For years I assumed that many of the things I was good at were nothing special. When I was complimented on what I was doing, I assumed that anyone could have done it and that eventually people would discover that fact. This is the essence of impostor syndrome, a problem that is rampant in our field and probably in others.
We assume that no matter what others might say, we’re really just an impostor and that anyone could have done what we do. Some live in dread that others will find out they’re an impostor, and the illusion will come crashing down.
And yet, those people feeling impostor syndrome are usually not impostors. They’re usually quite skilled people, doing excellent work. They just don’t believe it about themselves.
Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes identified this pattern in the late 1970s:
“Despite outstanding academic and professional accomplishments, women who experience the imposter phenomenon persist in believing that they are really not bright and have fooled anyone who thinks otherwise.”
Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes, “The Imposter Phenomenon in High Achieving Women”1
This is certainly not unique to women, despite the quote. I used to have it and so do many men I know.
As a general rule, impostor syndrome is not a confidence gap that you close by collecting evidence. If it were, it would dissolve the first time you passed the exam, or shipped the project everyone praised, or got the promotion. It doesn’t. It survives all of that. You can stack the proof to the ceiling and the belief sits there, unmoved, waiting for the next test to expose you.
So why does evidence usually not work?
Because the belief isn’t being held at the conscious level where the evidence lands. It’s held below conscious awareness. The conscious mind is the part reading the performance review and doing the arithmetic. The belief is somewhere underneath, in our unconscious mind. That’s the whole reason arguing your way out of it is such slow, grinding work. We’re trying to consciously make changes at an unconscious level.
Maya Angelou felt it too. She wrote a shelf of celebrated books and collected honours for decades, and she still said that each time out, part of her was sure people were about to find her out, that she had run a game on everybody and the game was finally up.2 There is no achievement large enough. If a wall of awards doesn’t settle the question, no line on your resume is going to settle it either.
I did eventually reason my way out of impostor syndrome. I finally convinced myself that even though lots of people could do what I was doing, almost nobody actually was. It took me years to finally believe that, so today when I help people with impostor syndrome, that’s not the way I approach it. Now I work directly at an unconscious level.
So the next time you’re thinking that you’ve fooled everyone, realize that you’re probably running just an unconscious program that isn’t benefiting you. You’re better than you think you are.
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Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes, “The Imposter Phenomenon in High Achieving Women: Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention,” Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice, 15(3), 1978, 241–247. Full text: https://paulineroseclance.com/pdf/ip_high_achieving_women.pdf. ↩
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Widely attributed to Maya Angelou (“I have written eleven books, but each time I think, ‘Uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.’”). The quotation circulates without a confirmed primary source; it is presented here as widely attributed rather than sourced to a specific interview or publication. ↩