How impostor syndrome controls us and how to overcome it

You might know the feeling: you’re asked to lead a project at work. You wonder why you were chosen. You worry that you’ll make a fool of yourself. When everyone finds out that you’re a fraud, you’ll never be asked to lead again. Or worse, you’ll be fired. It’s only a matter of time before they discover that you don’t know what you’re doing at all. If you do in fact manage to pull it off, you think you just got lucky or you fooled them again. You know, deep down, that you don’t have what it takes to be here.

If this thought cycle sounds familiar, you might have impostor syndrome, a psychological pattern that causes a person to doubt their accomplishments and instills in them a persistent fear of being exposed as a fraud or discovered as an impostor despite evidence to the contrary. But you’re in good company. Studies have shown that around 70% of people have felt the effects of impostor syndrome at some point.

Is impostor syndrome the same as low self esteem?

Impostor syndrome is not the same as low self esteem or a lack of confidence (although you can have them all! isn’t that fun). The key characteristic of impostor syndrome is the sense of feeling like a fraud about your achievements or success—the fact is, you’re usually very good at the thing you have impostor syndrome about. For example, when I started taking adult ballet a few months ago, I lacked confidence because I’ve never danced before. I was blatantly bad at ballet and I wasn’t confident in my abilities (although I was enjoying myself). On the other hand, I play Gaelic football and I am quite good (...right?). I’ve competed in the North American Gaelic Games a few times and I’ve been on the starting lineup in countless games. And yet, I often feel like a fraud, like someone is going to turn around and say, “wait, you don’t belong here, take that jersey off,” because I didn’t grow up playing the sport, I’m not Irish, and whatever other reasons pop into my head to keep me feeling like an impostor. When I do succeed by having a great game or winning, I write off those successes as anomalies. When I miss a ball or we lose, it reinforces the fact that I’m a fraud. As you can see, impostor feelings can crop up in any part of our lives, not just work. Increasingly, people are feeling like impostors in their hobbies, online lives, and personal relationships.

To “protect us” from the fear of being found out as an impostor, our brains set up thinking patterns and behaviors, mental games that keep us from being “found out”. Different researchers have coined phrases and split people up into groups based on what kind of impostor feelings they have. In my Defeating Impostor Syndrome workshops, I’m mostly concerned with identifying and amending behavior patterns, so I have split the behaviors into three groups.

Here are three categories of behaviors people with impostor syndrome engage in to protect them from the fear of being discovered as an impostor

Never do

If you’re a “never do” person, maybe you don’t apply for a promotion, ask for a raise, submit work, or apply for a program to keep from being found out as an impostor. Because never doers don’t...well, do anything, they don’t ever fail, which means they are protected from their fear of failure. If they don’t even provide an opportunity to get rejected, they’ll never be exposed as a fraud.

Don’t do enough

If you’re the type of person who doesn’t do enough, maybe you procrastinate or don’t finish a project, job, or assignment so when you fail, you have a ready-made excuse that you actually didn’t even try that hard. Or maybe you stay up late the night before an interview so when you don’t get the job, you can say that you just didn’t get enough sleep. Maybe you switch jobs or majors a lot because you’re afraid that if you start to be considered an expert in something, people will find out that you’ve been faking it all along.

Do too much

Or maybe you do too much. These types of people work so hard that when they do achieve something, they think they only achieved it because they worked harder than everyone else. They know that they’re not that talented at all and they’re just fooling everyone, but no one else has figured that out yet. Or maybe they pack their schedule with so many extra things that they’re “too busy” to do what really matters to them, like starting that company or finishing that book (I’m cringing as I write this). Or maybe they’re “the funny one” or “the nice one” in the group and when they achieve success or get compliments, they tell themselves that they only got the job or are only in the friend group because of this one quality and they have to do whatever they can to keep it up.

The problem with all of these behavior categories is that they’re only protecting you from being “discovered” as an impostor. They not helping you succeed, develop as a person, or live a happy life.

What happens when people with impostor syndrome do achieve success?

An important part of the impostor syndrome cycle is that if you do in fact succeed despite your self-limiting behaviors, you won’t accept your success. If you get the job or promotion or you get engaged or someone tells you that you’re a good parent or you get an award or prize, you’ll say that you fooled everyone again. For people with impostor syndrome, successes are mistakes and failures are truth.

How do I overcome these impostor feelings and break the cycle of impostor syndrome?

Our greatest fear as people with impostor syndrome is being found out. Our brains are just trying to do their jobs and protect us from fear, but people with impostor syndrome have to break these behavior and thought patterns somewhere in the cycle or we’ll never stop feeling like frauds. Like any pattern, these cycles are hard to break because they reinforce themselves. You have to remember that these behavior and thought patterns are only protecting you from your impostor feelings, they’re not actually helping you celebrate your successes.

First, ask yourself: what is the impact if I don’t break the impostor syndrome cycle?

What are the consequences of letting your impostor syndrome control your thoughts and behaviors? What opportunities will you miss out on? What chances won’t you take? What successes will stay out of reach?

I have a lot of impostor syndrome about being a writer. Inconvenient, as it is my career, favorite hobby, and life’s work. Because it’s so important to me, I have a lot of emotions around writing and what I think success looks like. In my mind, there is only one measure of success: I should be the next JK Rowling or I should break my pens, smash my computer, and give up forever. That’s the standard I have set for myself and anything short of that makes me feel like a failure.

So to protect myself from the fear of not being a “real” writer, maybe I don’t submit to magazines or I don’t ask beta readers to read my work or I procrastinate and don’t finish projects because I’m afraid that if I finish, I’ll find out that I’m actually no good at writing at all. Or I pack my day full of other things and only leave time to write when I’m exhausted so I have that as an excuse. Because of those self-limiting behaviors, my writing suffers—you know, the thing I want to be really good at. I get caught in a loop: feel like a bad writer, fall into self-limiting habits to protect myself from failing and being exposed as a fraud, and either failing because I limited myself or succeeding and explaining it away as a fluke, because I’m a bad writer, right?

I have to stop and ask myself: what are the consequences if I don’t stop thinking this way?

Examine how you measure success in order to take action against your impostor syndrome

Once you’ve discovered what’s at stake, set yourself up for action and success in the future. People with impostor syndrome let our failures define us and we explain our successes away. It’s easy for us to explain our successes away when success is a moving target. When I was writing my first book, I told myself that I would call myself an author when I published it. When I published it, that went out the window and I told myself that I would call myself an author when a stranger bought my book and loved it so much that they sought me out to tell me. When that happened, that goal went out the window as well. I kept moving the measure of success.

The most important part of defeating impostor syndrome is redefining what achievable success looks like and sticking to it, and the best way to do that is to set a SMART goal + (ER)

A SMART goal is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. I have added Excellent and Reward, because positive reinforcement and self care are really important when we’re trying to change behaviors. They don’t have to be big rewards or even tangible rewards—they just have to be a nice thing that you do for yourself.

For example, this would be my SMART goal about calling myself an author: When a stranger buys my book and tells me that they love it, I will call myself an author (and here’s where the Excellent and Reward parts come in to seal the deal) by writing author on my name tag at a networking breakfast and accepting my success when people bring it up. Low stakes, makes me feel awesome, fun personal goal achieved. When another person sees my name tag and says, “ooh, I’ll check out your book,” I don’t say, “oh no, you don’t have to, it’s not Harry Potter or anything,” I say, “thank you, I think you’ll really like it.”

It takes practice, but by identifying our behavior and thought patterns, articulating what’s at stake if we don’t change, and making a plan with SMART(ER) goals to move forward, we can start to defeat our impostor syndrome. And if you’re a manager, leader, or parent, here are some tips to help the people who look up to you overcome their impostor feelings as well.