Impostor syndrome or impostor phenomenon is a type of mental condition where the person doubts his own accomplishments and fears whether their friends and colleagues will discover that they are fraud.
Although it sounds too weird to be true but it exists in real life. Certain kinds of people believe their success comes from a series of luck and do not take their personal hard work into consideration. An article published in the International Journal of Behavioural Science pointed out that approximately 70% of people experienced these impostor feelings at some point in their lives. People of all walks of life seem to experience it: Men, Women, Students, Professionals, etc. It makes a person feel that somehow even through all the hard work they put in, it is their luck which has rewarded them with accomplishments and not their hard earned efforts.
As per Valerie Young, an expert on impostor syndrome claims that people suffering through the syndrome usually have a set pattern and can be classified as: The perfectionists, Experts, Naturally genius, Soloists and Supermen or superwomen.
The perfectionists have a perfect goal and want to achieve perfection in everything that they undertake. They set a high expectation for themselves and if they don’t meet all their expectations to the T, they consider themselves as failure. As such they construct a false narrative of failure in their head and feel fraud in their own beings.
The experts have high expectation from themselves. As such if they feel like they lack even .1% of the required knowledge, they feel vulnerable and fail to see themselves as a success story. If they have a small amount of gap in their knowledge, they feel they are undeserving of the knowledge and thus put themselves on a high mental pedestal.
The naturally genius are naturally talented, but if they are unable to get on the high horse of any skill, they feel like an impostor and undeserving of all the natural talent they posses. When all their life, they were able to achieve accomplishments on the basis of their talent but due to some reason they are unable to do so in some cases, they feel that they are frauds and not good enough to hold those accomplishments.
The soloists are people who have an immensely strong belief of independency. They consider themselves strong enough to undertake any task and achieve it dutifully. As such when they are unable to do something alone, they feel impostors to their own self and consider themselves a failure.
The supermen or superwomen have an inherent belief of being a fraud and therefore put in more hard work than anybody else. They feel they need to prove to the world that they are not impostors and they can only achieve it through succeeding in every aspects of their life. Supermen or Superwomen put themselves in a mental cage of fallacy and struggle to prove something that is not at all true.
If you ever feel like a fraud to your own self, try to look at yourself in a positive light and seek help if required. Take care.
