Over-thinking your work success and convincing youeself you're a fake?

by Candice Chung

Always over-thinking your work success and convincing youeself you're a fake? Here's how to duck those self-doubt thoughts ...

It's after work and you're on the bus on your way home. You find a seat, fish out a magazine and start flipping through it, and start reading.

At the back of your mind, you are still thinking about your day. All the meetings, deadlines, and things you haven't done. You try to shake off that niggling feeling and are quietly relieved to get through another day without any major disaters.

Your manager thinks you are a star, yet, somehow, you find it hard to believe. Others say you are a hard worker, but they have no idea just how much effort you put in to get everything done. If only they knew what was going on inside. If only they realised that, deep down, you've been feeling like a fraud.

Imposter or high achiever??
For business owner Nyssa Berryman, 31, the false belief of being a fraud is something she has been wrestling with for some time. Despite being nominated for several prestigious business awards for her successful PR company. The Buss PR, Berryman still finds it's hard to relate to her own accomplishments at time.

"I'm usually a very confident person, but, privately - every now and then - I'll sort of pause and think. "Do I know what I'm talking about? Do people even trust me? ... And I'm hit with a feeling where I don't know if I'll ever find real success."

Although Berryman has always been a high-achiever, external praise and recognition only offer her a limited sense of reassurance. In fact, it is often when she stops to evaluate her successes that she feels a heightened sense of anxiety.


"It is a bizarre feeling to have. When I verbalise it to someone, they might tell me (my fears are) ridiculous. I'd try to overcome it by reminding myself of what I have achieved. But, then, the next day, I could have the exact same feeling again ... It's like I'm my own worst critic and my own worst enemy," she says.

What Berryman has been experiencing is, in fact, a classic case of the "imposter phenomenon" - concept first discovered in the 1970s by clinical psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes. The pair conducted a study with 150 women who, despite their outstanding accomplishments, believed that they weren't smart and had "fooled anyone who thought otherwise".

Those who identify with the syndrome often feel that other people have, somehow, overestimated their intelligence and abilities. Thier skewed perception could also be accompanied by a fear of being "found out" and a tendency to dismiss their success as luck or the result of a dispropostionate amount of hard work and effort.

the parent trap...
Many theories exist about the origin of "impostorism", but Clance and Imes believe our early family dynamics from a crucial part of the cause. The researchers discovered in their study that "impostors" tend to come from one of two categories.

One group of women grew up with parents who labelled their sibling as the "brighter" one in the family - causing them to internalist the belief they are less intelligent or capable, while, as the same time, wanting to disprove the perception through hard work and success.

The other group of women are told in their childhood that they are smart and can do anything they want with ease. When confronted with problems they can't solve "easily" later in life, they began to doubt their own abilities and their parents' idealised perceptions of them.

fear of rejection ...
Ironically, these self-imposed feeling of fraud are most prevalent in high-achieving women. Corporate consultant Suzanne Mercier has been training clients about the phenomenon for the past 18 months.

Mercier argued that it comes down to a fear of rejection. "Impostors syndrome is about feeling scared that somebody is going to discover we are not good enough and that if we let them see who we realy are, they won't like what they see."

She adds," [People with self-doubt] tend to live with incredible stress because they are often super-vigilant about making sure nobody figures out they are 'not good enough'. For example, someone might become a workaholic and put in lots of extra hours so that nobody can ask them a question they won't know, or find fault with what they are doing."

silencing the fake...
Louise Schultze, 30, CEO and founder of marketing company ibidam.com says it's often hard for successful women to open up about feeling like a fraud - because many don't realise their peers are facing the very same struggles.

"You see yourself with all your flaws. [But other people] see the gloss, they see the articles, they see you standing up onstage in front of a crowd, or all done up in a photograph. I guess they don't see the hard part," says Schultze.

Having been asked to speak at the National Small Business Summit alongside former PM Kevin Rudd and key business figures, Schultze admits it's difficult to silence the "inner impostor". She recalls, "I kept thinking, 'what if they ask me a question and I haven't got my stats right, or if they catch me out on something?'. I have this opportunity to be in a room with some of the most influential people, yet I [still sometimes] question whether it's my place to say anything."

While it's impossible to banish all self-doubt, Schultze believes it's important to stay strong and forge ahead despite our fears. "I understood early on what it's like to push yourself through the parts where you are uncomfortable, or you don't like, so you can get to the other side - where those feeling of reward and sense of achievement are great."

To do this, Mercier believes we should first address any feeling of anxiety. "Fear is real, but the perception that we are not good enough is not necessarily so. We can only break the pattern by separating our feelings from what we perceive as the truth, and then questioning it."

And, for some people, the simple realisation that the imposter phenomenon exists, and knowing that they are not alone, can actually be enough.