How Impostor Syndrome Occurs

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

It takes a long time to achieve success, through suffering and hard work, you can't lower the bar, you can always do better … Psychologist Ilya Latypov is sure that all these attitudes are actually different ways to devalue yourself and your successes. But he has two tips for those looking to defeat their inner impostor

Magpie-white-sided cooked porridge … Surely you remember this nursery rhyme, in which the magpie handed out porridge and at the end "but did not give this one." Why? But because he did nothing. Did not deserve. Because everything in the world, and even food, must be deserved. Such is the deeply conditional love …

And okay, if this magpie has clear and precise criteria for what needs to be done in order to receive porridge or love. Here at least you can adjust, do everything right - and get a reward. And if these criteria are tight - are they either vague, depending on the mood of the "magpie", or are they simply unattainable?

Then either die of hunger, or learn to deceive the magpie. True, you will live on pain of exposure, but still survival is more important than the risk of shame. This is how a sensation is formed, which is called the "impostor syndrome".

In essence, this is a person's inability to appropriate his own achievements and successful actions. Everything he does is an accident, the result of luck, someone else's efforts. And if you can't blame successes on circumstances, it means that what was done was not done well enough to earn approval or respect. And therefore, if you do something and other people appreciate it, then you feel like a deceiver-impostor.

Each success is not pleasing, but reinforces shame and a sense of impending collapse.

There are many different ways to devalue what you are doing, reject success and approval, and immerse yourself in the experience of being a cheater. Here are a few of them.

1. Everything in life should be done with hard work. If something came easy for you, then this is not a real success, it is a dummy. Do you have talent, and therefore something is easier for you than for others? Be ashamed. Are you a handsome person and thanks to your appearance you easily find contact with people? Be ashamed, make excuses - you did not deserve, and everything in this life should be deserved, in this world there are no gifts for you.

2. Real success is achieved through self-abuse, pain and suffering. If you enjoy what you do, and those around you appreciate the results of this work, you have deceived everyone.

Everyone hunchbacks and suffers like real ants, and you are a careless dragonfly, then you will pay for it. Only suffering gives permission to rejoice.

3. Recognition and value cannot come quickly. Confessions are achieved at the end of life, or even better - after death, otherwise you will become undeservedly proud. And in general - only a select few can assess your work, you yourself - don't you dare. If people began to respect you before you died, you deceived everyone. The genius of deception, you will not refuse it. This is the only thing that you have succeeded in.

4. Success requires never to lower the bar again. The only proof that you truly deserve to be recognized is to never stoop lower again. And since you know for sure that it is impossible to be on top all the time, it means that all your achievements are worthless emptiness.

5. Respect deserves only something extremely extraordinary and flawlessly done. If there is even one flaw, that's it. It's just that the people around were so distracted by all this shiny tinsel that they did not notice the spots. Not noticed yet. Etc. The main thing is to deprive what you do of value.

At the same time, the impostor syndrome is not an obsessive need for external approval, but a feeling of inappropriateness of oneself to this very approval and one's achievements.

If we do not recognize what we do as valuable, then success does not fuel self-esteem. And the lack of self-esteem makes it impossible to recognize that what we do is important and valuable. Vicious circle?

How can you get out of it?

There are no definite answers. For some, it is enough to catch oneself on the above ideas - over and over, day after day, and gradually the critic's grip will become weaker. Two tips were valuable to me.

First clue … When we are told, "This is great!", We do one tricky thing. We devalue not only ourselves, we - without wishing it - take for fools those who say to us: "This is good."

By depriving ourselves of respect, we at the same time deny respect to those who support us. Because if you managed to "trick", for example, your boss and he promoted you, then your boss is not very smart. Yes, he is simply stupid - for so long he cannot expose you, an ordinary swindler.

And the people around who recognize your skills are also naive fools. Only the critics are right, only they are shrewd. And the professor who speaks approvingly about your work is a layman and layman, unable to separate a good attitude towards a person from his real merits. Here are critics, they always separate envy and their other experiences from an objective assessment of your efforts.

Are you, in the heat of devaluation, belittling those whom you seem to value and who have had the misfortune to think well of you?

And the second clue was "thrown" by John Tolkien. When asked about how he wrote "The Lord of the Rings" (an extremely extraordinary book for its time), he replied: "This book is written with the blood of my heart, thick or thin - it really is; more I can not."

I was amazed at the time by these words. Do what you love with the blood of your heart, be equal to yourself, and no one else. In these words, the recognition that this book is not flawless, but it expresses the author's soul and is dear to him.

The way out of "imposture" is the rejection of attempts to be someone else, to portray someone else, ideal - as opposed to the real one. It is difficult if only ideal creatures who have earned recognition for their exploits have the right to life and respect. And this is possible in the world of ordinary people, where the right to life does not need to be earned, where your mistakes are just mistakes, not a sentence, and where the recognition of your limitations is a reason to feel sad, not despair. Then there will be a place for merits.

Ilya Latypov

Psychologist, gestalt therapist