Unmasking the "Imposter": Why Self-Doubt Isn't Your Fault, It's the System's

Forget "syndrome," psychologist Leila Ainge is calling imposter feelings what they truly are: a pervasive phenomenon fueled by the digital age. Leila's groundbreaking research, featuring interviews with successful entrepreneurs, reveals the surprising culprits behind your self-doubt – online comparisons, relentless competition, and the pressure of constant visibility.

Dive deep with Leila, as she empowers you to recognize these external forces for what they are: the fuel for your inner critic. This insightful opening episode of Psychologically Speaking is a breath of fresh air for anyone who's ever been crippled by self-doubt. Join Leila as she reframes the narrative and rewrites the rulebook on conquering the "imposter" within.

Connect with Leila online at www.leilaainge.co.uk and subscribe to her newsletter for psychological insights direct to your inbox.

Psychologically Speaking is produced by Buckers at Decibelle Creative / @decibelle_creative  

Welcome to psychologically speaking with me,

Leila Ainge This is a podcast

all about human behaviour, weaving

together fascinating research, opinions, and real

life experiences. I'll give you a psychologist's

insight into how we behave in spaces we live

and work in, and how they in turn, shape

us. You this season, we're exploring

my favorite topic, impostor phenomenon.

So get comfy and let's dive into today's

episode.

Welcome to the first episode in this

series of psychologically speaking, where we'll

take a look at the impostor phenomenon backstory

and the narratives around one of the most talked about

experiences in business.

Impostor phenomenon is characterized

as self doubt, attributing success to luck,

and a fear of failure or being found

out. In almost every

article you'll read about Impostor, the story

you're being told is one where you need to overcome

impostor syndrome. It's a narrative

that I became increasingly uncomfortable with.

What I was noticing with my own clients

were the experiences and spaces that heightened

self doubt or feeling lucky, and that risk of

exposure more than others. I was

curious about the syndrome narrative.

Does it accurately describe the experience

of impostor? Curiously,

for one of the most talked about experiences in business,

there was very little research on the way

entrepreneurs and people who own their own

businesses experienced impostor

feelings. Throughout this series, I'm

going to use the phrase phenomenon, and I'll be talking about

impostor experiences and feelings.

What we call the experience is

important. A syndrome and a phenomenon are

two very different things. A syndrome

indicates that there's something wrong. It's a set of

signs or symptoms. And usually a

syndrome is something that we try to fix with either

medication or therapy.

Importantly, though, a syndrome suggests that

the issue lies with the individual.

My research really challenges that thinking.

And to be clear, medically,

impostor syndrome does not exist. So

why is everyone calling it that syndrome?

is admittedly easier to say than phenomenon.

But to understand why impostor is more commonly thought of as

a syndrome, we'd need to take a look at how it's been

researched in the past.

Impostor phenomenon started with a series of clinical

observations. Back in 1979,

two psychologists, Pauline Clance and Suzanne

Ives, were seeing women in their clinics who were

intellectually at the top of their game, high achievers.

These women were worried about failing, getting caught

out. They felt lucky rather than being

talented. They used the word

phenomenon to describe the enigma of these

experiences being associated with successful

women, these three broad

feelings became associated with the impostor

phenomenon. Through clansonime's work. In

fact, a recent review of all of the studies that have

happened since 1979, these

are still the three key areas that we associate

with impostor. The narrative

hasn't changed much in 46 years,

and I want you to consider one reason for that.

The way in which we think of and measure the

impostor experience has been pretty consistent for

that time, too.

The idea that these feelings

belonged to the women in their minds,

rather than being a consequence of

the situational context, is interesting to

me, and I think it helps to explain why

syndrome seems to fit the phenomenon. We

should also consider that despite the term phenomenon being

used in the original study, the narratives of

that decade most likely influenced

interpretation. So earlier in the

1970s, the term fear of success

had been coined by Martina Horner.

Martina, also a psychologist, had set an

exercise for men and women, and, she'd had them finish

writing a story queue about being successful in a

medical setting. Now, remember, back in the

1970s, not many women made it

into the top of medical professions.

A key difference between the men and women in that

study were the ways in which negative imagery was

used more by women. When writing about the

success of a woman, Martina

concluded that women had what she thought of

as a trade off mindset. When it came to

success, the success was synonymous for

women with making big life changes and sacrifices.

Of course, these narratives and negative

stories still exist. Women are unfairly

judged on balancing careers and family life in

comparison to men. Thinking about the

cultural tone that existed when the original research took

place is useful, though, because it helped me to

think about posing different questions to understand the

impostor experience.

So how do we measure an,

enigma? Typically, impostor

phenomenon is measured through a diagnostic

questionnaire. The Clantz impostor scale

is just one example. And one of their

statements says, sometimes I'm afraid others

will discover how much knowledge or ability I really

lack, and there'll be a rating with that

statement. So that's something you always experience

or rarely experience. But what

does sometimes or rarely mean? And, which

situations? What's the context?

I want to know when they felt that

way, were they writing a report? Were they sat in a

boardroom? Or were they doing their thing on

Instagram live? Because these situations,

they are so different. I think another

problem with diagnostics is that, trying to determine

how much of a problem that person has,

it's what's wrong with them. It puts the emphasis back

on that individual rather than the situations they are

experiencing. I'd like you to

consider, that impostor feels more at home

alongside the word phenomenon than it does

syndrome. There's a lot about

impostor that's still unexplained, and

largely because we've not been asking the right questions.

This is what motivated me to talk to the

entrepreneurial community, because here you've got

a group of people who are putting themselves out there and

taking huge, big risks. Running

a business is not easy.

So how do entrepreneurs experience impostor

phenomenon? Surely they need to be the

opposite of somebody who's got self doubt or fear of

exposure and thinks that they're just lucky.

Shouldn't entrepreneurs be really self assured and

confident, ready to put themselves into really

awkward situations and reframe negative

thoughts? This is what those self help

articles in magazines are telling us we need to

do. The types of things these articles

tell you and me to do are, name the feelings, get

feedback, and talk about your feelings with a coach or

psychologist. But what

if you are, not the problem?

Will these tools help you to get ahead then?

It was such an interesting opposite for

me to think about entrepreneurs as a group,

and it felt really obvious to say, tell me

about your impostor feelings. Tell me about when you're

experiencing this and, under what

situations. I didn't want to use

existing questionnaires. I didn't want to go around

pseudo diagnosing people. I

wanted to understand their experiences and say, what do

you think? How are you making sense of this?

Historically, men and women have not wanted to speak about

impostor feelings with peers because it feeds the fear of

being found out. It's a key barrier for overcoming

feelings. When the pandemic happened, we were

all suddenly thrust into online ways of working,

and I was starting to observe the ways entrepreneurs

in some online communities were creating spaces

where it was safe to say, I've got self

doubt. I'm really worried about putting myself out

there. I don't want to be visible. The

contrast with putting forward positive self image in

other online spaces reinforced my

idea into researching how

entrepreneurs navigate online spaces

and, impostor feelings.

Here's what I found. Entrepreneurs

experience impostor phenomenon in

unique ways, moving beyond a fear of

failure, feeling like a fraud, and waiting to be found

out. The women who shared their experiences

with me talked about visibility,

especially where there are intersections around race

and neurodiversity, how, they cope

successfully with comparison using

whatever tools social platforms provide,

and curiously, how that comparison is so

often inward looking. In fact, one of

the phrases that stuck with me from the moment I

heard it was, a woman who said, I miss her.

I miss me. And, finally, they spoke

candidly about competition

in their own words. Visibility,

comparison, and competition are at the heart of

impostor feelings and experiences. We'll

explore what this means and how it relates to women

who are getting ahead and getting things done,

because the women I spoke to had been successfully

running businesses for an average of seven

years, some of them more than 15.

This is why that narrative of something being wrong with the

individual didn't feel right to me.

These women are getting ahead. Despite experiencing

impostor phenomenon, they've adapted and

created ways of coping in a space that is

often psychologically unsafe and

competitive.

Today, we've looked at the impostor

backstory, the way in which success was

feared by women in the 1970s,

and the current narratives that focus on

overcoming a syndrome, which, of course, puts the

emphasis back on the individual. I've

asked you to consider ditching the word syndrome

in favor of impostor phenomenon. It's

a phrase which nicely guides us to a place where we

consider there's more to impostor than

overcoming our fears.

In the next episode, I'll be introducing.

You to a psychological term called context collapse,

how it helps us to explain behavior in online

spaces and why it then relates to

impostor. M.

That's it for today. I hope you learned something

new, or perhaps I've given you a new way to think about

what you experience. A quick reminder

that rating and reviewing.

All the podcasts you love really does.

Help other people find them, which is especially

appreciated by independent podcasters. For

more psychological insights, you'll find all the ways you can connect

with me in the show notes

thanks for listening to psychologically speaking with me,

Leila Ainge bye for now.