Fake it till you make it, the saying goes. But what happens when you’ve “made it” but still feel like a total fraud? The term “impostor phenomenon” was coined in 1978 by American psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes, who noticed their female students and therapy patients were full of doubt about their abilities. A 2021 survey found that up to 82% of people have experienced what’s become known as impostor syndrome – that nagging feeling that you’ve tricked everyone into thinking you know what you’re doing.
“Impostor syndrome is incredibly common among my clients,” says psychologist Dr Jessamy Hibberd, author of The Imposter Cure. “It seems to be worse among high-achieving, very competent people who are outwardly very successful and experienced.” Indeed, Michelle Obama, David Bowie and Maya Angelou have all spoken about feeling as if they didn’t deserve their success.
Hibberd says it’s not just at work that people can feel like impostors: parenting, relationships and social media can all bring on feelings of inadequacy and a deep fear of getting found out. Impostor syndrome can lead to anxiety and depression, interfere with our ability to take risks, and make it harder to progress.
So what should you do if you can’t shake the feeling that you’re only a poorly worded email away from being fired? How can you overcome the fear that one bad day means everything will fall apart? We asked the experts for their tips on how to beat feelings of self-doubt for good.
Track your fears
“People with impostor syndrome often predict the worst-case scenario happening, and will turn down opportunities as they believe things could go wrong and then they’ll get found out,” says Hibberd. “I recently had this myself, when I tried to talk myself out of a public speaking engagement because I was nervous it would go badly.”
To overcome this, Hibberd encourages her clients to write down their anxious predictions and then track what actually happens – something she does herself. “When you start doing this you realise that the worst doesn’t happen, in fact things normally go positively,” she says. “You grow in trust and confidence as you realise it’s just your impostor brain talking, it’s not realistic. The next time I’m asked to give a talk and I feel nervous, I can look back and remember that I’ve felt this way before, but also I’ll be able to track how pleased I felt afterwards.”
Swim in the unknown
“Those of us who feel like impostors often have a belief that we always have to be the expert or have all our ducks in a row,” says business coach and therapist Amanda Brenkley. “When in fact, coming from a place of not knowing is a superpower, not a weakness.”
It is possible, says Brenkley, to train the brain to be comfortable with uncertainty and to enjoy swimming in the unknown. “You don’t have to come in all guns blazing, knowing everything,” she says. “Remind yourself that it’s perfectly OK to say ‘I don’t know’; it’s good to ask questions; it can feel empowering to ask for help. Actually, you might find that people respond better to the curious learner, rather than the know-it-all expert.”
Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman embraced this philosophy, breaking down new and complex ideas in what he called his Notebook of Things I Don’t Know About, a technique that became known as the Feynman Method. Normalise that you’ll never know everything, and that it’s OK. Maybe even start your own notebook.
Celebrate your wins
“Those with impostor syndrome tend to be very hard on themselves when things don’t go well and belittle any success they have,” says Hibberd. “When things go right, they’ll say ‘I was just lucky’ or ‘I had a good team’, which is why they never feel good enough and feel disconnected from their accomplishments.”
To combat this, Hibberd asks her clients to write down three things they’ve done well every day. “I ask them to read them out in our sessions and they find it incredibly hard at first,” she says. “They’ll say, ‘Oh I forgot to do it,’ or visibly squirm as they read it to me. People are much more comfortable replaying the things they’ve been unhappy with. But over time, celebrating wins like this feels more natural, and you can even up the negative thoughts with positive ones.”
Create an impostor-busting CV
“I ask clients to write a big list of their achievements or create a big CV of everything they’ve done and keep adding to it all the time,” says life coach Ash Ambirge, author of The Middle Finger Project: Trash Your Imposter Syndrome and Live the Unf*ckwithable Life You Deserve. “I tell them to imagine they’re making this for someone who’s not in their industry. Many of the amazing things they’ve done they’ve never written down or said out loud.”
Ambirge then gets clients to take a step back and imagine they were reading about this person as if it wasn’t them. “I ask them, ‘How would you feel if you heard about someone who’d done all these things?’ and ‘What would your 16-year-old self feel about the person who’d achieved all this?’ Sometimes just seeing your accomplishments on paper is enough to make you stop feeling like a fraud and start feeling like a badass.”
Learn to take a compliment
“Those struggling with impostor syndrome find it particularly hard to take and remember compliments, and they gloss over successes,” says Hibberd. “We have to learn to take credit when it’s due. This can feel uncomfortable or unnatural at first – try starting by simply saying ‘Thank you’ when someone pays you a compliment or gives you credit.”
The next step is to start paying yourself compliments. “Remember to tell yourself when you believe you have done well,” says Hibberd. “Then you can begin to tell others about the things you have done well, achieved or learned.”
Embrace your failures
“There’s a tendency these days – especially online – to only share the best bits of our jobs or our families and friendships, and that can make impostor syndrome feel even worse, as it seems like everyone else has got it all figured out,” says Brenkley. “We’re very good at pretending things are effortless, but we don’t share the feelings of nerves or inadequacy along the way, or all the hard work that’s gone into an end result.”
Brenkley says that by embracing our failures and mistakes – by sharing our pitfalls, and even rewarding ourselves and others for the learning opportunity – feelings of being inadequate or a fraud no longer feel like something we have to hide. “Growth and discomfort are a circle, not a straight line, and no one gets it right 100% of the time.”
Find your thread
For many people, impostor syndrome strikes when we’re trying something new, putting ourselves in a different context, or getting out of our comfort zone. Ambirge says that’s when it’s important to reflect on what your “secret sauce” is – your USP, which translates across many different areas of your life and your interests.
“If you’re starting something different, it’s easy to feel out of your depth or like you don’t know what you’re doing,” she says. “But actually, if you look back at what you’ve done in the past, you’ll probably be able to trace some commonalities or a theme, for example it could be creativity, or helping people find their purpose, or even just being inquisitive. If you map out your life so far, the path may seem jagged, but there will be a thread between your previous experience and this new interest or project. Sometimes, that’s all it takes to make you realise that you’re not a fraud trying to fool everyone. Everything you’ve done before is an advantage, and you do have valuable skills. Now you’re just applying them to a different setting.”
Own up to your impostor syndrome …
“Part of the power of impostor syndrome is that it feels like a private shame,” says Hibberd. “But by being open about how you’re feeling, you can start to bring the different parts of yourself together.”
Hibberd advises talking to friends and trusted colleagues about the mistakes you feel you’ve made or – even better – the fears you have about mistakes you might make in the future.
“Revealing our insecurities and admitting our struggles to others can help give us better perspective on the way we talk to ourselves,” she says. “You might find that if you talk about how you feel, you’ll notice how many other people in your life feel exactly the same way sometimes, and that can be very healing.”
… but don’t cling on to it
“Sometimes people have lived with their impostor syndrome for so long, they have convinced themselves that it’s actually a positive trait,” says Ambirge. “They might think it’s a way of ensuring that they stay humble and don’t become arrogant. They also think that if you underestimate yourself, you will be motivated to improve – it makes you work harder, aim higher, stops you getting big-headed or complacent, and will protect you if everything goes wrong.
“They feel like not thinking these impostor thoughts will somehow jinx them, and it feels too risky to try another way,” she says. “But acknowledging your own skills, knowledge and experience is not arrogance. Impostor syndrome isn’t helping you – it’s holding you back.”
Additional reporting by Zahra Onsori
