Ditch the Imposter "Syndrome": If 70% of us experience imposter feelings, maybe it’s just…normal.
You know that feeling--the one where you’re sure at any moment your colleagues are going to find out you don’t reallyknow what you’re doing and you’re not sure how you even made it to this level in your career? You tell yourself you just got lucky or the person who hired you must have made a mistake? Yeah, me too. I’m pretty sure I only got into graduate school because my dad knew the program director.
It started when a mentor in my psychology master’s program suggested I apply to work with David Barlow, a world-renowned anxiety expert in the PhD program at Boston University. I hadn’t heard of Dr. Barlow but when I looked him up and saw the 1-2% acceptance rate at BU, I knew with 100% certainty I wouldn’t get in. I’m not sure why I even applied, but I did.
I was living in San Diego at the time, but Boston was home. I grew up in a suburb about 20 miles west of the city (Natick--home of Doug Flutie and featured in an episode of Family Guy!). I didn’t tell my parents I had applied to BU because I didn’t want any pressure to come back ‘home’ and didn’t want to have to explain why there was no way in hell I was going to get in anyway.
Eventually, the secret ate away at me and I confessed to my dad.
“David Barlow?” he asked. “The psychologist?”
What the? My dad was a business guy who knew nothing and no one in the field of mental health. Except it turned out he knew Dave Barlow. They belonged to the same golf club and had played together a few times.
The next time my dad ran into Dave, he told him I was applying to the program. Fast forward a few months; miraculously, I was accepted. I did well in the program and have accumulated a number of successes since graduating, but to this day, over 20 years later, I still worry my dad is the only reason a mediocre applicant like me could have possibly gotten into a stellar program like that.
The Imposter Phenomenon
The imposter phenomenon was first identified by Drs. Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes in 1978 and later came to be known in pop culture as Imposter Syndrome. Clance and Imes described the imposter phenomenon as an internal experience of intellectual phoniness that persists despite objective evidence to the contrary. In other words, people who suffer from the imposter phenomenon are bright and successful but don’t believe themselves to be despite their achievements. They question their legitimacy and whether they truly belong when they are part of an elite group. The imposter phenomenon causes a fear of being ‘found out’ or exposed as a fraud. So people suffering from the imposter phenomenon can get accepted into a competitive graduate program, win an award, or get a promotion and believe they didn’t deserve it.
The imposter phenomenon affects up to 70% of us at some point in our lives and most research finds that it is more common in women and people from other marginalized groups.
In western cultures, white, straight, cis, able-bodied boys are raised to believe they can do and be anything. They are invited to all the tables from the outset. Girls (especially those in bigger bodies), BIPOC, LGBTQI, immigrants, and disabled individuals have a history of being told they don’t belong. So, for example, a Black woman entering a STEM field will likely be more vulnerable to the imposter phenomenon than a White man.
Though the imposter phenomenon was rebranded imposter syndrome, some have recently argued this designation is problematic (Tulshyan & Burey, 2021). Not only does the term pathologize a phenomenon that is nearly universal, those who experience it often do so because they have been victims of social oppression--they are not people living with a disordered psyche.
They say sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me but we all know “they” don’t know what they’re talking about. Words and language have power. So how about we agree to ditch the syndrome and opt for less pathologizing terms like imposter phenomenon, experience, voice, or just plain old imposterism.
Stay tuned for future blogs where I talk about imposter subtypes and what to do when the imposter voice gets loud.
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References
Clance, P. R. & Imes, S. (1978). The impostor phenomenon in high achieving women. Psychotherapy Theory, Research and Practice, 15 (3), 1-8.3 Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one's own
Tulshyan, R. & Burey, J. (Feb. 2021). Stop telling women they have imposter syndrome, Harvard Business Review.
