Imposter syndrome is the quiet fear that your success is an accident, and that someone will eventually discover the truth. It is the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that make us feel like we are just not good enough. Imposter Syndrome makes us discount, reject, and refuse any compliments and praise. So, what makes us think these things? Even many high achievers can feel like a fraud.
It’s a combination of who we are, where we come from, who we hang out with, what we believe in, what we believe about ourselves, who we think we should be, and who we think we are.
Some psychologists suggest that impostor feelings may be linked to protective psychological mechanisms that evolved to help us navigate uncertainty, social status, and a sense of belonging. The good news is that the more aware we become of how we talk to ourselves, what we feel, and what we do, the more we can change ourselves.
What is imposter syndrome?
Imposter syndrome isn’t a flaw or a weakness. It’s a psychological phenomenon in which our internal self-image doesn’t align with external reality.
Fundamentally, it’s an unhealthy way of thinking that will cause you to believe that there’s been an error in assessing your competency and that you’ll be exposed as a fraud.
The feeling that fuels imposter syndrome isn’t just doubt. It’s the belief that you’re actually a fraud, a fake. Despite all the evidence to the contrary- your successes, your six-figure incomes, your college degrees- you go through your days with the internal feelings that you’ve done an incredible job of tricking everyone, and, at any second, your house of cards will fall apart.
It is commonly assumed that achievements are coincidental or that some don’t deserve them. This belief becomes a filter that erases your own efforts.
Imposter syndrome occurs when your mind rejects your accomplishments. You work hard to create a trail from your achievements to everything except your own capability, effort, and intelligence.
You brush it aside as a coincidence or a matter of timing; you were just fortunate. Or it could be charisma or lies; you seduced them into thinking you are an expert at what you do. You play down your own skills by telling yourself you weren’t that good and that it was actually easy.
It’s like a tension between our inner doubts and the tangible proof. Fundamentally, it is a psychological data processing snafu. On the surface, there’s a mountain of undeniable evidence proving you’re great-glowing positive reviews, awards, peer recognition.
The internal voice of doubt is blaring. It is not the data that rewrites your internal narrative of self. It’s what you choose to keep of the data that favors your old anxious identity over the truth. We cling too much to those more familiar stories, which keep us from fully realizing ourselves.
Where imposter feelings come from
Feeling like an imposter isn’t a sign that you are not talented. It is a method of controlling expectations, how we grow and learn, and the standards by which we judge ourselves. It is when we hold ourselves to high standards.
The further you move the bar for your performance, your potential performance, your morals, and your integrity, the more unattainable the bar you’re setting becomes.
You only see success as perfection. The more life you live, the more you come to the conclusion that you know very little, and you lump not knowing with not being able to. If there’s room between your ideal and your reality, your brain will say you’re being dishonest.
Every time you stretch beyond your comfort zone and take on another role, a new career, promotion, or start a new business, you leave behind an identity lag. The world has moved on, but the story is still the same old news in your mind.
When you are in a new space, there’s a learning curve. It feels awkward and uncomfortable. And instead of feeling like being in a place of learning or growth, your brain interprets that feeling of discomfort as evidence that you really don’t belong in the room.
We also live in a culture of comparison in the age of hyper-curated external realities. The fatal error in comparison culture is ignoring the data structure. You are comparing your own internal supercut to everyone else’s highlight reel. This is especially prevalent in a world of social media influencers.
You’re more familiar than anyone with the doubts you have, the worries you hold, and the scribbles you make. All you ever get to see of your colleagues or peers is the final result of the project. You think they’re all living with absolute certainty, and you’re not.
Unfortunately, these stories about what it means to be an adult are drawn early in childhood. Imposter fears can stem from those early childhood conditional messages we received about our value and acceptance. It’s not that most parents simply drop their kid into the gifted trap; they actively place them there. If you are told again and again that you are smart or talented, rather than hard-working, you learn to interpret struggle as failure. When it shows up, you think that the magic has left and that you are a fake.
It may be due to the conditional approval and love from your parents. If you were loved, wanted, or felt safe only when you achieved high grades, behaved perfectly, or did well. You may develop a deeply ingrained belief that success is necessary for acceptance and safety. If you’re not perfect, then you’re in danger of revealing your inadequacies.
When love or approval is tied to performance, the brain learns that safety depends on perfection. As adults, this wiring turns normal learning curves into perceived danger.
Emotional patterns of imposter syndrome
Once you’ve started falling into the imposter mindset, it becomes less a passing thought and more like a series of daily feelings and behaviors. The aim of those behaviors is to keep you from being discovered, but that tends to result in a vicious cycle of self-doubt.
The cycle is doubt, overwork, temporary relief, and avoidance, which then reinforces self-doubt. Do you see any of these patterns in your life?
The first thing that might happen when getting a compliment is to ignore it or even dismiss it. Your filter immediately disables the compliment so that you cannot hear it. To get a compliment, you must change the story you are telling about not being good enough.
We really don’t think we are good enough. She’s just trying to be nice, supportive, or easy to impress. You turn the spotlight to a fault: I totally blew that one to begin with, and you make sure the pats of praise stay outside your emotional borders, so your familiar self-doubt stays perfectly relaxed.
Oh yeah, and then we go all out to prove ourselves to gain approval. That’s the imposter cycle engine. You afraid you’re not good enough? Think you’re not enough? Well then, you’re going to overprepare and overwork to make up for it.
You may find yourself clocking in sooner or leaving later, redoing the same few simple steps over and over to make sure the job is safe. Well, this is dangerous thinking: Overwork is your safety net.
I worked at a Savings and Loan years ago, in the early years of my career. I started working as a human resources clerk, working closely with the payroll administrator. My motto was fake it until you make it. Always a curious being, I learned how to do the payroll. So, the day my coworker gave notice, I walked into HR with my resume. Shockingly, got the job, but I felt like a fake. I knew the job inside and out, came to work early, and stayed late; I overworked each week’s payroll. There were no problems, only my feelings of not being good enough running through my mind; I did not have a college degree, and I was not good at math. Of course, these were leftover beliefs from my old story; I had not updated them to who I was now.
We can be left with the horror of the alternative weighing on our minds, failures, or having to fess up; the very walls of your world close in, and you sabotage it yourself. You pass up opportunities that require your expertise. You do not go for the promotions, the pitch, or the leap of faith in your career. A leap that you are more than prepared for, but maybe just next year, or one more class.
And you are back in your comfort zone again. You become a big fish in a small pond, with far too much on your plate because you have become an expert and you are perfect, so you stay that way.
Your brain perceives this avoidance as a win. Your brain is incorrectly identifying relief from procrastination.
Reframing imposter feelings
This is a great way to think about imposter syndrome. What you are experiencing in that moment of doubt is not a sign that you are wrong. It’s a sign that you are evolving and learning. Your brain sees the new territory in a new environment as a threat rather than an opportunity.
Our inner critic has a way of putting a dark spin on life, embracing the worst-case scenario. Our inner coach can learn how to change the story. As you begin to build a more positive inner voice, your brain can see worry not as danger but as an opportunity.
Below are some samples and tips to ground the reframe you’ve just read. When you want a reframing to sink in, anchoring that shift in objective, concrete action helps.
Create a list of your genuine accomplishments and data, and separate facts and feelings. Comparing facts to feelings cues your brain into seeing your status as an achievement, not an accident.
Instead of you being a failure, identify the gap in skills by asking yourself if you need to develop some tech skills or knowledge here. Then transform the emotional crisis into a ready-made list of activities. That takes the fear out of it.
Self-doubt wants you to wait, to wait before you go. Waiting feels safe, but action rewires identity. What is hard is taking the tiniest actions and making these decisions while in doubt. Thus, creating believable, temporary proof that you can succeed in this new domain.
We all hit that roadblock when we try to push ourselves. It’s not about removing the sensation forever. It’s about developing awareness of it and knowing that it is a sign that you are making progress.
Final thoughts
Imposter syndrome shows up not because you’re not good enough. It shows up because you’re stepping out beyond the limits of what you’ve known. It’s just your old identity struggling to keep up with your growth, and when you start to untangle fact from emotion and base your achievements on objective evidence, the story changes. Stop confusing trying with danger and doubt with deficiency.
Imposter syndrome isn’t that you aren’t enough; it’s that you’re growing. Growing can be uncomfortable until you see growth. Every tiny act of presence in the face of negative self-talk validates that you are meant to be here. The question is not whether you belong in the room. The question is whether you are willing to let go of an outdated story long enough to discover that you already do.
As we reach the third week of November, we will explore how to treat yourself with the same compassion you offer others.
Recommended reading
The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women, by Valerie Young
The Imposter Cure, by Dr. Jessamy Hibberd
The Gifts of Imperfection, by Brené Brown
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, by Carol Dweck
Own Your Greatness, by Dr. Lisa Orbé-Austin and Dr. Richard Orbé-Austin
Citations
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