Nostalgia: Imposter Syndrome

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Why we do what we do. Welcome
to Why we do what we do. I am your
faking it until I'm making it, Host Abraham.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
And I'm your just waiting to be discovered Host Shane.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
We are a psychology podcast. We talk about all of
the things that humans and non human animals do and
try and understand what's going on in this crazy psychological
world we sort of live in and evolve in and whatnot.
And sometimes we talk sort of politics, sometimes we talk
sort of broad philosophy, and sometimes we dig into the

(00:48):
vault of things that we have since made and we
dig it out again and we revisit it.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Yeah, and so today we are doing a nostalgia episode
on the concept of imposter syndrome. I remember wanting to
do this topic early on because I had felt like
I had personal experience with this. Yeah, I feel like
I've gotten a little bit better. I think I've been
able to distinguish between imposter syndrome and self doubt. And
we'll kind of talk about you'll hear a little bit

(01:13):
about the original episode and some updates on this stuff too. Yeah,
but there's been a lot of researchers come out about
imposter syndrome since the last time we chatted about this,
so we wanted to kind of share what's new, what's
happening now if.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
This is your first time hearing a nostalgia episode. Essentially,
what we do here is we are going to play
this old episode that we recorded and published five years ago,
almost exactly five years ago at this point, and when
a plant in its entirety, We're going to play the
whole discussion we had, and then after the episode plays,
we're going to come back and we're going to expand
on that discussion with the new research that we have

(01:47):
found that adds to this what we had used in
our original discussion to talk about this concept. So yeah,
this original episode, it was episode one forty five, aired
on February twenty, twenty twenty, almost exactly five years ago,
so pretty good look at us go and.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Like a couple of days before everything shut down, so
wild time's there.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
That's right, Yeah, yeah, in the early days of pandemic lockdown.
Wild that that has been five years since.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
That, yeah, yeah, and how drastically it's changed everything.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Yes, So before we dive into today's topic, i'd like
to say thank you for joining us. And if you
like what you hear today and would like to support us,
you can do that a couple of ways. You can
pick up some merch from our merch store, leave us
a rating and a review like subscribe, tell a friend,
or head over to Patreon, and I'll talk more about
all of those things at the end of this discussion.

(02:43):
But this episode is publishing. It is March twelfth, and
so we must first acknowledge the very important as Tech
New Year. So happy as Tech New Year, everyone.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It's also Girl Scouts Day,
so if you like thin mince, celebrate them.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
And if you like Cora movies, it is National Alfred
Hitchcock Day.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
And if you hate sea creatures, today is National baked
scallops Day.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
I hate them in one sense, you hate them being alive,
but you love yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Of course, yeah, yeah, you want to get rid of
them by eating them.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
It is National Working Mom's Day.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
Oh love them. It's planted a flower Day.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
In honor of working moms or you know, I guess
everybody can enjoy flowers. We don't have to restrict this.
This doesn't have to be a gendered thing.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
It doesn't have to be working moms at all. It
could be everybody.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
It could be anybody. It is Registered Dietitians Day. That
seems very important.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
Yeah, it feels good. It's also World Glaucoma Day.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
Now, this one may come as a surprise to you,
so I need to brace yourself for this one. It
is Brain Awareness Week. You have a brain? What now
you're aware of that brain?

Speaker 2 (03:58):
Wild never thought that. I think that the thing that
makes me think, I'm going to think about the thing
that makes me think.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
So meta?

Speaker 2 (04:06):
Oh, it's so meta. This week is also end up
Metriosis Awareness Week. Okay, important, yep.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
Less importantly, it is National bubblegum Week.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
I'll never forget. In sixth grade, I did a science
fair project and I was studying whether or not there
was acid rain in my neighborhood and pollution in my neighborhood.
And I thought it was such an important study. And
I tested all these waters and I looked at all
these things, and then I lost to a kid who
did a survey on preferred bubble gum. And I'll never
forget it. Mister Dean, if you're out there, you're not

(04:37):
for sure, like you're for sure in the ground. But
if you are out there and you're listening to this,
I'll never forgive.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
You sounds rigged.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah, it was a little bit rigged. It's National Green Week. Great,
we'll move on.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
National Older Workers Employment Week. That sounds very important.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
I like that. It's National Science and Engineering.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
Week and National Sleep Awareness Week. Now you know that
you also sleep. You have a brain and you sleep.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
Uh huh. Isn't that fun?

Speaker 1 (05:08):
It is fun, very good, awesome. So, as we said,
this is this is these nostalgia type episodes, and this
one is on imposter syndrome. And as a quick reminder,
imposter syndrome refers to the psychological phenomenon that is characterized
by persistent and pervasive feelings of self doubt and adequacy
and the fear of being exposed as being a fraud

(05:31):
despite one's own personal and professional achievements. So, even if
you're not a fraud, you might fear that people will
see you as a fraud. You might think of yourself
as a fraud.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
Yes, at the time of the original recording, there wasn't
a direct cause for the syndrome, and there still isn't,
and it wasn't formally diagnosable at the time, and in surprise.
It still isn't, but it was reported a reporting experience
by many, many, many people, And since then we've had
a lot of really cool, interesting and important emerging research
about this particular phenomenon.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
Yes, and this is not, by any means to diminish
the fact that there are some people who are actually frauds,
like RFK Junior is actually a fraud.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
Yeah. Wish he felt imposter syndrome a little bit more.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
Yes, because there are real frauds out there, and those
of us who have earned our achievements should not be
made to feel bad while the people who have earned
nothing and claiming achievements should But nevertheless, let us go
ahead and jump into this original episode as I said,
that was aired five years ago. Unless there's anything else

(06:34):
you need to add to preface this before we play it, No,
let's do it. Well, then let's go ahead and play this,
And then when this episode is finished, as I said,
we'll come back we'll do a discussion about the updated
research on imposter syndrome.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
Can't wait.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
Hello, and welcome to Why We Do what We Do.
I'll be your host, Abraham, and I'm Shane, and so
today we have much to discuss and let's just jump
right in with the question of shame one of your
credentials right now.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
So right now, I am a BCBA and I have
a PhD. So I've been doing this for a long.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
Time, fraudulent liar. And did you experience any like self
doubt or I guess in reflecting upon where you were
at and people depending on you and that sort of thing,
concern about your ability to meet the requirements of those
credentials or be able to sort of fulfill on the

(07:38):
expectations of those roles.

Speaker 2 (07:39):
Oh, I do it all the time. I still do it.
I actually had a conversation the other day where somebody
had offered to pay me to come speak somewhere, and
even in the interaction, I was like, I'm just a
kid from the beach. Why do you want to hear
me talk?

Speaker 1 (07:54):
Yeah, so I can't. I can't charge you money for this.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
Yeah, I can't charge you money for this. I'm gonna
go and like I'm gonna wear sneakers and use profanity
in front of you, Like this is not going to
be helpful for anybody.

Speaker 1 (08:06):
Yeah, I mean I very much have had this experience
on multiple occasions, and most recently completing my degree, have
experienced a good amount of like sort of anxiety and
fear around you know, they're gonna come take this away
from me, and they're going to think, you know, they're
going to think about this and decided to change their
mind because they didn't really deserve it. And just a

(08:28):
lot of those sorts of thoughts rolling through my head persistently.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
For me, it's it's somebody's gonna figure me.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
Out, right, Yeah. Yeah, So if you are listening to
this and you have maybe experienced this before, raise your hand,
just kidding, but that we would be able to see. No,
But seriously, this is this is a real effect and
a lot of people probably are going to hear this
and immediately think, oh, jeez, that that has definitely been me.
I've had that experience, And yeah, that's actually the case.

(08:56):
As we'll get into a lot of people have this
experience of feeling sort of unworthy, I guess. And so
what we're talking about today is called imposter syndrome. And
to define this right up front, it's the belief that
you're not worthy of your accomplishments and that any success
you have must be a results of you being a fraud.
Or sort of being able to trick people into believing

(09:18):
that you are capable of doing the thing that you're doing.
And I do want to be clear that there are
frauds out there and they probably know who they are,
oh yeah, but there are also these people who have
actually achieved success and a high level of mastery and
a particular skill or set of skills, like Liam Neeson,
and that even with that actual competency, feel like they're

(09:43):
not really as good as people want or maybe treating
them as people are treating them to be. I guess yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:49):
And I think it's important to kind of distinguish between
like being humble about your skill set and kind of
saying like, you know, I am just as good as
anybody else. Are having that kind of feeling versus I'm
a fraud, I'm a phony, I'm gonna get figured out.
Like there is a large jump, even though they kind
of talk about them being in the same arena, you know, Like,
for example, I know that what I'm good at in

(10:11):
my feel is like I'm a pretty good public speaker.
I could do assessment pretty well, but there's a lot
of other stuff where I'm like, I know I can,
but then I have these moments where it's like somebody's
gonna figure me out and figure out that I'm not
doing what I'm supposed to or something like that.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
Right, and so, as I mentioned, this is probably going
to resonate well with a lot of people, or at
least this will sound familiar to a lot of people,
because there's an estimated seventy percent of people report having
this experience of being competent but feeling like they're sort
of frauds and that they're going to be sort of
found out.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
In some of the groups of people, this is sided
from bside twenty one dot org. You'll see that they
talk about people with imposter syndrome could be highly successful people, managers, professors, doctors, minorities,
grad students, pretty much anybody in a position where they
are looked at as a leader or somebody who is
looked that as an expert. And you'll see a lot

(11:01):
of those people have that experience. But other people outside
of that too, I mean people that are first year
learners or just getting into college. I mean I've met
high school graduates that are like, I can't believe I
got accepted as school. How did this happen? So it
does affect a lot of people.

Speaker 1 (11:16):
Now, this can show up in a few different ways.
The sort of broad categories that are described or is
that you if someone is having this experience of being
an impostor or having imposter syndrome, that you might see
someone look sort of like an obsessive workaholic, or you
might see someone go the opposite direction and do some procrastination.
I think that there's another category of someone who might

(11:38):
combine those things a little bit, but generally is just
going to have a lot of anxiety and concern that
they doesn't necessarily show up real directly in their work,
but nevertheless feels that way about it. And what that
might look like is just reluctance to do things and
not necessarily procrastination. Like they might do things really well
and do them on time, but they might just feel

(11:58):
like I deserve to be here, this isn't something I
should be doing. I'm just gonna I guess I'll take
it on like they might show up that way would
be my thought. But you can imagine that if someone
is legitimately concerned about the reality or maybe the legitimacy
of the credential that they have that has been placed
upon them or the trust that someone is placed in them,

(12:19):
that the outcome of that might be to work way
harder than they actually need to, to like really prove
that they deserve it, or else to try and shy
away from it and just avoid putting themselves in a
spotlight where they're going to be found out. And so
it does make sense that those are sort of the
broad categories that they see.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
And this was a funny, kind of an interesting resource
that was found in our show notes was imposter syndrome
dot com. There's a whole group.

Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yeah, that was surprising.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
Yeah, it's pretty pretty interesting. And so what they kind
of mentioned on there is that what it's time to
get things done, you end up procrastinating. But if you
do too well, others will demand the same or more
of you. So now there's this other side of it too,
where it's like, if I do it really well, people
are going to keep asking me. So I want to
maybe avoid it so that people don't keep asking me
to do this thing right.

Speaker 1 (13:02):
And so one of our new primary researchers who did
most of the work on this article, Alan Kinsella, he
found on this on BuzzFeed. There was a quote where
someone said, quote, I have trouble charging for my work
because I feel like a four year old asking someone
to buy my macaroni art and end quote. And so
this seems to be someone who is an artist who's

(13:22):
thinking maybe they're even really good at being an artist,
but they're sort of saying, I don't deserve to take
your money. This thing isn't good enough for someone actually
pay me for it. That sort of thing here is
an imposter to this episode. And add oh, all right,

(13:45):
let's get back on track.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
I will say this, It sounds fairly harmless on the surface,
but it actually leads to some pretty like detrimental things, like,
you know, like we don't as practitioners or as speakers
or as professionals. If we have this kind of mindset
about everything we do, then we stop valuing our time.
And if we don't value our time, then we end
up giving so much of ourselves to these situations or

(14:08):
these people. You know, we don't really have the time
to do that, or we don't have the energy to
do that, and then we can burn out from it.

Speaker 1 (14:12):
Yeah, and so I think a lot of people, when
they are experiencing this, they're going to explain their ability
to achieve in terms of matters of just being lucky
or in the right circumstance, or that they had the
right people to sort of help them navigate a particular
opportunity and that it wasn't really them And I mean
for some people, again, that is going to be true.

(14:34):
By going back to this imposter syndrome dot com, they
mentioned that there was this experience of success being dependent
on luck specifically, and references the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell,
and he described luck as determinism based on any number
of variables and then any other the number of variables
that may have contributed. So for example, if you met
the right person, or you were in the right place

(14:55):
at the right time, you knew the answer to a question,
then you get this linear progres of these events that
were necessary to influence any particular behavior at any time.
And so it could have only been that particular way
based on those things that sort of cascaded and led
to that outcome. Right. Yeah, But that sort of an

(15:16):
experience that people have when they look at themselves as
being these impostors is like I just got lucky, you know,
And I mean for some people that's kind of true.
And I think also it's worth pointing out that a
lot of these are people who put in the work
to actually get where they were at.

Speaker 2 (15:32):
I recently did a talk at a conference and it
was on a subject that is just outside of my
scope a little bit but not quite. I had done
it a little bit, and I had mentioned at the
beginning of this is like, I'm not somebody who is
considered an expert in this area, but here's what worked
for me, and here's what this is based on what
I know. And I had somebody come up to me
after the talk and they were like, everything you said

(15:54):
was on point. Everything you said makes sense, and everything
that you said aligns with the theory. What you need
to not do talk yourself out of the space because
you know what you're doing, and you know what you're
talking about, and I've watched your work and you have
the data to show it. Don't talk yourself out of
that space. Don't discredit your work from the beginning. And
I think that happens sometimes with people who kind of
suffer from this.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
That's a good point, and we'll get more into some
suggestions about how to manage or deal with this feeling
of being an an imposter. But definitely one that I
got from a lot of my mentors was don't apologize,
don't show that you're unsure of yourself, because nobody else
is going to take it that way unless you make
them take it that way. So if you tell everyone

(16:35):
you're a fraud, they'll believe you, you know. Yeah, And
so it's just, you know, even if you don't feel confident,
portray that confidence because that's how everyone else will receive it.

Speaker 2 (16:43):
Yeah. Absolutely, So a little bit of background on imposter syndrome,
so let's get into that. So it was first coined
by a clinical psychologists, Pauline Klantz and Susanne I'ms in
nineteen seventy eight. So it's a fairly new concept in
terms of psychological perspectives. But yeah, it was originally to
described as the imposter phenomenon, and it was observed that
people with adequate external evidence of accomplishments remained convinced that

(17:06):
they don't deserve the success they have.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
Makes sense, right, Yeah, So even those outputs that would
normally say you're successful, those don't necessarily work to produce
more successful behavior, and that they also don't necessarily result
in the feeling of being success. And so what happens
then is there is this there's some assumptions that one
might make about themselves or about others. And according to

(17:30):
muse dot com, to discussing the imposter syndrome, they say, quote,
it reflects a belief that you are inadequate and an
incompetent failure despite evidence that indicates your skilled and quite
successful end quote. And this is another thing that we've
already mentioned several times, this idea of waiting that and
expecting that you're going to be found out quote unquote

(17:52):
found out or discovered or someone's gonna sort of uncover
your fraudulentness. And and so this can really impact the
way that you sort of portray yourself in terms of
how confident you appear to others.

Speaker 2 (18:07):
Yeah, and then to go further into that on imposter
Syndrome dot com, there's a quote that says people who
feel like imposters hold themselves to an unrealistic and unsustainable
standard of competence. Falling short of the standard evokes shame.
And I actually just had a conversation with a supervise
about this. There was a crisis situation and they handled
it and they said, they spent two weeks perseverating over

(18:30):
this situation. What could I have done better? I shouldn't
be in this situation, like all this stuff. And I
just when I was talking to them, I said, I
had to stop them and say, you know, and in
that circumstance, is that person alive? Did you keep them safe?
For you safe? Is that what happened? And that's what
matters most. You did your job, that's the part. And
then we had the conversation about science not having a

(18:50):
finish line and all that. But even in that moment,
it was a one time moment that just shook this
supervise e's entire foundation of their confidence.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
Wow, it's a bummer. Yeah, the story, I mean, it's
important one though, but I think that is certainly going
to be relevant for a lot of people. And I've
had that experience myself as well. So all right, Shane,
what do we know about why people experience imposter syndrome?

Speaker 2 (19:10):
We know very little about why. So yeah, so we
understand very little about why. It may occur in some
kind of relation to maybe like an underlying physiological condition,
but it tends to be more like reactions to challenging
contingencies and like these challenging situations, and so that's what
happens a lot is a situation comes up and it's
a little bit tough, and so people have its experience.

(19:32):
And when we talk about this, more focus is actually
given to the common symptoms of the phenomenon rather than
some of the more complex things that we're going to
talk about. And in stating that it is something that
most of the population seems to experience to some extent,
kind of gives it this idea that it's a common phenomenon.
So it's general symptoms, general things, and kind of that
languaging around that there is some co occurrence with social

(19:55):
anxiety disorder and we just kind of see that a
little bit and others that fall into that anxiety realm,
but the symptoms are not exclusive to those populations. So
you have this kind of phenomenon that is occurring across symptoms,
across populations, across people without really a good box to
fit in well.

Speaker 1 (20:11):
And I also want to be careful here that we
don't give the impression that if you are experiencing imposter
syndrome that you have an anxiety disorder. It would be
very unrealistic to say that seventy percent of people have
an anxiety disorder. You might experience anxiety, but the point
at which it becomes chronic and impactful is when it
becomes a disorder, and that is not what we're trying

(20:33):
to suggest here, is this is something that a lot
of people experience. If you are concerned about having an
anxiety disorder, definitely go see a mental health professional for diagnosis.
That is obviously something that should be diagnosed so that
you can have resources to deal with that. But I
just want to deter that experiencing this effect does not
mean that you have any kind of anxiety disorder. You might,

(20:55):
but this doesn't in and of itself diagnose that. Does
that make sense?

Speaker 2 (20:58):
Yeah? Absolutely, that makes perfect sense.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
Yeah, I just want to make sure we're clear on
that because there might be co occurrence there, but it's
not a cause effect relation right now. There are some
people that are famous, successful people who have noted their
experience with imposter syndrome. So, for example, John Steinbeck, the
famous author of Grapes of Wrath right and.

Speaker 2 (21:17):
Of Mice and Men.

Speaker 1 (21:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he said, quote, I'm not a writer.
I've been fooling myself and other people end quote, which
for one of the most prolific writers of all time
is kind of ironic to hear, you know.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
Yeah, and this one made me laugh when I read
it was Dave Grohl. You know, if you're not familiar
with Dave Grohl and his music, you've ever heard any
Nirvana song or the Foo Fighters. That's the guy on
top of I don't know them, Crooked Vultures and Probot
and he played on some nine inch Nails records and
he's done all this stuff. He's a really prolific musician.

Speaker 1 (21:48):
He's been all over the place.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
He has literally been all over the place Queens of
the Stone Age. In interviews, he's alluded to the fact
that he transitioned from the drummer Nirvana to the frontman
of the Food Fighters despite you know, not ever really
having that opportunity to like move into a leader role,
and you know, kind of like Ringo Star does, right,
Ringo Starr did that from the Beatles, Like he moved
into a solo artist in that realm, right, And he

(22:09):
never really claimed to be a master guitar, but there's
actually a story where he ended up re recording all
the drum tracks for the second Food Fighters album because
even though there was a drummer that had recorded it,
and he recorded the entire first Foo Fighters album by himself,
so he played all the instruments on the first album.
And you know, there's some examples that we're talking about,
like this idea of being a soloist or a perfectionist,

(22:31):
but you know that's gonna be kind of the characterizations
that we talk about later. But I just it makes
me laugh to think that Dave Grohl is somebody who
suffers from this because you're a drummer. So, like, what
are your thoughts on Dave girl as a drummer.

Speaker 1 (22:41):
I thought he was fine as a drummer. He never
stood out to me as being like the greatest drummer
in the world, but I thought he did very well.
And I also liked him in the Food Fighters, So
I'm mostly just impressed with him as a musician all around.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:54):
Absolutely, I like Dave Grohl. I think he's seems like
a cool guy. Yeah, And on that point, this whole
thing of him, like re recording the drums, I think
there is definitely something that to be expected about people
who experience imposter syndrome and kind of want to do
it all themselves, and we'll talk more about that in
a minute, but you can get this sense that someone
who is capable of doing that much can see themselves

(23:19):
both as a fraud but also simultaneously as like I'm
the only one who can do this at least with
my vision, and being unwilling to compromise on that vision,
and so seeing themselves almost as lone wolf is kind
of a way I think about it. And to that point,
there's a quote from John Lennon where he says, quote
part of me suspects I'm a loser, and part of
me thinks I'm God almighty end quote. And I think

(23:43):
he's being hyperbolic here, but really speaking that to the
point of like, at times like I feel like a fraud,
but I also feel like I'm the only one who
can do this. And it's this weird dichotomy where those
even it's not even dichotomy really, it's these two completely
opposite opinions that sit juxtapose next to one another that
sort of represents this just general inconsistency and unease about

(24:07):
how to even think about your own work.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
So like the fact that you've got people like Dave
Grol John Steinbeck, like John Lennon, who is was an
incredible songwriter. Yeah, not great human, but great songwriter.

Speaker 1 (24:20):
How dare you?

Speaker 2 (24:21):
Oh, imagine all the people? But then you've got Meryl
Streep and Jody Foster, who are incredible, incredible actresses. They
are self admitted that they are imposters. That they go
back and say the same types of things like ah,
I shouldn't be here, I don't deserve this, And they
have those moments and it moves from being kind of
like humble and being like, thank you, I really appreciate that.

(24:42):
Is there anything I could do to be better? Versus
I shouldn't be here. I haven't earned this, I don't
deserve it. And there's a big difference between those two.

Speaker 1 (24:48):
Do you suppose Meryl Streep just cries herself to sleep
on a bed of her oscars?

Speaker 2 (24:53):
I think that she puts them away because she might
be ashamed to have them, because she's like, I haven't
earned these.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
That's that's why I more realistic.

Speaker 2 (25:01):
Speaking of frauds, here's an ad and we're back, all right.

Speaker 1 (25:12):
So, according to muse dot com and Imposter Syndrome dot Com,
doctor Valeriejung categorized imposter syndrome into five subcategories, and she
published this book called The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women,
Why capable people suffer from the imposter syndrome and how
to thrive in spite of it. And the five categories
that she came up with are the perfectionist, the superwoman

(25:33):
or superman, the natural genius, the soloist, and the expert.
So let's go through those one at a time. Do
you want to take the first one.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
Yeah, So the first one that she mentions is the perfectionist,
and some of the characteristics that she talks about are
setting excessively high goals, failure to accomplish some results, and
there's some self doubt related to that, micromanagement, difficulty delegating tasks,
and success is rarely satisfying, like they could have always
done better, which I'm going to say to some of that,

(26:01):
you know, I have a hard time with that. And
so in relation to those things, so you talk about
the activities or some alternatives that you can look at
to kind of replace some of those things. In those thoughts,
they talk about acknowledging mistakes as part of the learning process,
which I think is important, and pushing yourself to act
before you're ready, because essentially there's never gonna be a
good time and you're never gonna be flawless in what
you do. I tell people that with parenting all the time,

(26:22):
you're never, never, never ready to be a parent. Nobody
is ever No matter how many resources you have, you're
just not.

Speaker 1 (26:28):
So just don't do it. Just don't do kidding, there's.

Speaker 2 (26:32):
Enough people, There are plenty of people out there.

Speaker 1 (26:35):
There are also parenting classes, so there's like there's help
and resources and whatnot. But yeah, all right. So the
next one that I mentioned was the superman or superwoman subtype,
and this is characterized by people this is the sort
of workaholic person. These are people who push themselves really
hard and push themselves harder and harder. They take on
excessive workloads. Again, a lot of this is around their

(26:57):
insecurity about their fitness or their ability to to produce things,
which can end up really straining their relationships and can
lead to some mental health issues. They have a lot
of problems with downtime, Their hobbies and passions will often suffer,
and so they often feel like they need to earn
their title by working harder and longer. And there's this

(27:17):
idea of this addicted to validation that comes from working,
but not necessarily the outputs of that actual work. And
so the alternative she suggested was to learn to accept
constructive criticism seriously and not take it really personally.

Speaker 2 (27:30):
Yeah. Sometimes that's tough, right, Like getting feedback you're like ooh,
that was painful, and like you have to kind of
separate yourself from that and be okay, cool.

Speaker 1 (27:39):
Next one.

Speaker 2 (27:39):
So the next one is natural genius. The natural genius.
And I had a moment where I read this at
first and I was like, oh, yeah, that's me, which
is like the opposite of imposter syndrome. That's a different problem, right.
So some of the characteristics that she notes here are
like competence is judged by ease of acquisition. Anything that
takes too long to understand or to mastering that is

(28:00):
like shameful, Like if you take too long, it's hard
to kind of asswallow that pill impossibly high bars. It's
similar to the perfectionist, where you have these high expectations,
but the expectation is also to master something on the
first try, and practice is an indication that you're not
really getting it and you're not really there you're not
good enough to understand it. You're used to excelling without
much effort. So basically you can pick up a topic,

(28:22):
you can pick up a new skill, and you can
do it really quickly without a lot of practice. And
within that you've got these ideas of self fulfilling prophecies
and pressures that you kind of set it on yourself
when you say things like, oh, I can do this,
I can learn very quickly. I'm smart. Right, you have
those questions like I'm a smart person, I should understand this,
and then when you fail you don't do that. You know,
you've got a track record of straight a's gold stars

(28:43):
praise being the smart one. And so my initial reaction
was that I did relate to I was like, ah, yeah,
I'm a natural genius. But legitimately this has been my struggle.
If I don't understand something very quickly, I beat myself
up over it like crazy, and so it takes me
a lot. It takes a lot for out of me
to have some of these characteristics. Now, some of the
alternatives that they mentioned. As you see yourself as a

(29:05):
work in progress, you kind of understand that there's always
something to learn, and you sometimes it does take a
little bit of practice in understanding and you can identify
some behavior within that that can improve over time, so
you can actually chunk up these larger things into smaller
behavior changes that might be helpful for learning the skill.

Speaker 1 (29:21):
That makes sense. So the next one is called the soloist,
which is characterized, as you might imagine by the title,
as someone who doesn't want to ask for help, and
they tend to try and take on everything themselves, and
they to the person who's the soloist asking for help
sort of reveals them as a phony, as a fraud.
So this is that avoid being found out sort of thing,

(29:41):
and that to achieve success they have to do it
by themselves. So that's a sort of lone wolf approach,
and that sort of was described when we were talking
about earlier as Dave Grohl and even John Lennon sounded
like they kind of fit into this category. And the
alternative suggestion here is to actually ask for help and
to delegate, you know, this is to reach out to
other people allow them to contribute to the task that

(30:03):
you're taking on.

Speaker 2 (30:04):
Yeah, and the last one that she mentioned is this
idea of the expert, and so essentially what the expert
is is that they measure their competence based on some
knowledge of what they can and can't do, but fear
being exposed for never knowing enough. So that's that person
that has to know everything and have all that information.
So they don't apply to something if they don't qualify it,
even for one requirement. So they'll see a job posting

(30:26):
and it'll they'll check off every box except for maybe
one and they'll say, nah, I'm not good enough for that, right,
And then they're they're constantly seeking out training certifications to
improve their skills, to get better, and they kind of
what ends up happening is they always kind of move
the goalpost, right, I can do this, I can know
this stuff. I have to know all the things, but
there's never an end point and that can be a

(30:47):
big problem. So for this type of person or this
type of impost, what they should be doing is they
should be looking at how to accept that there's always
more ways to learn, there's always something new to learn,
and that's okay, and you learn skills that you need them,
not just for the hell of it. So that's another
way to look at that, Like otherwise you're just hoarding
behaviors and hoarding certifications and stuff, which is kind of
a funny thing to think about, you know. I always

(31:08):
look at like learning a new skill as adding a
tool to your toolbox, and so I'm just gonna get
tools just to have them, you know, And now you
have this toolbox full that you can't even move, you
can't even bring with you because it's too full. And
they might consider like looking at like a mentoring role
or playing an expert role for others to come up,
because that's a really great way to learn as well.
You are. Mentoring people is kind of learning from that

(31:28):
new group of up and comers that are coming in.

Speaker 1 (31:30):
So, Sha, which of these do you think you fall
into most closely?

Speaker 2 (31:33):
I think that I would say that for me, I
think that the natural genius and the expert are mine
for sure.

Speaker 1 (31:40):
Okay, I say for me, it's probably the soloist. But
I see a lot in the expert thing where I
definitely have found myself evaluating how much I can sort
of memorize as being the criteria by which I would
call myself competent in something, And even then there seems
to be no amount of what I can memorize to
say that I really understand it and if I can't

(32:01):
recall it at the drop of a hat, and it's
like I don't know anything, I'm an idiot.

Speaker 2 (32:06):
Yeah, And you know, I think that anytime there's like
new research in our field, Like I remember the first
time I had heard about RFT and I didn't understand
it right away, I was like, nope, I'm done. I'm done.
I should just give up my certification. I'm gonna go
back to being an RBT. So I had that moment.
So but I think that's a great point. Is I
think that anybody who is in our field, or in

(32:27):
any sort of leadership role or something where you're looked
to as the expert, you're gonna probably experience one of
these general things. I can't imagine that you're gonna probably
experience all of that you're but most people will experience
at least one of these things within their lifetime.

Speaker 1 (32:41):
Yeah, exactly. And this of the numbers bear out as well.
So now we need to understand then whether or not
imposter syndrome is a good thing. And there is some
correlation that with that. Perfectionists and these people that our
imposters tend to be fairly successful. It's hard to say
necessarily that there's a cause effect relationship if they're successful

(33:02):
because they have imposter syndrome or if they have imposter
syndrome because they're successful. I'm inclined to believe the latter,
which is to say that I think that being successful
causes people to question their role in that success, not
that they are afraid that they're not successful and so
they work really hard because I can't imagine what the
motivation would be if you had achieved nothing and you're like, oh,

(33:22):
everyone thinks I'm successful, but I'm really a fraud, Like no,
no one does, no one thinks they're successful nothing, So like,
I don't know the motivation, Like that's almost delusions of
grandeur at that point. So it seems like it has
to be the other way around to me. But yeah,
but I mean, if you really think about the major
problem here is that this approach can really lead to
a lot of burnout, and it's not really a particularly

(33:45):
desirable condition, even though it can have that appearance of
high productivity, because it can also be so much self
sabotage and it might predict achievement, but it's not necessarily
a characteristic of success. And as we mentioned, although seventy
percent of people who are successful report experiencing this, there
means that there are thirty percent of people who are
successful who don't report experiencing this, and that's a lot

(34:07):
of people.

Speaker 2 (34:08):
Yeah, I mean, I think one thing I would probably
note here is that, you know, there was the one
category that talked about, like the expert in particular, where
you may not apply for something or you may not
seek out an opportunity for something because you don't meet
one requirement, and that's probably a bad part, Like one
of the bad parts of having imposter syndrome is that
you might miss opportunities that you perfectly qualify for that

(34:28):
you are probably really great at, and you may miss
it simply because you kind of like talked yourself out
of the space.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
And it could I think, very easily lead to other
mental health issues down the road if it really spirals
out of control. And it won't necessarily like just by
its nature, but they could result in that. So yeah,
all right, so let's talk about there. Although I mentioned
that it's not a real clear reason why, there are
some potential circumstances that would be relatively decent explanations for

(34:57):
the conditions under which this is most likely to occur
if you want to go to those.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
One of the things that they talk about, and this
is specifically from APA dot org, is this idea of
effects of circumstance, and so one thing that might lead
to having these thoughts or feelings about imposternus or how imposterum.

Speaker 1 (35:13):
I love that imposterness.

Speaker 2 (35:15):
Is it imposterness or imposterdom? I don't like I like
imposterdom too. I don't know it either way. So there's yeah,
so circumstances can lead to that. And so one thing
might be growing up in families with a big emphasis
on achievement. So I don't know what your family situation
looked like. That was not a big emphasis in my family.
But I have met people that they come from families
of doctors, and they come from surgeons, and they do

(35:36):
all this stuff, and they really struggle with this idea
of having this high achievement. And there's also kind of
built into that and wrapped up under that as this
idea of mixed messages of where there's a lot of criticism,
there's a lot of praise for stuff, and it's just
kind of confusing they're maybe praising the wrong things, like
they're praising traits and not actual achievements, or they're criticizing
things that aren't really in that learner's control. So there's

(35:58):
a lot of stuff that kind of goes into that
circum stance piece.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
Right, Yeah, And I think all of these are saying
because even the categories here seem to say that you're rich,
you're poor, or whatever, it doesn't matter, you're going to
experience this. And that's because all this has to do
with the circumstances in place, pushing toward the pressure to
achieve in some capacity or another, which is not inherently
a bad thing. It's just when that results in this

(36:21):
unease about it that becomes really pervasive. And I think
to the last point talking about these marginalized communities and
minority groups, that there can often be that sense of
responsibility to perform higher because they belong to a group
that's not expected to do well, and so under those circumstances,
they're sort of always fearing like, this isn't good enough

(36:41):
because I have to achieve so much just to be
at the level of recognition relative to other people. That's
a very real circumstance for people who fit into some
of those more minority groups, and then they therefore seem
more likely to encounter that imposter syndrome. And this could
be some family dynamics that are going on with the
those people, and this could be some of the general

(37:03):
patterns of their personality and behavior that they engage in.
And we'll talk more about personality and an upcoming episode,
as well as how they fit inside of their workplace.
You know, if they're a minority both in their community
and their work, then that can really feel to that
experience to really have to push harder. And let's take
a break from making good points and make a weak point.

(37:23):
Let's play an ad all right, We'll return to our
good points part of the conversation. This is also seen.
This is believed to be potentially more prevalent in women specifically,
and this is related in a way potentially to the

(37:45):
existing still to this day wage gap in pay that
women often experience, as well as I think there's often
a lack of recognition to the contributions that a lot
of women make to organizations in science.

Speaker 2 (37:59):
Yeah, and I think I think to kind of piggyback
on that discussion, around marginalized groups. I mean, you have
the people that are maybe suffering from this. A lot
come from these spaces where maybe they're a descendant of
an immigrant and they have to kind of like build
the dream, right, or maybe there's some values that are
Eastern versus Western value differences. You've got people there's pressure
along these like majority groups where if you're part of
a minority group, that you're feeling pressure to compete with

(38:21):
that majority group too. And that speaks a lot to
kind of those family dynamics and all those cultural pressures
and those social pressures that go along with that. Now,
essentially what ends up happening is that for each person
that experiences this, there is some constellation of variables and
environmental factors that contribute to that. Right, So successful people
come from all these different situations. They sometimes wind up

(38:42):
in beneficial situations. They meet interesting people, they attend classes,
they go to trainings, they set goals, they follow through,
they do all these things. But it's all this and
kind of going back to Malcolm Gladwell's point is that
there are so many unique moving parts within this that
it's hard to gauge, you know, what's working and what's
not sometimes.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
Yeah, absolutely, Okay, So let's transition to a discussion about
the sort of recommendations for how to avoid having to
encounter this at all or how to deal with it
if you do encounter it. And so one here is
thinking about that. There's this analogy of sort of putting
on your oxygen mask first, the sort of when you're

(39:23):
on an airplane. That's what they always say is put
your oxygen mask on first before putting it on your
kid or whoever's dependent on you, because if you pass
out before you can help them, then everybody loses. And
so this idea of dealing with your own insecurity is
in a role as an advisor or mentor or a
therapist or whatever, so that it doesn't then affect your
work with your client down the road. And so some

(39:44):
recommendations put forward by beamntorship dot net as one of
the resources, the five lists that are to find a
mentor acknowledge events differently, list your strengths and accomplishments, educate yourself,
and accept that failures create learning oper tunities for you
to improve. So I'll just we'll just summarize those really quick.

(40:04):
So the first one here, finding a mentor just really
means to find someone who can further articulate what skills
you need to continue to advance and to grow, and
who are going to give you feedback, and that they
can also sort of give you their own story that
will show you that, like other people have had a
similar path as you.

Speaker 2 (40:22):
Yeah, and then the second point is acknowledge events differently,
and so what that means is taking the time to
kind of think about, like we did that perspective taking peace,
where you kind of take a second to look at
it from a different viewpoint. You know, basically what you're
doing is you're reframing that situation. So, hey, you know
what I messed up in this situation? It was really tough.
It was really really difficult for me to get through.
Then I can go back and say, Okay, it was difficult,

(40:43):
Here's why it's difficult, here's what I could do instead.
But here's also some of the cool outcomes that came
out of that. So instead of looking at something with
literally one lens, it's important to kind of take a
few different viewpoints about it and see if that helps
kind of alleviate your thoughts about that.

Speaker 1 (40:56):
And the third one on listing strengths and accomplishments. This
is actually of more about sort of setting goals for
yourself the way that it's described, and really setting manageable
goals and then being able to actually list the actual
accomplishments that you've made. And I know of a specific
group of people who have pioneered this idea just casually

(41:18):
with themselves about setting goals where the goals are ludicrously easy.
So if they want to write a book, then their
goal is this week, I want you to sit down
and write three letters or write one word. Yeah, and
people sit down do way more than that, but then
they always accomplish that goal. And so like I've had
a goal for myself where if it's I spend ten
minutes a day cleaning some part of the house, it

(41:39):
always ends up being more than ten minutes and the
house gets a lot cleaner. But I'm also able to
accomplish that goal. So that's another thing that's recommended here.

Speaker 2 (41:47):
Yeah, another one too is educating yourself. Basically, if you
feel like you're missing something, look at it as an
opportunity to learn and grow. I have kind of had
to learn to do that instead of it being like, well,
you know, I don't understand it right away, So you know,
I'm going to go ahead and drop it. It's been
I don't understand this right away. I need more training
in this, so I need to learn a little bit
more about this particular concept. And so that's a way

(42:08):
to kind of make you more confident and more confident
within that and kind of erase that feeling of that
you're not good enough or that you don't know your stuff.

Speaker 1 (42:15):
And this last one in accepting that failure creates learning opportunities.
I mean, the name itself is pretty straightforward. It's just
looking at any time that you do something incorrectly, assuming
this wasn't like fatal, then that's an opportunity to learn
how to do it better next time. Right, So you're
less likely to make that mistake because you learn something
about the situation in which you made that mistake. And

(42:36):
I've actually read plenty of recommendations for people learning certain
skills of like do it completely wrong so that you
know what doing it wrong feels like, Yeah, and like
allow yourself to make those mistakes because then you'll learn
how to do it better next time. And I think
there's there's often this push of never failing, of never
contacting failure and only ever being successful. That I think

(42:57):
is really detrimental to people's success because our failures are
so instructive in teaching us how to do things better,
and so seeing them in that way as an opportunity
to do better, I think is a really helpful way
of orienting to situations like that.

Speaker 2 (43:12):
Yeah. Absolutely. So. Another example of something that might help
to kind of like deal with this idea of imposter
syndrome is this idea of learning how to accept feedback
and criticism that is very tough. I mean, how do
you deal with accepting feedback? You feel pretty good about it.

Speaker 1 (43:27):
Me personally, yeah, or just asking the listener.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
I'm asking you personally.

Speaker 1 (43:33):
It has been variable. I always struggle with feedback that
I felt was very unnecessary. So and people tell me
something that I obviously know and like that to me
isn't helpful. It's a sort of if you ever watch
South Park, the head captain hindsight, come on, He's like,
you guys should have built that a lot better, Like
uh huh, thanks, go on. Yeah. So you know when

(43:58):
people say if something broke and they're like, oh, you
should have been more careful, Like really, I didn't think
about that, Wow, what an insightful comment. So like that
kind of feedback, oh, has made me very upset because
I'm like, this is not helpful, and it's so unhelpful,
it's insulting, and so it to that extent, I think

(44:18):
I've always been irritated by feedback that I think it
falls into that category. But feedback that corrects something that
I'm very definitely doing wrong or definitely could improve on,
I always am very grateful for.

Speaker 2 (44:30):
Yeah, I think it took me a little bit to
get there, And kind of one of the things they
talk about underneath this idea of accepting criticism is like
withholding that emotional knee jerk reaction, right. I know, for
a long time, you know, I was a little bit
of a hothead, and so when somebody would give me feedback,
my first thing would be like, you don't know what
you're talking about, and it was more like you know,
or it was a personal attack. And I had to

(44:51):
learn to kind of take a step back from that
and say, you know, once I kind of learned like
more of a behavioral framework, I kind of learned that like,
if they're telling me this, then there's something too that
somewhere like there's something there that's gonna that's prompting them
to say that to me. So I've had to learn
to kind of withhold that emotional reaction and just understand
that if somebody's giving me feedback, there's probably some benefit

(45:12):
to either improve my skill, improve my relationship, improve something
within that right.

Speaker 1 (45:18):
I actually relate to that really well, similar to what
you were saying, because I also had i'm speaking now,
I think I do much better with me back then
I used to, because I also had that reaction of
if you are you are attacking me, you're contradictoring me,
I'm angry at you, that sort of emotional thing. And
I definitely have learned to approach this a lot more

(45:39):
as whatever my thought is about how I'm doing on
this thing, your experiences that I'm doing it differently, and
I need to understand that and how to like what
the importance is of me changing this to and just
basically taking responsibility for it and so really seeing feedback
as being valid in every case, and I still acknowledge

(46:02):
when it's useless feedback, then I'll try and allow that
person to understand, like, let me show you why this
isn't helpful for me, and not be mean about it.
I try not to be mean about it. I'm probably
still mean about it, but again, like telling me to
be careful when I broke something is just why.

Speaker 2 (46:18):
Yeah, yeah, well that use of eye language right, like
you said, like that might be helpful for somebody else,
but this is not helpful for me. So like, here's
what would be helpful for me, so that if you
are going to give me feedback, I can use it.

Speaker 1 (46:30):
Yeah, well, when people have specifically said, oh, I hold
it like this so that it never falls, or when
I went in here, I noticed that I tend to
move this way, so I had to step back so
that I don't bump into this thing. And those are
all hypothetical examples, but the point being giving specific recommendations
is a lot more helpful than telling me that you
did something wrong. I'm like, well, this, I had no idea.

(46:50):
The thing shattering on the floor wasn't supposed to be there.

Speaker 2 (46:53):
So that feedback piece is good for kind of getting
through some of these things. I think the other thing too,
just to kind of as you're starting to learn to
deal with this, is this idea of reframing and kind
of attending to different ways to look at a situation.
And so when you start looking at your work and
your performance, you start kind of specifically. If you look
at your mistakes, you want to take a moment to

(47:13):
recognize that one it might have been a mistake, but
two maybe that's part of the process towards becoming more
successful and to mastering a particular behavior or skill. So
Thomas Edison has a really famous quote that says, quote,
I have not failed. I've only found ten thousand ways
that won't work. And I think that's a really great
way to say, like, hey, I messed up a whole lot,

(47:36):
but I know those don't work anymore. So I'm gonna
hopefully do better with this going forward.

Speaker 1 (47:41):
That's a not imposter way of thinking about it, or
not amposter syndrome way of thinking about it. Yeah, absolutely,
all right, a couple other interesting pieces before we wrap
up here, And this is something we've mentioned before, but
those experiencing this imposter syndrome will often do this self
sabotage thing and otherwise begin to demon straight certain patterns

(48:01):
in their behavior that interfere with them making progress, and
that certainly procrastinating, I think falls in that camp. And
this may be this fear of higher expectations being placed
on you if you do continue to achieve, or that
the tasks get more and more complex, or that if
you're subpar then you won't necessarily expose yourself as being

(48:21):
a fraud. So I think you can sort of see
the way that you frame the context of your experience
can affect then how you approach it and really be
the self sabotaging thing where you shoot yourself in the
foot to avoid shooting yourself in the foot.

Speaker 2 (48:37):
That is something that I struggle with is, like I
mentioned before, is talking yourself out of the room, like
you know, you're setting yourself up for failure the minute
that you start, just not giving yourself the chance to
do it right. I know, I said something really funny,
So I'm going to give you a break to laugh
at that while this ad plays and we're back. So

(49:02):
this other interesting bit about this idea of imposter syndrome
is that originally this was a build as a women's issue.
You know, according to talk Space, it was build as
an issue in the seventies for women, and continuing researchers
found that there isn't really a difference between identify sexes.
So what they do find is that women are typically
more comfortable with discussing their emotional experiences, and so maybe

(49:23):
that's why this phenomenon was identified as a women's issue earlier.
But that's kind of an interesting thing to look at,
is this, you know, the research around specific populations.

Speaker 1 (49:32):
Sort of a sampling bias. Yeah, all right, shall I
wrap it up?

Speaker 2 (49:35):
I think that's a good place to wrap it up.

Speaker 1 (49:36):
Okay, So leaving this episode, I think the important thing
to remember is that people from all demographics, and all
walks of life, and all levels of success even will
report experiencing some level of this imposter syndrome to an extent,
and that it may not fit neatly into the categories
that we described, but that general sense of lack of
deserving of the maybe recognition or even the opportunity to

(50:01):
have some level of autonomy, is that's something you don't deserve.

Speaker 2 (50:06):
Yeah, and you know, there's some definite factors that have
to do with with the individual's learning history. You know,
you've got social pressures, cultural, academic, family, workplace demands, those
different types of dynamics spanning across an entire lifespank can
contribute to those thoughts and feelings in those experiences in general, and.

Speaker 1 (50:22):
That there's essentially two main ways of thinking about how
this tends to appear. That someone who's experiencing imposter syndrome
that they'll either procrastinate or be sort of workaholics. And
obviously the workaholic is going to be the one that
looks more productive, but both of them are potentially going
to be self sabotaging, and both of them could affect
your general mental well being.

Speaker 2 (50:43):
Yeah, and just to kind of combat this, there are
some small adjustments that you can make, some little tweaks
in your daily life or work or home routines that
can evolve and help you, you know, kind of adapt
to these challenges that come up. So what you'll see
is maybe you acknowledge successes as they occur. Maybe you
acknowledge things that you would normally. I heard a podcast
where a prominent name in our field had talked about

(51:04):
collecting data on things they said no to, and that
was a cool measure of success that they were looking at.
Maybe you start setting these short term obtainable goals that
lead to these larger goals. I mean, that's there's a
lot of science behind that, and it's really super helpful.
Keep a record of those successes, keep a record of
those things that are invitations and whatnot, find a role model,
and there's just a lot of small things that you

(51:26):
can introduce to kind of help combat that feeling of
that you shouldn't be here and that you don't deserve
a space at the table.

Speaker 1 (51:32):
And then just think about the fact that probably everybody
that you look up to professionally or otherwise has or
not everyone, but most people that you look up to
in those capacities has either experienced this or does experience
this regularly, a feeling inadequate or that they're frauds. So
you're not alone.

Speaker 2 (51:50):
Yeah, I mean I one of the biggest realizations I
ever had is when I got to be an adult
and I started talking to my parents about stuff and
realized that they were human beings that were trying to
figure it all out too.

Speaker 1 (52:00):
Yeah, they really.

Speaker 2 (52:01):
Did not have all the answers, and that was a
big eye opening thing for me. It's like, we're a
bunch of people that don't know what we're doing, that
are just trying to figure it out the best that
we can, and so we just kind of got to
live in that moment and be okay with that.

Speaker 1 (52:13):
Yeah, exactly, all right. So that was our discussion on
imposter syndrome, and surprisingly a lot has happened since then.
Some of the topics when we replay them, like not
a lot has changed. So for example, if we were

(52:34):
to I don't know if we would do this, but
if we were to replay an episode that was like
a biography of someone who has died, like, probably not
a lot of new information comes out. But on these
areas of active research where there is ongoing investigation, we
actually have the great benefit of getting new research that
we get to talk about. So let's go ahead in

(52:55):
and dive into that.

Speaker 2 (52:57):
Yeah, so as of twenty twenty five, what do we
mean now about imposter syndrome? Since our episode came out,
there's been a ton of research about the phenomenon itself,
and in the last five years there's been a huge
boom and an interest around imposter syndrome around multiple professionals.
But what we have seen is that there has been
a lot of research around medical doctors and specifically surgeons.

(53:18):
So you see this kind of like boom in the
population of studying imposter syndrome around medical doctors and surgeons.

Speaker 1 (53:24):
All right, I'm curious to learn more.

Speaker 2 (53:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:27):
Bravada and colleagues in twenty twenty found that imposter syndrome
most often occurs in the workplace across age ranges and
can impact workplace satisfaction and staff retention. Those reporting high
rates of imposter syndrome may also have decreased job performance
and are more likely to leave those employment sites. So

(53:48):
the impact of this experience is like almost viscerally, almost
tangibly felt by some of the people in these spaces,
which is really impressive. Not impressive, but I mean it's
important that such an experience would do, would go so
far as to actually drive people from their sort of
chosen profession.

Speaker 2 (54:09):
Right absolutely. This is kind of an interesting research line
that I thought was really important, is starting to look
at culture and imposter syndrome. So Tulshen and Bury in
twenty twenty one, they reported that imposter syndrome appears to
be quote diagnosed among women more than men, which may
actually be a symptom of sexist and patriarchal biases. And

(54:31):
so there's this really great quote from this article that
I thought i'd share, and this is what they said.
They said, quote imposter syndrome is especially prevalent in biased,
toxic cultures that value individualism and overwork. We see inclusive
workplaces as a multi vitamin that can ensure that women
of color can thrive, and rather than focus on fixing

(54:51):
imposter syndrome, professionals whose identities have been marginalized and discriminated
against must experience a cultural shift. Writ large end quote.
Now that's going to be really important because when we
start talking about some of the other articles that came out,
you start to see that there is a similar theme
in that discussion. But I think that's really important. I
think this discussion starts putting the onus back onto the

(55:12):
culture and not necessarily the individual to resolve their feelings
of inadequacy.

Speaker 1 (55:17):
Right, So, it sounds like, essentially they're saying that imposter
syndrome is essentially an outcome of a society that devalues
people in certain ways, and it sort of heightens their
experience of feeling like they don't belong because they were
sort of already treated like they don't belong, and then
they succeed into a space where people of their background

(55:40):
are uncommon, and so they're less likely to feel welcome there, right,
exactly intense intense, all right, So the next one here.
Freeman and Paisa Pisa in twenty twenty one found that
imposter syndrome was reported at higher rates among women in
the medical profession compared to their male doctor counterparts. They

(56:02):
also reported that this has impacted career progression, leadership and
their own mental health in these similar spaces. So it
sort of seems to continue to extend that same sort
of finding from Tushian and Bury.

Speaker 2 (56:16):
Yep, now heslop it all in twenty twenty three also
found that imposter's syndroime disproportionately affects women, underrepresented minorities and
trainings early in their career. They find similar experiences underneath
something called stereotype threat, So you'll see something similar there.
Maybe we'll do an episode on stereotype threat at one
point in time. But they note that the way to
resolve these factors is a shift in workplace culture towards positive,

(56:39):
inclusive workplace environments that aims to mitigate burnout and stress.
So basically, supportive environments to support those folks that are new,
support those folks that are feeling less accomplished. Make sure
that it's a positive place, making sure people are getting
in that rewards and also attending to burn out and
stress about the job itself. Those can mitigate those imposter
syndrome risks.

Speaker 1 (56:59):
Awesome, very hopeful to have sort of a solution oriented
approach to this as well. Yeah, all right, the last
one here is hooker. I'm gonna assume is how that's pronounced.

Speaker 2 (57:09):
Yeah, here maybe.

Speaker 1 (57:11):
And twenty twenty three found that those who struggle with
imposter syndrome may also experience other comorbidities such as things
like depression and anxiety, and you know, sort of the
gamut of what you might expect in that realm of
mental health conditions of things that seem to sort of
hang together for many people. Yeah. So yeah, that just

(57:32):
I think further cements that, like this is this corresponds
with an overall sort of non nurturing environment where I
think mental health issues need to be taken a little
bit more seriously just broadly speaking.

Speaker 2 (57:46):
Yeah, absolutely, one hundred percent. I mean, I think this
shows that this is much bigger than just individual perceptions.
There are other things happening that are influencing the real
experience of folks that are that are reportedly suffering from this.

Speaker 1 (57:59):
Yeah, all right, very good. So yeah, I think the
added research here continues to tell the story that, Man,
how do I say this? It feels like we have
been using this term a little bit loosely in a
way that possibly undermines the experience of people who are
facing a different sort of challenge but having that sort

(58:20):
of experience. And what I mean by that is like,
there are people who are in systems that actively oppress them,
and so they feel a sense of imposter syndrome because
they're just not really welcomed in that space to begin with.
And the rest of us, now we might still feel
something that's sort of like imposter syndrome that maybe is
more like this idea of self doubt and feeling inadequate

(58:43):
or feeling unprepared for a particular obligation or set of
responsibilities that we find ourselves in that is not going
to be as detrimental and serious as those of us
who have been systematically oppressed by a culture and by
a set of policies that have more or less ensured

(59:03):
that that was going to be the case. Right, So
they're feeling of imposter syndrome is accompanied by more serious
considerations around other health outcomes and mental health wellbeing just
broadly speaking.

Speaker 2 (59:13):
Right, And so I think a big take on point
that I would leave with everybody on this is that
there is a large discussion about personal responsibility to address
imposter syndrome versus workplace environments. Like I think a lot
of times what happens is there's a discussion about it
is the employee's personal responsibility to resolve issues of stress, burnout,
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, And much of the

(59:35):
work around burnout focuses on individual responsibilities. But we know,
and anybody who works in behavioral systems knows that a
bad system will be to good employee every single time.
And in a nurturing, supportive environment, even those experiencing some
imposter syndrome are less likely to experience burnout of stress
if that environment is supportive and nurturing. So maybe maybe

(59:58):
the onus is on the organization in the workplace and
the managers and the supervisors and the leaders in those space,
and not the individual themselves. Maybe blasphemy, I know, maybe
our bosses and our people who are hiring people, and
our people who are designing systems should consider that imposter
syndrome is a symptom of a bad workplace.

Speaker 1 (01:00:21):
And I do think, to be fair that probably many
bosses do think about this, have acknowledged this, and have
attempted to create positive workplace environments. Sure, and so I
don't want to have the takeaway be that all bosses
are bad and no employers ever think about these things.
Definitely they do. And there are a lot out there
who not only don't think about these things, they actively

(01:00:44):
hate even being told that they could think about these things, right,
and they're helping no one, so poo on them. Yeah, exactly,
all right, anything else to add or anything that I
forgot before we transition to our credits and our recommendations.

Speaker 2 (01:01:03):
Nope, I think that covers it for now.

Speaker 1 (01:01:05):
All right. Well, then, as an attempt to keep people here,
we do a really fun thing at the end of
our episodes, which if you're joining us for the first time,
may it will be something new. And if you are
a recurring listener to the podcast, then you know what
I'm about to say. But we do these recommendation things.
They're fun, they're usually unrelated to our topic at hand.
That will be the case in our recommendations today, but

(01:01:26):
before we do that, we need to first play some
more ads and then do credits. Oh all right, so
we are going to recommend things. Before I do that,
I would like to quickly give a shout out to
all of the people who help make this podcast big podcast.

(01:01:46):
And first, before I even do that, I said first,
and then another first, so second and then first, but first, yeah, first, more, first,
even more first, pre first, if you will. If you
would like to support the show, one way you can
do that is by heading over to Patreon. When you
do that, you get to join our little club of people,
and there's all kinds of bonuses that might come from

(01:02:07):
being a part of that community. We have ad free content,
early episode releases, there is a discord channel where people
can talk to each other about episodes if they want to,
all kinds of stuff. So you can head over to Patreon,
join us for whatever dollar amount works for you that
you can make happen. And if you do that, I'm
also going to read your name and a list of

(01:02:27):
names of the people who have helped us continue to
make the show. So thank you so much, patrons. Mike,
m Megan, Mike T, Justin, Kim Brad, Stephanie, Olivia, Brian, Ashley,
and Kiara. Thank you so much for your continued support
and helping us do what we do.

Speaker 2 (01:02:43):
You're our favorites.

Speaker 1 (01:02:44):
Yes, If you cannot support us in that way, or
you just don't want to, but you'd still like to
support us, you can head over to our web store
and we do sell merch there, the podcast merch. They're
clever and humorous and lovely to look at and make
you look very cool by having podcast merch can do yes,
or else you can leave us a rating and a
review wherever you listen to podcasts that helps other people

(01:03:06):
find us. You can like and subscribe to our podcast
to make sure that we are always getting downloaded to
your feed and you never miss one of our very
thoughtful and thought provoking discussions. And of course you can
tell a friend to just help get the name out
there so that more people find us. Otherwise, if you
don't like us, you don't have to do any of
those things and we would never know. So that's fine,

(01:03:27):
that's true. Yeah. Also, then thank you so much to
my team of people without whom I could not continue
to do this show. Writing in fact checking from Shane
and myself. Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson. And
the person who receives these audio files, listens to them
and converts them into listenable content is Justin who is
our audio engineer person.

Speaker 2 (01:03:48):
We love him, all right.

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
So that is I think what I have to say
about all of our credits before we get into our recommendations.

Speaker 2 (01:04:01):
Recommendations, all right, I'm going to recommend a TV show
that I think is utterly fascinating and just a real
joy to watch, and that is called Grave Conversations with
Dave dust Maukian. Have you seen any of these yet
at all?

Speaker 1 (01:04:17):
I've never even heard of this, Oh.

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
Man, Okay, so he is. It's an interview show and
the premise is so close. The premise is that he
and his guest both lay in open caskets and he
interviews them. They don't look at each other. They're both
laying on their backs looking up at the camera. The

(01:04:40):
camera is above them, and and he is just asking
them questions, and they're just very insightful questions, like what
do you think of what happens to you after you die?
What do you wish you would do before you die?
It's like very like honest conversations and the interviews are phenomenal.
So they're just getting ready to release season two. He
only does their very short form. There's only like three

(01:05:00):
episodes a season, and so the first episode is with
Katie Segal, the second episode is with Mike Flanagan, and
the third one was with Matthew Lillard from season one. Okay, yeah,
they're getting ready to release season two, which is going
to include I'm let me pull us up real quick.
The third season is going to include Kumail Nan, Johnny
jack Quaid from the Boys, and Laura Levera from Terrifier three.

Speaker 1 (01:05:24):
Wow, okay, yeah, fun, it's.

Speaker 2 (01:05:26):
Really funny, Like it's very kind, you know, because the
conversations can be very difficult. It's a very kind approach
to it and just neat really like a little bit
of dry humor too. Like it's very funny, Like I've
really enjoyed it so and they're very short, they're not
they're not very long episodes. So I hope that you
all check it out because it is really really fun cool.

Speaker 1 (01:05:46):
And sorry, what platform was this on?

Speaker 2 (01:05:48):
I watched it on YouTube?

Speaker 1 (01:05:49):
Oh okay, at least probably some amount on YouTube. Grave
Conversations with Dave dust Melchian.

Speaker 2 (01:05:58):
Yes, you could listen to You can listen to the
episodes on podcasts as well. There's videos, but you can
listen to the podcast as well.

Speaker 1 (01:06:05):
So who wants to listen to a podcast?

Speaker 2 (01:06:08):
So that's all I'm saying, gross.

Speaker 1 (01:06:12):
Yuck. I am recommending a thing for those of you
who maybe try to not eat meat or eat less
meat or something. There is this alternative called meat me
e a t I I can go to meet dot
com and these are these steaks that are made out
of mushrooms. Believe it or not, I love them. I

(01:06:33):
think the taste is fantastic. I'm not sure that they
taste like steaks necessarily, And they have a few different
types of cuts that they do or like types of flavors.
So they've got these breakfast patty ones. They've got what
they call classic and crispy cutlets, and then a steak
cutlet and a carne a soda cutlet, and I think

(01:06:54):
they're just just different like flavoring preparations for them. What
they do not really taste like is mush if that's
a problem for you, And they certainly aren't textured like mushroom.
They're mostly like the texture of like shredded beef maybe okay,
but in steak form, sure, it's kinda hard to imagine.

(01:07:17):
I think they're delicious anyway, so I'm recommending you check
them out. Most of the most stores that sell alternative
meats will probably carry it, but you can always go
on their website and look at their locator and see
if any store is near you carry them. But I've
really really enjoyed them, and I just every time they're
on sale or whatever, I definitely pick up a few
boxes of them. So cool.

Speaker 2 (01:07:36):
They're good. Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 1 (01:07:37):
Cool all right? If you would like to tell us
about your experience with imposter syndrome or something related to that,
so you can email us directly at info wwdwwdpodcast dot
com or rich us on the social media platforms. I'm
especially over on Blue Sky, and if you would like,
you can go make fun of Mark Zuckerberg and tag
us on Facebook and that would be fun for us.

Speaker 2 (01:07:58):
I'm okay with that.

Speaker 1 (01:07:59):
You can also make fun of elon Musk and post
it somewhere because we're not on Twitter, that's true, so
wherever you choose to post that, then we'll also enjoy
that thing.

Speaker 2 (01:08:11):
Usee email to us too. We're fine with that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:13):
Yeah, that's totally fine as well. But I think that's
everything that I have to say. Is there anything that
I've forgotten that you'd like to add before we wrap
it up today?

Speaker 2 (01:08:20):
No, I think that covers it for today.

Speaker 1 (01:08:22):
Perfect. Thank you all for listening. Thank you for recording
with me today, Shane. This is Abraham and this is Shane.
We're out. See ye you've been listening to Why We
Do What We Do.

Speaker 2 (01:08:32):
You can learn more about this and other episodes by
going to WWD WWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening,
and we hope you have an awesome day.

Speaker 1 (01:09:00):
Zo

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Nostalgia: Imposter Syndrome