I hadn’t heard of impostor syndrome until a couple of months into graduate school. I felt out of my league and completely stupid compared to my colleagues and lab mates. After feeling this way for a while, I finally had the courage to bring it up with one of the older graduate students in my lab and she calmed me down by telling me everyone feels like that at points in academia. It’s called impostor syndrome.
What is Impostor Syndrome?
Impostor syndrome is defined as a state of doubting your own accomplishments to the point you are afraid you will be outed as a “fraud” to your colleagues. It’s scary; it affects all aspects of your life from work to friendships to hobbies. I’ve always been someone who pushes myself but joining graduate school I am introduced to many great like-minded people who also push themselves hard every day. This gets me to thinking about what gives me the right to be here compared to all these other smart, goal-oriented people?
There are 5 types of personalities that especially predisposed to the feelings of impostor syndrome:
- Perfectionists
- Superman/woman: Pushing yourself to work harder than everyone around you to prove your worth.
- Natural Genius: Used to having things come easily, anything that provides a challenge brings shame
- Soloists: Works independently best and believes asking for help shows weakness
- Expert: measure abilities on how much they know and fear being inexperienced compared to another person.
This is all a spectrum, but as I heard more about the impostor syndrome and read more about it, slowly it all started making sense. I saw the similarities in my personality to many of the above-mentioned types.
You are not alone
It is estimated 70% of people feel the effects of impostor syndrome at some point in their careers. In fact, research suggests that it is the people that don’t feel the effects of impostor syndrome throughout their career who are more likely to be actual “impostors”. Additionally, a lot of it comes down to your family upbringing and personality traits, with some also suggesting being a minority in the workplace affecting how often you feel this way.
Whatever the causes, you are not alone. This was one of the hardest things for me to accept (and I am still working on accepting it) but acceptance is the first step in making impostor syndrome go away, or at least lessen itself. It is great to be a go-getter, a natural genius, or want to work hard, however, we also don’t want to let this get the better of us when things get hard or we meet other people similarly predisposed.
I think that is why so many people feel the effects in graduate school because this is the first time we are truly experiencing a world of people that are all smart and dedicated to the same things we are. And you can’t help but think what makes me different from all these other people that seem to know so much more than me?
Facing the Feelings
Maybe some of this resonated with you as it did with me when I first learned about it all. If so, great! I hope this might help if nothing else to begin to accept it. If not though, don’t think this doesn’t make you an impostor. While there are some byproducts of impostor syndrome that are beneficial such as driving people to work harder, most of the impostor syndrome is negative and leads to high burnout rates if not properly managed.
Below are some of the tips I have learned to handle impostor syndrome. Everyone has their own way so feel free to modify as necessary, but these particularly resonate with me.
Acceptance
We talked about this earlier as well, but this really is the biggest first step to overcoming impostor syndrome. Before you can do anything else, you first have to admit to yourself everything isn’t okay and you feel less smart than everyone else around you.
Talk to your Mentor and Friends
After acceptance, one of the best things to do is just to bring this up with your mentor and friends. Your mentor can help you tackle these feelings and show you that you are not alone. You likely have at least one friend feeling a similar way and by reaching out to your support network not only will the reassure you of your abilities, but you may, in fact, be helping someone else realize their own impostor syndrome feelings.
Reframe your thoughts
Every time you have a feeling doubting your ability to succeed or feeling like you are a fraud, repeat “it’s not me, it’s impostor syndrome talking.” Every time you are trying to work on a draft of a paper, remember that even though that first draft may not be great, it is a work in progress that will improve. Try to take all those negative thoughts telling you that you aren’t good enough and reframe them into a positive outlook. When all of my experiments fail for the week, instead of thinking I am such a bad scientist, I think instead of all the ways I can adapt the experiments to try to work for next week. If you have a hard time with this, this is when it is useful to have a friend in the loop to remind you to reframe your thoughts (in my case it is my labmates who help me through).
Remind yourself of your expertise
Finally, and possibly the most challenging of them all, remember you are actually smart. I am by no means an expert of this one (pun intended), but what has been working for me is when I first start feeling overwhelmed and anxious about not being smart enough, I take a few deep breaths and physically write down in a journal three things you have done well. I have expanded on this by now ending my day writing down at least one accomplishment from the day.
One of the reasons I started this blog and my presence on social media is to remind others that scientists can take so many different shapes and sizes. In turn, the science friends I have made virtually on social media remind me that they go through these same exact impostor feeling problems, even though they look like they all have it sorted just like I must look to people.
All in all, the biggest thing to remember is that if you fail you are not a failure. Your smarts and accomplishments are not supposed to be ranked or compared to others. Find your own self worth and strive to prove to yourself more than others what you are capable of.
For those of us experiencing impostor syndrome, it is alright to be affected by these feelings once in a while. The goal isn’t to completely get rid of impostor syndrome as much as learning to use the moments you feel like an impostor to push you forward while not letting it take over your life. And by using some of these tips, I am on my way to using my impostor syndrome to help me during graduate school, and hopefully later in my career.
