Comedian Aparna Nancherla on: Impostor Syndrome, Anger, Social Anxiety, and Stage Fright

10% Happier with Dan Harris

10% Media, LLC

Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.6 • 12.9K Ratings

🗓️ 27 September 2023

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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Aparna Nancherla is a writer, stand-up comedian, and actor. Her new book is Unreliable Narrator: Me, Myself and Impostor Syndrome. You can hear Aparna as the voice of Moon on Fox's The Great North, or have heard her as the voice of Hollyhock on Bojack Horseman. She's also appeared on The Drop, Lopez vs. Lopez, and Corporate. She's written for Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell and Late Night with Seth Meyers, as well as Mythic Quest on Apple+.

In this episode we talk about:

How impostor syndrome relates to anxiety and depression
Procrastination and how she sometimes feels it sets her up to do good work, even though she hates it
The difference between standup and therapy in her life
How she feels about the word "no"
The sometime-burden of representing South Asians in entertainment
What it feels like to finally put this book out into the world

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/aparna-nancherla

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	It's the 10% happier podcast, your host, your boy, Dan Harris.
0:20.0	Hello everybody, at first glance, it might seem a little surprising that the comedian
0:25.3	Aparna Nancharla has for so long felt so insecure like a fraud. She's in the middle of a successful
0:32.9	career in entertainment after all. She's a well-established stand-up comedian with recurring roles
0:39.3	in TV shows like Search Party and Mythic Quest. She's also done voice work in animated hits like
0:45.6	Bob's Burgers and Bojack Horseman. But Aparna has long wrestled with imposter syndrome, sometimes
0:52.4	called imposter phenomenon, that persistent feeling that you're only pretending to be capable
0:59.0	and intelligent, a constant fear that you're going to be found out. She's now written a whole book
1:04.0	about this called unreliable narrator, me, myself, and imposter syndrome, in which she goes deep on
1:10.7	issues such as anger, social anxiety, and stage fright. And she talks a lot about what she has tried
1:17.4	that has helped for this interview. I invited my wife, Dr. Bianca Harris, to join us.
1:22.5	She has long wrestled with imposter syndrome herself. She's working on her own book. I thought
1:27.2	she would add a lot to the conversation and she did. So here we go now with Aparna Nancharla.
1:34.6	There's something I hear from a lot of people who listen to this show and care about their mental
1:39.4	health. They will tell me, Dan, I want to meditate, but I just can't find the time. Listen,
1:46.0	I cannot make the stressors of your life evaporate. But I do have good news. Even if you meditate
1:51.8	for just a minute, it actually counts. Studies have shown that even a very small amount of meditation
1:58.1	can change your relationship with your own mind, with your annoying and often intoxicating or
2:05.0	totally destructive thoughts. And to prove this to you, my friends, over on the 10% happier
2:10.6	meditation app have put together the one minute stress busters meditation pack. And it's available
2:16.9	for free until September 30th. These meditations are all just 60 seconds long and they're perfect
2:22.2	to help you catch your breath in the middle of a long and stressful day. Download the 10% happier
	...

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