Struggling with imposter syndrome?

If you are one of many professionals in different fields, who are constantly doubting themselves and feel like a fraud, then you might be dealing with a thing called the imposter phenomenon aka imposter syndrome.

*Disclaimer
The content of the article does not provide medical advice. It depicts only my personal experiences and research. It is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

What the F is the imposter syndrome anyway

Imposter syndrome (also known as imposter phenomenon, fraud syndrome, perceived fraudulence, or the impostor experience) describes high-achieving individuals who, despite their objective successes, fail to internalize their accomplishments and have persistent self-doubt and fear of being exposed as a fraud or impostor.

In other words, people with imposter syndrome can’t attribute their performance to their actual competence, they believe that success was just luck or any other external factor, and they believe somebody will expose their incompetence soon and live with that constant fear.

Initially, it was perceived to affect high-achieving women, but recent research shows that men are likely to struggle just as much. These individuals experience anxiety, depression, and deep frustration. Despite these side effects it is not technically considered a mental health condition, therefore there is no official cure for the syndrome.

A 2013 study by researchers at the University of Texas found that ethnic-minority college students are more likely to experience impostor feelings. More interestingly, impostor feelings more strongly predicted mental health problems than did stress related to one’s minority status.

Such feelings affect people more at workplaces than in colleges: these people avoid taking on additional responsibilities at work so as not to compromise the quality of the tasks they already have, they also tend not to ask for promotions as they believe they don’t deserve it so they stay in their same positions for a long time. This can mean that people undervalue their skills and can’t evaluate their true worth as a professional.

The reason I’ve decided to dive into this topic is the fact that I struggle with the syndrome and more and more people in my circle started mentioning feeling like they don’t know enough and need to try harder, or that they don’t think they deserve the promotion they are getting.

The thing is that the majority of these people are in product design and development. The highly competitive, complex, and insanely fast-evolving fields, can drive anyone to the edge.

Trends, tech, software, and human behavior change rapidly. We torture ourselves mentally to keep our competitive advantage. Despite being constantly busy with work and projects, we are putting a huge amount of pressure on ourselves to excel, evolve, and learn everything new that comes up. All that, paired with feeling like a fraud and an imposter can be a whole lot.

What can cause imposter syndrome?

With a little bit of research, you might learn, that people who develop impostor syndrome grew up in families that pressured children to achieve, criticized them, or over-praised them. Growing up in today's society can add to that by putting a lot more pressure on over-achieving and being up to your game every single day.

Stereotypes play a huge role — for many years researchers were convinced that the syndrome affected only women. There is no doubt that social stereotypes about achievement, making money, and being in a position of power were strongly shifted toward women in male-dominated fields. So labeling women as less intelligent, less capable, or even incompetent could make them internalize these ideas and pressure them to feel like they don’t really deserve to be where they are, thus making them force themselves to over-excel, over-achieve, over-work, and even burn out as a result.

How can we manage to control or even embrace it?

If you recognized yourself In the article up to now, then the methods I use to try to embrace and overcome it might be helpful to you.

First of all, know what you are dealing with

If you understand what you’re going through, you are on the right track. Researching helped me understand what I was feeling, reading other peoples’ experiences, asking questions on Reddit, and in general, mentioning the issue to other people showed me that it was not an exclusive struggle. It surprised me how I related to others’ experiences and how much I could learn from them.

Recognize your expertise and visualize your accomplishment

As creators, we are usually subjected to a lot of opinions and uncertainty, we look back on our projects and constantly analyze and critique them. We dramatize the mistakes we find, compare ourselves to other successful, smart, and creative people, and push ourselves to believe we are way worse than anybody else.

One thing I try to do is to document small successes. Was the presentation a success? Great, write that down somewhere. Did you receive perfect feedback from the client? Amazing, save it to reference when needed.

I’ve been using Notion for personal finances, task management, and note-taking in general. So I created a separate page for my small successes and daily achievements, which helps me calm down and reflect on my work realistically.

Focus on growth — not perfection

There is endless knowledge to acquire in every field and practically, nobody holds all of that knowledge, so neither should you pressure yourself to do so. Recognize that every professional in your field has their strength and weaknesses, evaluating your own and coming up with a development plan can help you ditch negative thoughts about not being competent or worthy.

To do that, I create checklists in Notion of things I need to learn, things I need to read, watch, and focus energy on. Those are usually topics that make me feel insecure and this way, I can track my progress in those topics and ensure myself that I’m learning and making the list of insecurities shorter and shorter.

That’s where you can embrace your imposter syndrome, by taking the fear you have and turning it into an everyday encouragement to learn. By making a checklist of topics you are not sure about, you can track your growth and improvement. I believe that you are less likely to feel like an impostor when they consider yourself “a work in progress” and can see how far you’ve come.

And lastly — set realistic goals

When we fear failure, we tend to want to over-achieve, thus we set goals and expectations, and sometimes these goals are only possible in the perfect world with no distractions, and no need to eat, sleep, and rest. So when we fail these impossible tasks — our nightmare comes true, we feel disappointed and assure ourselves that we are not good enough.

I remind myself to try to give myself room to breathe, room for unexpected things to happen, room for distraction, rest, and feeling off.

Make the most of feeling challenged, uncomfortable, and uncertain. I believe it means we are growing and pushing ourselves to success.

Among us illustrations from: https://www.figma.com/community/file/1030232137448981840