Do you ever find yourself feeling like you have no idea what you’re doing, that you’re a fake, and that any accomplishments people attribute to you are setting up a false ideal of what you’re capable of? Do you ever get worried that someone is going to figure out that you’re not as competent as other people might think you are? Welcome to impostor syndrome.

Impostor syndrome is common in technical and academic fields, but women are disproportionately affected. It’s a huge career limitation, because unchecked, it keeps them from applying for promotions, submitting papers to conferences, or really doing anything at all that might call attention to themselves. That’s really not that surprising given that women still get an unbelievable amount of flack in these fields, and their accomplishments are already often devalued. When women do get positive attention for their accomplishments, it’s not surprising when it’s quickly followed by a lot of negative and highly gendered comments.

Preparing yourself to deal with this can be hard, so I’m going to tell you a secret: no one really has any idea what the fuck they are doing.

While I’m writing this post and I’m addressing most of these points as targeting women, it’s important to note that most of what I’m going to say applies to men as well. I think that women have it worse, and they’ll have more of a battle because of it, but the points here still apply to men.

One solution does not fit everyone.

I’m not really an asshole, but I call myself one because I learned how to act like those men early in my career. However, because gender dynamics are what they are, I can’t do this without repercussions that they wouldn’t normally deal with as men.

I’m not really suggesting that anyone does what I do without putting a lot of thought into it. This is just me talking about what worked for me. Part of my ability to pull this off is a position of privilege. I’ve got tech cred that spans 16 years, and I’ve got a great network of former colleagues that know and appreciate my competence. I work for myself (sort of). Public perception does affect me, but it does so in a different way from most people. I don’t have a manager that defines my priorities, and I don’t deal with peer review, but my reputation is everything. People don’t need to think that I’m nice, but I do have to be seen as being trustworthy and competent by individuals and companies that are looking for help. I get to choose who I work with, though, and that leaves me in more of a position of power than most. If I worked in a normal office and was vying for promotions, this might not work as well.

Define the source for feelings of inadequacy.

When I was first trying to actively deal with impostor syndrome, I realized that I was comparing myself to other people a lot. All the guys around me were really confident, so clearly they had their shit together, right? I would try to mimic their confidence, but I wasn’t really feeling it deep down. I started wondering if I even belonged there.

Throughout most of my career, I’ve been the only woman in the room. This means I also had to wonder if I was one of those diversity hires the guys were always complaining about. I worked really hard to try to prove myself, to the point at which I probably knew more than most of them. They seemed to appreciate my work and treat me as being competent, but I didn’t feel exceptional. Eventually, I came to a realization…

Your tech bro heroes aren’t that exceptional.

Most of the well known dudes in tech are not super-geniuses, but you wouldn’t really known this based on how they present themselves. They make statements with confidence. They own their accomplishments. They make reference to things they’ve worked on in casual conversations. Have they done cool stuff? Sure. But so have you. So have a lot of people that don’t get recognized. These guys have learned how to talk about their accomplishments with pride. Practice talking about the things you’ve done, even if you think it’s a small thing. If you’re trying to get over impostor syndrome, fuck being humble. Being humble isn’t for closers. Make a list of the things you’ve done that people have praised you for or that you’re proud of. Move the stuff that makes you feel the most uncomfortable to the top of the list. Ask colleagues for help with this list, because I’m sure they will bring up things that you’ve never even realized were great. Tweet your list. Talk about it until you’re comfortable with it. This doesn’t happen overnight. Commit to seeing yourself as being awesome.

Fake it until you make it.

Do you think those tech bros don’t have those moments where they wonder if they really are as smart as everyone thinks they are? I’m sure they do. Everyone has those feelings. A lot of these guys have been acting this way since early in their careers. How many junior level guys have you met that seem to think they have all the answers? You might want to attribute this to the Dunning-Kruger effect, but I don’t think that’s it. Men seem to be a lot more comfortable with the idea of fake it until you make it than women are, probably because they aren’t asked to justify themselves as often. Perception is everything, and that includes the perception you have of yourself. When you find your internal monologue leaning towards the negative, give yourself a verbal beatdown. “Fuck you, self. Have these bad feelings later. I’m awesome, and I’ve got shit to get done.”

Develop a thick skin.

The second you start publicly treating yourself like you’re not a stupid piece of garbage, the trolls will come out in force. This is especially true on social media. Here’s 100 comments from people telling me I can’t code. While it’s true that things that happened in the past year kicked the throughput of comments like that through the roof, the reality is that I’ve been dealing with people telling me I was shit at computers since I was a teenager on IRC. I’ve watched every woman I know in tech go through this.

The constant background noise of being told that you’re shit wears on you. It breaks down your confidence. It leads to severe impostor syndrome that is so difficult to get over. It doesn’t stop. It will never stop. When you’re facing this, you have to decide who you want to be. Do you want to be quiet and hope that their attention eventually gets focused elsewhere? That’s a valid strategy, and I’ll never tell anyone that it’s a bad idea, but for some of us, those that have the privilege and the constitution to do so, there’s another option: learning to treat it as worthless background noise from jealous plebs and…

Be awesome out of spite.

I’m fat. Everyone knows that I’m fat. I talk about being fat. I’m pretty OK with this. I’m stronger than most dudes from lifting weights, my overall health is good, and I really enjoy quality food. I like the way I look, as is evident from all the selfies I post on instagram and Twitter. Of course, because I’m pretty open and unapologetic about not hating what I look like, I get a lot of dudes telling me that I make their boners sad. If my goal in life was to make every boner happy, maybe I’d shed a tear for them. However, I’ve got other goals, and I don’t let other people define my opinion of myself.

So I send them pictures of my butt.

This is how I have learned to deal with these situations. Getting over impostor syndrome has everything to do with self-confidence, and darling, I’ve got confidence to spare. I know that this angers some people, but anyone that gets mad that I present myself to the world without apology isn’t someone that was going to like me in the first place, so why bother listening to what they think? What makes their opinion of me more valid than my own? Embrace whatever part of yourself is pissing off the haters, because the more angry eggs you’ve got screaming at you on Twitter, the more likely it is that you’re doing something right.

Build your self confidence. Walk into a room like you own it — even if the room is empty. Don’t shy away from talking about your accomplishments when it’s relevant to the conversation. Speak with confidence, even if you might not be feeling it on the inside. Listen to those that you respect, because sometimes the most confident thing you can do is admit that someone else knows something that you don’t. If you get something wrong, realize that no one is perfect. Learn from your mistakes, and stop being so hard on yourself. Stop holding yourself to ideals of perfection that you wouldn’t expect from anyone else. Ignore people shrieking insults at you, because this is probably more of a reflection of how they view themselves than anything that has to do with you. If you’re a confident and outspoken woman, people are going to see you as being a bitch. Fuck them, they suck. Embrace your ego. Haters gonna hate.

Practice this for long enough, and it becomes part of who you are. Actively put effort into faking confidence, and eventually you’ll find that it’s there without you needing to look for it, because you’ve learned to value yourself outside of the context of others. The dreaded inner monologue that’s been telling you that you’re a fake learns to settle down. It never goes away completely, but in time, you learn to recognize it for what it is, and you can slam those mental walls in place to block it out. Or, in my case, put on some Taylor Swift and dance it out.