Three Strategies for Managing Imposter Syndrome

Have you ever had a day at work where you’re doing well, very well, everything is going right, you’re at the top of your game… and yet, you feel dissatisfied, as though all the accomplishments were luck, or chance, or maybe even a mistake? I’ve had those days. I have those days often where I ask myself, “Do I deserve to write?” when I’ve just had a piece perform successfully, yet I doubt what my own eyes and heart are telling me. Imposter Syndrome and its nasty friend perfectionism have a way of burrowing into your self-conscious and reinforcing the negative beliefs you have about your value and ability to perform.

While feelings of self-doubt are normal every now and again, and while Imposter Syndrome isn’t a clinical diagnosis and this piece isn’t intended to diagnose mental illness, when your negative thoughts about your abilities and worth become persistent, it may be time to address the adverse effects it’s having on your life. I regularly feel the symptoms of this anxiety-driven state and it causes a great amount of self-sabotage, here, I’d like to discuss recognizing and acknowledging your imposter syndrome and how it affects your performance, checking the facts, recognizing “doing” and “being” mind and assessing your inner critic, as well as other proven ways to cope with Imposter Syndrome and its ugly companions. If you’ve ever felt that creeping sense of dread that maybe you’re not good enough, tell it to creep back away. You are valuable and Imposter Syndrome is not an invincible monster.

Recognizing Signs of Imposter Syndrome

Imposter Syndrome is the internalized belief that our successes come from external factors rather than our own intelligence, skills, or qualifications. A state of anxiety and shame, this isn’t a diagnosis but a pattern of thinking and judgments that skew how you view yourself and your accomplishments. Along with feelings of uncertainty and self-doubt, you may be under the illusion that you “tricked” your way into a position or have feelings that you are a “fraud.” Being faced with new or unfamiliar challenges may raise a negative feedback loop if you’re feeling insecure about a new task, but recognizing signs you’re experiencing Imposter Syndrome can be key to cutting off the vicious cycle. Signs that you may be suffering from Imposter Syndrome can look like these: not believing success was earned, feelings of inadequacy surrounding your intelligence, ability, or education, unable to internalize and feel pride in one’s accomplishments, flaw exaggeration, and chronic feelings of invalidation. If you’re experiencing several of these symptoms, I recommend examining the Imposter Syndrome Cycle to see if your response pattern fits the cyclical pattern in which we invalidate ourselves.

It begins when we are presented with a task, whether we are familiar with it or not, and we experience anxiety or over-preparation for it. The project or task gets completed during which there is a brief sense of relief followed by rationalization (“Someone else could have done it better.”), and increased doubt and elevated anxiety in oneself. Do you feel you fit into this pattern? Do you recognize negative thoughts that have overwhelmed or prevented you from fulfilling what you believe your potential is? Have any of these thoughts or behaviors made you feel “trapped” in an unhealthy routine? I have found myself in this pattern, and It’s fine if you relate, and it’s fine if you don’t, anxiety over achievement and performance affects us all differently. For those of you that do resonate with these feelings and catch yourself sometimes slaving away in this cycle, you’re not without a tool kit and do not have to surrender to feelings of being stranded.

Three Strategies to Manage Your Imposter Syndrome

When I’m feeling invalidated or a sense of failure I’m urged towards the DBT skill “check the facts.” Applying this skill to your imposter syndrome could prove instrumental. When we check the facts, we examine what is true in a situation and pit it up against the anxious and invalidating critical thoughts to see if your feelings and the facts “fit.” If you’re feeling like a fraud or that you’ve tricked your way into a position, checking the facts is invaluable. Did you lie about your qualifications? Were you dishonest in your interview? Have you been performing at this job with success after your acceptance? Checking the facts from your inception at a workplace to your current position might be a way to create a validating timeline of your work and show from start to finish you, you yourself, earned this opportunity. You can similarly evaluate your work with this skill. For myself, I ask many questions on whether or not I’m truly committed and doing the best job I am or if I’m pulling a fast one. Has your work required repeated, repetitive correction? Have you been reprimanded over the quality of your work? Have you been doing everything in your power to meet your responsibilities in your position? If you’re like me, you pour yourself into your work whether you like it or not, so when I ask “am I really trying,” I check the facts of my quality and quantity of work against my negative feedback and see that, while maybe in the past I’ve needed guidance, if anything, this is not just a sign of success but a sign of improvement.

A second strategy to consider with Imposter Syndrome is confronting your inner critic. Criticism is the loudest of our inner voices and can drown out even the most reassuring of thoughts as we tend towards a natural negativity bias (i.e. it’s easier to remember a bad thing than a good one). There are a couple of ways you can confront your inner critic, one being the method I chose, which was drawing and visualizing what I felt was bogging me down. What I scribbled out looked like a haunting scarecrow sewn in black ink, sitting in the rows of gray matter in my brain and watching over every negative thought I had. It made sense when it finally manifested on the page that this was something I had dreamed up and dreaded. Visualizing and confronting your critic is one way, a simple conversation is another way. Try and get a hold on that voice, its tone, its depth, its brittleness, and hang on to that voice. Ask your critic what it’s judging and why; you may get some answers bubbling to the surface, you may get nothing at all, and sometimes in that nothingness we get the facts: the critic is only our inner negativity, and the more we challenge it the more we see it can’t rely on facts, only feed on our feelings.

This final strategy may work better for those of you that already write or keep a journal, but focused review of your work and documenting your successes could help battle those intrusive thoughts. I’ve begun marking days on my calendar when something exciting happens at work: an article gets big, I write a milestone piece, I complete a special series. I try to revisit those days to remind myself that not every day is going to be a home run, but I’ve knocked it out of the park in the past. Most journals are chronicles of our sadder or more difficult days as noted by our tendency to fixate on the negative, but this type of writing could be more assertive and reaffirming rather than merely venting or fixating. By beginning even a short writing journey reaffirming the successes professionally and personally, you’ll have your own handy narrative crafted from fact and written with your feeling to counter any lists or blocks of doubts that might cycle back your way.

Three Strategies for Coping With Perfectionism

Perfectionism is another anxiety we can pick up while we experience Imposter Syndrome, driving ourselves toward an impossible standard. While the Imposter Syndrome makes us feel like we aren’t doing enough or well enough, the perfectionism drives us to never make errors even though we are bound to make one or be disappointed with progress. One way to start overcoming perfectionist tendencies is to begin noticing judgments and practicing a non-judgmental stance with ourselves. Practice, when you have a task you might be feeling stressed about, noticing your inner monologue. Thoughts will arise naturally, and you might notice some judgments you have about the job you’re doing or how it needs to be done. You don’t need to do anything about these judgments for the moment besides practice noticing them every now and again and understanding their presence. As you begin to recognize judgments as they arise, you can slowly begin to practice taking a non-judgmental stance of the situation and of yourself. For example, if you were passed over for a promotion at work, you might think, “I’m a failure. I haven’t been promoted in years. I’ll probably never make an impression.” You can reframe this judgment into a non-judgmental phrase such as, “I am frustrated with my position at work. I feel as though my efforts are being unnoticed and I’m feeling discouraged.” This validates your feelings while not attacking yourself as the cause for your disappointment and redirecting towards a non-judgmental stance may help to change the narrative for your inner critic as well.

Acceptance and recognizing the “doing” and “being” mind are useful tools as well. Acceptance is perhaps the most difficult, that we are to take an open-minded stance towards our achievements and future goals and understand that there is no perfection. Instead of fighting for the impossible, we attempt instead to accept our reality task by task. There is a concept in DBT and mindfulness called “wise mind” or “the middle path” between being and doing where we can exist in a flow state. In our doing mind we are goal and task-oriented, focused on what’s ahead whereas in being mind you are aware of reality as it is in the present moment. With a balance of both determination and awareness, you can begin to balance your emotions towards your work, and you can begin to approach your task as only a task instead of planning ahead, catastrophizing, and attempting to create perfection, helping to make things more manageable. An example I use is when I believe a piece has to “sing” and I fixate on the entirety of the piece instead of the parts of it I need to complete. I, instead of falling into fixation, focus on each sentence and each paragraph as my task, working in pieces as if moving firewood: one log at a time. Every letter and sentence matters, just as much as the whole, and without thinking ahead or designing an image, I focus on the pieces and accept the task. I try and marry my mind focused on doing with the mind that wishes to be in the present, attempting the ideal balance in which we achieve flow state and what we are striving for feels both natural and purposeful.

A simpler way to practice battling perfectionism is to both try new things and try failing on purpose. Have you ever tried to write with your opposite hand? I invite you now to take a pencil or pen, if you have it, and write the first sentence that comes to mind with your non-dominant hand. Take a look at it and ask yourself how you feel with the product and how you felt doing the task. I felt silly, but had no expectations this would be a success! Can you truly judge that as a failure? Yes and no, I’m sure, since I’m talking about perfectionism. Now, if you can, think of something you’re not particularly good at or maybe you’ve never tried. For me, billiards come immediately to mind, I’ve never had the knack for it and I’ve always found some way to fumble up when it counts (noticing my judgment there). If I wanted to challenge myself to experience failure and see that it can’t hurt me and is, in fact, oftentimes part of the learning process I could pick up a cue and try and shoot some unimpressive billiards, focusing on the fun and steps of the activity rather than a winning score. If you’re naturally gifted at all bar games, perhaps try something that might not come as naturally to you such as drawing, poetry, gaming, or some other art or activity that may interest you that you haven’t explored as much as you’d like. Experiment by drawing your first sketch, hammering out your first lines of poetry, or exploring a new world online. Was your first picture your magnum opus? Was your first poem published? Did you beat your favorite video game on the first try? If you did, wonderful, and congratulations on trying something new, and if you didn’t I ask, was it ruining? Did it seem to affect your self-worth? Or can the attempt of new things sometimes draw out interests and talents we didn’t know we had! Practicing new things without high stakes for failure is an excellent exposure for your anxieties at performing your job and what level you believe you should be performing it at. With time, patience, and finding the right set of coping mechanisms for you, perfectionism and Imposter Syndrome can be little flies in your office, annoying, but you can swat them away with a practiced hand.


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