Let’s talk about imposter syndrome

When I was talking and writing and posting about the inner critic a few weeks ago, one of y'all asked if I would do a lesson on imposter syndrome as well. 

It was so fun for me to get this request, and also, I was like, oh, yeah, of course, why haven't I written about that yet?!?!?! So here we are. (Also, if anyone else has requests, please feel free to send them my way. I love hearing from y'all. Ok back to our regularly scheduled program...)

Like everything, imposter syndrome comes down to thoughts and feelings. 

The thoughts go something like this. You're not good enough. You're not qualified. Someone is going to find out that you don't know what you're talking about. You don't belong here.

But sometimes they can be more subtle, like this. Are you sure about that answer you just gave? What if you make a mistake? Maybe you don't deserve that promotion after all. Or even, no matter what you do, you'll never fit in here.  

There are two main ideas at the heart of imposter syndrome: not enough and not belonging. Not good enough. Not prepared enough. Not qualified enough. This kind of not enough-ness isn't about money or time or energy. It's about YOU. It's about being worried that if people knew who you really were, they wouldn't like you or hire you or promote you. And then there's the not belonging. The not fitting in. The not understanding how to become part of the whole or believing that you never will become part of it, no matter how hard you try. 

When we have these thoughts and worries, and we believe them, we feel terrible. We feel inadequate. Worried. Anxious. And often, ashamed. For perfectionists, we double down on the shame, too.

We're ashamed because thinking we're not good enough and that we don't belong feels terrible, but on top of that, we're also ashamed that we're worried about this at all. We're ashamed that we can't just, like, love ourselves already and create our own dang belonging. The whole thing feels sort of dramatic (we've also probably been told we're dramatic and over the top and way too much, and now we're just repeating those judgments over and over again inside our own heads, in our own voices, even though they are not our original ideas). 

And this is the thing with imposter syndrome (and with all the other unhelpful thoughts, too, really). It's us saying mean shit to ourselves inside our own heads. 

But why are we even doing this? Where did all these mean thoughts come from? Why are we questioning our own abilities all the time? 

When you understand how the brain works and where it gets its ideas from, it actually makes a lot of sense why we think this way sometimes.

When we were kids, we were taught that being good at things was important. A lot of us were also taught that being good at things was how you stayed safe, in a way. For instance, if you got good grades, your parents didn't yell at you when you brought your report card home. If you knew the right answer when your teacher called on you, then she liked you and would be nice to you. But the thing about the brain is, the lesson it takes away from a situation doesn't always make sense. 

As an example, I one time got grounded for getting a B- in Science because I had lost an entire work packet, which I had already completed before I lost it. Instead of realizing that the solution was to keep better track of my work, and that I wanted to do that, because it would save me from having to do work twice or get a bad grade on the missing work, my 4th grader brain decided that this meant that my parents were mean for grounding me. And I decided that "being good" (which in this case meant keeping track of my work) was necessary so that I could avoid my parents anger. 

Like me and my science packet, most of us have had many experiences of trying things and sometimes being told our efforts weren't good enough and that we would have to do better. Being told this (often over and over) as kids is part of what formed our thought patterns. Also, most of our parents and teachers and siblings did not first praise what we'd done well and then gently point out what we could improve. Instead, we were guilted and scolded and shamed into trying harder. This isn't exactly our parents and teachers and siblings' faults, either. Because they also learned to think this way from their parents and teachers and siblings. 

This is the thing with social conditioning. Seeing it can help you understand where your brain learned these ideas from. And that can be important. But we don't do it just to say, ugh, they did it wrong, it's all their fault. No. We do it so that we can untangle the knot of why our own brains behave this way. 

Don't get me wrong. I do think that social conditioning is the source of a lot of our problems. But I don't think most of our parents, teachers, and siblings were teaching us problematic thought patterns on purpose. I think mostly they were just doing their best to get through their days with the tools they had. And most of the time, those tools were the very same problematic thoughts we're all dealing with now. 

But back to what causes imposter syndrome. Ok, so we know about the social conditioning and why our brains are so obsessed with being "good enough." But what about the brain biases? Well, the human brain has two biases that I talk about A LOT. And those are negativity bias and confirmation bias.

Negativity bias means our brains prioritize negative ideas, thoughts, feelings, etc. It's not that we like them better. Just that our brain thinks they're more important, because when our species was evolving, paying more attention to possible threats kept our ancestors alive. I've read that it takes five pieces of positive information to balance out one piece of negative information, because that's how strongly our mind attaches to the negative information. This is why you can get a bunch of positive feedback, but your brain will still keep obsessing about the one piece of negative feedback and tell you it means you're terrible. 

And then we have confirmation bias. This one basically means that your brain will prioritize information that agrees with its beliefs and de-prioritize information that contradicts them. So if you have the thought that maybe you don't belong, your brain will look for evidence of that and it will suppress or discount evidence that you do belong. And if you think that maybe your work isn't good enough, your brain will look for evidence of that and it will ignore or dismiss evidence that your work is awesome. 

When you combine these two biases with our social conditioning, you get a recipe for things like the inner critic, imposter syndrome, perfectionism, and more.

Ok, so now we know why imposter syndrome is there. But what do we do about it? My favorite tool for imposter syndrome is strategic list making. 

Here's how you do it. Create a list with four categories: accomplishments, possible future accomplishments, parking lot, and trash can. 

Under accomplishments, write every single even tangentially relevant accomplishment. Your brain may try to discount these or explain why they don't matter, and that's fine (this is confirmation bias trying to downplay what you've done). But don't let it keep you from making the list. And don't write any objections on the list itself. 

When your brain tells you things that you need to do in order to belong or be enough, write them down under possible future accomplishments. While the delivery mechanism is flawed, there may actually be valuable information inside your brain's criticisms and complaints. Maybe you really do want to get a new certification or crush a new goal, and your brain is just telling you about it in the form of a criticism. 

What about parking lot and trash can? Parking lot is for things that are interesting to you but that you're not quite sure about yet. It's just a holding space. Trash can is for things you are deciding, on purpose, not to worry about right now. If your brain keeps insisting that you will never belong, no matter what, you can put that idea in the trash can list. When your brain brings it back up, you can say, nope, we handled that already. We don't actually need to think about it anymore. 

Now, we don't just make these lists once and then put them away. That won't change your thought patterns and all the things you brain says to you all day long. You need to actually use the lists. For the accomplishments list, pick five or so things you're the most proud of. Write them down separately and review that list everyday for a while. You can also pull it back out when you're in situations where imposter syndrome pops back up (and it probably will - it often takes time to change these things).

And keep using the possible future accomplishments list, too. This will change how you feel about your brain's commentary, because you are turning it into information that can actually serve you. The way these thoughts feel may even shift from the terrible not enough or not belonging to a flow of insights and ideas.

And if your brain offers you some input you're not so sure about, you have the parking lot and the trash can at your disposal, too. Just because your brain has an idea does not mean it's useful to you, and knowing how to evaluate your own thoughts will help you get out of imposter syndrome a lot faster when it does show up.

One more thing: As you'll notice, this tool isn't about making your work better. Because when it comes to imposter syndrome, your work is not the problem. Your thoughts are. But this doesn't mean that your work will always be perfect, and that's ok. We're all humans. We all create imperfect work. Learning to allow that and not make it mean you're an imposter is also an essential piece of this. That doesn't mean you won't also improve your work. But when a work error is just a work error and not a sign that you don't belong, it's a lot easier to fix it.