Three Ways to Stop Feeling Like an Impostor
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“I am not a writer. I’ve been fooling myself and other people,” wrote John Steinbeck in his private journal when he was working on The Grapes of Wrath, his 1939 epic novel about a family fleeing the Oklahoma Dust Bowl during the Depression to seek a better future in California. You might think he was simply experiencing momentary self-doubt but, informed by my work as an academic and writer, I see a hint of something more insidious, which plagues many people of great intellect and erudition: impostor syndrome. For many of these high achievers, the more plaudits they receive, the more they worry that they’re putting one over on everyone.
You don’t even have to be a genius to feel like an impostor. In today’s environment, when people are assiduously cultivating an image on social media that accentuates the positive and buries the negative, anyone can be made to feel they’re a failure and a phony. If you worry about this too, I have some good news for you: The fact that you have the worry means you probably aren’t a phony; the true phony is convinced they’re not one. Even so, suffering from impostor syndrome is certainly deleterious to your happiness. But you can do something about that.
[Read: ChatGTP has impostor syndrome]
The condition was first described in 1978 by two psychologists in the journal Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice as the common affliction in which people who possess real skills and knowledge secretly believe they’re inadequate or incompetent. The authors of the study found evidence that many high-achieving women felt insecurity about their abilities—“an internal experience of intellectual phoniness.” Later research found that this phenomenon applied not just to women or to any particular demographic group; “impostor phenomenon,” as they labeled it (syndrome was a later refinement), was something anyone could experience. (One exception is age—older people experience it less than younger adults.)
A number of tests have been validated for impostor syndrome. One is the Clance Impostor Phenomenon Scale, which asks respondents whether they agree with such statements as “I’m afraid people important to me may find out that I’m not as capable as they think I am.” (You can get an idea of how you score on the scale by using a slimmed-down online survey.) By testing, researchers find that certain personalities tend to experience the syndrome more than others. People high in neuroticism and low in conscientiousness are more afflicted than others. Perhaps not surprisingly, introverts are prone to feeling fake more than extroverts (who tend toward narcissism). Perfectionists typically feel like phonies, because they’re so focused on their own perceived errors.
Impostor syndrome tends to manifest among people who work in highly technical fields that require the trust of others. Multiple studies have found a high incidence among young physicians: For a 2021 survey, more than three-quarters of surgical residents reported a significant or severe feeling of being an impostor. I suspect this occurs because doctors think that they must demonstrate a great deal of confidence they don’t authentically feel—which is indeed a form of phoniness, albeit a functionally necessary one. You hardly want your surgeon saying, “Hmm, let’s see how this goes, then,” as you’re being wheeled into the operating room. And if you’re a parent, remember the way your kid looked at you when they were little—with complete trust. If they only knew, I used to think.
Some scholars have argued that impostor syndrome can theoretically lead to higher performance in tasks, insofar as it provides an emotional motivation to succeed. If you’re telling yourself that you’re merely a poser, you will be impelled to improve, the theory goes. But just as such denigration would be destructive when applied to a child, such an abusive method, when self-inflicted, can have huge psychic costs, possibly provoking depression and anxiety. Such negative feedback can also lead to cognitive distortion, causing its subjects to discount legitimate compliments and overgeneralize failure. This makes useful learning harder and is associated with impaired job satisfaction and burnout.
[Read: When you fear that your writing doesn’t measure up to your ambitions]
If you experience impostor syndrome, your well-being is almost certainly compromised. Fortunately, several straightforward ways to treat the condition are available.
1. Don’t talk to yourself like someone you hate.
Just as you wouldn’t, or shouldn’t, tell your spouse or your child that they’re an incompetent idiot, you should avoid speaking that way to yourself. Kinder self-talk might sound like the sort of indulgent self-focus that characterizes narcissism, which would indeed hazard phoniness, but in this necessary therapeutic context, it is simply recognizing reality: You are not an incompetent idiot; you are simply a person hoping to learn and improve.
2. Track your progress.
Whether you’re a surgeon or a parent (or both), when engaged in a challenging task, try framing your activity as an opportunity for growth and learning. Keep an account of your personal progress to create an objective record of your momentum toward your goals, as opposed to obsessing over what you haven’t yet achieved. So for example, if you’ve recently started a new job, think each day about the new skills and knowledge you’ve acquired, rather than worrying about what you still don’t know or can’t do. Keep a log of these accomplishments and review it regularly.
3. Get some company.
Building or joining a community of people similarly situated professionally can be very helpful. This provides a peer group with whom you can speak frankly about any insecurities and discover that such doubts are quite common. This turned out to be a benefit of the Lean In movement started by Sheryl Sandberg, the former Meta executive, because the circles of professional women it created were invited to share the experiences that held them back—and impostor syndrome was a very typical example. The business group YPO’s Forum program for young chief executives is based on a similar idea, which members find enormously helpful as a venue for unburdening themselves of feelings of isolation and insecurity.
[Arthur C. Brooks: The strength you gain by not taking offense]
We’ve looked in depth at people who feel like an impostor but aren’t. Despite the temporary misery he confided to his diary, Steinbeck clearly was no fraud: The Grapes of Wrath went on to win the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was a major factor in his later being awarded the Nobel Prize. But we should consider a phenomenon closely related to the syndrome: people who disingenuously claim to be impostors, even though they don’t think they are, out of false modesty. I’m talking about the humblebraggarts who say such things as “I’m the last person to deserve the personal invitation I just got from the president to visit the White House!”
Nothing is phonier, of course, than this veneer of humility. The humblebrag’s ruse is transparent, and makes its perpetrator instantly irritating and unlikable—a bit like, well, a phony.
Want to learn more about leading a life that feels full and meaningful? Join Arthur C. Brooks and The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, on Monday, August 11, at 2:30 p.m. ET as they discuss Brooks’s new book, The Happiness Files: Insights on Work and Life. Learn more about the event here.