Dealing with the Imposter Phenomenon (Imposter’s Syndrome)

Hello friends, welcome to the simulation and happy new year! This is the first post of 2021 and we’re coming in HOT. So prepare yourself for a bumpy and self-reflective ride.

What is it?

Dr. Pauline Rose Clance and Dr. Suzanne Imes coined the term the Imposter’s Experience or Imposter Phenomenon. People commonly refer to it as “imposter’s syndrome”, but the originators of this theory prefer not to use the word “syndrome” since it’s not a medical disorder or illness. It’s a common experience many people face some point in their life. A lot of this post is referencing concepts in Dr. Pauline Rose Clance’s book “The Imposter Phenomenon: Overcoming the Fear That Haunts Your Success”. Let's continue on with my shoddy rehash of it, peppered with my own experiences.

The Imposter Phenomenon (for the rest of the post we will shorten it to IP) is a view where a person believes they are an imposter and has tricked others into believing they are more capable and knowledgeable than they really are.

Side note: This is for information only. If you are suffering and in need of serious help, then you should contact a therapist or doctor to diagnose you. I highly encourage seeing a counsellor or therapist if you are having unresolved issues and have the means to do so.

Before going further, I recommend you take this short self assessment linked from Dr. Pauline Rose Clance’s website. Try to answer quickly and not think too long on each question and then add up your numbers!

Self Assessment: https://www.paulineroseclance.com/pdf/IPTestandscoring.pdf

If you’re back here, then welcome, you little imposter! Don’t worry, I’ve distracted the validity police with doughnuts, they won’t be coming for you...yet.

If you’ve scored moderate to high (or, like me until now, haven’t aced a test since high school) then let’s move on to the traits. You don’t need to fit this profile exactly, but a lot of those with IP feelings will feel at least some following ways.

Traits

1. Feelings of unworthiness and that you don’t belong in the “rooms” you got into.

2. Feeling overwhelmed and anxious about living up to your achieved success. Worrying whether you can repeat previous successes or follow them up.

3. Feeling that you just got lucky, and it wasn't about your skill and knowledge. One day the “validation police” will come and find you, revealing the imposter you are. You’ve only tricked everyone into believing you’re an actual writer, doctor, consultant, planner, lawyer, artist, etc…

4. Comparing yourself to those around you and not doubting their place in the field, but yours.

5. Being a perfectionist and fearing failure.

6. Being uncomfortable with praise or dismissing compliments.

7. Feeling that if you are not number one, you are a failure. Comparing yourself to other experts in your field.

8. Feeling guilt about your level of success.

Disclaimer: This experience is not to be confused with those who feign low confidence in order to receive praise and inflate their ego. That is an entirely different profile of a personality and the key difference is that those people are showing false modesty to gain something. This is also not to be confused with those who actually lie and cheat their way to successful positions. People with IP feelings seriously doubt their abilities and don’t believe in themselves despite their honest achievements.

Perfectionism & Failure

Those two words are basically complete opposites. However, perfection is like the word infinity, there is no limit; no reachable state. The pursuit of perfection is a path to failure.

I am not encouraging poor performance or cutting corners. This is about the dangerous pursuit of an unachievable perfection that hinders productivity or results in dissatisfaction despite achieving excellence.

Let’s make the word “failure” more palatable. First, we define what failure is not: it is not the end. The end is when we’re free of our meat suits and swan dive into the cosmos (we can discuss that another time).

Failure is actually an important step in the path to success. We must become familiar with failure and maintain a strong yet tumultuous friendship with it. We want to avoid it but when it comes knocking relentlessly, we must let it in, offer it a drink and let it rant about why red flag boyfriend #5 has hit it and quit it, yet again.

“The greatest teacher failure is” - an anastrophe you may have heard from a beloved green Jedi Master. Failure is a teacher, one that we have to face sometimes. The key is to learn the lesson, not dwell on a bruised ego, pick up the pieces and keep going.

• Stop being overly concerned with perfection. Get something finished to the best of your ability, but know when to let it go. At that point, you are no longer improving on it, but tinkering and wasting time.

  • Learn lessons from the last project and apply them to the next one; keep finishing things and make good habits.

  • Remember that nothing is perfect, that is in the beholder's eye. Perfection is not a reasonable metric to measure your abilities.

• If you stop judging what you’re doing and allow yourself to explore and roam free in the realm of your creativity, that’s where the magic happens. ‘Cause judgment is like, super lame. *checks manicure*

• The failure you fear is not properly measured against your actual ability. High achievers weigh failures unproportionally heavily. Allow yourself the space to fall and get up again. You have dealt with a lot in your life, you can do this.

Let yourself be free to explore your talents so you can create without perfection and failure haunting every step you take, because you are much more capable than you think you are.

Luck Versus Skill

You have made it into a “room” that was really hard to get into, be it at a firm or a school or a studio or a publication. There were a lot of other great candidates that could have gotten in, so you must have just gotten lucky. They looked at your application or manuscript while the reviewer was eating a beef satay Vietnamese sub for lunch and they associated that savoury flavour with your work and that’s why you got in. It had little to do with your skills or qualifications at all, or the hours and brain power you put into preparing the thing, but it was just a lottery pick...Right?

Wrong. I say this while being the person who still believes it. I went to university and studied electrical engineering and did a minor in computer engineering. My IP feelings skyrocketed in school so high that I’m still trying to recover from it. I got a job after graduating; the interview was swell, and then prior to starting - I started sweating nervously and wondering why they would have hired me. Despite my certificate framed on the wall - I was no engineer. I was an imposter. I tricked the company into thinking I could actually do the job, and I feared that they would “find me out” when I started working and then be extremely disappointed when I didn’t measure up to the resume or interview in reality.

You may wonder whether I botched my first job. Well, I had terrible acid reflux because of the stress I was putting on myself, but other than that I did an excellent job. I received great feedback and even got to train newcomers in the field. I must have accepted that I’m an engineer after that, right? Nope. Once again, I kept devaluing my own skills and knowledge by believing that everything I did was Homer luck.

Did you think I wouldn’t insert another Simpson’s reference?

In life, of course, there is a certain percentage of luck and probability that comes into play. But there are those who receive great opportunities or breaks and don’t know how to use them. If you have achieved a level of success, it is because you took the opportunities you got and used your knowledge and skills to make the most of them. You got that job because you worked hard and did great on the interview. Maybe the managers ate a great lunch that day, but that counts for ~3% of the reason. The rest was you. Your article or story got that many hits because it's actually great, you are a writer because you write. You achieved success because you worked your ass off and have used your gifts wisely.

I mentioned in a previous post that talent only gets you so far, your skill got you the home run. You deserve to be in your field and you deserve to have your voice heard. You are knowledgeable and your skills are valuable.

Feeling Unworthy

In the same vein as the previous header, feelings of unworthiness factor into luck versus skill. You walk into the room, luck on your side, and feel anxious. The luck that brought you here wasn’t anything earned, so you don’t deserve a seat at the table, right? Everybody else made it on their own skills, but you are an anomaly.

There can be several reasons a person can feel this way, from low self-esteem issues to self-loathing issues (or both if you’re a lucky duck). Often, a person experiencing IP thinks that they don’t belong at the table because of the “luck” that brought them there. Because they are the imposter and everyone else is the real deal.

This makes it difficult for the person experiencing IP to take compliments. They may smile and nod when given a compliment, but internally will deflect those words of praise like Serena in a tennis court. The person experiencing IP needs validation that they belong or that they are doing the right thing, and yet if someone praises them, they will dismiss it automatically. It’s a tragic paradox.

It's unlikely that those in the rooms (or competitive fields) will give you the validation you’re looking for, so you have to believe in yourself. If you worked so hard to get there, you owe it to yourself to make your voice heard. For artists and writers, you have fans because your work has value. To those in the corporate world, you got to your position because the company recognized your value and work ethic. You’re in that room as a valid part of the community and your opinions matter and are no lesser than anyone else’s.

Comparison

This is something everybody on the face of the earth will go through or think about at least once, it’s a part of life. We comprehend our world through comparison.

Comparison is not inherently bad. It can be a useful measuring tool and help you make connections between different things. Comparing with the eye of insecurity is when it becomes negative. A cold, hard look can be refreshing. An insecure one can be debilitating.

Those who experience IP typically compare themselves a lot. Most with IP are high achievers, and this causes an attitude of wanting to be the best. It’s not about being good at the thing, but being the best at the thing. If you’re not the best, then why bother doing the thing? This attitude can hinder a person’s ability to feel joy in their successes - since they compare their achievements to those who have accomplished more.

We all want to be special, from movies to books to millennia old poetry, we know the story of the chosen one. Some dream of doing great things and it's not always in a supervillain or megalomaniacal way. Sometimes it's just that you feel you differ from everyone else. Typically, children are taught that they are special; only to be beat down later and told that nobody is special. High achievers with IP truly feel (and wish) that they are unique and because of that they become paralyzed by the fear of not being the most talented in the room.

There are some with IP that end up staying in positions they are so good at that they do not challenge themselves. They could move on and achieve more success but the fear of failing, and the fear of no longer being the special one, can prevent them from wanting to enter higher education or other opportunities and specializations. We live in a competitive - a lot of times cutthroat - world, and sometimes it's very hard to sit in a room of superstars and still feel special or even relevant. So a lot of those with IP limit themselves to being a big fish in a little pond. To be clear: this is not from wanting to lord over people by remaining on top (that is a separate personality profile). This comes from a crippling fear of being around those that are as good or better than you because of a futile need to be number one, and a misbelief that anything less than that is failure. See how we’ve circled back to perfectionism and failure?

This is difficult, and I struggle with it all the time. Social media is a large feeding source for this. If you recognize that the comparison aspect is crippling you from reaching your goals, here are some suggestions:

• Avoid obsessing over your heroes. Once they stop inspiring you and become a sad reminder of what you have not accomplished yet, you need to stop looking at them.

• Take a social media break once in a while. Or if you like to look at stuff during your lunch break, then follow accounts that are fun or unrelated to your field. Example: If you are a musician and watching other musicians more successful than you is no longer inspiring but debilitating - unfollow or mute them.

• A healthy sense of competition is just dandy, but you need to see for yourself and be very honest about whether the information you’re taking in is pushing you up or pulling you down.

• Look back on yourself and see how far you’ve come. Compare yourself to your old self! No matter what difficulties you have had, I can guarantee you have at least one thing you improved on in the last five years. Even if you're Leonardo Di Caprio’s character devolving into madness in the third act of his movies.

Guilt

There is an interesting type of guilt that some associate with success. Some of those with IP may feel a certain level of guilt about the success they’ve achieved. People that care for those around them usually feel this kind of guilt and it ties in with ideas of unworthiness.

Fear or guilt about success can come from someone you care about not achieving a certain level of success and your own fear of exceeding that and causing a rift in the relationship. It can also come from guilt about them not getting the opportunities you did despite them having talent. This attitude comes from a caring place, but guilt does not solve the unfairness of the world. If you feel this guilt and therefore minimize your success when you talk about it, think about why you do this. Find the line between confidence and arrogance, without resorting to timidity. Being honest but tactful is not the same as bragging and boasting.

Is your guilt helpful in any way? Typically, the answer is no.

One option to lessen your guilt of success is to give back to the community you’re in. It doesn’t have to be monetary but can be, but explore other ways like mentoring those in your field or lifting others that are talented but may not have access to the same opportunities. This is an actionable change where guilt is not.

I would also recommend reading or watching videos on this topic. Brene Brown does research in guilt and shame, and in my last book recommendation list I mentioned a book called “The Gifts of Imperfection”, I highly recommend this book to those who feel a sense of guilt and shame (and unworthiness) in different aspects of their life.

The Cycle

Dr. Pauline Rose Clance discusses an important process in her book and calls it the IP Cycle.

It goes like this:

1. You get a great new opportunity or project and accept it.

2. You are ecstatic and happy about the opportunity.

3. The happiness gradually fades and is replaced with fear and stress.

4. You feel unmotivated and procrastinate because of the fear and stress. The anxiety causes a type of paralysis.

5. Then you dive hard into the work, under immense pressure, even to the point of burnout, but finish what you need to have done.

6. The project or venture ends up going great and you receive praise and “hurrahs!”.

7. You experience relief and the post “high” feeling after being so stressed.

8. A great new opportunity rolls around, you accept it.

9. The fear/stress cycle begins again.

Fear to stress to success. This seems to be the unspoken mantra of many of those experiencing IP. It can manifest as physical symptoms like reflux, frequent bathroom trips, nightmares, or nervous tics to mental symptoms like anxiety, panic attacks, or intense dread. These are all high stress responses.

When you finish a project or venture, write the process and how it went after. Keep this list with you so that when you enter a new project or opportunity, you can reference the list and see that you excelled each time and got through it so it may quell the unreasonable stressors.

Feeling Like An Outsider

Here I would like to mention that feelings of IP can affect many people, but there is a special brand of it that affects minority groups and womxn.

When you’re from a unique background than those that are typical in your field, it can feel as if you’re a stranger in somebody else’s house.

My personal example of this is being a woman in engineering. When I was in school, it was a male dominated environment, with only a handful of women, particularly in the electrical department. When I entered the workforce, I found the number of women in engineering dwindled a little more, and then plummeted at the senior and management levels.

I am the only woman in a lot of rooms, and often the only South Asian as well. There were a lot of times at the beginning that I thought I didn’t belong or that I should not make too much noise. Particularly, being a young woman in a boardroom of much older men was extremely daunting. I was hyperaware of how different I was, and I would compare myself with my colleagues and despair.

There are different people in these rooms. Some of them know what they’re doing, but there are a few that are all talk. They made it through for several reasons (luck, nepotism, bullshit) but they’re in the room. The funny thing is, they have high confidence and low competence. There are also, sometimes, people that don’t want you in the room. They see you and make a judgement about your abilities or even your role (ex. someone assuming I was a man’s assistant and not the project manager). For a person experiencing IP, that creates a double whammy of self doubt.

To this I will say, make a space for yourself, anyway. No matter who you are, sit in that room. Bring your voice to the table. Do not make yourself small out of insecurity or discomfort. You are allowed to take up space and ask questions, because you made it there because of your skills and knowledge. Those around you may not look like you or think like you, but that’s why they need you. You bring a unique perspective and background that supplements your knowledge and skills. You are both important and valuable.

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What Next?

There was a lot to discuss here, and still we have barely touched the surface on this fascinating topic. I have tried to nail down the major points and provide some background on them so you can think about and tackle your IP feelings. Like with anything, it takes deliberate practice to change, but it is possible.

Ask yourself the following questions:

1. What happens if I fail at something?

2. What happens if I stop trying to be perfect?

3. What happens if I stop feeling guilty?

4. What happens if I’m not as successful as person X, Y, and Z? Do I still find fulfillment in what I’m doing?

Talking about your experiences may help too. I’ve weaved in a few of mine in this post and hope you know you’re definitely not alone. So rarely do I truly know what I’m doing, but keep chugging along. One step at a time, right?

I hope that this was useful to you and if you have questions about this, comment or message me! I’d love to talk about it. If you’re interested in learning more about the Imposter Phenomenon, then I recommend reading Dr. Pauline Rose Clance’s book, “The Imposter Phenomenon: Overcoming the Fear That Haunts Your Success”. There are also many great Ted Talks and articles about this online.

I’ll end this post with my favourite Winnie the Pooh quote:

That’s all folx!

Love,

FP