Women and Imposter Syndrome

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The three essentials for high performance are neuro-regulation (to get and stay calm), clear the negative self-talk and the beliefs that create them (including imposter syndrome), and create new success habits.

This week we're looking at women and imposter syndrome!

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Women and Imposter Syndrome

Today is International Women’s Day, so it’s definitely a good time to talk about imposter syndrome.

If you have read many of the articles about imposter syndrome, and indeed some books about it, you have probably been told that imposter syndrome primarily affects women.

Estimates are that 70% to 82% of high-achieving women experience imposter syndrome.

But this is only partly true, and the facts may well surprise you. I hope so - let’s explore.

What is imposter syndrome?

Imposter Syndrome: self-doubt and feeling like a fraud when you’re not a fraud

Imposter syndrome sounds pretty mild when you look at its definition. As if it is a little bit of low confidence or low self-esteem. Indeed many people think they can drive it away with a good pep talk or listing their strengths. But it’s not low confidence or self-esteem, so mindset boosts rarely touch it.

Imposter syndrome is actually a big deal. It creates massive internal stress, a sense of isolation and not belonging, anxiety, overwhelm and lots of frustration. It can hold you back from seizing opportunities, or it can drag you down with exhaustion and lead to burnout and/or quitting a successful career.

There are three types of symptoms of imposter syndrome: imposter syndrome thinking, the physiological stress reaction, and ‘coping behaviours’ that you feel driven to do but which don’t get rid of it. Browse through the symptoms in the image below, everyone has their own individual combination of which symptoms they experience.

The impact of these symptoms is massive. The imposter syndrome behaviours drain your time and energy, which means you have less for your friends, family and relationships. Several of my clients attribute their divorce to imposter syndrome.

The physiological stress can affect your sleep, your ability to switch off and rest properly, contributing to even less energy – mental, physical and emotional – for your life. Burnout is a serious issue, and the stress directly impact your quality of life. You’re in survival mode, which means your nervous system gets triggered into fight, flight or freeze states which can make you emotionally volatile. The nervous system states change the blood flow in your brain, which decreases your IQ temporarily by 13 points, reduces your creativity by 50%, and hinders your ability to make good decisions.

The imposter syndrome thinking makes you distracted, discouraged and highly self-critical. You lose your focus and productivity and become more risk-averse and unwilling to jump on new opportunities with enthusiasm. Or it can trip you into overdrive to prove yourself, which leads to a lack of self-care and can create burnout. One client described her life as one-dimensional, as her whole focus was trying to prove that she was good enough at work.

With such severe consequences to imposter syndrome, you can see that some people’s claim that imposter syndrome is somehow good for you (proves you’re brave?) is unfounded and misplaced.

Why does it affect women?

This part is a little historical. The original research (1978) that identified imposter syndrome (or phenomenon) was done on female graduate students. When the study extended to male graduate students, the men reported it less often.

Further studies showed the same trend, and it started to be though of as a women’s issue.

That is, until the mid 90s when a publication in the journal Sex Roles showed that when the survey was trusted to be 100% confidential and anonymous, then men reported they experienced imposter syndrome in the same numbers as women!

What was going on? The previous studies had captured a society trend in which men were less willing (not allowed?) to expose any feelings of inadequacy or weakness.

Imposter syndrome is NOT a women’s issue

But the damage of being thought of as a women’s issue had already been done. Because it begs the question – why should women get it more than men? And the conclusion it suggests is that there is something inherently wrong with being a woman. Ironically reinforcing the feeling of not being good enough.

Imposter syndrome is not a women’s issue, it’s a human issue.

The Root Cause

Resolving the ‘who gets imposter syndrome?’ question means finding out the root cause of it.

Forty years of research into imposter syndrome has proved that it is not your personality and affects all ‘profiles’ of personality that can be measured. It is not who you are.

Rather, it is an unconscious identity-level belief that your worth as a person depends on what you do. This is conditional worth, as discovered by Dr Carl Rogers in the 1950s. He called it the root cause of human suffering.

Okay, so where does this belief come from? It’s not down to poor parenting, trauma or childhood experiences. The belief in conditional worth comes from early childhood development.

As a baby, the information coming to the senses is undifferentiated – we can’t separate them. As the brain grows, we learn to order and label the world around us. Between 18 months and 3 years old, children develop a sense of themselves as separate beings from all the other information. If a child is taught, through words and actions, to separate the sense of their own worth from their actions, then they grow up with the deep-seated belief that their worth is unconditional.

However, the vast majority of people were never taught this, so who they are and what they do remain merged. This is conditional worth, which causes so much suffering as well as imposter syndrome.

Notice here that this lack of separation has nothing to do with gender. Indeed, a gender difference wouldn’t even make sense; this is about the brain and belief development.

Why are we still talking about it being a women’s issue?

Despite explaining this, I still get asked about the differences between men and women with imposter syndrome. Does it show up in different ways? The answer here is also ‘no’. My clients include men, women and transgender people, and everyone experiences it in the same way (their own combination of the symptoms), and I see no trends along gender lines.

Are women more motivated to resolve their imposter syndrome? No, in fact, I consistently have more male clients than female. But then my clients are executives, and there are more men than women at that level. So my client balance is due to demographics rather than gender itself.

Do women talk about it more? I think this may be true. Even though more than forty years have passed since the original research, society still ‘allows’ women to talk about their perceived ‘weaknesses’ publicly more than men. Even knowing that imposter syndrome is not a flaw or weakness.

What can we all do?

As a human issue,? first we need to understand that imposter syndrome is not who you are and that you’re not alone in it, not somehow defective. No blame or judgement (self or otherwise).

Eliminating imposter syndrome requires the change in belief; from conditional to unconditional worth. With the right approach, this is absolutely achievable, and then the symptoms of imposter syndrome simply fall away.

Then you’re left with calm energy, effortless confidence, natural resilience and deep self-acceptance. That is wonderful transformation for everybody.

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What I've loved this week:

Cybersecurity Awareness

I was invited to a Welsh Government preferred-supplier talk on Cybersecurity this week from Tarian Cyber and Economic Crime (https://www.dhirubhai.net/company/tariancyec). A woman refreshingly presented the talk which helped to break the ‘tech geek’ stereotype.

The talk was excellent, and my main takeaway was that this crime arena is evolving so rapidly that awareness and risk-assessment must be ongoing and not a once-and-done affair.

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An action step you can do this week …

The work to address imposter syndrome is not just for women, as you now know. And the solution is a transformative belief-change programme. However, one small step to help dial it down a little is to notice when you’re comparing yourself to others.

Comparing is a normal (and essential) brain activity, so you won’t be able to just stop it.

However, imposter syndrome comparing means looking at the differences and judging that these differences somehow mean you’re not good enough.

When you notice you’re comparing, take control of it. Instead of looking for differences, look for similarities between you and them—make a list, even! The more similarities you can find, the more you’ll feel like you belong, which will help calm your nervous system, too.

But don’t leave it there. If you’re plagued by imposter syndrome, the wise move is to take the steps to eliminate it once and for all. (Message me!)

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We'll cover more on imposter syndrome in future issues.

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I'm Dr Tara Halliday, specialist Imposter Syndrome Coach and best-selling author. I run the 5-star Inner Success programme for executives that eliminates imposter syndrome for good. Message or email me for details.

If you think you may have imposter syndrome, take this free quiz:

https://bit.ly/ImpostorQuiz

If you get over 62%, then it’s causing enough stress that it’s worth addressing. You’re worth it!

Have an excellent, refreshing and recharging weekend!

Tara

P.S. Thank you for reading to the end of the newsletter, I appreciate your interest and attention!

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