Why You Have Impostor Syndrome And The Best Way To Deal With It

Imposter Syndrome

Are you a fraud, did you deserve these marks, promotion, partner or success

you're enjoying, how long would it take for the other person to catch you red handed and take it all back.

Maya Angelou said: "I have written 11 books, but each time I think, 'Uh oh,

they're going to find out now. I've run a game on everybody, and

they're going to find me out.

Introduction

Impostor syndrome is the feeling that you either don't have the requirements,

credentials, skills, talent, accomplishments, wealth, family name to carry out a

certain activity like learning, presenting, fulfilling a task or a project at work,

promotion, titles,  starting a business, writing a book, asking someone you

fancy for a date, being a parent, etc.

It has the potential to stop us from trying out new things and forcing ourselves

to grow and develop rather it makes us appear lazy, scared, incompetent,

undependable and worse off it makes us believe all those negative things

about ourselves.

Around 25 to 30 percent of high achievers may suffer from impostor syndrome,

and around 70 percent of adults may experience impostorism at least once in

their lifetime, research suggests.

The term impostor phenomenon was introduced in an article published in 1978,

titled "The Impostor Phenomenon in High Achieving Women: Dynamics and

Therapeutic Intervention" by Pauline R. Clance and Suzanne A. Imes. Clance

and Imes defined impostor phenomenon as "an internal experience of intellectual

phoniness" and initially focused their research on women in higher education and

professional industries.

The researchers surveyed over 100 women, approximately one-third of whom

were involved in psychotherapy for reasons besides impostor syndrome and

two-thirds of whom they knew from their own lectures and therapy groups.

All of the participants had been formally recognized for their professional

excellence by colleagues and displayed academic achievement through

educational degrees and standardized testing scores.

Despite the consistent external validation these women received,

they lacked internal acknowledgement of their accomplishments.

When asked about their success, some participants attributed it to luck,

while some believed that people had overestimated their capabilities.

Causes

You may say that Cinderella, from the famous fairytale, had an

impostor syndrome due to the fact she was lowborn which was exacerbated

by the treatment she was dealt with by her stepmother and half sisters who

basically turned her to their housemaid.

From Cinderella's tale, you can appreciate how much identity is a big factor of

this phenomena, identity or simply how we view ourselves and the story we tell

ourselves places us in a position in the social hierarchy we are playing whether

it is, academic, work setting, romantic, friends, and community.

If the story you tell yourself or identity misaligns from your status,

it predisposes you to negativity within your psyche and damages your

self esteem which can manifest in a wide range of emotions and behavior.

Clance and Imes believed that the mental framework of the impostor

phenomenon developed from factors such as gender stereotypes, familial problems, cultural norms, and attribution style. They discovered that the women in the study experienced symptoms of

"generalized anxiety, lack of self-confidence, depression, and frustration related to inability to meet self-imposed standards of

achievement.

Why does it occur more often in women than men? According to the

aforementioned research, according to a lot of psychologists, the big 5

personality traits could be the main reason why it occurs.

People who are high in neuroticism or emotional instability are highly sensitive

to threats compared to other people. If you are high in neuroticism you have

a pessimistic outlook about situations  i.e. what's is the worst case scenario

if I fail to accomplish this task then I am going to lose my job, the respect of

my colleagues, never get married, get ostracized, or lose my status.

Women have been found to have higher levels of neuroticism especially from

adolescence onwards, you may say it's an adaptive behavior considering the

role they play as mothers who have the life of babies in their hands.

By the way, you can take a free Big 5 personality test from this link.

The spotlight effect is the psychological phenomenon by which people tend to believe they are being noticed more than they really are. 

According to Sigmund Freud the superego is part of our psyche which  reflects the internalization of cultural rules, mainly as absorbed from parents,

but also other authority figures, and the general cultural ethos, you may describe

as our consciousness. A superego attack is when that voice is overcritical and

judgmental on every step of ours due to unsuccessful integration of the superego

which ends up crashing the ego anytime you want to try out a new activity or a

challenge.

Lastly, there seems to be a correlation between impostor syndrome and guilt,

which could be as a result of expectations from family from a young age when

the kid shows potential and gets labeled with words like genius, smart, intelligent,

the good one, our favorite kid. This creates a burden of expectations from a

young age and as we mature we realize that the world is hard and we ideally

lose that self entitlement, everything you achieve is through hard work and not

potential.

Therapy

The first question you have to ask yourself is that is imposter syndrome

something abnormal, my answer to that is not really, any time you are trying

to do something you have never done before and there is uncertainty about

whether you can conquer it or not.

It seems that the only way out of it is by achieving small goals, which build up

your confidence for harder tasks, and even if you fail at that task you know that

you have already succeeded once so you try again and again till you succeed

because you aren't a failure but rather failed at one task.

Talking to a mentor wouldn't only validate how normal this phenomenon is

but that you can overcome it and be like that person if only you persevere,

the glory lies just beyond this obstacle.

Any task which is worth pursuing has to make you feel incompetent, and that is

where the excitement and expectations lie, what is called the optimal experience

or flow by the psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi  is the mental statein which a you are performing an activity in which you are fully immersed and

actively enjoying the task at hand. It's the state of finding a balance between

your competence and how challenging that task is. If a task is too easy we get

bored, if the task is too hard we get too afraid, so flow is the sweet spot where

we lose track of time and feel a sense of accomplishment.

Often impostor syndrome occurs due to the fact that we are the first person from

our family, village or even country to climb the social ladder without no known

role models hence we are representing more than us and we feel the pressure

to be perfect. The only way out of it is to accept our predicament and even take

pride in it while becoming the best role model for our youth and using that as a

fire to outcompete our colleagues who come from a better background.

As Friedrich Nietzsche said "all great men are play actors of their own ideal".

Do you have one big problem currently with your health, work, education, finances, relationships, parenthood or life in general? if yes, please feel free to talk to us in effort to find a solution based on our expertise and experience together. book a free 30 minute consultation by clicking here.