It's Not Me, I'm Just Lucky: How to Avoid Letting Imposter Syndrome Get in the Way of Your Success

How often have you thought that you passed an exam with flying colors because the teacher was in a good mood, forgetting that you spent two weeks preparing for it? Or, for example, you came up with a successful architectural solution for the program, but chalked it up to random success? All of these seemingly insignificant stories are symptoms of impostor syndrome. Imposter syndrome is not a mental illness, but rather a psychological phenomenon in which a person is unable to attribute his achievements to his own qualities, abilities and efforts. The syndrome can manifest itself in work, study, hobbies - anywhere that requires a fairly high level of expertise. A person with this level of expertise, due to low self-esteem, cannot believe that he can cope with complex tasks, and therefore attributes their solution to other people, chance or luck. Imposter syndrome is associated with a fear of failure, which in turn prevents you from taking risks and solving difficult problems, both in work and in school. It turns out that impostor syndrome directly prevents a person from developing as a professional. We will talk about the causes of this syndrome and how you can “make friends” with it.

When you feel like a fake

The term “imposter phenomenon” first appeared in 1978 in an article by Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes, according to whose observations many successful women tended to believe that they were not smart and that others overestimated them. Feelings associated with impostor syndrome can be divided into three categories:

• Feeling like a fake when a person believes that he does not deserve the success or professional position he has achieved, believing that others mistakenly think otherwise. As a rule, such thoughts go hand in hand with fears of being exposed, for example, that colleagues will understand how incompetent a person susceptible to the syndrome is in their professional field. Fear of exposure greatly increases the fear of failure, as well as the fear of success, since success is assumed to be a big responsibility.
• Explaining your successes to luck or other external reasons, but not to your work or abilities. At the same time, the person is afraid that next time he will not be lucky.
• Devaluation of one's successes when a person believes that the work done was too easy and did not deserve much attention.

For clarity, here are a couple of stories of people who suffer from impostor syndrome.

Откуда берется “самозванец”

Much has been written about impostor syndrome. The main thing to understand is that it appears on the basis of low self-esteem. There are many reasons for this - a lot of criticism or lack of attention from parents in childhood, psychological trauma, an unexpected failure that you encountered as an adult - all this can ultimately lead to the fact that a person ceases to believe in his own competence. Interestingly, impostor syndrome goes hand in hand with the Dunning-Kruger effect, a cognitive distortion in which people with low skill levels draw erroneous conclusions, make poor decisions, and are unable to recognize their mistakes due to low skill levels. your qualifications. According to psychologists, highly qualified people, on the contrary, tend to underestimate their abilities and suffer from insufficient self-confidence, considering others to be more competent (that's impostor syndrome). One explanation for this relationship between a person's self-esteem and his professional competencies is that the more experience a person gains in a particular field, the more aware of how many knowledge gaps remain to be filled. Also, highly skilled people mistakenly believe that tasks that are easy for them are also easy for other people. Where do we evaluate ourselves professionally? In society. I propose to consider society as a place to satisfy our needs. Why do we join with other people, for example, in a company? Because this way we can get more money, more stability, prospects, and so on. Society has a system of requirements and rules that must be followed in order for society to accept you. Any professional community has its own rules and requirements and monitors their compliance. Since man is a pack creature, he also has a fear of expulsion from the pack. The way a person is treated in the professional world is a guarantee for him that he will receive a resource and protection. This assessment is directly related to our sense of security. The professional community knows about this, so the assessment of our professionalism is used as a tool of influence. It is important that we know that our professional self-esteem is a tool for our employer to influence us. As a person grows up, self-esteem is assigned. That is, a person accepts what people around him think about him. The more important a person is to us, the more important his assessment is to us. If a child has little information about the world around him and has very little influence on the situation, then an adult is distinguished by the fact that he can make his own judgments - he has enough analytical abilities to evaluate the one who evaluates him and therefore accept or not accept someone else’s assessment of his own personality. What is adequate professional self-esteem?The first thing you should have is a good attitude towards yourself. People with impostor syndrome have a breakdown in this area - they do not feel good about themselves. The second is a person’s knowledge of his strengths and weaknesses. It is more difficult to influence the self-esteem of such a person. Third, know what the professional community needs from your strengths. And what do you want? What does adequate professional self-esteem provide? It gives stability in defending one’s interests; it is difficult to “push” a person and force him to do something. Stable self-esteem also gives freedom of action: satisfaction of needs, ambitions, greater stability in a problem situation and greater flexibility. With impostor syndrome, self-esteem is so low that it acts as a kind of filter through which positive assessments of society do not pass. Imposter syndrome usually affects successful people. The difference between a person with extremely low self-esteem and someone with impostor syndrome is that people with extremely low self-esteem usually have a lot to fear because of it. People with impostor syndrome, as a rule, act, but in this activity there is always a lot of tension and fear: “Do I really meet the requirements?”, “What will they tell me now?” There are situations during which impostor syndrome worsens: when a person does something new and significant. For example, going for an interview in a new field.

What to do with an impostor?

It is important and necessary to make friends with the impostor. Ulyana Khodorivskaya highlights several recommendations on how to do this:

• “Appropriate the impostor.” You literally need to tell yourself that this is part of your inner reality, and you are an adult. An adult has the ability and tools to control his impostor.
• Separate your attitude towards yourself as a person from a professional assessment of your qualities. It is better to work on your attitude towards yourself as a person with a psychotherapist, but you can work on your attitude towards yourself as a professional on your own. Assigning self-esteem is the answer to the question: “What do I think of myself?” The second question: “How does the market evaluate me?” Your own opinion of yourself as a professional may be below par, but if society pays you at the same time money, then this is an indicator that the problem is more likely with self-esteem than with professional qualities.
• Ask yourself the question: “Why do I need an impostor?” It happens that the impostor does not allow us into situations for which we are not ready and works as a defense mechanism.
• Learn your limits like a professional. A strong professional with strong self-esteem knows where his core competencies are (that is, what he does best). This is necessary in order to understand what you want and how to achieve it.

Do you have impostor syndrome and is it stopping you from learning to code? We are waiting for your comments.