\n<\/p>\n
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\u201cI am not a writer<\/span>. I\u2019ve been fooling myself and other people,\u201d wrote John Steinbeck in his private journal when he was working on The Grapes of Wrath, his 1939 epic novel about a family fleeing the Oklahoma Dust Bowl during the Depression to seek a better future in California. You might think he was simply experiencing momentary self-doubt but, informed by my work as an academic and writer, I see a hint of something more insidious, which plagues many people of great intellect and erudition: impostor syndrome. For many of these high achievers, the more plaudits they receive, the more they worry that they\u2019re putting one over on everyone.<\/p>\n You don\u2019t even have to be a genius to feel like an impostor. In today\u2019s environment, when people are assiduously cultivating an image on social media that accentuates the positive and buries the negative, anyone can be made to feel they\u2019re a failure and a phony. If you worry about this too, I have some good news for you: The fact that you have the worry means you probably aren\u2019t a phony; the true phony is convinced they\u2019re not one. Even so, suffering from impostor syndrome is certainly deleterious to your happiness. But you can do something about that.<\/p>\n The condition was<\/span> first described in 1978 by two psychologists in the journal Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice as the common affliction in which people who possess real skills and knowledge secretly believe they\u2019re inadequate or incompetent. The authors of the study found evidence that many high-achieving women felt insecurity about their abilities\u2014\u201can internal experience of intellectual phoniness.\u201d Later research found that this phenomenon applied not just to women or to any particular demographic group; \u201cimpostor phenomenon,\u201d as they labeled it (syndrome was a later refinement), was something anyone could experience. (One exception is age\u2014older people experience it less than younger adults.)<\/p>\n A number of tests have been validated for impostor syndrome. One is the Clance Impostor Phenomenon Scale, which asks respondents whether they agree with such statements as \u201cI\u2019m afraid people important to me may find out that I\u2019m not as capable as they think I am.\u201d (You can get an idea of how you score on the scale by using a slimmed-down online survey.) By testing, researchers find that certain personalities tend to experience the syndrome more than others. People high in neuroticism and low in conscientiousness are more afflicted than others. Perhaps not surprisingly, introverts are prone to feeling fake more than extroverts (who tend toward narcissism). Perfectionists typically feel like phonies, because they\u2019re so focused on their own perceived errors.<\/p>\n Impostor syndrome tends to manifest among people who work in highly technical fields that require the trust of others. Multiple studies have found a high incidence among young physicians: For a 2021 survey, more than three-quarters of surgical residents reported a significant or severe feeling of being an impostor. I suspect this occurs because doctors think that they must demonstrate a great deal of confidence they don\u2019t authentically feel\u2014which is indeed a form of phoniness, albeit a functionally necessary one. You hardly want your surgeon saying, \u201cHmm, let\u2019s see how this goes, then,\u201d as you\u2019re being wheeled into the operating room. And if you\u2019re a parent, remember the way your kid looked at you when they were little\u2014with complete trust. If they only knew, I used to think.<\/p>\n Some scholars have argued that impostor syndrome can theoretically lead to higher performance in tasks, insofar as it provides an emotional motivation to succeed. If you\u2019re telling yourself that you\u2019re merely a poser, you will be impelled to improve, the theory goes. But just as such denigration would be destructive when applied to a child, such an abusive method, when self-inflicted, can have huge psychic costs, possibly provoking depression and anxiety. Such negative feedback can also lead to cognitive distortion, causing its subjects to discount legitimate compliments and overgeneralize failure. This makes useful learning harder and is associated with impaired job satisfaction and burnout.<\/p>\n If you experience <\/span>impostor syndrome, your well-being is almost certainly compromised. Fortunately, several straightforward ways to treat the condition are available.<\/p>\n 1. Don\u2019t talk to yourself like someone you hate. 2. Track your progress. 3. Get some company. We\u2019ve looked<\/span> in depth at people who feel like an impostor but aren\u2019t. Despite the temporary misery he confided to his diary, Steinbeck clearly was no fraud: The Grapes of Wrath went on to win the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was a major factor in his later being awarded the Nobel Prize. But we should consider a phenomenon closely related to the syndrome: people who disingenuously claim to be impostors, even though they don\u2019t think they are, out of false modesty. I\u2019m talking about the humblebraggarts who say such things as \u201cI\u2019m the last person to deserve the personal invitation I just got from the president to visit the White House!\u201d<\/p>\n Nothing is phonier, of course, than this veneer of humility. The humblebrag\u2019s ruse is transparent, and makes its perpetrator instantly irritating and unlikable\u2014a bit like, well, a phony.<\/p>\n Want to learn more about leading a life that feels full and meaningful? Join Arthur C. Brooks and The Atlantic\u2019s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, on Monday, August 11, at 2:30 p.m. ET as they discuss Brooks\u2019s new book, The Happiness Files: Insights on Work and Life. Learn more about the event here. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Want to stay current with Arthur\u2019s writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out. \u201cI am not a writer. I\u2019ve been fooling myself and other people,\u201d wrote John Steinbeck in his private journal when he was working on The Grapes of Wrath, his 1939 epic novel about a family<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[6978,6979,415,4005],"class_list":{"0":"post-13284","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-feeling","9":"tag-impostor","10":"tag-stop","11":"tag-ways"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Just as you wouldn\u2019t, or shouldn\u2019t, tell your spouse or your child that they\u2019re an incompetent idiot, you should avoid speaking that way to yourself. Kinder self-talk might sound like the sort of indulgent self-focus that characterizes narcissism, which would indeed hazard phoniness, but in this necessary therapeutic context, it is simply recognizing reality: You are not an incompetent idiot; you are simply a person hoping to learn and improve.<\/p>\n
Whether you\u2019re a surgeon or a parent (or both), when engaged in a challenging task, try framing your activity as an opportunity for growth and learning. Keep an account of your personal progress to create an objective record of your momentum toward your goals, as opposed to obsessing over what you haven\u2019t yet achieved. So for example, if you\u2019ve recently started a new job, think each day about the new skills and knowledge you\u2019ve acquired, rather than worrying about what you still don\u2019t know or can\u2019t do. Keep a log of these accomplishments and review it regularly.<\/p>\n
Building or joining a community of people similarly situated professionally can be very helpful. This provides a peer group with whom you can speak frankly about any insecurities and discover that such doubts are quite common. This turned out to be a benefit of the Lean In movement started by Sheryl Sandberg, the former Meta executive, because the circles of professional women it created were invited to share the experiences that held them back\u2014and impostor syndrome was a very typical example. The business group YPO\u2019s Forum program for young chief executives is based on a similar idea, which members find enormously helpful as a venue for unburdening themselves of feelings of isolation and insecurity.<\/p>\n