The impostor syndrome: why do you also think you are a scam

• Javier Cámara. "All the actors have the 'impostor syndrome'"

There was the English writer Neil Gaiman in a meeting with artists, writers, scientists and discoverers of a lot of things ... and he found an older guy out of the crowd at the bottom of a hall. The man was called Neil too. «I just look at all these people, and I think, what the hell am I doing here? They have all done amazing things and I have only gone where they sent me, ”said the man. "Mr. Armstrong," Gaiman told him. «You have been the first man to step on the moon. Maybe that counts for something too.

The confession in that corridor of Neil Armstrong, aerospace engineer, naval aviator, test pilot, professor at the University of Cincinnati, Gold Medal of the United States Congress, first civil astronaut to fly into space and, yes, first man in stepping on the moon, is an obvious symptom of the so-called impostor syndrome , a psychological phenomenon that portrays those who are unable to internalize their achievements and suffer a constant fear of being discovered as a fraud.

And you don't have to travel to the Moon to feel it. Have you ever dreamed that you still need an exam to finish the race? Or an entire course? Have you ever woken up startled because suddenly you thought you didn't have the title yet and your boss was going to find out? Welcome to the club, you are also - better said, you also think you are - an imposter. You also feel a person's fake . If it comforts you, you are not alone. According to research published in the International Journal of Behavioral Science , at least 70% of people experience this syndrome at some point in their professional career. It doesn't matter if you are Neil Armstrong, Martin Scorsese, Meryl Streep or Michelle Obama herself.

You feel that the achievements you get are not yours, you do not accept them as your own and you think they are due to external causes, luck, the work of others ...

"It is a phenomenon quite frequent and at the same time, too unknown," said Marta Calderero , professor of Psychology and Educational Sciences at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC). «It arises when people begin to feel that the achievements they get are not theirs, when they do not accept them as their own and believe that they are due to external causes , to luck, to the work of others ... Nothing is their merit or It owes to your skills or knowledge. This feeling is being enhanced and generates feelings of insecurity and incompetence, which in turn disrupt the self-concept until the person is believed to be a fraud, that he is a true imposter ».

The syndrome was first described by the American psychologist Pauline Clance in 1978. "I experienced it in school," she says in her blog. «If I had an exam, I was terrified of having failed. I remembered everything I didn't know more than what I did know and thought that my fears were due to my academic background. My friends started to get tired of my worry, so I kept it to myself until I started teaching at an outstanding university with an enormous academic reputation and heard similar fears from students who had excellent grades and recommendations. In discussing this, Dr. Suzanne Imes and I coined the term phenomenon of the imposter and wrote a document on that concept.

Theirs is also a test that allows you to gauge how much the happy syndrome interferes with your personal life. Answer:

Can you give the impression that you are more competent than you really are?

Do you think he got his current position because he was in the right place at the right time?

Do you think that your success in life or at work is the result of some error?

Do you think that everyone around you is smarter than you?

Do you tend to downplay the tasks for which you have been recognized?

...

That first work of Clance and Imes focused on high performance women and studied over a period of five years the profile of 150 respected professionals in their respective fields of work and students recognized for their academic excellence. Most of them believed, however, a farce. "Despite the academic achievements and being outstanding professionals, women who experience the phenomenon of the imposter persist in believing that they are not really bright and have deceived anyone who thinks otherwise," says Clance.

Previous work had already pointed out that, while men generally attribute failure to luck or the difficulty of the task, women tend to explain it because of their lack of ability . When it comes to attributing success, however, the parameters are changed. They deserve it, they don't.

Being perpetually waiting to be unmasked depletes your energy and makes you more reluctant to risk and self-promotion

"Being perpetually waiting to be unmasked not only depletes the energy and confidence of a woman, it also makes her more risk averse and less prone to self-promotion than her male partners, which can ultimately harm her future success," writes the Dr. Valerie Young, author of a book of very long title in English that we could translate as follows: The secret thoughts of successful women: why capable people suffer from the impostor syndrome and how to prosper in spite of them .

Another study carried out in 2016 at the University of Salzburg (Austria) found that the majority of people who suffer from it are limited in their professional career, have lower salaries, fewer promotions than colleagues with similar abilities and experience and greater inability to seek new jobs . That vicious circle is the so-called impostor cycle and reaches the top of the public sphere.

Michelle Obama admitted during the presentation of her recent biography to have felt a scam while staying at the White House: «I still have a bit of that syndrome. That feeling that they shouldn't take me so seriously does not disappear because ... what do I know about life? We all have doubts about our capabilities, about our power and what that power is.

Actress Emma Watson confessed a few years ago in Rookie magazine: «I have a feeling of disagreement towards me and the worst thing is that it increases day by day. Sometimes I think: 'At some point, are people going to realize that I am a total fraud?' I do not deserve anything I have achieved in recent years ».

We all have doubts about our capabilities, about our power and what that power is

And just a week ago, British singer Ellie Goulding told her 14 million followers on Instagram: “I know I chose this job, but nothing could have prepared me for the ups and downs it entails. I know with certainty that much of my anxiety comes from what they call the impostor syndrome, not believing in myself and thinking that I don't deserve happiness, which ends up causing me to sabotage my own success ».

A survey conducted in the United Kingdom last year estimated at 62% the percentage of adults who had experienced the impostor syndrome at work in the last 12 months. That same report revealed that women are 18% more likely to suffer and that the professionals who had experienced it most were dedicated to the arts, law, the media or medical care. More than half of employees of technology companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft or Google also sign up for the club. The great novelty of the latest studies, however, is that they reveal the new trend: young people. 86% of workers between 18 and 34 admit that they have ever felt that they do not deserve their job .

"More and more companies are addressing this problem because they understand that these kinds of feelings have consequences both on a personal level and on the final result at work," Valerie Young tells Paper from New York. “It seems that there are more and more people who experience the impostor syndrome or at least there is more awareness about it and more desire to speak publicly about it. Thanks to social networks, we live in a culture of constant comparison in which nobody talks about their setbacks or failures or how much work their achievements cost.

Look at my new shoes. See what cult I am reading this book. Watch my feet on this beach of white sand and crystal clear waters. I'm in the cinema, in the theater, another concert. Selfie in the gym. Eye with this sunset. My grandmother is 112 years old but she is fantastic. Say something to the camera, yaya. 379 stories of my vacation in paradise. Have you seen which cupcake more cuqui? My son is the best son in the world. Can my girl and I love each other more? Hashtag love My dog ​​is the best dog in the world. By the way, I have written a fantastic report of 15,000 characters about the impostor syndrome and I look forward to your retuit.

«It is a phenomenon enhanced by the current context», shares Marta Calderero. «There is an effect of overexposure of successes in the work environment through curricula and, above all, in social networks. We perceive our partners, our competitors or the model profiles as people with many successes. Of others we never see any failure, only their achievements. But we know each other well, we know our virtues but also our shortcomings and we are aware of them even if they are minimal. The others are apparently perfect, but we know that we are not.

In these times of false news, of extreme posturing on the Internet, of the tyranny of clickbait , of great scams, of deceptive advertising, of politics turned into a perpetual fraud, of seeing life through a filter of colors, of appearing that our vacations, our children, our pets, our breakfast and even us are what we are not, it was inevitable that the impostor syndrome will catch the youngest. The fake generation arrives. On the one hand, the authentic fakers of the like . To the other, those who, seeing the success of the former, feel that they are a true deception.

We expose our best feathers in the networks so that others envy us and nobody thinks at all that we can live moments of pain

«There has always been a certain strutting, but today there is a phenomenon that leads us to hypertrophy and expose on the Internet in an oversized way everything we do or that we are enjoying and giving too much to certain events with the fundamental intention of exposing how well we are doing and tell how we are and how we live, even if it's not true. We expose our best feathers so that others envy us and nobody thinks at all that we can live moments of pain, restlessness or restlessness, ”explains José Antonio Luengo , expert in adolescent psychology and secretary of the College of Psychologists of Madrid. «We publish the restaurant we are entering, the ribeye we just ate and the toast we make with our girlfriend. Everything has to do with the ability to cancel self-criticism and reflection. The almost reactive impulse to expose to others everything magnificent in that we show prevails and in the end we end up believing our own lies ».

On the other side of the screen, there are those who end up feeling less than the others, who believe themselves without complaining about the sham of others and internalize that they, instead, are a scam. “There are more and more teenagers who internalize that they are nobody, who believe very little in their abilities and do not value those things that until recently made them happy even if they were not exposed,” insists Luengo. «We are losing the intimate reference of happiness and perpetuate that feeling that you are a fraud, you are not worth it, you are not comparable to all that others show . And many of the mental health problems that young people suffer today have to do with this frustration ».

-How do we fight this impostor syndrome among the new generations?

-With more education, working to increase people's emotional security. Social networks are a dangerous scenario, they act like gasoline, a fuel that quickly multiplies both positive and negative feelings. We are facing the arrival of a new generation that begins to suffer from this social disease that is overexposure, loss of intimacy and permanent comparison with those supposedly others. Of course the scenario is not positive. There is nothing more devastating to a person in society than the annulment of their emotional security . We need a good self-concept of ourselves, a good self-esteem to not feel a fraud, not to believe ourselves impostors.

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