impact or the influence that it has right now. It becomes a hell of a lot easier to tune it out. And it behaves better when you catch it doing its thing. Now, the reality of the situation here is that you're driving down the road, stuck with this annoying passenger in your car that you're forced to ride with. But at some point, you have to start imposing rules. Okay. The imposter is allowed to sit there in the car with you, but it has to sit the fuck down in the passenger seat and take its hands off the wheel. At no point is it allowed to drive this car. You understand me? That's what I've done for myself. It's what I've taught other people to do, and that is what I'm going to talk about here. But the first part of dealing with the imposter inside you is identifying where that crippling fear and that doubt comes from in the first place, what its origins are, getting clear on what areas of your life it has the most influence and control over. Okay. Is this specifically about professional capability? Or is it something else that colors everything in your life? Let me put that another way. When you find yourself in a situation where that voice pipes up, right, and you start feeling that growing tightness in your chest, or whatever physical symptoms are your particular flavor of imposter syndrome, the first question you have to ask is this is this old shit or new shit? In other words, is this about right now, or is it about something that came before? Are you truly reacting to the thing that just happened? Or did that event trigger something that occurred in the past? Some belief that you're carrying that's rooted in something that did happen in the past, someone who second-guessed every move you made, or made you feel like you weren't good enough, or that you were never going to be good enough. Something you're afraid might happen in the future. Asking that question and working to answer it can help you recognize the difference between, you know, a reasonable, justified reaction that's in proportion with what just happened or what is happening, and the kind of panicked, reflexive, instant reaction we're all prone to when we're triggered. I'm going to give you an example. For a really long time, okay, I was the type of person who, if somebody I was working with in an office sent me a text or an email that said, Can you come to my office? or a voicemail where the person says nothing other than, can you call me? That would trigger instant fucking panic for me, okay? Catastrophizing to the nth degree. The voices in my head would literally start shouting, oh shit, what is this? It must be really bad. Something horrible is going to happen. And the one screaming the loudest here was the voice that said, I'm in trouble. And I start digging through my mental files for every thought, every word, every deed that I'd done in the last 24 hours, right? Quickly trying to figure out what I did to upset this person or what I did wrong. And that, you see, was essentially my upbringing. Okay. That's where that's coming from. Whenever I was called into the room with no detail, a lot of times there is an explosion waiting for me in that room. So the response that gets conditioned is one of panic, okay, of anticipating pain. Your body learns really quick because your brain and your entire limbic system is designed to protect you from danger. So a few reps is all it takes. Okay, this means danger, filed it away, got it, appropriate response recorded. So I reacted and reacted and reacted like that with no control over it for years. And I did not learn to draw proper boundaries until I was in my late 30s, to be honest with you. So the first part of combating the imposter's initial overreaction is learning to resist that initial urge. Okay. Learning to resist that definition of what this event means. And I mean any event, okay, especially something said or requested that doesn't have a lot of detail attached to it, like the example I gave you. Could be something at work, you know, somebody reacts to something you offer up and gives you a four-word reaction. Hmm, not sure about that. Could also be a heated moment in a tense conversation with someone at work, with your significant other, or with a family member. Because let's face it, no one pushes your buttons as effectively or as often as family. And in that very moment, there is a panicked urge to surrender to the voice that's instantly in your ear. This person has no faith in me. Shit, I don't know what I'm doing, man. I must have really fucked this up. Damn, I knew I should have done it the other way. And you're running through the list in your head immediately, right? So there are three things that you absolutely need to do here in these instances. The first two involve changing your reaction, and the third involves taking action.

SPEAKER_00: 10:57

After 35 years working with teams inside global enterprises, he created the UX365 Academy to show you what's really standing in your way and how to move past it. Textbooks teach theory, Joe teaches reality. This is practical, real-world UX, taught by someone who's lived it. Learn more at UX365academy.com. For the way it actually is, not the way it's supposed to be.

SPEAKER_02: 11:29

The first thing is this always, immediately before you let your mind go anywhere, before you open your mouth to say whatever defense your brain has already cooked up, wait. Pause. And when you do, breathe. Here's why that's important. Your body's doing what it's been trained to do, with or without your permission, which is pretty much to go into panic mode. So the first thing that has to happen is you gotta interrupt that process. Okay. You're throwing a stick in the spinning wheel that the hamster in your brain is already on. And you do that with two single words to yourself. This is something I do. I say to myself, wait, breathe. Wait, breathe. If you're alone and you're in panic mode, you say it out loud, literally, more than once, if necessary, as many times as necessary, as a matter of fact. And then you do it. Breathe in for four seconds, and then breathe out for four seconds. Stretch out each thing to cover a four second span. Alright, and I know this is goofy, but let's try it together. Okay? Breathe in. Breathe out. Feel free to pause this and do that three or four more times. Again, let that breath in happen for four seconds, let that breath out happen for four seconds. This matters more than I can explain to you. The physiology of simply doing that goes a long way in calming your body. And if you calm your body, you can also start to calm your mind. One thing absolutely affects the other. Doesn't have to be conscious, you don't have to talk yourself into anything or out of anything. Just breathe and wait. And then, once you're calmer, you do the third thing, which is learning to physically counter that reaction. Now I'm going to try and explain this by way of example. My dog, Rosie, who happens to be sleeping next to me right now, should be doing something that I can tell just by her behavior, okay, she knows she's not supposed to be doing, right? She's up on a couch or something. If I look at her and she catches my eye, or if I say, yo, she stops dead in her tracks and does this thing like hi, hi, hi, hi, papa.

SPEAKER_01: 13:53

I wasn't, I wasn't really doing anything. I'm just sitting here with me being good, see.

SPEAKER_02: 13:57

What a therapist once told me is this. He said, you have to get in the habit of catching your brain in the act of doing this bullshit. The way he explained it was there's a physiological reaction that happens, okay? That that knee-jerk negativity, that self-talk, that's unconscious processing. It's triggered immediately. Like I said, your body's already been trained to react without your consent. But here's the thing: it literally stops if you notice it doing that thing. It stops when you catch it in the act of being an asshole, basically. Once you become conscious of it, it's kind of like your brain goes, what, who me? I I wasn't doing anything. See, I'm just sitting here being good, thinking nothing. La la la la la. It literally is that kind of thing, okay? Buddhists call this mindfulness, coming back to the present moment, being right here, right now, instead of in that panic place in your head. And there are a number of ways to trigger that. All right, you may have heard that some people count. They count to three in their heads. That stops the processing, or they adopt a mantra, something they say to themselves, which is what I do. All right, in my case, I adopted a mantra that I read in possibly the most terrible self-help book I've ever read in my life. Okay, book was garbage. But the mantra was fantastic. And the mantra was this my thoughts do not have to become my emotions. So what I do is the minute I feel that tension rise in my chest, because that's how it shows up for me, right? In my chest, I feel it like a vice. I first take a moment to breathe, right? Wait, breathe. And then I start repeating this phrase in my head. And if I'm by myself, I literally repeat it out loud over and over. My thoughts do not have to become my emotions. My thoughts do not have to become my emotions. My thoughts do not have to become my emotions. I do that for a solid minute, okay, or until I feel the pressure release. And it always does release. All right. So, tip of the hat to that guy who wrote a really crappy book but managed to work one amazing gem into it. All right. And you can just talk to yourself as well. Say to yourself, all right, look, you're doing the thing again. Calm down for a second. Let's find out what's going on here. That's self-talk. And the older you are, I really believe the more you need to practice this. The more years you have of that reflexive, ingrained, habitual knee-jerk behavior, the harder it is to prevent it from happening. All right, you've become really good at it at this point. So you have to develop a counter, you know, a challenge like this to catch your brain in the act and force it to stop spinning that wheel. It's the equivalent of you mentally body checking yourself to say, yo, cut that negative shit out and come back here. Because that negative shit has become second nature for you by now. Okay, you're there before you even know you're there. Tell me I'm wrong. These two things, okay, breathing and countering your reaction, are both the most simple and the most effective responses in the world. Why? Because the very act of doing them reminds your body that you are in control. You are driving this car. You are dictating what happens next. You are saying to the imposter or to the devil on your shoulder, or whatever the hell you want to call it, you're saying, listen, you can say whatever the fuck you want, but you're going to do what I tell you to do. Naming that action out loud or in your head or doing it consciously like this buys you the headspace you need to do the very next thing, which is replace fear with truth by asking for clarification, asking for more detail. Because in the absence of additional information, it's going to be hard not to react. It's going to be hard not to instantly dive into that self-doubt. So once you've taken those breaths, once you feel like you're back in your body again, before your brain can try and talk you out of it, you ask for clarification. Can you give me some additional detail here? Tell me why you're thinking that or tell me what's this about. If there is silence from that person and you feel the panic coming, ask them. Tell me what you're feeling right now. Tell me what you're thinking right now. Whatever it is, whatever the answers that you really need in that moment happen to be, pull it out in the open so that you know what this is, so that you're not making guesses about what it is or what it means. Because in milliseconds, your mind, just like my mind, will want to make up all sorts of unkind explanations for what this is and what it means. Even though I'm in a much different place with my life, uh, with this at this point, that temptation is always there. Okay. That knee-jerk reaction is always there. That voice always pipes up in my head, always every time it essentially says, You must be in trouble here. They're quiet because you're in trouble. They didn't bother to explain what was going on because you're in trouble, you know, whatever it is. And with regard to the asking for clarification part, I think a lot of us are afraid to ask clarifying questions because we were brought up in a way where it wasn't okay to ask questions. It wasn't safe to ask questions. And quite honestly, that has nothing to do with necessarily having, you know, horrible parents or a horrible upbringing or whatever. It has a lot to do with generational stuff. You know, my parents' generation and certainly the generation before, you didn't ask anything, okay? You you didn't speak until spoken to. There was a there was a sort of unspoken understanding that kids did what they were told. You accepted what was, right? You didn't ask questions. That was not a thing. So, by way of example, I mean, I was a weird, sensitive artist kid. You know, I was a young boy with sensitive feelings in a world of alpha males and athletes. I didn't really fit in in any way, any shape or form. And there is this expected politeness among my parents' generation where you just don't challenge things. Okay. You don't challenge authority figures, you don't ask questions, even if they're Damn good questions, which is 180 degrees from how a lot of people in my generation, and certainly my wife and I have raised our kids, which is, you know, just because that person is in a position of authority does not automatically make them right. So if you're doubting something, you have a right to spit it out onto the table and say, look, I don't think I like what's happening here. But we weren't taught that. We were taught that you don't have a right to question anything, which translates into you don't deserve an answer. You're not worthy of an answer. These are the messages that get internalized and accepted. And the only way to combat this, at least at the start, is to physically find ways to sort of body check that impulse when it happens, like I said, because it's gonna happen. No matter how long you go to therapy, no matter how long you listen to me talk about this, it's still gonna happen. It still happens to me. All right, instantly. The only difference between me at 56 years of age and me at eight years of age is that I don't let it go anywhere past that first step. I got lots of mechanisms, I've got lots of ways that I counter it. I simply don't let it happen. Wait, breathe, come back to center, be patient, let it pass. Now, here's what I need you to understand and internalize. This is not a magic bullet for your fears. It's practice. It is something you consciously start doing in order to eventually turn it into a reflexive habit. A habit of trying to be more present, trying to be more conscious in that moment, steering the boat instead of being swept along by the current. Like I said before, and I really have to stress this because it's the number one thing that keeps people from overcoming this shit. You don't get rid of this, you manage it. There is no someday I will be free of this. That's an outright lie. No matter what any bullshit book or self-help program claims, you will not magically be free of it. And that is okay. Because what you absolutely positively will be in time if you practice consistently is you will be able to control it the instant it happens. You will be able to put it in its place. And in the next episode, I'm going to tell you exactly how to do that.

SPEAKER_00: 22:32

You've been listening to Making UX Work with Joe Natoli. Honest talk about the hidden challenges that shape a design career. See you next time. And until then, onward and upward.