The BS behind Impostor Syndrome … and the first step to liberate yourself

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Impostor Syndrome affects thousands and thousands of people.

It’s that awful feeling of not belonging in a space — often a job or career or level of success — that makes you feel like a fraud, like you don’t deserve the role you have, or even that if ‘they’ catch you out something dreadful will happen.

Common signs and symptoms include:

• using self-punishment to achieve goals
• caught up in spirals of shame about past mistakes
• self-doubt, a lack of self-esteem
• fears about what the future might hold
• feelings of inadequacy even as your results ‘on paper’ are absolutely fine
• perfectionism and overwork, as you constantly strive to prove yourself
• hesitating to speak up in meetings or in your online marketing
• not pursuing opportunities (because “I might not be good enough”)
• being hard on yourself after making a mistake

It’s exhausting and debilitating. It definitely exists. But there’s a huge myth which has made it so much harder to solve, in the past.

We all know that we live inside millennia-old systems of oppression.

Those systems are sustained more easily, when people from historically marginalised groups unconsciously believe that we don’t belong in certain places — the halls and corridors of power, wealth, opportunity; or the compassionate, connected places of nurturing, caring and vulnerability.

The systems are kept in place by demonstrating that it’s dangerous to be caught in places you ‘don’t belong’; and by constant underlying messages which reiterate the not-belonging.

This is not about specific individuals trying to oppress you, although there are often individuals who keep repeating the messaging.

(Thanks, Harrison Butker, for being the latest to prove this point).

And it doesn’t matter which oppressive system tells you that ‘you don’t belong’.

It could be for being Black or Brown, being queer, being a woman, living with a disability, having a criminal record, lack of access to education, low socio-economic status, etc, etc — or all of the above.

It can also apply to cis het white men who want to be in certain spaces such as child-rearing and the caring professions, because systems of oppression can also be very bad for the ‘oppressors’.

But you are not a powerless victim in this situation.

The messaging has been wired into your brain from day one, by the weight of the culture around you, as well as the cultures to which all your ancestors were exposed.

Any notion that Impostor Syndrome arises because of your actual abilities, your quality, your worth as a human, is complete and utter nonsense (which you probably already know, intellectually).

The myth which has kept it in place, is the idea that it’s caused by some flaw in you.

Impostor Syndrome was first identified in women who held high office or positions of power, but who battled with ongoing feelings that despite clear evidence, they were ‘out of their depth’, that they would be ‘caught out’ as frauds.

For years, there was an implication that Impostor Syndrome was something wrong with the individual women.

The very name itself — Impostor SYNDROME — makes it so easy to think it’s a you problem, that it’s a condition you have, some kind of thing unique to you that ‘normal’ people don’t have.

That’s not just a problem because it means our solutions were misdirected — but because making it a you-problem just emphasises all those feelings of inadequacy, not belonging, being broken, being wrong.

Your brain has been exposed to constant, regular messaging — both direct and indirect — saying that you don’t belong in certain spaces, asking ‘who do you think you are to do that thing?’, telling you these spaces are unsafe for you.

And your brain has been witness to many, many incidents — both recent and historical — where people suffered lethal consequences for being found in places they did ‘not belong’. The lynching of African-American people, the persecution of women seeking the vote, the current spikes in domestic violence are all powerful messages that defying the system can get you killed.

You and I might know, intellectually, that your earning big money, or becoming a Hollywood A lister, or getting that promotion won’t literally get you killed.

But your brain pays attention and sees patterns — and your brain’s primary job is to keep you alive.

When you find yourself seeking to step into or inhabit roles and levels of success which were not available to ‘people like you’ for many generations, your unconscious mind is working hard to make sure you are safe.

And since the systems of oppression are alive and well and operating all around us, you can see how this phenomenon we call Impostor Syndrome is actually a very reasonable and rational response for your unconscious mind to have — not a personal character flaw, not a fault in you.

And you can see how, when you are under the impression that Impostor Syndrome is something wrong with you, you’ll be trying to problem-solve for ‘I’m broken’ rather than problem-solving for ‘F** the system which tried to break me!’

But there is good news.

You are not a helpless victim of the system.

You didn’t install this toxic BS in your own head.

But it IS something you can uninstall.

Knowing that it’s not a you-problem is the starting place, because it removes the burden of feeling like there is something wrong with you; and it means you can focus your energy on countering the impact of Impostor Syndrome with defiance and a sense of empowerment.

“Dang it, there’s nothing wrong with me!! I just need to do a bit of brain rewiring — easy!”

For my clients who are experiencing Impostor Syndrome, the first place I look is a sneaky underlying habit we have all been taught — glossing over and diminishing our own achievements.

I once asked a client to list her greatest achievements. She began by listing her kids, and her work in the local community — and then said, as though in passing, “oh, and I passed medical school”.

For nearly a decade, she’d shown up for every part of medical school — exams, intern work, specialism training — while supporting herself with waitressing jobs. Then she’d been a successful physician for over a decade, saving lives on a regular basis.

But it was reduced to one phrase, uttered almost as an afterthought — “oh, and I passed medical school”.

It’s not her fault — that’s how we’ve all been trained to think about our own achievements!

Here’s my first step to dissolving Impostor Syndrome

1. Make a date with yourself for at least 30 minutes (this tells your brain you’re embarking on something that matters).
2. Sit quietly with yourself and engage a little non-judgemental curiosity. Grab pen and paper (handwriting forces you to go slow, always useful for this kind of work).
3. Look back at the achievements of your life — the large and the small — and pick just one.
4. Dive down into the details of that journey of that achievement — look for every milestone, the challenges you had to overcome, the unexpected detours you successfully navigated, the work you put in.
5. Reject any notions of perfection, because that’s another myth perpetrated by the systems around us (let’s not do the work of the patriarchy for it, ‘mkay?)
6. Bask in each one of those milestones, like a cat stretching in a patch of sunlight. Slow down, and allow yourself to feel a sense of pride in each one, as though you were giving unabashed praise and a ‘well done’ to a beloved child or friend or your sweetie. Relish noticing how amazing you are, and how amazing you were back then too!
7. Repeat daily for at least a week, looking for different achievements each time; after a week, you will find you can reduce the length of time taken, to make it a 10 minute or even 5 minute daily practice
8. If you’re in a role which is particularly challenging (surrounded by older white male bosses; emerging into a role nobody understands; at the cutting edge of your industry), you may want to turn this into a long-term practice, since those systems will be extra loud in your ears

We have it drummed into us that we need to be humble all the time; and it’s true that humility and gratitude are very important when we’re looking to serve our purpose in the world.

But we are smart humans with sophisticated brains capable of wonderful nuance!

We can simultaneously feel the humility of being able to serve, through our careers and our engagement with community and family, AND — at the exact same time — let ourselves be proud of our achievements.

That self-pride is a powerful antidote to Impostor Syndrome, because it trains our brains to know that actually, I DO belong here, I AM the person to do this work, I AM more than good enough for the role I have and I AM safe in my own power.

And, of course, it feels good — always a juicy bonus!

PS if you struggle to implement this, feel free to drop me a note to janette@janettedalgliesh.com. I’d love to help you, with a simple tool that I think you’ll love!