The Imposter Cure

Fear of being an imposter can corrode your quality of life.

Imposter syndrome springs from faulty assumptions people make about themselves. Those who suffer from it tend to dismiss their accomplishments as the result of luck or other external factors, which means they don’t take their successes on board and internalize them. Yet, ample opportunities await people who can change this self-defeating response. The potential rewards include lifting the emotional burden of imposter syndrome, acknowledging concrete evidence that you’re not an imposter, developing self-compassion, and accepting that experiencing insecurity and overcoming it by taking action builds self-confidence.

People experience imposter syndrome “on a continuum” from occasionally to chronically. Clinical psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes first described the syndrome in 1978 as a phenomenon in which people have a persistent belief that they’re not worthy of success and lack ability, skills, or competence. Clance and Imes interviewed 150 successful women who, considering themselves “imposters,” feared they did not deserve their ...