HACK YOUR BREATHING calm your mind

Psychotherapist Jess Henley shares her best advice to beat imposter syndrome and tame your racing thoughts

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As with many mental health difficulties, meditation can be extremely beneficial in reducing symptoms of imposter syndrome. With imposter syndrome, you are trying to let go of the thoughts that you're a fraud and a fake and you cheated your way to where you are. Meditation and mindfulness can be fundamental in helping to reduce the impact of these thoughts, by getting you out of your mind and into your body. More crucially, they help teach you to trust what your body is telling you, over what your mind is saying. If your body is feeling calm, and you trust what it is telling you, then any ruminating thoughts will begin to lose some of their power as you'll know that if the calmness in your body is true, then the thoughts can’t be. Remember, your body can’t lie, but your thoughts can. Over time, you should start to notice that even though the thoughts might still be coming, they don’t seem so loud anymore, they're not as frequent and they don’t hold so much weight. Please remember: practise, practise, practise! It really does become easier over time and for most people the mental shift happens very subtly so it’s not until they're a month or so in, and looking back, that they can see any difference. Every once in a while, reflect back on how you may have reacted to a certain situation a month, or two months or three months ago, and this will help show you how far you've come. Build a breathing meditation into your daily routine so that it becomes something that you just do without thinking. If possible, try and do it in the morning so that you are setting your day up with a calm, present exercise. For example, you could add it in after your morning shower. But if that is not possible then it could be pa