Shattering Imposter Syndrome
6 minute read
I listened to author Kathleen MacMahon on the Brendan O’Connor radio show last Saturday talking about how women lack confidence. She herself – a graduate of Cambridge University, an award-winning radio journalist, the author of three hugely successful novels – has always been plagued by the half-belief that she’s not good enough, smart enough or qualified enough. She calls it the opposite of entitlement – “un-entitlement”. She also fittingly (and poetically; she’s a novelist after all) compared the feeling to a strong headwind that women must face into every day.
Of course, we also know this as ‘impostor syndrome’, a phrase that was coined back in 1978 when 150 high-achieving women who had been recognised for their professional excellence and academic achievements were interviewed by two female clinical psychologists, who subsequently found that the group demonstrated a stark inability to acknowledge their own success. The study also discovered that many of these women believed that success was simply down to luck. Interestingly, I interviewed a Dublin-based careers coach back in 2014 and she remarked to me that the biggest difference she noticed between her male and female clients was that the former believed their achievements were down to talent and hard work, while the latter attributed them to random good fortune.
Even some of the greatest female thinkers of our generation have acknowledged this kind of extreme self-doubt. On the publication of her 11th book, author and activist Maya Angelou revealed that every time she was published, she would think to herself: “Uh-oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody.” Lean In author Sheryl Sandberg explained that, “...every time I didn’t embarrass myself – or even excelled – I believed that I had fooled everyone yet again.” How can this be? How is it that women of all intellects, talents, personalities, colour, shape and size appear to be crippled by the idea that they’re not good enough?
A recent article published by the Harvard Business Review offered an intriguing answer to this question. Essentially it argued that it’s not us, it’s them. In other words, what was “a fairly universal feeling of discomfort, second-guessing and mild anxiety in the workplace” has been pathologized and has left women feeling that they must “fix” themselves in order to fit into workplace environments. The article points out that even the label itself is layered with negative connotations: “‘Imposter’ brings a tinge of criminal fraudulence to the feeling of simply being unsure or anxious...added to that [is] the medical undertone of ‘syndrome’ which recalls the ‘female hysteria’ diagnosis of the nineteenth century.”
As women, we are not born feeling deficient, nor, in general, do we allow those predictable confidence wobbles encountered in puberty and young adulthood to damage our prospects in school and university; there are plenty of studies which show that girls outperform boys at both stages. But when we enter the workplace, things begin to go a bit pear-shaped. Doesn’t it stand to reason, then, that the environment might be the problem, rather than any inner nervousness?
The traditional narrative that this ‘condition’ is something that women need to confront, deal with and resolve within themselves has become just another emotional rod with which to beat ourselves. It’s almost a self-fulfilling prophecy now – if you begin to believe you have impostor syndrome, your thoughts and actions will be that of someone who is convinced they’re a fraud. Moreover, if women like Maya Angelou and Sheryl Sandbery have experienced impostor syndrome, how can any woman admit to not having had it, because most of us are neither iconic authors or pioneering businesswomen.
From my own perspective, I know several women who are far better writers than I am but who don’t have the confidence to commit to a published word. And here I am not feeling like a fraud. Perhaps I should though? See how easily the impostor syndrome cycle can spiral out of control?
The internet is almost as flooded with content about how to correct impostor syndrome as it is fine lines and mum tums. This condition is hurled onto a bonfire of female ‘imperfections’ that is never set alight, but just keeps on building. History is peppered with examples of how women were forced to shape themselves to fit into the patriarchal demands of the time; from The Angel in the House of Victorian times to WWII’s Rosie the Riveter (the 1940s American symbol of women in the workplace). The focus has consistently been on how women must adjust, reinvent or rethink their personalities, performance and attitudes, rather than how our culture, institutions or laws should be adapted to suit women’s evolving needs and desires.
Maybe it’s time we stopped giving so much oxygen to this idea of impostor syndrome? None of us who have been legitimately hired are impostors in any field or workplace no matter how we might think of ourselves.
If we’re made to feel as if we are, then the problem is not ours, but belongs to the individuals, organisations or institutions that allow us to believe so. The Harvard Business Review maintains that: “The answer to overcoming impostor syndrome is not to fix individuals, but to create an environment that fosters a number of different leadership styles and where diversity of racial, ethnic and gender identities is viewed...as professional as the current model.”
Buzzwords can easily become labels that box us in and eventually force us to forget who we are, and what we want to be. They begin as positive identifiers and wind up as pigeonholes. I’ve been thinking a lot about the phrase ‘multi-hyphen woman’ lately too. I’ve used it many times as a compliment to my colleagues and friends, but now I’m beginning to question its appropriateness in a world where we as women are constantly encouraged to compare ourselves with each other.
Isn’t it really just another way of making some women feel bad about themselves or less than others? Isn’t it just a subtle means of creating divisions? I recently started watching season 1 of Motherland on Netflix, so perhaps seeing Julia trying desperately (and hilariously) not to feel inadequate around alpha mum Amanda while juggling a demanding job has prompted this train of thought.
To me, the multi-hyphen tag harks back to the ‘having it all’ narrative of the 1980s, which turned out to be more than a bit of a damp squib, as women drove themselves to despair trying to be breadwinners, homemakers, mothers, partners and lovers with equal dedication and distinction. The big hair of that era had nothing to do with product I suspect and everything to do with the head-in-sweaty-palms habit of highly stressed people. As soon as women realised that they didn’t have or need to be everything to everyone, that this was simply a fallacy supported by vested interests, they were free to be the individuals they really wanted to be; like Diane Keaton in Baby Boom.
Impostor syndrome, too, is a mistaken belief and a false ‘diagnosis’. Nerves and self-doubt are normal. Neither is a failing, neither should define us, and neither should affect our sense of professional belonging. In the Collins English Dictionary, the word belonging is defined as a “secure relationship”. Both personal and professional relationships are a two-way street. When workplaces, organisations and institutions give back to women what they have put in, imposter syndrome will be wiped out as quickly as if we’d been vaccinated against it.
Marie Kelly, May 2021
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