How to Manage Imposter Syndrome: Before, During, and After
If you’ve ever attempted to learn a new skill, take on a new challenge, or push yourself outside your comfort zone - odds are good you’ve felt a whiff of imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is the feeling we get that tells us “I am a fraud! I don’t belong here. I’m not capable of this. If anyone found out, they’d know I don’t belong here and have no idea what I’m doing.” If you’re looking for therapy in Orlando to help cope with imposter syndrome, we’ve got you covered.
What Does Imposter Syndrome Feel Like?
The most commonly reported description of imposter syndrome is feeling like a fraud. Here are a few other common elements of imposter syndrome:
Wanting to be an immediate expert
Pretending to know everything, rather than admitting “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure”
Fear of embarrassing yourself
Fear of making mistakes and worry that even minor mistakes will lead to catastrophic consequences
Feeling as if you are leading a double life, one in which the “real” you is wholly incompetent, and the “public” you is an expert
Fear of being “found out” by others, and potentially exiled from the group once they realize you don’t belong
Avoiding asking for help or drawing attention to things you don’t know
When Does Imposter Syndrome Strike?
We are particularly vulnerable to a case of imposter syndrome whenever we are reaching beyond our comfort zone. Most commonly this includes situations where you may be trying to expand your knowledge on a topic, trying to master a new skill, or trying to gain a sense of belonging to a new group. Essentially, any time you are trying to better yourself or make new friends, you’re at risk for a case of imposter syndrome.
Who Gets Imposter Syndrome?
The funny thing about imposter syndrome is that it has very little to do with your actual competence. That’s actually the sad part. You can be incredibly skilled and capable and still struggle with feeling like an imposter, just waiting to be found out. Some of the most skilled athletes, surgeons, celebrities, and academics have been known to struggle with imposter syndrome.
How to Cope with Imposter Syndrome
Preparation is key. Thanks to our large prefrontal cortex, humans love to plan and prepare, almost as much as we like to know what’s coming before it happens. The worst kind of pain for a human is the kind we didn’t see coming. So give yourself some comforting predictability and remember that you’re likely to feel a bout of imposter syndrome if you try something new. In addition to predicting the discomfort, here are a few other strategies you can use to decrease the intensity of imposter syndrome ahead of time.
Imagine that your best friend or someone you care about has just decided to give this a shot. Write them an encouraging letter of support to read during moments of self-doubt or after a misstep. This can help you channel a more supportive way of talking to YOURSELF.
Set realistic expectations BEFORE you start. Give yourself permission to mess up. If you don’t, you’ll be living in a pressure cooker of unrealistic expectations, which can actually negatively affect your performance.
Think of someone you really respect and admire and imagine them messing up. Imagine their reaction as soon as they realize their mistake. Imagine how they recover from it. What might they do or say to get through it and get back to the task at hand?
An intense physical reaction to even minor missteps is a big part of imposter syndrome. Imagine yourself making a small mistake and envision how you can recover from it. By allowing yourself to visualize yourself messing up AND recovering from it, you desensitize your body’s reaction to making a mistake, making it more likely that you’ll be able to carry on after a minor misstep. This way, instead of being plunged into level 10 embarrassment and anxiety, it might register a level 2 and then fade off as you get back to the business at hand.
Allow yourself to be the pupil, the trainee, the future-expert in the making. Make a list of topics you want to learn about or skills you want to master on the way to becoming an expert in this area of interest. Cross things off as you learn them to give yourself visual evidence that you ARE learning, even if you don’t yet know everything.
Talk to others who have mastered whoever you’re trying to learn. Ask them how it was for them in the early days, what they struggled with the most, any doubts they had, and how they got through it. You’ll likely find that many of the things
Prepare, but don’t over prepare. The sweet spot with preparation is to get comfortable enough with the skills or material that you can perform automatically without too much thought. Over-preparation, on the other hand, can take you past this sweet spot and lead you to becoming overly self-conscious, which can have a negative effect on your performance.
Once you have accomplished something, by definition, it will no longer be a challenge. Unfortunately, as a result, this means that past accomplishments are more likely to feel like they “don’t count” because it wasn’t really that hard to get your master’s degree, or finish that marathon, or publish that book - was it? Looking back it’ll always seem easier than it felt at the time. In an effort preserve a little bit of that feeling of triumph, take a moment at the beginning of taking on a new challenge to journal a bit about how daunting it feels to take on this new challenge. Looking back you’ll be able to see how far you’ve come.
Take a poll from your peers. Talk to others who have mastered the new skill your learning or have already checked off the challenge you’re working on. Ask them how it was for them in the early days, what type of struggles they faced, and how they persevered. You’ll likely find others have faced many of the same struggles you might be taking personally.
In the eye of the storm, it turns out external focus, a willingness to feel your way through the uncomfortable, and a dash of humility are key to moving through imposter syndrome without getting stuck. During a bout of imposter syndrome, you may feel tempted to pack it up and slink home before anyone notices you have no idea what you’re doing. Do yourself a favor and try these coping strategies before you give in to the urge to flee.
Research has shown that performance depends at least partially on your ability to be present, in the moment - not caught up in the embarrassment of past mistakes, not worrying about possibly making an ass of yourself in the future, but right here and right now. The more you're “in your head,” the more likely you are to slip up and make a mistake. Any time you find yourself focused on your thoughts, feelings, or physical movements, try turning your attention to your sensory input and getting your mind off yourself. Focusing on the external environment around you can help to decrease anxiety that sometimes drives imposter syndrome.
Unless you’re an expert in your field (an even then, sometimes) disclaimers can help to ease your anxiety. If you’re giving a lecture, don’t purport to know everything there is to know about the topic. If you’re sharing a plan for a group, solicit suggestions from other group members instead of presenting yours as the one and only perfect plan. Giving a small disclaimer that takes you out of the “expert” role can take the pressure off and allow you to relax more into the situation, which can actually improve your performance.
Learn to watch your feelings come and go. Try thinking of feelings like a wave of energy that swells up (crashes over your head sometimes) and then rolls back out to sea. Watching an intense feeling roll in, crash around, then roll back out can mean the difference between having a panic attack and watching anxiety rise and fall. If you feel a swell of anxiety, shame, embarrassment, or even pride roll in - just watch it. Sharpening your mindfulness skills can help with this and allow you to move through a feeling without getting caught up in it.
Forgive yourself quickly. Imagine you are running from a tsunami (dramatic I know) and you drop the bag of survival gear you’ve been carrying with you in preparation for this moment. You could stop and angrily berate yourself for dropping it, calling yourself all kinds of names, even running through ways to go back and get it. Or you could escape the tsunami. Stopping to berate yourself for minor, often meaningless mistakes, will only hurt your cause. Forgive yourself quickly, and let go, focusing on the next task in front of you.
Dismantling imposter syndrome on the backend is also possible. As humans, we like to rehash things. We like to replay football games and even have whole shows devoted to commenting on games that have already been played. Similarly, in cases of imposter syndrome, you might find yourself doing the post-mortem recall of all your perceived missteps, cringing at every detail. Here are a few coping tactics to help you ease out of the imposter storm, after the fact.
Don’t count the maybes. As I mentioned, we have a tendency to fixate on perceived missteps - meaning mistakes we aren’t even sure we made. This includes replaying things you said that may or may not have upset someone and things you did that may or may not have been correct. If you don’t know for a fact that it was wrong, take it off the review list. Life is too short for maybes so unless it was a confirmed error, it’s not worth your time.
For any actual confirmed mistakes you made, take them as learning opportunities. Your brain will naturally want to criticize you for embarrassing yourself, but this is probably the least helpful activity to which you can devote your time. You already feel badly about it, that box is checked, no need to keep rechecking it. If you want to learn from the mistake however, to decrease the odds of repeating it, that can be a useful pastime in certain circumstances. If you’re a surgical resident for example, and you made an error in surgery, it’s critical to learn from it so you can do better next time. Did you simply not know the right way? Were you not sufficiently prepared or practiced? Or did nerves get the best of you? The answers to these questions can yield far more helpful information and guidance than a handful of insults.
Compete only with your past self. We have a tendency to compare ourselves to others all the time. Social media has only made this a thousand times worse. Do your best to compete only with yourself. Ruminating about how you measure up compared to others isn’t likely to yield any helpful change either. Keep track of where you are, where you’re trying to get to, and how far you’ve come. This can help keep you focused on what matters, rather than caught up in the comparison game.
Imposter syndrome can make even the best of us second guess ourselves. Therapy in Orlando can help you pinpoint the thinking habits and behaviors that keep you stuck in the loop of imposter syndrome so you can stark working your way free. Imposter syndrome is not a cute that you should be aiming lower, trying less, or living a smaller life. On the contrary, it’s usually a good indication you’re on a path toward growth and adventure and self-doubt can be a truly normal stop along the way.
We can help.
If you or someone you love is struggling with anxiety, depression, or the effects of trauma, please reach out. We offer CBT Therapy in Orlando and online throughout the state of Florida. Call today or send us your info and we’ll reach out for a free consultation to see if one of our therapists would be a good fit.
