The Psychology Behind Imposter Syndrome and How to Combat It

The Psychology Behind Imposter Syndrome and How to Combat It

Hello in greetings. Welcome to In the Rising Podcast. My name is Bettina Brown and I am the host of this show where we talk about living a life that is in alignment with your dreams, your hopes, and your vision. Leaving behind that shame, blame game and all those negative emotions which do absolutely nothing for you.

And I start off every show or nearly every show by saying, I am not a licensed counselor, a psychologist or psychiatrist, but I am a healthcare professional who really enjoys having conversations with people and figuring out what makes them tick. And a lot of my conversations with my clients, Was part of, you know, spending that time with them.

You know, you spend 10, 12, 15 hours with someone you often prefer to talk. I like silence, but that's a lot of silence and you hear everyone's story and you start to realize that there are just more commonalities among us regardless of our race and our background. Then there are a lot of differences. And one of those commonalities I wanted to talk about today was imposter syndrome.

This has been just a topic I've thought about myself. I've had many wonderful things happen to me this past week and basically my life, and I, I had a moment that I will admit, where I felt myself like. Am I qualified for this? Am I stepping way too much outta my comfort zone? Maybe you've heard of that saying, you know, too big for your britches, but then I thought, no, I am not too big for my britches.

I'm just walking in those britches a couple steps to the left in a couple steps to the right to check out the scenery from there. And so during this research, for this podcast today, I came across some very interesting information. I actually found out that there is a website called the imposter syndrome.com, and it's led by a Dr.

Valerie Young, who's spoken to 80 different college universities, spoken to numerous people from major corporations and McDonald's as part of it. And, Telephone companies talking to executives to help them build their self-confidence and self-esteem. Now it's almost counterintuitive that someone who's an executive of anything has an issue with self-esteem.

Or self-confidence. So I started to look at this a little bit more. Found this wonderful article by Carol McBride called Are You Plagued With Self-Doubt? And she describes that self-doubt is not necessarily an indicator of self-esteem, of low self-esteem. It's just a place where you're not sure. You have the qualifications.

You feel like you're a good person, you know that you have things that you can achieve in life. You know, you have qualities which are desirable, but that self-doubt tends to be in an area or like an area of your life. Maybe you have self-doubt when it comes to relationships, but you don't have poor self-esteem in every other facet of your life.

You just not so sure that you have qualities that someone's looking for. You may have a self-doubt when it comes to your career. You know, do I have the skills that are needed? But you don't feel that you question the point of your education. You don't question the point of your existence. For example, you know you have good, valuable assets for yourself, for your loved ones, and for other people.

And Dr. McBride goes on to describe. How our childhood can actually be part of that. And having a life where people ask you for proof constantly of whether or not you're good enough for something. And that proof leads many people, many, many people to just have letter after letter after letter, have an alphabet after their name.

But still feel that they are by far an expert in something, still feel that they just, they, they haven't accomplished anything, you know? Well, yeah, I have three masters and, you know, two bachelor degrees, but, you know, I'm still, I'm, I'm, I'm not the one qualified for this. I don't know very much about the topic.

And Dr. Valerie Young, in her YouTube actually said she was interviewing, and she's interviewed over five or 50,000 people. I like 50,000 people. And she said one of the. Interviews that struck her the most was when a person with a PhD in astrophysics. Said to her, well, you know, if I can get one from Caltech, you know this, anybody can do it.

It's, you know, it's nothing special. And I feel a PhD in astrophysics is absolutely something special, but it's amazing that someone who's gone through all of that still did not feel qualified or that they had something special that other people did not. And so there's this imposter syndrome that actually keeps many people, Kind of stuck.

Stuck where they are stuck in that comfort zone or, and I don't even think it's a comfort zone, sometimes stuck in your discomfort zone, comfortable being uncomfortable with what you know, but not being comfortable with being uncomfortable about what you don't know or what you haven't tried yet. So put in that way, it's, it sounds like you're gonna have discomfort either way.

But most people will settle for staying in the known environment. And you know, I worked last weekend at a hospital and a nurse tech came in and my coworker said, how's school going for you? And she said, well, You know, I'm trying to get into nursing school. I don't know, you know, no one ever went to college.

No one pushed us. No one, no one thought it's a good idea, and none of my family members are really supportive. Right now, I'm 36 and I don't want to be a tech for the rest of my life. I wanna set an example and I wanna do better for myself. I know I can do this, but it's hard because no one else had. And so she had that same imposter syndrome from just trying to do something like get a, a basic college degree because everyone around her did not have that, did not have that experience.

And so between Carol McBride and Dr. Young, they described that often this imposter syndrome has more to do when we are doing something that our group, our social group, is not. And by that, I mean that you may very well be surrounded by people who all got their bachelor degree, but now you're pursuing a Master's and you're the only one.

Well, how are you different? Why do you think you're good enough? And it does go back to the innate. Feeling that we wanna have, and that's the feeling of belonging. We want to belong to a family. We want to belong to a political party. We want to belong with a certain gym. Belonging helps us with our identity, and going outside of that means that we may be leaving our identity, kind of like we're just holding onto it like a kite flying in the wind.

And that's actually not the case. We're taking that identity with us like a jacket on our back. It's not that far away, but we are learning to be uncomfortable with that. So in that discussion of imposter syndrome, I read Marian Williamson. She's a very, very good author, and she's written this popular inspirational quote, which is our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light and not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Isn't that the truth, though? It can be so much that people are afraid of their failure, but they're almost more afraid of their success.

And I feel that may be part of the imposter syndrome issue, that we are not feeling completely comfortable with the idea that we may succeed at something that is bigger than we originally thought of. So what do we do about this? Well, Dr. Valerie Young, you know, has a list of 10 things. In fact, on her website, you can sign up to be part of her new newsletter and get weekly support in your inbox, available for you, delivered with a smile, and can help give you some tips and strategies.

But the number one thing that she said is, you know, she would talk and give these, you know, 10 strategies, that really help people out or five strategies at different speaking conferences. And people would always say that she gave a fabulous talk. But the number one criticism is like, well, I don't have a solution.

And the solution is not that you can walk into a conference or read a book. And feel like you may be an imposter and then you're done with the book or you walk out of the conference and you feel just fine. It doesn't work that way. But there are some things that you can do on a consistent basis that help you feel more comfortable with the uncomfortable, and one of them is, Changing your thought process.

So instead of thinking, oh my gosh, when they find out who I am, they're going to know I'm not, I'm not knowing what I'm doing. I don't belong here. But changing that mindset and that thought, you know, stop that thinking immediately to everyone. Start something new and they feel new and they feel off base.

I don't know how all the answers are going to look, but I know that I have the intelligence and the fortitude and determination to figure it out. That's it. Because I read somewhere else, and I wish I would have kept it, for this show tonight, but I read somewhere that a lot of us are concerned with what other people are thinking.

But if we knew how little other people think, we would really not have any source of concern anymore because a lot of people are not thinking, they're not thinking that you're not good enough. They're probably not thinking at all. But, I think that plays in into this as well. Just focus on that. You're new and you're learning, and you have the smarts to figure it out.

No one was born with the innate ability to build a car, build a rocket, build a house. We all had a task of learning and a process of learning. We all did, and we tend to only see the end result, right? We only see what happened at the end, and there is another saying that what you practice in the dark will get seen in the light.

So all they see is what you've, what you've accomplished at the end. They don't really get to watch all those mini failures or mini learning opportunities. So just change your thinking. Number two, reward yourself. You know what? When you do something that's out of the ordinary for you, that's out of your, your comfort zone, do something fun for yourself.

You know, take yourself out to lunch. Uh, order a different kind of coffee, take an extra break. Buy that book you've been thinking about. Do something for yourself as a reward for going out and venturing out. Be excited about what you've accomplished. Be excited that you applied and you were accepted. Be excited.

You had the courage to apply in the first place. The worst. Anything, that can happen is the answer is no. The best thing is that the answer may be yes. Take care of yourself. Right. Reward yourself. And number three, separate your feelings from fact. You know, I think this one is one of the most powerful one from Dr.

Young's list for me, because how I feel about something may have no relevance or barrs on the fact of it. You know, I am a physical therapist. I've mentioned that a few times, and I am a board certified wound specialist. I am a certified lymphedema therapist, and I am a person that has credentials. That's kind of rare for the state I live in.

There's 17 of them. Now, if you think of a regular outpatient clinic, there's probably 17 in that clinic alone, so it's not very common, and in that, not very common. That means I have a skillset that is desired and is needed. But then I also feel sometimes, well, what if I don't know enough? Of course, I don't know enough because I am not, I don't have a photographic memory.

I have read many books I've read, listened to many lectures. I've investigated and researched. I don't have all the answers. But I have so many more answers than the person who is not a board certified wound specialist and not a certified lymphedemas, and they're not a physical therapist with my years of experience in my settings.

So it's not about necessarily, well, I'm better than you or you're better than me. But I have had different life experiences and different education to bring to the table. That's a fact. It's indisputable. It's not arguable, you know, you can't say, oh, you're not a physical therapist, you're not a I am. It's written here, right in black and white.

Here's my license. Now, we can always have an opinion whether I'm a good one or not, but the fact is, I believe I am, and I have this here, I have this education, I have done this, and I have the ability to help more people with what I have. It would be a shame if so many of us would keep that behind our closed doors.

So I'm gonna end this, this session today with saying, again, I wish I would've written it down where I heard this, but I loved it so that people are kind of like stain glass windows. Maybe you've heard of this, where we shine very brightly when the sun is out. You know, all the little twinkles and shimmers and the different colors.

It's really beautiful. And that sun is from the outside, right? People saying, oh, you're great. Oh, you're doing a wonderful job. Oh, I love that outfit, all of that. But the sun sets every night. In order for us to still have that twinkle and that shine, the light has to be coming from the inside going out, and that is our internal belief system.

That is our knowing and believing in fact, and not just lingering on our feelings. I always like that analogy about the stained glass window. It's not any less beautiful. It just is. And the light can come from the outside or it comes from the inside, but it still needs that light. And at the end of the day, just like Maryanne Williamson had mentioned, it can be that light that scares us and not that darkness.

So thank you so much for listening to my podcast show today. I am so grateful for all of the time because you know what? We only have so many minutes and you chose to spend some of your minutes alongside with me, so I encourage you to go ahead and leave a review. I would really appreciate it. Or sign up to listen to my podcast so you know, every Tuesday when it drops on most places until next Tuesday.

Let's keep building one another up!