Impostor syndrome is the feeling that your achievements have come to you by chance. That at some point everyone realises that you don’t really know enough. It’s not just self-criticism, it’s a deep inner fear that I’m not really worth what I have. The person experiencing this is afraid that at some point others will discover that he or she is not as competent or as valuable as he or she seems.
It’s been talked about a lot lately, but for some reason we haven’t covered it yet in the Leadership Without Leadership podcast. In today’s episode we do. So start listening or watching.
But briefly about the background and the roots of the impostor syndrome from a mentor+therapist’s point of view when working with clients: it is not rooted in thinking, which can be accessed by just talking. I’ve seen approaches that say you have to change your thinking, use positive psychology and that’s it. However, in many cases this is not enough. At least it hasn’t been enough for my clients.
This syndrome is an emotional pattern that starts in childhood, like many of the distractions in our everyday lives – the time when we learned what love is and how to live life.
Some of the root causes of imposter syndrome from customer examples:
🌱 Love as a reward, not an essence.
When a child only receives praise for being good, smart or successful, a belief arises:
“I am only worthy if I strive, do and achieve.”.
⚖️ The culture of comparison.
If a child’s worth was measured by others, he learns to live on a ‘rating scale’ – no matter how much you achieve, someone is better. Never enough.
🎭 An example of perfection.
If parents did not allow themselves to make mistakes or talk about them, to apologise to the child, the child will adopt the same pattern. As an adult, this means that making mistakes = shame. You must not make mistakes. Which in turn, of course, implies a stifling of creativity, because creativity always goes hand in hand with error.
💔 Lack of recognition for being.
When attention is only given for doing, the message is left in the mind, “If I just am, I will not be noticed.”
👶 The shadows of the parents.
Often it is not our own inner voice, but the unresolved pain of the parent – their lack of self-worth, passed on to the next generation through the explanation of epigenetics, mirror neurons and similar scientific jargon.
The impostor syndrome is not reduced by positive thinking and positive psychology or esoteric techniques alone. It begins to weaken when a person sees that he no longer needs to prove his right to exist.
But to make this change, there is quite a journey into oneself to take – to allow going back to the past, to allow the emotions that were stuck in those situations, to allow the emotions towards one’s parents, to do physical work with one’s subconscious, to clean out the attics and basements of one’s subconscious, experiencing the “negative” emotions, so that peace, happiness, enjoyment, living life, can finally move out from behind those traps. It’s uncomfortable for a while, but with just a few encounters, changes are noticeable in one’s life.
