Did I Almost Kill Someone?

The limits of faking it until you make it

It started with her eyelids. They swelled up like mushroom caps, sealing her eyes shut. The soft skin under her eyes rose like dough. Her lash line receded into the depths of her face. Next, her lips. Filling with blood, they bruised painfully until they were taut and glossy. Her inner ears swelled shut until she could barely hear. Her whole face ballooned sideways, misshapen, grotesque. Sam, my staff, my friend. She was unrecognizable. 

I didn’t know yet, but her throat would be next.

A Dream Job

I was the leader of a six-week wilderness expedition. In my care were 18 young women aged 13 to 15, with my two staff, Sam and Maddy, as support. 

The girls came from all over the continent: inner city Chicago, L.A., the Upper East Side, Oklahoma City, even Montreal. Some of these girls had done a backcountry expedition like this every summer since they were 10 years old. Others were sent here as punishment or had never hiked in their life. 

I remember walking around the campground as the group was preparing their packs for departure. I was pulled aside by Cindy, a girl from Chicago. She asked, “What do you mean, ‘backpacking’?” I looked into her face, and beyond her bored expression I could see she was deeply afraid. 

Another girl cut in. “You put on this heavy pack and walk uphill for six days,” she laughed, clapping her friend on the back. Cindy paled. 

“It’s fun,” I said, patting her shoulder, “you’ll love it.”

I was under qualified for this job. By a long shot. But I was freshly in my 30s, just back from a year-long adventure in New Zealand, and feeling confident. I’d hiked and biked hundreds of miles across both islands, and came back to the U.S. determined to build a life where I’d be paid to have similar adventures. 

I applied to Outward Bound, NOLS, Adventure Treks and other expedition companies across the country, with a resume and hiking log I’d exaggerated. I mean, I’d taken my Wilderness First Aid certification one weekend in a city park. We wrapped a fellow classmate in a foil blanket, learned to tie knots, and how to administer a tourniquet—I was a pro!

I got a job at an expedition company in New Mexico. To my surprise, they wanted me to be the leader of one of the largest groups with a rugged backcountry itinerary. I said yes, happily. But, looking back, was that the right call?

What’s the limit to faking it until you make it? George Santos has been a pretty public example recently. Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos might be the most egregious. Their stories make it obvious that there’s a line in the sand. But when does “faking it” cross into deception? Where is the boundary?

FIMI as Aspiration

“Faking It until you Make It” (FIMI, as I like to call it) is an aspirational mindset. 

If FIMI is helping you develop a growth mindset, hell yeah. You’re not faking it, you’re practicing it. In fact, there’s strong psychological research supporting FIMI as an effective tool for self-actualization. 

Lev Vygotsky, a Soviet psychologist of the early 1900s, pioneered the concept of the Zone of Proximal Development. He identified a magical space along your learning journey where you’re stretched past your capabilities. It’s an uncomfortable but fertile zone where you’re forced to observe, experiment, fail, reinvent. You take your best guess, you work with what you have, you fake it! He argued this type of challenge promotes maximum cognitive growth.

Psychoanalyst Alfred W. Adler, one of the fathers of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, developed the “acting as if” approach. He believed in the power of fiction to influence fact. By acting out the behavior that you want to embody—your (fictional) best self—you eventually actualize as that person. FIMI, at its core, is exactly this. “Faking it” allows you to enact a fictional confidence, and “making it” is when you see your aspirations realized.

What if more people used FIMI to become more empathetic, ambitious, vulnerable, confident? Michelle Millar Fisher writes, “In Adler’s construct, ‘acting as if’ is a necessary mindset to inhabit for[...]the greater good of societies.”

But what about the dark side? What if your FIMI just continually affirms you’re a “fake”? (oh hi Imposter Syndrome) What if you fake too well? Then you’re in constant fear of blowing your cover and unable to ask for help.

Help, Somebody Help

By the time I was hired, I couldn’t back out. I had a whole organization depending on me. There was a group of 18 pre-teens blinking at me for instructions. I was the leader, they said. So I had to believe them. I told myself I’d figure it out as I went along. I’m a kinesthetic learner. FIMI is great for kinesthetic learners, right?

On the first day of our trek, I immediately ran into trouble. Ten girls got nose bleeds. The altitude made them vomit. They started panicking, crying, begging to go home. Many girls didn’t have enough warm clothing. In week two, monsoons washed out our canyon hikes. We narrowly escaped a flash flood. The girls didn’t like me. I was high strung and nervous. I yelled at them too much. I was barely keeping my head above water. But I didn’t realize how close I was to drowning until Sam got stung by the wasp.

It was our third week. We were backpacking along an alpine canyon in southern Colorado. The weather was cold and rainy. Even though it was mid-July, temperatures were near freezing at night. 

Exhausted from a full day of hiking uphill in the rain, we were making camp on a mossy cliff. The gray stone dropped off suddenly, plummeting down into the chasm of rushing white water. The whole forest was dripping, cloaked in mist. The rain had cleared enough that Sam, who was my staff counselor and cook, was setting up the firepit kitchen. Unbeknownst to her, there was a nest of digger wasps underfoot. She was stung in the ankle.

At first it was isolated pain. She cradled her foot and shed a few angry tears. We searched the area for the nest, but couldn’t find it. I told Sam to rest and instructed the girls to divide into small groups to make their own dinners. I helped gather firewood as we built small campfires to boil soup. Twenty minutes later Maddy, my other staff counselor, came to me in the dusk. Her eyes were wide, pupils dilated with panic. 

“Sam…” she said. “She’s worse.” 

When I saw Sam’s swollen head, she was lying on her egg crate mat. Her neck was loose and her head dropped heavily to one side as I came near. Her left eye was completely sealed shut, her right eye barely opened. She labored to peek through at me. She’d been given two Benadryl, and she was humming, mumbling. 

Sam patted my hand, “I’m gonna be fine.” Her tongue was thick in her mouth. Her voice sounded lilted and drugged. 

“I couldn’t get her rings off in time,” said Maddy. 

I looked down at Sam’s hands. Her nimble fingers were swollen into sausages, her rings biting deeply into her flesh. She coughed. She struggled to swallow—signs (I learned later) that her throat was swelling shut too.

Maddy stayed by Sam’s side as I calmed the girls and instructed them to get into their sleeping bags. Night had fallen, and the trees dripped and rustled. Below, the white water gushed dreadfully. The forest had turned on us. All of its power had grown black and dangerous. And I was faced with a terrifying decision. Either we break camp in the obscurity, and hike out with 18 whining, stumbling girls in the dark. Or, we hold onto the belief that the allergic reaction would subside, and wait until dawn to evacuate. The girls would move faster in the light, and we’d get Sam to the hospital by morning. 

Did the lesson on “how to recognize anaphylaxis” from the Wilderness First Aid quiz come back to me in my moment of need? No. But I’ve learned a lot since. Anaphylaxis continues to spike once it’s initiated in the body. It can fool you. Symptoms develop, recede, then relapse with increasing acuteness for hours and even days despite treatment. Histamines released in a rush dilate the blood vessels so fast that blood pressure can drop precipitously. Most deaths are the result of shock. 

Did I realize Sam’s life was truly at stake? No, not fully. 

In the moment, I made the best call I could, on the little information I had. Maddy stayed with Sam, dosing her with Benadryl at regular intervals. I, shaken but still naive, went to sleep. 

We evacuated at first light. Once we finally reached the trailhead, Sam was rushed to the closest hospital and pumped full of epinephrine and IV fluid. 

Taking FIMI Too Far

In a way, it worked. I faked it…and I made it. No one died. 

Sam survived a traumatic wilderness emergency, and understandably, wrestled with anxiety for the rest of the trip. But she faced it bravely, without losing confidence in my ability to lead. 

That time in my life totaled only three months. But I think about it endlessly. I belabor those decisions, rehash each twist and turn.

Sam’s close call made me understand a critical component of FIMI. When you “fake it,” you must also assume the risk and responsibility of failure. During your calculation, you must be honest with yourself about how many lives your “acting as if” will affect. Did Santos calculate his effect on the Republican Party’s reputation? Did Holmes calculate how many lives her bunk technology would ruin? I certainly didn’t calculate the human risk of my overconfidence. 

Richard E. Watts, practitioner of Alder’s “acting as if” approach, warns, “for those who go out and act ‘as if,’ I have concerns about the well-being of others who might be affected by their choices.” Vygotsky was careful to specify that optimal learning only happens in the Zone of Proximal Development if the student has a mentor or tutor to guide them. Otherwise, lack of guidance will lead to traumatic failure. 

To me, FIMI is integral to how I learn. I fully embody my aspirations to make them true. I surf the Zone of Proximal Development in that sweet spot of discomfort and growth. I fake it and fail—and learn, learn, learn, over, and over, and over. But these days I calculate more rationally. I take more care when other people’s lives are in the balance. 

The backcountry is cruel and random. Some trek leaders are less experienced than me, and they are never tested. No one gets stung by a wasp. It never rains a drop. I was tested, brutally. But thankfully my overconfidence didn’t result in tragedy. I left that experience deeply changed, and more judicious. I see myself now as capable, calculating, confident. A real leader, not a fake.