By Valli
vallidated.com imposter
Let’s start with a little quiz. Would you rather agree or disagree with the following statements?
✅ At work (school), I often feel I receive praise (grades) that I don’t deserve.
✅ I am often surprised when I perform well at projects, job tasks or on tests.
✅ At times, I feel that I am in my present job or position through some kind of mistake or pure chance and that I don’t deserve it.
✅ I often feel like I am “in over my head” in my current line of work or course of study.
✅ I often worry about not performing well on a project, task or test, even though others around me have considerable trust in my and confidence that I will do well.
✅ I sometimes feel like I have to act or behave more informed and intelligent than I really believe I am.
✅ From time to time I pretend to be someone or something I am not.
That’s too bad, because this might be an indicator of you being part of us – the big group of people who have what is called imposter syndrome (IS). Imposter – what?
The existence of imposter feelings was first identified by the two scholars Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes in the late 70s, who officially labeled what they found the “imposter phenomenon”. I usually call it imposter syndrome, because more recently it has become a big topic in the lay literature at least, and this is how I first heard about it.
What exactly is the imposter syndrome, though?
IS has been described as a subjective experience of perceived intellectual phoniness that is held by many, often high-achieving individuals who, despite their objective successes, fail to internalize these successes. Of course, these feelings are not only present in high-achievers, but exactly those individuals’ objective success is what makes these feelings of perceived fraudulence special: feeling like a fraud even though multiple achievements and successful experiences objectively paint a completely different picture.
Is has been found correlated with depressive tendencies such as low self-esteem, self-criticism or low efficacy, social anxiety, achievement pressures (from self and others) and high self-consciousness (i.e. they are overly concerned with reactions of others, and often overestimate the concern of others about themselves). Note on the side: causal relationships have not often been clarified yet (meaning, we don’t know exactly which comes first – impostorism or self-esteem issues).
What behaviors do I mean? Well, working yourself to the point of burnout, or spending more time on sounding smart than actually investing in your own development. There are of course different ways in how fake imposters immediately cope with their syndrome. Some studies have for example shown that while women mostly take direct actions against these feelings of fraudulence, men actually reported using more avoidant coping methods such as trying to get distance from their doubts through alcohol or other substance abuse, working even harder, or just ignoring those thoughts. The two major groups of coping mechanisms are actually complete opposites: avoidance versus overworking.
But people with IS in these moments forget that these feelings of insecurity are normal. Instead, they believe that because they feel a bit overwhelmed at the beginning, this must mean that they are not capable of fulfilling their new role, have not earned their spot or that somehow they ended up way in over their heads in a project that was meant for someone much smarter, talented and capable.
Don’t worry. To quote my friend and colleague Beth Anne (quoting our friend and colleague Rohin, quoting – unfortunately, not our friend – Woody Allen):
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