False
Negatives
March
5, 2003
By Annemarie Fleming
The
point
We all
have moments of doubt but feeling you’re not up to the job
can cripple your career.
Do you
ever feel you are a phoney? That, despite the framed diploma
on the wall, you are a fake? That success in your job is due
to luck, timing or just being liked, rather than how skilled
you are?
If you
answered “yes”, you may be pleased to hear you’re not alone.
Studies estimate up to 70 per cent of us feel this way at
some time in our working lives.
For
most of us, these feelings of insecurity do go away in time
but for others the condition worsens to the point that they
consider themselves impostors. They are the sufferers of
impostor syndrome, a condition in which personal success is
attributed to external factors, such as being in the right
place at the right time, rather than internal factors, such
as the person’s skill and capability.
One
man in the grip of this condition explained his acceptance
into Harvard as being due to computer error. A woman said
she only got her PhD because no one bothered to read her
thesis. Instead, she felt they’d just put it on the scales,
found it weighed about the right amount and so conferred the
award.
Andi
Garing, 42, a former opera singer and singing teacher turned
psychologist, knows only too well the effect that impostor
syndrome can have on careers. For years she was plagued by
the thought that one day somebody would realise she didn’t
have any skills.
“The
thing about this syndrome is that nothing is logical,” says
Garing. “I had two bachelor degrees, I had won a prestigious
scholarship from Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, my singing students
were successful, and yet I still thought that I was no good
at what I did.”
But
aren’t those feelings just all about being modest and not
wanting to blow your own trumpet? “No,” says Garing, who is
now doing a PhD on impostor syndrome, “it’s different
because you’ll find that impostor syndrome mostly affects
high achievers, people who are already successful. And you
find it starts to affect people at a particular point in
their lives, when they become more noticed in the workplace
or if they need to move on in their lives. But no one wants
to talk about it because they don’t want to let on that
they’re a fraud.”
Dr.
Valerie Young, a United States specialist in impostor
syndrome from Massachusetts, is not surprised to hear an
Australian voice at the end of the line when I phone her.
Australians and New Zealanders make up the largest group of
people to contact her outside the US, she says.
So
does this mean Australians regard themselves as a nation of
phoneys? “Definitely not,” says Young. “It means that
Australians are honest about owning up to the condition and
that they have an interest in self-discovery and want to
create more satisfying and balanced work lives.”
Young’s personal experience shows impostor syndrome affects
all professions. “It really does run the gamut, from doctors
right through to administration assistants. The incidence
seems less in blue-collar workers and I think this is
because in those jobs you can see the tangible fruit of your
labour. That pipe is broken so you fix it.
“For
most sufferers, just breaking the silence is a big step on
the road to recovery. I get so many emails from people who
say, ‘Thank God there are others out there who feel the same
as I do.”‘
And
recovery is not something that happens overnight for most
workers. “You have to work on it,” says Garing. “It’s all
about replacing the tape in your head that keeps saying ‘I’m
a fraud’ with one that says ‘I’m not a fraud; I’m highly
successful and people see me as such.”‘
“People who fear that they’re impostors need to realise that
most of life is like flying by the seat of your pants,” says
Young. “The trouble is we have an internal rule book that
keeps reminding us that maybe we don’t know what we’re
doing.”
So is
the solution to impostor syndrome that we should learn to
ignore these voices and adopt the “fake it till you make it”
approach? “There’s nothing wrong with faking it,” she says
with a laugh. There are many who would agree.
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