At some point in our lives, we all doubted ourselves and questioned our worthiness, especially during our hardest periods of life. We criticize ourselves knowing that maybe we should try harder in order to deserve certain things that we want in our lives or be on the certain path that will fulfill our inner needs. Understanding our flaws and mistakes we made in the past, we try to change ourselves, and with enough effort we achieve our goal, which will make us feel good and confident again. But what if we made to that point when we did everything right and eventually succeeded, but we still feel guilt and refuse to believe in our own success thinking that it is pure luck. That feeling is what many people refer to as the impostor syndrome, fraud syndrome or simply impostor experience. Believe or not this psychological phenomenon is quite common among people these days and can take different forms depending on a person's character, life experience and life circumstances. Usually, those who suffer from the impostor experience are very talented, smart and ambitious people. They are high-performers, perfectionists with fear of failure who tend to underestimate own capabilities and achievements. They can be best in what they do but still think that they are actually not. Needless to say, this mind-trap can make people unsettled causing them to feel unmotivated and unhappy about their self-development, losing faith in their work. Sometimes it leads to stress or depression; thus, killing a person's productivity and ideas. But is this a real problem or just an exaggeration? How can we cope with the imposture experience? Here is one interesting talk on this subject:
If you are interested, you can take this test to determine if you have signs of this syndrome.
Questions:
If you are interested, you can take this test to determine if you have signs of this syndrome.
Questions:
- What is your opinion on the impostor syndrome?
- Why is this problem so common nowadays?
- Can you relate yourself to this phenomenon? Have you ever experienced it?
Comments
I think this problem might be seen as common one nowadays, because of many people who can't really differentiate between having some doubts and a true syndrome. It's easy to notice how people get affected by all the information they are bombarded with and start to whine about everything in their lives. Then they get in some unhealthy mindset, which stops them from developing and growing.
In my opinion you can't 'experience' this stuff. It's not ice-cream. If you have it, then you have it. At least this is what I could tell after knowing such a person for some time. If you are having some temporary doubts and mixed feelings it's just the way it is. You get a new job, or your first job, and you will experience some stress and doubt yourself as you just left your comfort zone. But you won't cry every night and quit work, because of it.
To sum up. I think it is considered to be common because it's easy to exaggerate and also hard to validate who is really having serious issues or just a bad time. I think this problem is very much accelerated by social media of any kind and moderated by actually doing something, which was also the case of the girl who was sharing her talk.
I think that it may be so common because the world is going in the wrong direction. Nowadays people pay much more attention to your performance than personality and person that you are. That’s why people are so hardly pushing forward and trying to achieve more and more. I won’t say that it’s stupid but people are getting crazy about it. I often try to do my best but generally I don’t care about getting very good grades at university or being promoted in my job. For me, this is one big piece of shit. As I said I will always try to do my best but the most important for me is being a good person. Maybe that’s my solutions to problems like this syndrome.
Another factor that enforces impostor syndrome is the phenomenon of survivorship bias - the fact that we only hear about successful people and not about the people that failed. We tend to forget that for each Elon Musk or Steve Job there are thousands of diligent, hardworking people that have tried but didn't make it. This creates a illusion that if we *really* tried hard enough we should be way further in our career/skills/etc than we are now.
Of course there is another side of it: every success actually takes some luck and we should remember about that as well. Most of the things that we achieved, we could do partially because of our priviledge, because of the people that we were lucky to meet and many simple coincidences.
So to conclude, I believe that we should try to keep balance between the state in which we are overwhelmed by our impostor syndrome and therefore unable to reach out of our comfort zone and learn new skills, and the position in which we are simply presumptuous and ascribe all positive thing that have happened to us to our exceptional talents.
Perhaps the reason for this is that people nowadays are looking for acceptance from others, which makes them wish for continued success. Unfortunately, this can be frustrating and dangerous.
I do not think I would ever be in contact with that. I always try to do my best, but everything is under control, so as not to hurt anybody or, if necessary, help somebody.
I don't think I have such syndrome, despite sometimes I notice something like it, but not so often. I think I need to thank my parents for that, because they always were near and have always noticed my achievements and supported me on my failures.
When it comes to me, I can't say that I have experienced impostor syndrome, since maybe I have not achieved this much yet in life to be struggling with syndromes that are, in some way, reserved for the successful people. However, if I do become famous and rich one day, I will try to remember not to underestimate my own achievements.
For my personal standpoint this problem is co common because of so many examples of hard working people that succeeded in some particular area just because they spent so much time on self-development and didn’t take a rest at all.Such people become to compare themselves with these hard workers and this affect them even more.
I can’t relate myself to this phenomenon but I used to experience it.
Why is this problem so common nowdays? I think that it is a common problem nowdays because most of us attend in a rat race and we want to achieve some success in our life. On the television or on the internet we can see only successful people and they trick us that everybody has beautiful and easy life and because of that we think that our small sucesses are worthless. It's not true and we should remember that the television or the Internet is only a show.
I think it real, and many people(including me), feel themselves an imposters, but it comes along with people who think they professionals, but they don't.
Why is this problem so common nowadays?
Because of media, social networks, and modern recreation methods.
Can you relate yourself to this phenomenon? Have you ever experienced it?
Of course, I do, but people need to be imposters sometimes to become a person they want to be. Every time I get a new job position I experience this phenomenon.
The problem is so common today mostly in regards to social status. I think that at fault is entire entertainment industry. Movies, shows and every possible medium creates this model where mediocre is not good enough. It’s the same for social media where users themselves put out only the most impressive image that they can project. We are constantly reminded of where we could be and how ‘that’ looks.
world countries who live in a tiny rooms, work from nine to five
(often overtime) and seems depressed and anxious all the time.
Its probably coused by matriarchal modern society
which lacks strong man values. Men are constantly
being challenged that extrapolates on
a small, contained nuclear family, which than affects guilt on today's children.
I have never experienced it.
I hope I will never be forced to boost my ego by being focused on success not on health, family and friends.
Why is this happening? It is possible that social networking sites make life for the show. Everyone puts pics showing a high standard of living,
and show off with fancy work post, which usually means nothing. I think it can put some people down and they can feel that their lives are not enough.
I personally do not have this syndrome, but my girlfriend often does not believe in herself. Often when she reaches something he says it's by accident or that it is not
any great achievement. After reading this article, I think she may have symptoms of this syndrome.
People do not believe in themselves. A lot of people do not value themselves.
I think that I've experienced it, sometimes I'm just thinking that I'm not so good at something, and I don't know how did I get there. Lucky for me, it's quite rare feeling :)
I think, I don't have this syndrome. I know that I could be very exhausted and tired and unmotivated but not sick.
The reason for this kind of oppression is that we want so many things to do in such little amount of time. So we started to think that we not good enough.
2. In my opinion, the problem is related to the upbringing model, in which parents help their children with everything. They even replace them in some tasks. Therefore, children keep in mind that they are having a support, and once this kind of help is missing, then they can't manage with stress and the like.
3. I would say that I'm not having problems with such syndrome. However, I sometimes get this kind of feeling that everything comes so easily, but I think it's because I work hard to succeed.
Personally, I also think that the issue is pretty real as I've been victim of situations like that a lot. Sometimes, when I'm trying to tell something which I don't treat as anything important, some people also like to prove me that I'm a poseur who didn't really achieve anything at all. Thankfully, I don't take it personally and usually don't care about it at all.
I never heard about that. Politics definitely does not have that. In my opinion psychology in those days has a tendency to create fake syndromes, just to make many for the treatments.
Why is this problem so common nowadays?
I did not notice that is common at all.
Can you relate yourself to this phenomenon? Have you ever experienced it?
I think not.
Personally, I wasn’t experiencing it. But have few examples when I was seeing how people were downplaying their achievements. However, I do not really know an example when it harms the life of someone. Rother example which I mention above resulted in more effort in a way to achieve a goal.
I think this problem is common nowadays because peaple are trying to succeed to much. We are greedy and we're trying to get as much as we can't which could led to failure. I think this problem mostly concern people who work in corporations because it's hard work and very stressful.
No i've never experienced this syndrom but in some way I could identify with its victims. I demand a lot from myself and sometimes its to much. But I think that the golden mean is to find ballance beetwen being to harsh for yourself and too forgiving.
It's common and growing problem because of "super perfect" instagram photos which can make you feel worse and huge competition on labor market.
I've never experienced any symptoms.
People can see on the internet, on facebook people who managed to achieve success. I think that it has a big impact on us. By seeing known people, people get depressed and think they have achieved nothing.
That's how I experienced a few years ago. Now I try to enjoy every thing and do not envy others just to enjoy my own successes
I know that this is a negative phenomenon, but it shows that we are not too confident and too proud. We have to stand in the truth about yourself and see how much commitment we put into some initiatives. This will help see if it really is our problem with this syndrome or hard work.
Looking now at my experience, I think I could have problems with the syndrome but I know my values and I know my skills so I quickly dealt with it.
These days people tend to be strict to themselves because media create picture of perfect, successful person. People despite of the fact that they are in right place and they deserve the lives they have think that they had more luck than hard work.
I think that most of the people experienced that syndrome on some point of life and so do I. Every time when I am achieved something worthy, I have thoughts that maybe I didn't deserve it and have more luck than real skills.
I used to feel lack of entitlement, but now, I know that person am I, skill I posses, what values I can exchange and what standards I represents so, I dont think that I have this problem ;)