What's impostor syndrome? And why is it trendy? - Girlsplained.
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Hello peeps,
Welcome to another issue of Girlsplaining, where I - a girl - explain things. I don't pretend to be an expert on these topics; in fact, I am not. But I'm a fast learner, and I can easily explain the basics to increase your chances of someday winning 'Who wants to be a millionaire?' with every article you read.
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If I'm completely honest, every time I've sent one of these emails I've thought to myself "it's not good enough." It's not good enough for people to enjoy, learn, share, and want to read me again. That feeling quickly morphs into "I'm not good enough."
Eventually, I say to myself the magic word "yet", "I'm not good enough yet" to calm myself down and hit send.
That feeling befriends the rational part, and my brain begins to narrate a list of reasons why, in fact, I am not enough. Before, I used to let that feeling take over my decisions and my creative processes. If I am not enough, then why am I going to try?
Over time, I understood that if I stayed with that idea, it was going to become a self-fulfilling prophecy because if I didn't do anything to start being enough. Then, the thought was going to be true.
Now I take risks, and if something is not so good, I add my favorite word "yet", it is not so good yet. It doesn't mean it never will be, it just means I’m not there today.
Okay, I’m over these self-help paragraphs. Let's begin!
It seems that the boom of Among Us, the video game that became popular at the beginning of the pandemic, was not the only thing that made the word “impostor” trendy, the impostor syndrome also became quite popular.
Although this phenomenon is not new, it was described by psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes in 1978, it took off at the beginning of last year.
I'm going to go a little deeper into the details of what this is all about, but I'd like to start by asking you a few questions.
Have you ever been promoted at work and feel like you don't deserve it? (Although you tend to do all of your job and go the extra mile.)
Have you ever written/designed/taken a photo, or created any type of content that you haven't posted because you don't feel like it's "good enough"?
Have you ever felt that you reached some position of power and feel that there are people who deserve it more than you do?
If you said yes to any of those questions, then you may suffer from imposter syndrome.
But what is imposter syndrome?
According to the website, Very Well Mind, this phenomenon refers to an “internal experience of believing that you are not as competent as others perceive you to be.” The syndrome implies feeling like a fraud thinking that only you know it.
This does not apply to your ex, he was not an impostor, he was a real failure. Don't text him, baby.
Aha, let's continue. It’s no surprise that this was studied and discovered by women because at first it was believed that only females could suffer from it.
That data made me think about how sometimes it feels as if women had in our DNA to feel less deserving than men. At that time, men used to be the bosses, the rulers, and the successful ones, so achieving things was clearly not the place for women.
The world has been changing, but there are still spaces that feel alienating to women, as if we do not belong to some places just because when you turn to the sides you see other men.
I know that I always end up putting a little bit of feminism and the “down with patriarchy” discourse in these emails, but I think it is important to recognize and ask ourselves what kinds of things have historically oppressed the female gender in one way or another. This is one of those cases.
Who can suffer from imposter syndrome?
Over time it was discovered that we can all suffer from it no matter what gender we identify with. Although it is said that high achievers tend to be affected by it to a greater extent - Oppa! I humbly put myself into this group -. I suppose it has something to do with the saying of "blissful ignorance,” I actually have no idea, but it makes sense that the hardest workers are the ones who care more about their performance than people who do the bare minimum.
According to the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, 70% of the population has suffered from it at some point in their lives.
Usually, when people suffer from impostor syndrome, they seek to find an excuse for everything that happens to them from external factors. "They promoted me because Lucas resigned." "My tweet went viral because someone with a verified account liked it." "My article was read by thousands of people because the title seemed like clickbait."
All those excuses sound logical, but the reality is that it is not luck. If Lucas left, surely there were other candidates who could have been promoted, but they chose you. If a person with many followers liked your tweet it was because they liked it. If the title of your article was clickbait, but thousands of people read it in full, then it wasn't clickbait, it was an interesting title.
It may seem like luck, but the reality is that the work you build on a daily basis, whether you realize it or not, makes success seem given by external situations when it is the product of your work.
Why is it trendy now?
If this term has existed since 1978, why have we never heard so much about it until the last two years? I think it is no coincidence that it reappears with the rise of "hustle culture" on social media. I’ll explain what hustle culture is about another day, but basically, it is doing more work and getting more out of the hours of the day.
I read several articles that support my theory, and it is that although social networks are one of the most fun and useful creations of human beings, they also generate high levels of anxiety.
Seeing everyone's life in real-time - and the part of their life they want to show - immediately leads you to compare your life with others. I don't think it's a conscious process, but it is a very real one. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be any influencers. If we did not think that there are lives more interesting than others, we would all have the same number of followers, but it is not like that.
Even if you don’t compare yourself to influencers, seeing a friend who creates content on a daily basis while you are not, automatically makes you feel that you are not enough (compared to your friend). When the only difference between you and your friend is that that person is doing things.
The hustle culture plays a similar role here, if there are people who wake up at 5:00 a.m. and by 11:00 a.m. they have already exercised, read a business book, meditated, had breakfast, done 3 hours of deepwork, and bought an island. Then, it is natural to think that you are not enough.
It can be very overwhelming to see how things are created in every corner of the world every second of the day, while you are working on your own process. That does not mean you are not enough, it means you are exposed to too much information.
If you really were an imposter, everyone would know, so keep working on yourself.
A hug,
Cami.
Look at all the things you learned today:
Imposter syndrome was a term coined by two psychologists in 1978, Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes.
This phenomenon makes you feel like you are secretly a fraud and that your achievements have been an act of luck.
At first, it was believed that only women could suffer from it. Over time it was discovered that everyone can suffer.
70% of the population has felt like an impostor at some point in their life.
This syndrome became fashionable in recent years thanks to access to infinite information on social networks and hustle culture.
If you work on yourself and your progress, you will never be an impostor.
Thanks for reading. I hope you learned something. If so, please recommend it, leave a comment if you want me to explain any particular topic, or buy me a beer if you truly enjoyed it.
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