5 Steps to Stop Impostor Syndrome in Its Tracks

Social scientists David Dunning and Justin Kruger wanted to know whether people who are incompetent know that they’re incompetent.

Spoiler alert: they don’t. In the researchers’ paper “Unskilled and Unaware of It,” they write, “Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd.”

That’s right. Dunning-Kruger Effect shows that people who know more about a given subject think they know less about it and people who are totally ignorant of a given subject are overconfident.

We see it in the office, in the news, in overambitious home repairs. The people who know the least about a given topic tend to overestimate themselves in that realm.

But the inverse is also true: The people who know the most tend to underestimate themselves.

Taken to its extreme, veni vidi vici!, it’s impostor syndrome, the feeling you’re a fraud at something you actually excel at and, at any minute, you’ll be found out.

The sick irony? If you were, in fact, incapable or ignorant, an impostor, you probably wouldn’t have the sense to question your ability.

While many of us have wrestle with it, some of us are more susceptible. According to the New York Times, “women tend to judge their performance as worse than they objectively are while men judge their own as better.” Also according to the Times, impostor syndrome’s effects on people who are minorities is compounded because of pressures of discrimination. (It turns out, people treating you like you’re incompetent despite your competence makes you feel like you’re incompetent.)

And for those of us who make art, often ephemeral, often in isolation or without recognition or pay, these intrusive thoughts can be especially hard to beat back once they enter.

If you’ve felt the pains of impostor syndrome, you’re in good company. Even former First Lady Michelle Obama recently shared that she struggles with this feeling.

“I had to work to overcome that question that I always asked myself, ‘Am I good enough?’ … That’s a question that has dogged me for a good part of my life,” she said.

She felt that way stepping into the Ivy League. She felt that way again when she was becoming the First Lady of the United States.

Unchecked, impostor syndrome keeps us from sharing our most meaningful contributions with the world. Instead, we keep them in notebooks, on hard drives, in basements. When we let impostor syndrome lead instead of our gifts, we undervalue our work, we fake smile our way through parties, we bloviate or self-deprecate and often isolate ourselves. We’re never known and the world misses out.

Thankfully, Michelle Obama harnesses the courage to acknowledge her impostor syndrome without letting it run her life.

So how do we trust in our worthiness and make our mark?

Here are five steps to stop impostor syndrome in its tracks:

Step 1. Recognize it for what it is.

But it can be tricky to identify: Impostor syndrome may look like humility outwardly. But it’s actually a rejection of the gifts and talents you possess.

Humility is a virtue, and arrogance a vice. So, are you being humble or not giving yourself enough credit?

C.S. Lewis said, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.”

Do you hear your inner voice asking the question Michelle Obama asked: “Am I good enough?” Do you fear “getting caught” or “being found out”? Is there an anxious feeling attached? Is there an inward, negative focus?

If so, it’s likely impostor syndrome.

Or are you considering what you could give others with your knowledge, talents, or gifts? If you have an outward, positive focus, it’s likelier to be humility.

Once recognized, some of its power is diminished.

Step 2. Name it.

As shame and vulnerability researcher Brene Brown says, “Shame thrives in secret.” Tell a trusted friend or mentor what you’re experiencing. Often, in telling the story, you’ll see that the parts that made so much sense in your head don’t make sense out loud. In the telling, you might find the the feeling evaporating.

If not, it’s likely that who you tell will see your value and have an anecdote to share about a time they’ve felt like a phony. In sharing our experience, Brown says someone else can empathize with us and we realize we aren’t alone.

Why is naming so powerful? Brown says, “If you own this story, you get to write the ending.”

Step 3. Find the right people.

And, Brown emphasizes, it’s important who you choose to tell. You want honesty and compassionate support. In a “shame spiral,” you won’t trust the friend who you know offers effusive praise, and you don’t need the friend who you feel competitive toward or who might scold you.

As an aforementioned NYT article mentions, it may help to find a group based on an identity within your field (race, gender, sexual orientation, region, and so on). They’ll likely have commonalities, won’t require as much explanation from you, and can offer tips as to what’s worked for them in similar situations.

Bonus: being part of a group that identifies as a part of a profession gives you a little sense of verification. (For instance, I joined an online women’s writing group. Connecting with other writers helps me feel like a writer.) Find the person or community that you trust.

Step 4. Honor your integrity and do the dang thing.

Michelle Obama said she fought her impostor syndrome the way she knew how: hard work.

Worried you can’t make this presentation, do well in this promotion, parent your child well, make a painting as good as the last?

Then it’s time to begin.

Obama said: “Whenever I doubted myself, I thought, let me put my head down and do the work. I would let my work speak for itself.”

One way to prove to yourself you can do something is to do it.

Emmy winner Amy Poehler also takes this approach. In writing her best-selling memoir Yes, Please she admits she too has heard the voice that says “youaredumbandyouwillneverfinishandnoonecaresanditistimeyoustop.”

How did she combat it? She sat down and did it. Poehler says, “The doing is the thing. The talking and worrying and thinking is not the thing.”

Step 5. Celebrate your gifts.

Impostor syndrome seems akin to what Brown calls “foreboding joy,” the sense that any time something good happens, you’re waiting for the other waiting for the other shoe to drop. The antidote, she says, is gratitude.

You can’t experience joy or accept your gifts without it.

A friend reminded me recently that the data shows we just have to express gratitude, even if we don’t feel it yet. (Thanks, Jeanette!)

Write a list you’re grateful for in your planner or make a “successes” label in your email or file on your computer. When you feel impostor syndrome creeping in, read your success file. You’ll thank yourself. (Har har.)


Impostor syndrome may be a constant companion. The trick is to recognize it, confide in a friend, do your work, and celebrate your successes.

Still wondering if you’re good enough?

That needn’t stop you.

As Poehler says, “Great people do things before they’re ready. They do things before they know they can do it.”

(FWIW, I struggled mightily with impostor syndrome before pressing publish on this very post and have before, too.)


If you’d like to read more of my writing, subscribe to my monthly newsletter or read my book, Rodeo in Reverse.

Title Changes and Impostor Syndrome

Concrete donkey statue behind a wire fence.

Hi. My name is Lindsey Alexander, and I’m here today to talk about impostor syndrome.

In August, I found out that my manuscript, after seven years of work (and rejection), will be published with Hub City Press as a New Southern Voices Prize winner.

Once the prosecco wore off, I dove into revisions. I reworked, rewrote, and tinkered with poems, based on the suggestions of my editor, Leslie Sainz, who is brilliant and who should also be sainted. (Follow her so you can read her poems first.) The biggest suggestion was to change the title. Leslie sent 10 new potential titles, and then explained several that piqued my interest.

After much fretting, I sent back the manuscript revised, retaining the original title, which included the word “impostor,” and sounded like it belonged in a different genre. I hit send with a smug, comfortable satisfaction.

My publisher responded to (kindly) explain its reasoning for the change, in the way one might try to talk down a hissing cat from a tree, and at that moment I knew I had to kiss it goodbye. I emailed them that I understood and was ready to “come to Jesus.” And then I sent an immediate follow-up email to clarify, the hallmark of true confidence and sanity.

Meanwhile, instead of acknowledging to myself that I’d been wrong in trying to keep the title, I worked at convincing myself I’d been right. (As Kathryn Schulz writes, being wrong feels a lot like being right.) It took a while (and this in the Bible Belt) to find Jesus. I went for a long walk, fuming, certain my dog, who is a food mercenary, was the only one I could trust. It did not initially occur to me that (duh) my publisher wanted my book to sell well (likely sales matter more to them than to me). It did not initially occur to me that a team of smart people who were dedicating hours of their lives to sharing my work and who had read my book could understand its context, especially in the market, better than I did. No. I had selected the hill I was going to die on: Having the word “impostor” by my name on a cover. This is how overidentified I was with seeing myself as a phony. (I swear I must’ve read Catcher in the Rye too early in life.)

After an afternoon sulking, I was assuaged by a well-reasoned email from a friend, pointing out some of these fallacies. Oh, right, I had been granted a wonderful team, publication with a press I admired, and a big opportunity, and I wasn’t letting myself feel the glory of that gift.

I created word lists and theme lists and began creating titles I’m sure a bot could’ve come up with based on keywords from the manuscript. I conducted straw polls. Finally, a friend (fantastic writer Natalie van Hoose) with fresh eyes landed on Rodeo in Reverse. There it was: it had been between the manuscript and the word list and Leslie’s suggestions the whole time. I loved it. My publisher did too.

*

The only editorial work left was responding to a few new comments on the manuscript in a final round of revisions. A couple weeks later and I was receiving emails—you know the ones: polite, asking how a project was going, the kind from a kind person after you’ve missed or pushed a deadline.

Thing is: I was pretty much finished with revisions on the manuscript and had been for several days. At this point, I had a couple (just two) lingering small edits (whether to cut or retain a line, whether to add or leave out a short stanza), and in both cases I knew what I’d end up doing. I was creating false dilemmas for myself.

Chief among: searching phrases from my book to be sure they weren’t plagiarized. Taking small phrases and whole sentences and running them through Google, with quotes. If it didn’t return results, I’d look it up without quotes. If it did return a result—even a coincidental match on a random blog, I’d spin out, having proven to myself I was a fraud, not a real writer, much less a poet.

Which phrases was I searching? Any phrase I thought was good.

Why did I do this?

I felt uncomfortable. I mistook that discomfort for guilt, for having done something wrong, one of the grave sins of writing being plagiarism.

*

After some consideration, I recognized it for what it was: impostor syndrome.

I couldn’t be convinced I came up with anything good; therefore, if I like part of the book, it must be from somewhere, and someone, else.

I had insisted (gritting my teeth) on holding onto a title that my publisher felt it would be best to change. It had the word “impostor” in it.

Luckily, I’ve spent the last few months reading all the Brené Brown. (I don’t mean that as Internet speak. I mean I read all of it.) So I knew that “shame thrives in secret.” I needed to name it (impostor syndrome: done) and tell someone.

Being a good Millennial, I chose to share on Instagram Stories (which is private and only my really good friends and the occasional bored scroller would see), then after 24 hours it would disappear. Oddly, this medium mirrored the anxiety I was feeling: once named and shared, my shame (in this instance) no longer made sense.

Many friends reached out with an encouraging word—one even to say she’d had the same issue when she had a story accepted for publication at a Fancy Magazine.

Reading a section from Rising Strong helped me understand why I battle impostor syndrome in the first place: I have trouble accepting gifts—from others, from the universe. Like many women, it’s hard for me to accept even a compliment without reversing it thoughtlessly or mentioning where I got my dress for how cheap. A gift that’s a talent, unearned, an inkling honed into something bigger than the self—which I believe each one of us has—well, that’s nearly impossible to accept.

The thing about gratitude is, it isn’t hard to feel grateful once you allow yourself to feel joy, to accept goodness (including your own). But that means actually that gratitude is tough to access until it isn’t. Denying gifts isn’t a higher plane of maturity or understanding—it’s the road to ruin. Being kind to myself is oddly brave for me.

*

The title of my debut book, a poetry collection, is Rodeo in Reverse. I get to work with a caring, badass team of women to make it. I’m a writer and no more or less of an impostor than anyone else, which is to say, I’m human.

I wake every morning trying to lean into and learn from joy, to feel my gratitude. This means I am working on things like “being a hugger” and doing things like tearing up when I see my husband reading or thinking of how good my friends are. I say “I love you” to friends and acquaintances who are used to me not saying anything at all, or maybe “yeah, man.” I go to parks and sing with strangers at jams. (Okay, I did this once.) I thank the roof above my head for holding steady. I thank my stars for bringing me here. It’s the hardest and most embarrassing work I’ve done, and I don’t know where it will lead, but I trust it.

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Have you ever experienced impostor syndrome? When? How were you able to turn the corner?

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