Imposter syndrome

Students ask:  How can I deal with imposter syndrome?  There’s so much I don’t know; I feel like a fraud.

Imposter syndrome – that way of thinking that discounts one’s skills, knowledge, achievements and leaves a persistent, lurking anxiety about being ‘found out’ as a fraud – is inevitable and endemic in academia, where critical self-reflection and intellectual skepticism are promoted, but mechanisms for achieving balance are not.  

Some years ago, I received an insight from an unexpected source into how academia fuels self-doubt.  I was fetching my daughter from a badminton session, and I was buzzing, because I had just had a journal paper accepted.  One of the other mothers asked why I was so elated.  When I explained, she asked a series questions about what ‘having a paper accepted’ meant, and how many papers I was expected to publish; then she concluded:  “You mean, even though you’re a professor, you have to take a test that’s assessed by strangers 5 or more times a year?  I wouldn’t want your job.”  We are trained to question; the downside is that we turn this on ourselves.

Imposter syndrome often reflects a double standard:  we often hold ourselves to a higher standard than we apply to others (or:  we’re more forgiving of others than we are of ourselves).  Or we simply have exaggerated expectations.  For example, every year we ask students to read and discuss passed dissertations relevant to their research.  One year a student walked into the session, chucked the dissertation she’d read onto the table and said:  “I don’t see how this passed; I could have written it.”  We tend to denigrate our own achievements, after striving for them. This resonates with a famous Groucho Marx quotation:  “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”  We attend to criticism and dismiss praise.  

So, how can we manage imposter syndrome?  There are many ways, mainly to do with gaining perspective, self-management, and self-care.

Perspective

• Ask questions rather than making assertions.  Questions can be just as effective in making a point – in a way that invites dialogue, rather than a face-off.
• Absolutes are not the goal – mastery and knowledge discovery are.  “It’s a PhD, not a Nobel Prize” [1].
• Understand that the research discourse is about exposure to scrutiny – and that the scrutiny is about the output, not the person.  (So don’t personalise critique.)
• Acknowledge the possibility of limitation – and accept it.
• Review the evidence: what basis do you have for a sense of ‘knowing’?
• Recognise the pragmatics:  imposter syndrome is commonplace.  The research discourse often biases dialogues toward criticism.

Embrace the opportunities

• Recognise error as opportunity. Revise your reaction to failure to encompass failure as normal and instrumental to progress.  As Henry Ford phrased it:  “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.” 
• Seize the challenges:  they provide opportunities to broaden your exposure and experience.

Strive for balance

• Most perspectives/habits/qualities have a flipside, and the difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ is balance (e.g., attention to detail vs crippling perfectionism).  Sometimes it helps to consciously consider the flipside, in order to achieve balance.
• Identify objective, achievable standards of success:  make the list before you start (impostersyndrome.com.au)

Attend to praise

• Attend to the positives before the negatives (e.g., the highlighter trick:  when you receive a written review, highlight the positive remarks in one colour, and the criticism in another – and take note that it’s not all negative).
• Celebrate praise.  Create a ‘good news’ or ‘praise’ file to collect evidence that others value you and your work (e.g., thank-you emails, positive reviews, citations) – and flip through the file when you need help to remember to appreciate yourself.

Reach out

• Ask someone who knows better than you do, whose judgment you trust more than your own – and rely on their judgment to allay your fears.  The logic is clear:  they know better than you do, so you should respect their judgment over your own. 
• Dialogues help – they can provide sanity checks in ‘safe’ contexts. There’s no need to hide from discussions of imposter syndrome when it’s so widespread, and others may benefit from the conversation as well. (But a word of caution: sometimes others are too embarrassed by their own imposter syndrome to admit their difficulties, and instead ‘put on a brave face’.)

Self-care

• Take a breather.  Be kind to yourself and refresh your perspective.  Do something for yourself:  take a bath, watch a film, eat an indulgent meal, take a walk – whatever works to pamper you.
• Five Tips for Self-Care on OpenLearn:  https://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/mental-health/five-tips-on-how-plan-new-self-care-routines
• Notice and, as appropriate, adjust your internal dialogue.  Sometimes it helps to imagine what a trusted friend would say to you, or to imagine what advice you’d give someone else.

My first defence against imposter syndrome is the ‘Josh genie’, an invocation of a colleague whose voice cuts through my self-doubt.  Years ago, after I gave my first day-long workshop on research methods, one of the participants (Josh) offered to drive me to the airport.  I started recapping everything I thought had gone wrong – and Josh interrupted me, saying emphatically “Marian, stop this.  I offered to drive you because I was so inspired by your workshop and wanted to talk to you more!” Ever since then, when I dive into self-criticism, the ‘Josh genie’ pops up on my shoulder and says “Stop already!” 

As one student related, time and experience helped her achieve balance: “As a final-year student, I’m feeling less of an impostor. Part of what has helped is … seeing that other people do well in academia despite their many flaws, and that, while other people may not struggle with what I find hard, they struggle with things that are very simple to me. So, … I can have a more balanced perspective where I see my flaws compensated by my strengths, and I can hold myself to a realistic standard.” 

[1] Gerry Mullins & Margaret Kiley (2002) ‘It’s a PhD, not a Nobel Prize’: How experienced examiners assess research theses, Studies in Higher Education, 27:4, 369-386, DOI: 10.1080/0307507022000011507