Impostor syndrome

Impostor syndrome is a recent term for a variant of low self-esteem. It refers to a persistent self-doubt about the individual’s ability to carry on and explain his or her own success.

The first references to this mental distress appeared in the early XXI century, but skyrocketed in the past ten years. Books, counselling, and therapy devote considerable attention to the matter nowadays. It became an essential source of anxiety, depression, and burnout, very relevant in the professional context, especially among women.

Despite clear evidence of competence and success, it is common for professionals, regardless of their seniority, to feel like frauds. Individuals with impostor syndrome minimize their impact and influence on their achievements. In their perception, a large part of the credit shall be given to others, to circumstances, or luck rather than to their own contributions. They feel like fooling others about the overestimated competence credited to them. Paradoxically, external compliments and recognition only make the feeling worse, as these people think that the expectation of their prowess is only increasing, success after success.

Many theories exist to explain how this happens and what to do about it. I have my own. Although I am not a psychologist or sociologist, I don’t feel like an impostor for sharing my empirical observations on human nature.

In modern times, where people interact primarily via social media, parents and managers often confuse praise with motivation. As the other side of the screen is always nicer, perfect, glamorous, and successful, we forget that success always demands trial and error, failure, learning, and effort. As we reduce personal interactions, meaningful dialogues, and sharing of divergent points of view, we think we are the only ones having doubts, failing, having a hard time, or taking longer than expected to get things right.

Try your own experiments. Pay attention to the people you judge successful. Notice how they run a project, conduct a meeting, or propose an idea. You will notice that they stumble on similar challenges, pushbacks, and failures as you. The difference is that you don’t know how they handle frustrations, setbacks, and turnarounds. You don’t even know if they judge themselves as successful as you perceive them. And here resides an insight: low self-esteem may be linked to low self-awareness. Self-awareness depends on how well we know the people around us. Their posts and social media content are only a part of who they are.