University Times

“How many of you have ever had that ‘I’m in over my head and they’re going to find out’ feeling?” asked author Valerie Young, eliciting nervous laughter from an audience of nearly 200 women at the University’s annual Women in Medicine and Science Forum.

“Despite evidence to the contrary — often overwhelming, compelling evidence to the contrary: degrees, status, awards, raises, advances — a lot of bright capable, successful, high-achieving people have a difficult time internalizing and really owning their accomplishments.”

Instead they credit good luck or good timing. “The thinking here is: ‘Sure I’m successful, but I can explain all that,’” said Young, author of “The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer From the Impostor Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It,” who opened the two-day professional development event with an April 23 keynote in Scaife Hall.

The impostor  phenomenon was named by psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes, who coined the term in the 1970s to describe their observations on how bright, capable people felt like they were somehow fooling people.

“For a lot of us, our accomplishments don’t register very well,” Young said.  “If we push away and negate the evidence of our abilities, the next time we succeed, we don’t know how we got there.”

Impostor  phenomenon is not a fancy term for low self-esteem, she said. “Self-esteem has to do with a global sense we have about ourselves. Impostor feelings are very specific to achievement arenas — to academics, to work, to career,” Young said.

“You probably don’t feel like you’re an impostor when you’re walking your dog or you’re doing your laundry.” Instead, the feelings surface at a job interview, in conferring with an adviser, when conducting research or making presentations.

“We fooled them” leads to fear of being unmasked. “For some people there’s almost a sense of relief — at least the jig will be up. I can stop this pretense of being a scholar or academic and I can always go back to saying ‘Would you like fries with that, sir?’” Young said. “But for most people there’s not relief. There’s just that anxiety of always waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

While impostor syndrome initially was thought to affect only women, subsequently it has been found to affect men as well, she said.

Comedian Mike Meyers admits he’s waiting for the no-talent police to come arrest him and actress Jodie Foster has labeled her acceptance to Yale and her Academy Award as flukes, Young said.

Women do experience impostor  feelings in greater numbers. And “it holds us back more,” she said.

“The research shows that boys and men are more likely to externalize failure and mistakes and women and girls are much more likely to internalize it and blame ourselves.”

Why do so many people feel this way?

Impostor feelings have some roots in childhood, Young said. “What messages did you get growing up from family members and teachers? How was success defined? How was mistake-making addressed?

Were you labeled the smart one in your family? “That’s a lot of pressure.” Or were you competing with a sibling who was the smart one?

But childhood experiences don’t explain it all. There are situational factors. “Just being a student, period, will make you more susceptible to impostor  feelings,” she said. “You’ve signed up and you’re paying to be tested over and over, and to have your knowledge and intellect tested.”

Actors, authors and others in creative fields often admit to impostor feelings. Their vulnerability is understandable, she said. “You’re being judged by subjective standards by people whose job title is professional critic.”

While women more often are affected by impostor syndrome, academia presents a more level playing field for these feelings. “The only study I’m aware of where a higher percentage of men identify impostor feelings than women did was a study conducted with professors,” Young noted. “I think that speaks directly to organizational culture.”

Organizational cultures that fuel self-doubt — academic culture and medical culture are prime examples — can leave individuals more susceptible to impostor  feelings, she said. Competition, hierarchies within disciplines and constant exposure to critical feedback all contribute.

“It’s worth being mindful that I am in an organization that can foster impostor  kinds of issues,” she said.

Belonging

A sense of belonging fosters confidence, she said. “The more people who look like you the more confident you are going to feel. The less people look like you the less confident you are going to feel,” she said.

Impostor feeling may be higher among immigrants. “You’ve got all the same pressures as everyone else, but you’re also doing it in another culture and perhaps even in a second language,” Young noted.

Belonging also may be harder for first-generation college students, or other “firsts” to do something: the first woman, first person of color, first person with a disability in an area. “There’s a pressure really to ‘represent’,” she said. Being the sole woman in a traditionally male environment or the oldest or youngest in a group can have an effect.

“Whatever the stereotypes about a group’s intellect — and you know those stereotypes and everybody knows those stereotypes — then you are more susceptible to impostor thoughts,” she said.

Myths about competence

While cultural expectations play a role, we also share multiple subconscious myths about what it means to be competent, qualified or intelligent — a litany of shoulds and woulds.

“We all have these unsustainable, unrealistic self-expectations for competence,” she said. “We beat ourselves up when we break one of these rules … about failure, mistake-making and intellect.”

Audience members easily filled in the blanks:

• “I should” … manage my time perfectly, be able to answer any question, publish only in Nature and Science, know my next grant idea.

• “I would never” … have to say no, question my path.

• “I would always” … feel confident in my decisions, finish what I start.

“When you hear these out loud, it’s crazy. No human being could do that,” Young said.

The role of shame

“What the research shows is that while no one likes to fail or make a mistake, people who feel like impostors experience shame when they make a mistake or fail,” she said.

“We don’t all experience shame the same way. Where we feel shameful has everything to do with how we define competence,” she said, identifying five competence “types.”

Shame, for “the perfectionist,” is any tiny flaw — 99 instead of 100 on a test.

A corollary is “the expert” — the “knowledge version of the perfectionist,” for whom shame comes with not knowing everything, Young said.

There’s the “natural genius” for whom competence equates to ease and speed. “If it takes longer than you think it should to master, you’re very, very hard on yourself,” she said, adding that this is commonly seen in graduate students who have sailed through their undergraduate years.

There’s “the soloist” who feels shame in having to ask for help. “I should be able to figure this all out by myself,” is the mindset.

Then there’s “the superman/superwoman” who feels he or she must perform perfectly across all roles.

“The bad news is we have these crazy expectations for ourselves,” Young said. “Here’s the incredibly good news: This is also the solution.”

Unlearning the impostor syndrome

It’s important for individuals to understand how the impostor  syndrome plays out in their own life.

Impostors use unconscious coping strategies to manage the stress of waiting for the other shoe to drop and to avoid detection, Young said.

Keeping a low profile, procrastinating, never starting or finishing projects, self-sabotage, putting on a “game face” of uber-confidence or using workaholism to cover up one’s supposed ineptitude — are strategies that work, at a price.

“What opportunities or experiences am I missing out on” by not recognizing and changing these strategies? Young asked.

The cost isn’t just to the individual, Young said. It’s expensive to organizations as well.

The cure

There is no pill to fix impostor  feelings. “You just have to do it yourself,” Young said, enumerating three non-negotiable things that must be done to unlearn impostorism:

• Normalize impostor  feelings.

“You’re not special” in feeling like an impostor, Young said, citing a study that showed that up to 70 percent of high achievers at some point experienced impostor  feelings. “It’s incredibly normal. And just to know that some of the most talented and accomplished people on the planet share these feelings can be tremendously helpful,” Young said.

You’re not alone. It’s not a mental health issue. It’s a way of thinking that can be changed, she said.

“When you think about it, there’s a certain amount of arrogance to the impostor  syndrome,” she said. “What you’re really saying is, ‘Other people are so stupid that they don’t realize I’m incompetent,’” Young said.

It’s especially hard when you’re surrounded by brilliance as you are at an institution like Pitt to not have impostor syndrome, she said.

But it’s important to recognize most people have imposter feelings and that some brilliant colleagues are faking their way through theirs, she said.

• Reframe impostor  thoughts

“People who don’t feel like impostors are no more intelligent or competent or capable than you and I,” Young said. They simply think differently.

“We need to learn to think those different thoughts,” asking ourselves, “What would a non-impostor  think under these circumstances?” she said.

“We need to think different thoughts about failure, mistakes, criticism, to take some of that shame out of it,” Young said.

“We all know in the sciences you learn a lot more from failure than you do from success. It’s mostly a series of failures on your way to success,” she said.

“It’s how you handle failures and mistakes that matter. We don’t get out of life without failures and mistakes and it’s where so much of the learning can take place.”

We need to redefine what it means to be competent, she said.

“You will never know everything about your field. It’s a constant moving target,” Young said. “To be able to put that in perspective is very powerful.”

Asking for help is a sign of competence, she said. “Competent leaders surround themselves with people who know more than they do and they call on them.”

• Reframe fear

“What we want is to feel confident 24/7,” she said. “But that’s not how confidence works. We have moments of confidence and we have moments when we don’t feel so confident.”

Instead of beating yourself up when you lack confidence, “recognize instead that the body doesn’t know the difference between fear and excitement,” Young advised. When fear manifests with sweaty palms, nervous stomach or dry throat, repeat to yourself, “I’m excited, I’m excited,” she said.

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Change won’t come immediately, Young noted.

“You have to change how you think,” she said. “Then you have to change how you behave: Do the thing that scares you, even though you’re scared. And over time your feelings will catch up with you.”

Reframing isn’t instant. “You won’t believe the new thoughts. You’ve got the old rulebook going on. And that’s why you have to keep saying it and you have to keep going regardless,” Young said.

“You have to keep going regardless of the messaging you got growing up. You’ve got to keep going regardless of the organizational culture that you’re functioning in. You’ve got to keep going regardless of whether you’re still working on your coping mechanism … whether people around you are making assumptions about your competence,” Young said.

“You have to keep going, regardless. For you. But also it’s not about you,” she said.

“Everyone loses when bright people play small.”

—Kimberly K. Barlow