The Effects of Imposter Syndrome on Self-Esteem

The Effects of Imposter Syndrome on Self-Esteem

What is Imposter Syndrome

Imposter syndrome can occur when we feel the pressure, external or internal, to perform our best. Imposter syndrome can be influenced by feelings of perfectionism, leading to impacts in self-esteem and confidence. When we experience imposter syndrome, we may struggle to focus on our improvements and instead focus on where we could go wrong. Even in areas where we have developed skills and knowledge, we can start to feel as if we do not know enough or are faking our expertise. This can lead to feelings of self-doubt, avoidance, and stress, among others. Despite evidence of the contrary, imposter syndrome can influence our self-talk and keep us from pursuing goals or achieving self-fulfillment.

Traits and Consequences of Imposter Syndrome

Some aspects of imposter syndrome can include having high standards of self, fear about being ‘exposed’, avoidance, feeling unworthy, and putting extra focus on negative aspects and feedback while minimizing positive feedback and achievements. In addition to negatively impacting self-esteem and confidence, this can also contribute to feelings of depression and anxiety, isolation from others, burnout, and missing opportunities.

What Areas in Life can Imposter Syndrome Affect

While imposter syndrome is often connected to professional work or school, we can also notice effects occurring within relationships, personal fulfillment, and in social interactions. With work, it can affect our work ethic, procrastination of tasks, and confidence in interacting with coworkers. With relationships, it can affect our interactions with friends, family, and partners, including avoidance and withdrawal, feelings of insecurity and unworthiness, difficulty in engaging in open and honest communication, and doubt about the other person’s feelings. With ourselves, we can notice a lack of trust in our abilities that prevents us from engaging in activities due to a fear of failure. We might notice that our beliefs that we are not good enough, or that we will fail, lead to engagement in self-fulfilling prophecies in which we engage in actions that support those negative beliefs. This can become a negative cycle that is hard to break after having been validated. However, we are able to challenge these negative beliefs to allow for an increase in confidence and self-esteem.

How to Combat Imposter Syndrome

Addressing negative self-talk: Working to increase our awareness of negative and irrational thoughts can help to start the process of challenging and reframing thoughts toward a positive mindset. It can be helpful to engage in questioning to explore the factuality of thoughts, whether they are rational, from a place of logic or emotion, and how we are pulling on past experiences to influence current perceptions. It can be helpful to further explore Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with a counselor to engage in thought challenging and reframing in a safe and judgement-free environment.

Embrace a Growth Mindset: Embracing a growth mindset as opposed to a fixed mindset can allow for us to be open and willing to explore challenges and opportunities for growth. We can acknowledge our thoughts and emotions in the moment, but challenge ourselves in not being stuck on what went wrong. It can allow us to be more open to improvement by recognizing everything as a “work in progress” without focusing on perfection or failure.

Set attainable goals: Oftentimes, we can find ourselves demoralized because the goals we set for ourselves are too far from where we are starting. If we allow ourselves to set smaller, more attainable goals, we can focus on recognizing the progress we are making, rather than the distance between now and our final destination. Just as we grow up learning to walk, or learning to exercise a muscle - we aim to increase recognition of that time in between which builds the foundation for larger goals.

Challenge comparisons: We can often be our own harshest critic when it comes to comparisons. Sometimes without conscious awareness, we will look to others to judge where we should be - but this can negatively affect how we view our capabilities. This can lead to us not feeling ‘good enough’ which influences negative self-talk and avoidance. One way we can challenge comparisons is to focus on our own achievements and values in life.