UPDATE: wow, never thought this post would take off this much! thanks
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Believing that everyone belongs in the room besides you, and that you’ll be exposed at any moment as a fraud.
I was recently seeing a girl with Imposter Syndrome. Apparently it mostly affects women. She didn’t believe she could do anything well. She was constantly worried she was not doing well at her job though I pointed out things she did well just about every day. Basically people with this disorder don’t believe they are worthy of praise and any accomplishment they might have made is reasoned away by believing they were being recognized simply because other people want to make them feel better for sucking at everything. They don’t suck at everything. They just believe they do.
I’ve dealt with this in the past and should be able to provide good insights, but I don’t think I’m qualified
What is it when you feel the opposite? You know, I can handle anything that comes my way. Send it and hold my beer!
Imposter Syndrome is a feeling of not being good enough and doubting your own accomplishments (whether it be in work, school, relationships, social interactions, academia, etc.). People with Imposter Syndrome attribute their success to luck, or tricking others into believing they are smarter than they are. They fear they will be discovered as frauds.
I keep saying they, but many people experience this in their lifetime at least once.
Imposter syndrome is a type of inferiority complex where your perceived inadequacies cause you to not feel you belong in whatever role you’re fulfilling. I’ll give you a personal example:
This is common among new doctors, and I certainly had a bit of it after I graduated medical school. In case you don’t know, as a medical student, you have very little real responsibility. You basically follow a doctor around and your primary function is to watch and learn. That’s what I did through medical school. Six weeks after graduating, I suddenly wore a long white coat, a badge that said MD, and was the one nurses would call, who had to write prescriptions and make orders. I felt lost without someone looking over my shoulder and making sure I was doing everything right (technically we had supervising doctors in residency, but we were expected not to bug them too much).
The first couple months I was plagued with anxiety and felt like I didn’t belong. Even simple things like using the doctor’s lounge, I felt like someone was going to call me out for intruding. At worse, it can lead to paranoia and can actually impact your performance. Now that I help to oversee a residency program, I’ve started a mentorship program that sets up new residents with older residents for guidance to help ease the transition.
At the expense of simplifying it massively:
You ever been high and got paranoid? Or ever been driving and had a cop drive behind you and get you feeling uncomfortable, like you’ve done something wrong and you’re about to be called out on it?
It’s that. But about everything. It doesn’t matter how reasonable or illogical it may be, you’ll still feel like a big fat faker.
It could be about a job and how you feel like you’re going to get caught out at any moment and shamefully frogmarched out in full view of everyone (despite being a model employee), it could be about your relationship and how your partner is one day going to wake up and realise how you’re totally not what you said you were and they’re off. It could literally be about anything.
It seems strongly related to a fear of shame and embarrassment (to me, at least), but I’m not au fait with the actual definition or how it would be diagnosed and that’s me literally guessing because that’s a prominent component in my potential experience of it.
Imposter Syndrome is a psychological condition where the person doesn’t believe they are deserving of their achievements. There are different categories. Some believe they got what they have by luck and at any moment they will run out of it and fail. Some believe they got there by using others and that they will get cought at any moment etc. It’s a pathological condition and irrational.
You’re convinced that you don’t deserve anything you’ve worked for and your reputation is a lie. One day, your feeble facade of competence will come crumbling down and everyone will see you for the pathetic loser you fear you really are.
When the person telling you you don’t deserve to be where you are is you.
When you think maybe you’ve been lying to yourself about how you got there.
When the person telling you that you don’t have the skills, knowledge or professional acumen to be where you are is YOU.
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