Overcoming Imposter Syndrome at PAX West 2026

Sometimes the lessons we take from an experience can impact us in completely unexpected ways. There may be a simple change we plan to make or a behaviour to reassess, and doing so opens up a completely new set of opportunities. It may be a strange and anxiety-ridden journey there, but it is often worth it. For me, this has been my journey of overcoming imposter syndrome and discovering friendship along the way. Where did this happen? Well, in the most obvious place, of course, at a series of video game fan conventions.

Following PAX East 2024, I was lucky to detail my experience of overcoming my multiplayer anxiety in Final Fantasy XIV while waiting in line to battle Asura, and ultimately getting the cool shirt because I was able to work together with strangers and best this foe at the challenge event set up at the Square Enix booth. The real takeaway of this was this experience was going to be that it was something to build off of, and surely I would be more open to the social aspects of Final Fantasy XIV moving forward. Welp, that didn’t happen. All the PS1 JRPG’s conditioned me too deeply, and I'm still stuck in my ways; mostly going through FFXIV in a solo manner. 

However, while my brain clearly didn’t internalise the lesson I thought I had, it took something else away from this experience: put yourself out there, talk to people, and be open to what may happen when you open up to other people with similar interests. So I started taking this into consideration when attending events like PAX. Those people on that panel talking about Final Fantasy VII and psychology? Follow them on social media! Tell them you have a similar interest! They posted about taking submissions for a book about the psychology of Final Fantasy VII? Submit for it. You end up like me, get accepted, and find yourself in a Discord server with tons of wonderful people who are interested in exploring games through a unique lens that interests you. Then keep going. Tout that idea you always had for that panel! If you’re lucky, other people will be interested in being on the panel and think you should submit it for the next PAX. It might feel like you're making it up as you go along, but it's too late to back down now; your panel is on the public schedule.

This series of events is what led to The Good, The Bad, and The Stigmatizing: Drug Use in Games at PAX East 2025, which, in turn, was the start of me overcoming imposter syndrome in a crowded convention hall. As a social worker and person in recovery from substance use disorder,  being able to bring this panel to a PAX was a dream come true, but what I quickly realised was that getting a panel was one thing, but getting in the headspace to present it was completely nerve-racking. 

It was easy to convince myself that, at 37 years old, my time to pursue personal goals had long passed. Having spent my twenties dropping out of school, dealing with substance use issues, and slowly building my life back together, it was easy to take the route I had taken so often in the past and not follow through. Those uncomfortable feelings of figuring it out, asking for help, and trusting the supportive people in my life have never been my specialty, and now I’m throwing myself right into the deep end. The feelings of not being good enough really bubbled to the surface as the days crept closer.

PAX is home to video game announcements and panels hosted by game industry veterans and content creators with hundreds of thousands of fans. Did I really belong? Would anyone come? Why would anyone care what I have to say? Hell, this whole thing is probably a one-and-done, right? Especially if it crashes and burns. Oh god, people are going to remember my panel because I screwed it up? These thoughts piled up in the days leading up to the show, until by the time I was picking up my badge, I kinda assumed someone with more common sense than whoever approved this idea would stop me and tell me this was all some big mistake. Luckily, my fellow panelists were incredibly supportive and could sense my nerves leading up to PAX and helped walk me through it. It’s almost like if you ask for help, there will be people willing to help!

 And I have to say, I think it went pretty well! People attended, great questions were asked, and I thought to myself, “Hey, this is something you can do!” And now with the panel over, I have the rest of PAX East to... walk around alone?

Living in the Boston area, in years past, I’d commute into PAX each day and just sort of walk around aimlessly before returning home. But putting myself out there and fighting through the idea that I don’t belong gave way to the realisations that there are wonderful, like-minded, dare I say, colleagues who are not only willing to, but interested in, inviting me to lunch, walking the floor, and swapping stories and ideas on our thoughts on mental health in games. The little moments I was beginning to realize and support from others that really were piling up. 

At the time, I thought that experience learned in line waiting to battle Asura at PAX East 2024, from saying, “Hey, I main Summoner if you need someone,” prepared me to start playing FFXIV differently, but slowly migrating that “fuck it, better speak up mentality actually ended up changing how I interacted with the real world. At some point you realise that there isn’t a vast amount of difference between discussing raid tactics with strangers and having strangely in-depth conversations about how therapists are always shown as super unethical in a lot of forms of media during lunch with people you met a few hours ago. They are both just conversations. The imposter syndrome was slowly melting away.

That said, imposter syndrome isn’t something you just “cure”.  At PAX West 2025 in Seattle (my first West), I was again given the opportunity to present the panel on substance use depictions in games. Again, I thought they were going to tell me there was some mistake at badge pickup, and again I asked my fellow panelist, “Was that okay?” about 100 times following the panel. On the way home, I wrote a pitch I really liked and sent it to a few of my favorite sites, attempting to do a deeper dive into substance use in games, and they all went unanswered. Clearly, I’m not an expert or insightful, or in fact even all that interesting; the imposter syndrome screamed to me. While part of my brain knows that getting an in-depth piece picked up by a big website when budgets are tighter than ever was unlikely in the current games media landscape,the lack of responses allowed that unwanted guest of imposter syndrome to hang around like the guy who stays at a restaurant just talking for an hour after closing time (shout out to my current and former servers, cooks, and industry people who know exactly what I’m talking about).

There was this interesting feeling I encountered when returning to my day-to-day life outside of the gaming space too. I returned from Seattle excited to share my experience with my work colleagues and received many blank stares. There was one particular half-hearted, “Oh wow, that’s neat” from a respected non-gaming co-worker that hit like a piano was dropped on my head. It was like a morphed form of imposter syndrome saying I could only ever feel good in one space, and if in the gaming space I was finally overcoming it, I would feel it twice as hard in my professional spaces.

There seems to be this strive for perfectionism that was picked up around age 28 when I started to make positive changes in my life, but no matter how many times I say “I used to be a piece of shit” and “people can change,” like Tim Robinson relayed in his famed I Think You Should Leave sketch, there are certain feelings I struggle to overcome. The overcompensation of needing to be perfect while simultaneously battling self-doubt is likely the breeding ground for the continued sense of imposter syndrome across all aspects of my life. So naturally, I felt I had to go hard for PAX East 2025 and prove my worth. 

  At the end of PAX East 2024, my friend Amelia said, “Don’t worry, next year just wait, you’ll be on like six panels,” to which I replied, “Yeah, right!” At PAX East 2025, I was on six panels. That imposter syndrome told me that anything I submitted certainly wouldn’t get accepted this time, so I said yes to anyone who invited me to be on a panel. And you know what, it rocked! I became comfortable in a way I could not have imagined the year prior. My relationship with our little and growing crew of games and mental health people really became established at PAX East 2025. For the first time, I didn’t think I could do this; I knew I could and that I was doing a pretty damn good job! 

And this brought me to one of the most rewarding experiences that truly melded my professional and personal lives: a PAX panel I got to moderate entitled But is it Ethical? Therapy in Games. Because I have incredible, informed, and honestly brilliant colleagues who are therapists/clinicians/counselors, I decided to get them on a panel, watch some clips, and talk about what is and isn’t ethical (spoiler: the therapist in GTA V? Not ethical). And people came out! And they liked it! Take that imposter syndrome! Clearly you weren’t at PAX East 2025, right? Well, there was a second panel that I moderated that brought about a new challenge the imposter syndrome could jump at.

At this point, I had a solid base of amazing supportive, like-minded friends in the mental health and games space. Surely that’s good, right? Well, not necessarily! This opening up, sharing your ideas, and hoping others may be interested thing had been going pretty well, and I’m also a pretty silly, fun guy who may want to submit a sillier, fun panel.  Well, PAX East is in Boston, and I’m from Boston, so I thought, “What about pitching Wicked Pissah Games: The Most Boston Game as a panel?” One of the downsides was that none of my current mental health and games friends were from Boston. 

So, what did I do? I reached out to the games media side of things. And guess what? They were all nice! Like really nice. Even the people who couldn’t make the panel gave my thoughtful responses and shared they loved the idea. This one was a big shout-out to King of Boston games media Brenden Groom, though, who really helped me gather folks and immediately joined the panel when asked. When someone answers you saying, “Hey, I don’t know if we’ve ever officially met, but I’ve seen you post about north shore beefs [a Massachusetts delicacy],” then you know that they’re a solid dude. And while it was extremely nerve-racking coordinating and constantly feeling like I was bothering everyone, the newly formed Masshole crew for this panel rocked, and I hope it is something we can keep going. Okay, so now, with a heavy Boston accent, did I tell that lingering imposter syndrome to “Get the Eff Outta here?”

So here we are today, leaving an eventful and successful PAX West 2026, two and a half years after learning to speak up in line waiting to play a Final Fantasy XIV challenge raid, four and a half years after seeing people I could look up to like Dr. Rachel Kowert, Dr. Celeste Sangiorgio, and Dr. Amelia Herbst on a panel on the Psychology of Final Fantasy VII and thinking I could do something similar, a year and a half from my first PAX panel, 29 years after the North American release of Final Fantasy VII changed my life and cemented my love for games, and 10 years from when I started my recovery and began the process of feeling okay with myself I am finally ready to kick this imposter syndrome to the curb. While I understand I am still going to be anxious, self-doubting, and striving for perfection, this journey has shown me I don’t need to be defined solely by those aspects. 

Look, I’m not perfect, and I’m not an expert on all things video games, and I’m certainly not the most confident person in the room. What I am, though, is someone who has been afforded an incredible opportunity to do something I couldn’t have dreamed of years ago. I get to talk about something I care deeply about: the intersection of mental health and video games. Sometimes people come to see that! And through this journey, I have made incredible friends, discovered deeper things about myself, and found areas where I can continue to grow. Am I going to be nervous if I’m lucky enough to ever present on video games in front of people again? Absolutely! But will I know that I do belong there? Absolutely! So put yourself out there! It may start with something as simple as talking to someone in line at a gaming event. You never know what may happen next!