Oct 6

Oct 6 On Feeling Like An Impostor

Last week I had the opportunity to run a workshop for around 100 consultants at work on the topic of the Impostor Syndrome. The fact that so many people were interested in the topic - and braving a workshop that didn’t start until 4pm on a Friday (!!!!!) - shows just how pervasive this topic is. I originally drafted this post in the last year of my PhD (Mar 28, 2017), but have since made some updates. The real ‘cure’ to the Impostor Syndrome is to talk about it - so let’s do that!

“The real ‘cure’ to the Impostor Syndrome is to talk about it - so let’s do that!”

The Impostor Syndrome

Impostor Syndrome (IS) is characterised by chronic feelings of self-doubt and a fear of being discovered as a fraud - even in the face of being extremely accomplished. Even though certain people have clear-as-day evidence of substantial personal achievements, they are unable to internalise these accomplishments or skills. Instead of acknowledging achievements – the results of hard work, and celebrating our successes – we attribute our triumphs to luck, timing, personality, or the faulty judgments of others. Individuals who experience Impostor Syndrome believe they are less intelligent or competent than others think they are. A 1998 study of medical, dental, nursing and pharmacy students found that 30% thought of themselves as impostors. Impostor Syndrome can be extremely detrimental to psychological well-being and it can cause acute distress.

Additionally, a greater number of females display Impostor Syndrome compared to men. A 2016 study by Villwock and team found that the number of females with IS was more than double male counterparts (49.4% of females versus 23.7% of males). Impostor syndrome is surprisingly common among some of the most successful African American and minority groups. Even still, it can strike any gender, race, or age.

In 2017, I was at an intensive course for doctoral students (just to clarify, not just medical students… us other super cool PhD students too). It was a rare chance to interact with PhD candidates from other disciplines, mostly from the sciences. Quickly a common theme began to emerge amongst our shared reflections: a feeling of inadequacy. Lack of emotional support or functional support with research, daunting deadlines and hazy career prospects where it’s almost certain we will have to explain our thesis research over and over again to people who don’t understand the intensity of our struggles. It’s so easy to feel worthless in our world. It’s so easy to feel like an impostor.

More complicated than a simple insecurity, which tends to hamper success, this is an issue that plagues those with the highest accomplishments. These individuals believe they need to work harder and longer to harness the same achievements.

Joyce Roché lists the symptoms (of which you could have one or all):

When people praise you, you fear you won’t live up to expectations.
You feel your success is due to luck, despite your actual track record of achievements.
When you succeed, you have doubts about being able to do it again.
If you’re up for a promotion, you don’t tell anyone until it’s a done deal, in case higher ups “change their mind.”
You feel you need to work harder than others in order to prove your worth.
You seek external validation, yet don’t fully believe it when it comes.

Here are a couple of strategies suggested for tackling these demons.

Develop your self-awareness. Realistically analyse your strengths and weaknesses. Keep a dynamic inventory of skills that you can refer to when you’re feeling low.
Take in the external validation when someone gives you praise. Next time someone gives you a compliment, try to internalise it and say thank you.
See others for who they are. See both their strengths and weaknesses too - sometimes it’s not clear to us just how much work or struggle someone else felt when we only see their successes.
Make sure you keep perspective on your life as a whole. Perfection in one project might not make a dent in how happy you feel overall. Does it really matter if you score 96% on that exam compared to 100%?
Find a mentor. Having someone who believes in you and someone you trust to share your fears and self-doubts can be a healthy way to take stock of where you actually are.
Recognise you are not alone. The research shows Impostor Syndrome is more common than what we might think. Talk to others displaying the same symptoms; share experiences and coping mechanisms.

Pursuing a PhD is really an exercise in Impostor Syndrome as we exist within a long process of discovering who we are as academics, researchers, or intellectuals. We haven’t had time yet to make a widespread contribution to the literature in a (peer validated) way that makes less relevant our own self-thoughts because we have been accepted by committees of peers. The self-doubt can be a crushing feeling and can have a tremendous impact on day-to-day life.

Either way… be kind to your PhD friends, because they probably aren’t all that kind to themselves.

Post-Script

In preparing for the workshop at work, my research took me even deeper into the Psychology research on Impostor Syndrome, and the work of Dr. Valerie Young.

Dr. Young has hypothesized five different categories of Impostors. Understanding your impostor persona might help you realize the behaviours you’re doing that aren’t serving you. Here they are, in my own words:

The Perfectionist

Do you ever get 99% on something and still consider that a failure? For perfectionists, not only do the results count but so does how you get there. Standards that aren’t met may lead to feelings of shame.

The Superwoman

Success is about just how many roles you can satisfy - and easy excel at - at once. This might mean you have to be perfect at being the wife/mother/boss/friend/athlete/volunteer - and falling short of any one of those roles leads to feelings of failure and shame.

The Soloist

Success only counts if you and you alone it happen. Needing help is not an option - it’s the same shameful feeling as failure.

The Natural Genius

Anything that takes effort to learn or complete leads to feelings of failure; if it takes you more than one try, then you feel like a fraud.

The Expert

You expect yourself to know everything, and minor lapse in knowledge is equivalent to failure.

Which Impostor Persona Are You?

Need help figuring out which one you are? Dr. Young’s Book has a quiz, or answer the following questions.

I believe that the Impostor Syndrome comes from a knowledge asymmetry: we know just how hard we worked and struggled for our successes, but when we look at others, we can’t feel their struggle, we simply observe their success and how they made it look easy. We can’t feel their effort or their insecurities - and sometimes it feels like its just us that struggles. We can reduce this information asymmetry by talking about it and supporting each other. Knowing that we all face this feeling at some point or another is powerful, and together we can learn how to overcome it. Welcome to the Impostor Club.

Love,

Dr. D

Resources

Clance, P. R., & Imes, S. A. (1978). The imposter phenomenon in high achieving women: Dynamics and therapeutic intervention. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 15(3), 241-247.

Henning, K., Ey, S., & Shaw, D. (1998). Perfectionism, the impostor phenomenon and psychological adjustment in medical, dental, nursing and pharmacy students. Medical education, 32(5), 456-464.

Peternelj-Taylor, C. (2011). Is impostor syndrome getting in the way of writing for the Journal of Forensic Nursing? Journal of Forensic Nursing, 7(2), 57-9.

Roché, J. (2014). CONQUERING IMPOSTOR SYNDROME: LESSONS FROM FEMALE AND MINORITY BUSINESS LEADERS. Leader to Leader, 2014(74), 13-18.

Villwock, J., Sobin, L., Koester, L., & Harris, T. (2016). Impostor syndrome and burnout among American medical students: A pilot study. International Journal of Medical Education, 7, 364-369.