success

When you feel like a fraud: The Imposter Syndrome

WHAT IS THE IMPOSTER SYNDROME?

First things first; if you're a nerd like me who wants to look this up in the scientific journals, they don't call it "Imposter Syndrome," they actually call it the "Imposter Phenomenon" (which led to my initial struggle in finding relevant papers on this topic in the scientific literature, despite it being soooo popular in general media.) But it has also been called the "fraud syndrome," "perceived fraudulence," and "imposter experience.")

One surprising thing that came from my high-level review of the psychological literature on this topic is that currently, researchers DO NOT AGREE on what this concept means.

This was surprising to me because it seems to be all over the internet and mentioned a lot in the vernacular, so I thought the state of the science was further along!

The main issue is whether it's ONE core thing (unidimensional) or MULTIPLE-THINGS (multidimensional) bundled together. So, I don't find it possible to give you a one-sentence definition of this, but more productive to outline what the researchers have been listing as part of this phenomenon.

How to Feel Successful Despite Your Imperfections

“I don’t feel intelligent enough.” 😞

I once had a coaching client who started off our call with this. Let’s call him Nakita.

Nakita was a senior leader in a global company who was able to calmly and logically tell me that he knows that he is an intelligent person.

However, whenever he gets feedback that implies that he is stupid for making a mistake, Nakita goes into an emotional spiral of shame, and inner mental self-flagellation (i.e., excessive criticism of himself). 😞😞😞

As we talked, it became clearer to both of us that the specific feedback that led to feelings of unworthiness about his intelligence only happened 1-2 times a year from a specific person.

This was an a-ha moment for Nakita to realize that he was letting himself be blindsided by something that only happened 1-2 times a year, and that actually for the past 9 years, he has been actively working hard on not letting negative feedback derail him.

“I’m now only letting in the really shitty ones, not all of them, and that’s PROGRESS.” ➡️

🤔 Have you felt this way before? Where you focused so much on what’s still wrong with you that you forgot to look at how far you’ve come?