Are you an Imposter?

You’ve likely heard the term “Imposter Syndrome”. It has made its way into mainstream media along with other words like “narcissist” and “gaslighting”, but their true meaning and weight have gotten lost with their over-saturation.

According to Google Imposter Syndrom is defined as the following:

Impostor syndrome (also known as impostor phenomenon, impostorism, fraud syndrome or the impostor experience) is a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their skills, talents or accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a "fraud".

That those who feel imposter syndrome (IS) the most are those who should actually feel it the least. Read that again. In other words, those who are successful, talented or have a good working knowledge of what they do are usually the ones who feel most like a phony - the high achievers often don’t feel like high achievers. It can feel like you don’t belong where you are, that you got to where you are by sheer luck and that you’ll be found out at any moment. That’s the crazy thing about IS - doing well at something does not always equate to feelings of success or validation.

Imposter Syndrome shows up in various ways:

-self-doubt

-perfectionism

-work addiction

-self-sabotage

-fear of success

-fear of failure

-berating your performance

-attributing your success to external factors, not your own competency

IS was first identified in 1978 by psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes and showed that IS uniquely affected highly successful, intelligent women. During this study, Clance and Imes discovered that IS affected women of all ages, backgrounds, fields of study and vocation - it does not discriminate:

“Women who exhibit the impostor phenomenon do not fall into any one diagnostic category. The clinical symptoms most frequently reported are generalized anxiety, lack of self-confidence, depression, and frustration related to inability to meet self-imposed standards of achievement.”

Undergraduate women, Ph D faculty, professional women in fields such as law, anthropology, nursing, counselling, education and social work alike all dealt with IS.

I happened upon a podcast called “Write Now” by Sarah Rhae Werner. In the 100th episode called “I Have no Idea What I’m Doing”, she speaks about this very thing. Sarah gets paid to write full time, she has an extremely successful podcast and thousands of followers on Instagram, yet she says she sometimes feels like a fraud. There is a point where she breaks down the idea of having a fulfilling creative life and says

“I”m still figuring that out. I’m still involved in this grand experiment. This trial and error phase that I’m starting to think is going to last my entire life.”

I felt that.

The fear of being “found out” is real and can be debilitating. As a “writer” (see what I did there?), I struggle with almost every single word I write. It holds me back from being as creative as I know I can be and has me questioning how capable I am of even simply stringing together coherent thoughts. My mind fills with all of the reasons why what I have to say is both irrelevant and uninteresting. Who am I to call myself a writer? When I think of a “writer” I think of my most favourite authors, which immediately incites a sense of self-doubt and sheer panic. IS has held me back from pursuing many opportunities in the past. There were times I didn’t even try because I feared the pressure of success and, subsequently what I felt was inevitable failure. If I were to succeed, then that meant I had to commit to this thing and, in my mind, I couldn’t possibly commit to it because I didn’t actually know what I was doing. It was all fake and I was just pretending. This cycle had me believeing that I am not competitive; that I give up easily and am not a hard worker. But the reality is, I am intensely fierce when it comes to something I’m passionate about and I do not quickly surrender. The only thing that has really helped me is knowing I’m not alone in this struggle.

The thing is, the only way to stop feeling like an imposter is to stop thinking like an imposter. Your internal dialogue and your ingrained beliefs regarding competence and intelligence is often a result of social conditioning, not truth. I discovered some ways in which we can begin to flip the script on Imposter Syndrome.

Speak up - share your personal experiences with Imposter Syndrome. So many suffer in silence and allow the anxiety and lies to twist the truth

Accentuate the positive - remind yourself daily of what you’re proud of. Make a list of the things you have accomplished and spend time really focusing on those things. Stand in front of the mirror and speak it out. Remind your brain how worthy you are of where you are and how you got there.

Adopt a healthy relationship with failure - Henry Ford once said, “Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.” Instead of letting guilt and shame overcome you when you don’t live up to expectations, see failure as another opportunity to learn, to try again and be even better next time.

Write a new script - instead of allowing the same lines to run through your mind, create new ones. Rather than saying “Someone is going to find out I have no idea what I’m doing” or “Everyone here seems so confident in what they’re doing”, try something like “Of course I’m nervous, I’m trying something new, but I’m smart enough to figure it out.” or “Wow, everyone here is so great at what thyey do, I can’ learn a lot from them”. Allow for a perspective shift.

Fake it till you make it - we’ve all heard this before, but what does it really mean? It means even if you don’t feel it, act it. You may not feel confident, but you can look to those you admire and use their skills and habits as an example of how you can begin to actually feel confident.

Socrates said

“One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.”

When we become curious, we become open to experiences rather than putting pressure on ourselves to be perfect all of the time. When we let ourselves off the hook from being perfect, we grow. When we grow, we become better versions of ourselves. Isn’t that what we all really want? To be the best versions of ourselves as possible and allow ourselves to enjoy the process of becoming.