October 2, 2025 • 52 mins
Do you have imposter syndrome? You're not alone—70% of people will experience imposter syndrome at some point, and today, Dr. Lisa Orbé-Austin is here to help us break free. As a psychologist, imposter syndrome expert, and bestselling author of Own Your Greatness and Your Unstoppable Greatness, Dr. Orbé-Austin dives deep into how imposter syndrome shows up in our lives—and, most importantly, how we can overcome it. In this episode of Question Everything, she reveals:
- The subtle signs that imposter syndrome is creeping in
- The powerful link between self-worth and imposter syndrome
- Is there a link between imposter syndrome and perfectionism?
- How your upbringing shapes those feelings of self-doubt
- Are women especially vulnerable to imposter syndrome?
- Her personal experience battling imposter syndrome—even on the Today Show
- The two main cycles of imposter syndrome: overwork and self-sabotage
- How it impacts our personal lives and relationships
- Why marginalized groups are hit the hardest
- Simple steps to start loving yourself through it all
Follow Dr. Lisa Orbé-Austin here
Check out her latest book here
Book Rec: The First 90 Days by Michael D. Watkins
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
No one has all the answers, but when we ask
the right questions, we get a little closer, closer to truths,
closer to each other, even closer to ourselves. I'm journalist
Danielle Robe and each week, my guests and I'd come
together to challenge the status quo and our own ways
of thinking by daring to ask what if, why not?
(00:28):
And who says? So? Come curious, dig deep, and join
the conversation. It's time to question everything. Hello, I hope
you're having a beautiful week. Mine is actually really good.
I just got back to la I was in New
York for three weeks for some work. I moderated a
(00:50):
session at the Clinton Global Initiative, which was so we were
going to think this is corny, but so soul fulfilling.
I got to speak to five people who are changing
the world, people who have started organizations like Miracle Messages.
This guy, Kevin f Adler is totally retooling our solution
(01:13):
to homelessness. And I got to interview Nila Ibrahimi, who
stood up to the Taliban in twenty twenty one, and
mong Say Doola, who escaped the genocide in me and
Mar and is the first from his refugee camp to
be enrolled in higher education. It was just really inspiring
(01:38):
to be in a room full of people who are doers,
who are being the change they want to see. And
then also while I was there, I filmed some pretty
smart episodes, and I filmed the Eve episode when I
was there, which was I have to tell you, that
was like one of my favorite episodes. She was so
real and so cool. I think, you know, sometimes celebrities
(02:02):
brains feel like they're broken. I know you're probably not
supposed to say that, but she's just she's like one
of us. Like, she was so normal and cool and
had so much to say. I love that episode, and
a few more are coming out. I can't say who yet,
but I filmed a few more episodes, and then I
(02:23):
was also filming The bright Side, which is the podcast
I do with Hello Sunshine. And actually while I was there,
I got a call that tamer And Hall wanted to
feature The bright Side on her show. So I was
supposed to come home like last Sunday and ended up
extending to do the show, which was great. The only
(02:44):
thing I was sad about was I bought one ticket
to the Thames Concert and I had to miss it,
which was so sad. I actually have never bought a
ticket by myself to a concert, and so that felt
like a big thing for me because I was like,
I really want to go see her so badly. I
don't want to try and figure out who will come
(03:06):
with me. I'm just going to go and enjoy the music.
But I didn't get to see her. I think she's
headed to Europe, so I don't know if I'm going
to catch her at this point, but hopefully at a
later date it'll be meant to be. And then I
came back and we jumped into Shina Way, which is
Hello Sunshine's annual event, and it is like, truly one
(03:27):
of my favorite weekends of the year. It feels like
the Olympics of womanhood. I just love being in that space.
Hello Sunshine has this way of curating the most lovely women,
lovely human beings, and so every room you walk into
is warm, and it's just so rare. If you have
(03:48):
the opportunity to go next year, if it's something that
you feel called to, I would really recommend it, and
I don't say that about a lot of events. It's
just really special and so funny too is our interview
today is on imposter syndrome. And I recorded this honestly
like two months ago. But our session that we did
(04:10):
for the bright Side at Shinaway was about imposter syndrome
and it made me realize that this is a topic
that's maybe even more important to cover than I once knew.
So let's get into it, and as always a quick reminder,
I am still zooming with people. So if you write
(04:30):
a review on the pod, which we've had so many
beautiful new ones because of the Apple spotlight on new
and noteworthy, So if you have written a new review,
or you send the episode to two friends and screenshot
it and then email me Danielle at beprettysmart dot com.
I pick one person to zoom with every single week,
and I've been zooming with you all, which is such
(04:53):
a highlight for me. Okay, so now it's really time
to jump into today's episode. Maya Angelo once said I
have written eleven books, but each time I think, uh oh,
they're going to find out now I've run a game
on everybody, and they're going to find me out that
feeling it's called imposter syndrome, and we're diving deep into
(05:15):
it today. Like I mentioned, this episode is one we've
been crafting for a while, and it feels so crucial
because during a brainstorm with the Pretty Smart team, someone
casually suggested imposter syndrome as a theme and the reaction
from everybody was instant. Every single person in the room, successful, confident,
(05:38):
regardless of their age, felt it deeply. It made me
realize that imposter syndrome is everywhere. It's that feeling of
not being good enough. Some people describe it as that
feeling of they're going to find you out. It actually
shows up for me differently. For me, it kind of
shows up as that feeling of planning a party and
(06:00):
wondering if anyone would show up, just feeling out of
place in the room, thinking how did I get in here?
And what's more is minority groups, whether racial, ethnic, gender based, religious,
or sexual orientation, often feel it at higher rates. An
expert once described the feeling is having like a toxic
best friend in your head saying you don't deserve this
(06:21):
or you just got lucky. What I found out recording
this episode that shocked me was seventy to eighty percent
of people experience it at some point in their lives.
Emma Watson, Tina Fey, Michelle Obama have all spoken publicly
about the feeling of imposter syndrome and talked about asking
themselves that question, Am I good enough? So for this,
(06:45):
I didn't just want to talk about the concept or
hear stories from people. I wanted the facts. Where is
this coming from? And how do we solve it? So
I went back and I read about the history or
the concept of imposter syndrome. Doctor Valeriejung is the co
founder of the Impostor Syndrome Institute, which breaks it down
into five main types. First is the perfectionist, who thinks
(07:09):
anything less than perfect is failure. I think that's me.
Second is the superhero, the person who feels like if
they aren't working harder than everyone, they're falling short. Third
is the expert who thinks they can't be considered credible
until they know everything about everything. For the natural genius,
(07:29):
the person who believes that if something doesn't come easy,
they must be a fraud. And five the soloist, someone
who feels asking for help means they're not capable. So,
because this is a concept, sometimes it can be hard
to distill down. So I'm going to give you a
few scenarios to see if any of this resonates. There's
something called the invitation regret. Imagine being invited to a
(07:52):
high level meeting or an event, and you walk in
and you look around at all the accomplished people in
the room, and suddenly, instead of feeling proud of your accomplishment,
you start wondering, did they invite me by mistake? Any
second now they'll realize I don't deserve to be here.
Then there's the performance anxiety. After receiving praise at work,
instead of feeling satisfaction, there's this nagging thought in the
(08:13):
back of your mind, h I just got lucky this time.
There's no way I can replicate this success again, and
you start doubting your abilities and you're kind of convinced
that the next project will expose you as a fraud,
you know. Then there's the who MEI. You're given a
promotion or award or some form of recognition, and while
everyone congratulates you, all you can think is this wasn't
(08:35):
because of my talent or skills. It's because I worked
really hard, or it's because I was in the right
place at the right time. And despite the external validation,
you feel unworthy or worried that everyone will soon realize
you're not as capable as they may think. So do
any of these sound familiar? Some of them do to me,
some of them don't. And I think that's the thing
(08:56):
about imposter syndrome. It shows up for everybody differently. One
thing I realized talking about this is that I didn't
feel this when I was younger and starting out. It's
kind of crept up on me as I've started being
invited into spaces that I'd always dreamt about. So here
are my big questions today. Is imposter syndrome something we
(09:18):
just have to live with or is there more to it?
Is there something we can be doing about it? And
is it even a bad thing? Does it just signify
that you are stretched to the enth of your abilities
and are pushing forward To help answer these questions and
a whole lot more and to navigate imposter syndrome. We
have the perfect guest today, doctor Lisa or A Austin.
(09:42):
She's a psychologist, executive coach, and one of the leading
voices on imposter syndrome. The reason that this episode has
taken me so long to execute is I was really
specific on who we invited on for this episode to
cover this topic because I think I think it can
be a landmind. It's confusing, and I also think that
(10:06):
the cultural portion of this is incredibly important. Imposter syndrome
is definitely exacerbated when you are underrepresented in your context,
and I didn't want to gloss over any of this.
And I'm just so grateful for our guest time today
and really excited because I feel like there is no
(10:27):
one better to navigate all of this than doctor Lisa
Orbe Austen. She's a psychologist, executive coach, and one of
the leading voices on imposter syndrome. You may have seen
her in Forbes, The New York Times, Good Morning America,
The Today Show. But you know what's so funny, despite
all of her success, she still grapples with imposter syndrome herself.
(10:49):
So enough babbling from me this episode. It is really
close to my heart, and I'm just so grateful for
doctor Orbe Austen's time. A lot of people pull at her,
and I'm just so grateful that she shared her time
with us. I personally learned so much. It's a conversation
I've been thinking about since we've had it, and that's
(11:09):
when I know it's a special one. So let's get
into it. So, Doctor Lisa, this podcast is nearly exclusively
for women, and so I hear the word imposter syndrome
brought up on Pretty Smart probably thirty to forty percent
(11:33):
of the interviews that I do. What exactly is imposter syndrome.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
So it's not shocking that you hear it a lot
because from the research, about seventy percent of people experience
imposter syndrome over their lifetime. So it's a really common experience.
And it's the experience when you are competent, capable, experienced, credentialed,
even expert, but yet haven't internalized that. And as a
result of not internalizing that, you tend to fear being
(12:01):
found out or found that you're a fraud. And often
for you, that doesn't necessarily mean being a fraud. It
means making a mistake, having human issues, having a failure,
all of those things can then feel like as if
you're being found out to be a fraud. In order
to compensate from that feeling of fraudulence, we often either
overwork or self sabotage to cope with it, and then
(12:22):
often get ourselves caught in situations where we are chronically
burnt out and feeling really run down from the experience
of having to constantly overwork or overfunction to kind of
prove that we belong somewhere.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
That's interesting because I don't think that I would have
tied it to burnout at all.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Oh, it's highly tied, and it's correlated to burnout anxiety depression.
But I think what it does is because it makes
you feel like you're not good enough, You are constantly
trying to prove that you are good enough, and often
that comes from a stance of overfunctioning and overworking.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
That makes a lot of sense that it affects women disproportionately.
Then I've always heard that imposter syndrome comes from being
underrepresented in your context, So it disproportionately doesn't.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Yeah, it doesn't come from that. We find in the
research that privileged and disadvantaged groups actually experience it at
the same rates. There's no significant differences, So that's a mythology.
And actually, up until about I would say last month,
I would have also said women don't experience it disproportionally
for men, but a meta analytics study came out this
(13:31):
month that took a look at all the research that's
happened in the last couple of decades and said that
they do find that there is an increase for women.
It doesn't mean that only women experience it, but there
is a slight and significant increase for women. So yes,
we do experience it. I can now say that officially
we do experience it in larger numbers, but that's based
on the research.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Yet I'm glad to hear that in a sort of
twisted way, because I hear women talk about it more
and that could be that men just don't want to
talk about what they're feeling inside. But also I've always
thought it it does affect women more so, so it's
interesting to hear that the research validates that.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Yeah. It just recently did it this month. And I
also do think like there's been an interesting research study
that looked at the differences in men and women who
experience imposter syndrome, and what they found was that women
tended to be counterphobic, so they actually face the thing
that they feared more often when they had imposter syndrome,
and as a result got triggered to experience imposter syndrome
(14:29):
more often where men were more interested in mastery and
getting involved in things. They already felt that they were
good enough, so they tended to affiliate with peers that
were less competent than they were so that they could
feel mastery. And so as a result, you're going to
get triggered less often when you feel better than everyone
and so like, it is sort of like a gendered
potential way of interacting with the world that potentially creates
(14:51):
this experience of experiencing it more.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
That's fascinating. How does it show up? How do you
recognize that it's happening? What signs do you notice? I
think that because it's become such a buzzy term that
people use it to describe a lot of different things.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
I think that's captured beautifully. Yes, it's come to mean
like almost a single thing, like self doubt. It is
not solely self doubt. It is what I consider a
constellation of things. So usually when people identify truly with
the experience of imposter syndrome, they are experiencing a variety
of things. For example, they are feeling perfectionistic and feeling
(15:29):
like they have to do everything right to get credit
for it. They are feeling the fraud experience. Needing to
prove themselves, They're often overvaluing others and undervaluing themselves. They
tend to kind of really catastrophize mistake making and make
it bigger than it needs to be. They tend to
underplay achievement making and having trouble internalizing successes and saying
things like well, it wasn't completely me. It was a
(15:51):
variety of people. So there's a variety and a constellation
of things going on. And when you can identify with
almost a significant amount of the constellation, I think that's
when you where you're experiencing imposter synome. It's not just
self doubt, and it isn't transient. Typically, typically people have
experienced it for long periods of time. Like so if
you've experienced in one situation, chances are and never experienced
(16:13):
it again, chances are probably was imposter them. It just
was discomfort anxiety. But when you have a usually the
people have a significant history of experiencing this over their
entire lifetime.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
So it's not something that can pop up based on
your environment.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Usually it comes from childhood, so usually it's been around
for a long time, and so you can recognize it
from your educational experiences, from the ways you interacted with peers,
the ways you interacted with authority figures. You can see
it usually throughout. So oftentimes people say, oh, my boss
gave me imposter syndrome. Highly unlikely. It may have triggered it.
You may have felt insecure or like not good enough
(16:52):
with them, but that doesn't necessarily mean they gave it
to you. Largely this comes from a very well grooved
early developmental pattern that is so interesting.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
So when you say early childhood, I've heard some things
that say that it's from the role that our parents
played in setting expectations to codependent family dynamics. Actually, what's
your take on how our upbringing affects us in a
sort of more zoomed in way.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Yeah, so I think it affects us in a variety
of ways. We're actually writing a whole new book about
parenting and imposter syndrome, which God has me thinking about
this in a variety of different ways. It's interesting, but
I think that largely, to capture it in a nutshell,
it is about the way our parents like see us,
the way they look at us. For example, we can
often get caught in very siloed roles when we have
(17:41):
imposter syndromes. So you were the intelligent one who things
came easy to or you were the one who was
hard working, who had to work hard for everything. So
you get caught in this idea where you're seeing it
in one dimension and you feel like, you know, people
don't really know the truth about me, and that you're
hiding some part of yourself. And really what you're experiencing
is the humanity of what it means to be you,
but people have not seen you in that full whole way,
(18:02):
so that piece can be a part of it. Codependent
dynamics can really push that people pleasing elements of imposter
syndrome where you feel like in order to be seen
as valuable or valued, you have to make other people
happy and you can't say no, and that often comes
from that codependent environment where saying no is going against
the family family grain, and so that can be Having
(18:24):
a narcissistic caregiver can also create it. So a caregiver
where you are like an extension of them, You aren't
your own person, and they see you as either fulfilling
that extension or not fulfilling that extension. You're punished when
you don't fulfill that extension and cut off. And so
those kinds of things can kind of create it. Issues
with conflict, not managing conflict well, and the family can
(18:45):
affect it, dealing how people deal with success and wins,
and also failures can affect it. So all of these
experiences that we're growing up with that are getting repeated
over and over and over again are laying the foundation
for how it appears in our adulthood.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Been wanting to do an episode on imposter syndrome for
over a year and it was so hard to find
the right guest for this topic. And I was so
excited that we finally found you because you are both
research based and anecdotally personally tied to this topic, which
(19:23):
I found just fascinating. You are an authority on imposter syndrome,
You've written books, you've given ted talks, and yet you
deal with it personally. And I saw that you said
you were totally triggered on the Today Show. What happened there?
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Yeah, well it was when you put out a book.
Ofttimes they ask you like what are your media sources
you want to be on, and like, you know, what
are your dream media sources, and it was one of
my dream media sources.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Who doesn't want to be on the Today Show.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
It wasn't uncommon, but I just didn't think it was
going to happen. And then when they reached out to me,
I kind of was like, Oh my god, it's happening.
And then I think like, as it was happening, I
was like, oh, why am me? Why do they choose
me either? And I because I'm in this field, I
know all these other qualified people on imposter syndrome. I
was like, why not them? And no, why do I
have a unique voice in here? And I really just
(20:15):
started to go back to old patterns. And I think
it was because I was in this moment which can
be very triggering, which I was highly visible, and that
was being seen as an authority on a huge platform,
and it felt really scary to make a mistake, to
missay something, and it just really got me flooded and
it went I went back to an old place. But
luckily I have worked on it so long that a
(20:36):
lot of people said it didn't look like that because
I was able to kind of both perform and feel
the feelings, you know, And so I think that and
then process the feelings. I think that's the thing. When
I had imposter syndrome a long time, you know, had
it more prevalently a long time ago, I couldn't process
the feelings. I felt I was broken inside and that
there was something deeply, deeply wrong with me that was unfixable.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
You know. I think also one of the reasons I
find you to be such an interesting narrator for this
is that you have sort of like expanded the You've
expanded the definition of what this is.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Like.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
I have read so many things that have this very
very narrow definition of what imposter syndrome is, and your
work has brought in really specific and research based examples
of it that I think people can grab onto.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Yeah, it's been really important to me because I lived
it myself. What I really wanted to do was help
everyday people get access to research that felt very far
away and very inaccessible about how to get over it,
like because it felt like for me it felt until
I found the research, until I got my own support,
I really felt like it was going to be there forever.
(21:52):
And now I know it doesn't have to be from
my own research and my experience, and it was like
I wanted to disseminate it to as many people as
I could because I knew how painful those experiences often were.
And so that's been like, my mission is really helping
to kind of give people accessibility to this information in
a way that's super easy to use, read build tools
(22:14):
like That's been really important to me.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Yes, and it often feels obtuse to me and your
work doesn't. You did a TED talk about the topic
called the imposter syndrome paradox. Why is it a paradox?
What does that mean to you?
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Yeah, because oftentimes when you talk about imposter and people
get offended, they're like, I'm not a postor. You're calling
someone an impost It means you're not an imposter. There's
actually a word for people who are imposters. There's a
term for it. It's called the Dunning Kruger effect. And
that's when people aren't experts, but they believe that they are.
And so there's a whole nother word for that. So
(22:50):
you are not an imposter. Likely if you experienced this,
I would say nine point nine times out of ten,
you are not an impostor at all. You've just set
a standard that is realistic to reach, and part of
learning how to kind of move from it is being
able to, you know, understand that you can be expert,
(23:11):
competent and make mistakes and be human and flub And
I think that's what I also think has been really
important to me as someone who speaks about this, is
to recognize my own mistakes, to recognize my own humanity,
to talk about like what it feels like for me
to be inside of it, so you know that I'm
not talking from on high. I actually have lived it.
(23:32):
And my TED talk really talked about one of the
most vulnerable moments of my career where imposter syndrome was
at its height. I remember feeling embarrassed when I would
talk to my family about what was going on at work,
and I would feel embarrassed about the way that they
responded to me. And they were trying to be helpful,
but they were just like, what is wrong with you?
Like why can't you lead this terrible situation? And I
(23:54):
just didn't feel like I deserved better, And you know,
so it was really important for me in the TED
talk to share to share that experience because I know
a lot of people have had really what feels like
super shameful experiences related to this, and I wanted to
help people be able to talk about them.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
If I can sort of expand on that moment, I like, basically,
you were talking about a toxic work environment, and part
of I think what I felt from you was that
you have this Ivy League education, you hold a doctor
it and there was this notable quote from your husband
at the time where he said, if you worked as
(24:30):
hard for yourself as you do for other people, you'd
be unstoppable. And so everyone around you was telling you
how capable you were, how smart you were, and can
you explain why that just didn't help?
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Yeah, because I didn't believe it. I believed it was
all a mistake. Like I believe I got led into
my doctor at the time. I believe I got luck
to my doctor pokem as an accident. I actually even
said that the first day I was there. Yeah, and
my mentor said to me, I was coming out of
the room after a day of orientation on the first
day and doctor programs, you're like one of five students,
And so I came out and I was like everyone
was older than me, had had some of them had
(25:06):
had already had master's multiple master's degrees, and I came
out and I said to my mentor, I said, he said,
how do you feel after the first day. I said,
I feel like I don't belong here, like it's been
a mistake. And he's like, well, I guess we're about
to find out. And so he didn't say you're not
it's not a mistake. He said, like, we're about to
find out if it was a mistake. So then it
made me think, well, then it could have been a
mistake because he was part of the committee as part
so it really just like created then I started overworking overfunction.
(25:29):
But I think that's the reason I never believed any
of it belonged to me. And I think that's been
the process I've had to go through, is really beginning
to accept and take in my credibility, my experience, my expertise,
Like I think you saying, you know earlier that I
am an expert in the field, like it used to
make me anxious. It used to make me feel like
that's not great, really, and now I can hold it,
(25:50):
and so I think it It really took my own
work on being able to internalize the things that had
led me to, you know, to those successes, but it
took it took a while.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Here is where I feel confused personally. I feel like
I go in and out of this. There are moments
where I feel really confident, and there are moments where
like if like similar to what you just said, if
I'm a guest on a podcast and someone reads this
really beautiful, sort of glowing intro, I want to hide
(26:20):
under my sheets, like I am like, oh my god,
and I get really sort of humble and meek almost yeah,
And I'm wondering if it's tied to self worth.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Yes, there is a direct correlation to self worth and
imposter syndrome. And I think that feeling of coming in
and out is going to always be there, right Like
you can see a you know, a quote unquote an
expert in the field and been in a lot of therapy,
and you know, if I'm a thrown person myself and
I still come in and out of it. The difference
today is that I know I can get out of it.
(26:54):
In the past, I thought it was me like I
thought this is who I am. I met actually an
imposter and I say this, and now I have to
prove something that I'm not. I don't believe that anymore.
I know that I am capable, and I sometimes have
to kind of deal with that residual feeling that comes up,
but I know how to deal with it and I
know how to get it back down in a pretty
expedient way. And I think that's the difference. Is like
(27:16):
people ask me all the time, like, you know, does
it ever go away? And I don't. I don't know,
it doesn't really, but the volume goes down on it
like where before it would could shatter an experience, Like
I had an experience early on and I was doing
my first one of my first podcasts and I got
freaked out in the podcast in almost one blank. And
that's how That's how it can actually affect your performance
(27:38):
and actually affect whether or not you're going to be
an expert. Is like really affecting you so badly that
you do start to underperform. And I think that's what
it makes me think about when you're talking about your story,
is like you're minimizing yourself and you're like trying to
be humble and you're down playing yourself in order to
kind of set level set expectations about how fabulous are
going to be instead of standing in that fabulous you know,
(28:00):
And I think that's what I'm trying to kind of
help people do a stand in their fabulousness. It's already there.
There's nothing to do.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Yes. I recently had this revelation about the difference between
self confidence and self worth because I've always felt like
a co I was a confident kid. I feel like
a confident person, and so I kind of ignored the
conversations about self worth and they are totally different.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
They are totally different.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
I have a self worth issue, and so I just
noticed it a few weeks ago. To be honest, it's
interesting that we're having this conversation now. But I do
find and it could be that I'm just talking to
more women, which is very possible. I do find this
to be more prevalent in successful women, women in general,
(28:46):
but definitely career women. Is there any data or research
to back that up?
Speaker 2 (28:52):
From my experience, and this is not from the data,
there's actually been no studies to look at this, but
from my experience in practicing for fifteen years and looking
at this topic all the time and experiencing it different
people's lives. There's two different cycles in imposter syndrome. The
first one is the overwork cycle. So when you get
triggered around your performance anxiety, you're not good enough, you
overwork an overfunction. I think those are the women who
(29:14):
probably become the super successful, super driven. And the second
cycle is self sabotage. And I think there's a lot
of people who experience imposter syndrome who actually do fail
because they set themselves up in a self sabotage cycle
through the performance anxiety. And so I have met many
a person who hasn't lived up to their quote unquote
potentially the things that they wanted to do because they
(29:37):
have to break the self sabotage behaviors that they have
associated with imposter syndrome. So I think there's a whole
subset of people who haven't gotten to where they've wanted to.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Because what is self sabotage? Because what does that look like?
I think of self sabotage like sort of I guess
the more extreme ideas of it, like you know, having
an issue with alcohol or not showing up on time.
What are sort of the implicit ways that we self sabat.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Yeah, So I think the most classic way is like
procrastination followed by intense bursts of overwork. So oftentimes, because
we are capable and competent, we're going to try to
get it done. But sometimes those intense bursts of work
work to get the thing done, and sometimes they aren't
enough because you did need that longer period of time
to deal with it. So in those cases you can
often fall short or not, and then that sort of
(30:23):
becomes a reinforcing notion that yes, I am a fraud,
I don't belong here. Meanwhile, it's really the self sabotage
issue that becomes, you know, the issue itself. And even
if you look at my own story, as I'm talking
about the toxic boss, and I am not doing anything
proactive for my search in the story, I am just
like sitting around complaining with you know, I was miserable,
(30:43):
so I have a right to complain, but I wasn't
doing anything to serve myself to move forward, and so
nothing was changing. And so as a result, there is
a possibility that you know, I think about my life
as a diverge in that moment, and there was a
possibility I could have stayed there for years and then
I would have underfunctioned in terms of my capability. I
would have been stuck in a job. I've been underpaid.
(31:05):
There's a lot of stories like this where people are underfunctioning,
underpaid because they can't help themselves in the ways that
they want to, because they can't break that self sabotage cycle.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
I was interested to see that you wrote that imposter
syndrome isn't just work related. I have only thought about
it in terms of work. How else does it show up?
How does it show up in our personal lives?
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Yeah, because imposter syndrome has such a performance related component
to it, right, you don't feel like you're performing at
whatever level. It's true of like any time you feel
like you are, you know, engaged in something that's being
you know, potentially evaluated, or that it matters in some
dynamic where there's some other person involved. So I've seen
it in people's parenting. I've seen it in people's relationships.
(31:50):
So because of all the other dynamics, right, because there's
issues around codependence, and there's issues around overfunctioning, all of
these dynamics often show up in other parts of them
of their lives. And what I found, interestingly enough in
my clinical work as I work with people on imposters
rome and eradicating it. We focus mostly in the beginning
on work, and so we deal with it and we
(32:11):
get through sort of like in my book the Nine
Steps and everything, and they begin to feel like they're
releasing themselves from imposters in rope, and then they sort
of start to look at their personal life and they're like,
oh my god, it's here too. And then they start
to then start to do the work around their personal
lives and it disentangling it from their personal lives as well,
which can be also really freeing but also really scary. Yeah,
(32:33):
because work is like we can change workplaces, it's really
harder to change personal lives. That work is a lot deeper.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Do you think it presents in romantic relationships?
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Almost certainly, you know, the idea of overfunctioning, that the
idea of not feeling good enough in the relationship, the
feeling that you know you're gonna be left, because I
think a lot of people worry, you know, when they're
having posters room about being fired. You know, it's like
it's the same concept relationship of being left. You know,
they're like, I have to work hard because you know
(33:03):
they're cutting people, and you know I'll be the one
who's cut if I don't, you know. And the same
kind of like a frenzy can be in a relationship
as well, you.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Know, is that if we're talking about sort of the archetypes,
that's maybe more for the anxious people.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Yeah, anxious, codependent people pleasing those kinds of dynamics that
are occurring in the impostition of just replicate in personal
because you eventually you developed this in the first place
from a personal relationship. This came from your early experiences,
so the fact that it would still it would be
still be there makes complete sense.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
I've definitely experienced that in romantic relationships and wasn't aware.
I was aware that I was doing it, but I
was unaware of where it was coming from. And yeah,
I had a therapist who said something that sort of
feels close to what you're saying, which is this feeling
might never go away, but just noticing it will help
(33:59):
you ease whatever is happening. And the noticing is what
I think is so important here.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Yes, I mean, I think that's critically important. So the
awareness can lead to behavior change, right, because if you
see it, you then feel like, do I really want
to do that next behavior again? Like might there be
something different that I might do this time that actually
might be healthier or helpful for me. And so I
do think that's the fundamental piece I'm really trying to
(34:27):
promote with people is really getting an education into the
idea of it, what it really is, and if you
do struggle with it, thinking about being aware in a
way that just changes even one thing, you know.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
So, I saw you post on Instagram some imposter syndrome
self love languages, which I loved reading about. And the
reason I loved reading about it was it made me
feel like this is not all doom and gloom. There
are ways, like you said, to notice it, to maybe
not heal it, but make it settle more. So, what
(34:59):
are some tactical things that we can do to show
ourselves a little love when we are feeling it, when
we do notice it.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Yeah, So I think like one of the things is
really learning how to recognize the compliments or relational and
that you know, when somebody gives you a compliment, they're
actually trying to extend and connect with you, and to
really receive that back without trying to dismiss it or
qualify it or make them, you know, disconnect from you,
because it's a disconnection when you're like, well, you know,
(35:28):
because then they're feeling like, oh god, I maybe I
shouldn't have said it that way, maybe you know. So
I think it's really important just accept it, and I
think really take it in and thank them. And what
I often tell people is like, actually jot it down.
Maybe you can't hear it right now, but maybe you
want to actually jot it down and write it down,
put it somewhere for you to read later, because part
of that is really working on in one of the
factors in terms of developing self esteem is really being
(35:52):
able to take in other people's perceptions of your work
or the things that you're doing. And so without doing that,
you're missing this element of self esteem building that you're getting.
So it is it is a love language that we
really reject, but we have to work on accepting. And
I do also think the other pieces of sort of
the things that we can do are really also appreciating
(36:12):
a small win, really being able to not have to
have some mind blowing win in order to feel like
you can celebrate yourself. But even the tiny wins, even
the wins with that are fraught with mistakes and issues
and all of those things being able to celebrate those
as well. And I think also for me, like there's
another love language that I learned along the way, which
is setting boundaries. Like I was always afraid of setting
(36:34):
boundaries and feeling like if some if I set a boundary,
someone wouldn't like me or love me anymore. And to
be honest, the people who love me the most accept
my boundaries and respect my boundaries. And so it's brought
me all kinds of better relationships in my life.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
You gave us three great ones. Thank you for that.
I think I've been calling this imposter syndrome because that's
what we know it as colloquially, but you call it
an impostor phenomenon. From here on out rebranding, we're calling
it a past phenomenon.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Phenomenon.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Yes, why is it a phenomenon?
Speaker 2 (37:07):
Because it's a it's a common occurrence, right, it's not
a And I think that that's how it was originally
termed by plants. And i'ms in like nineteen seventy eight
when they did the original paper that began to talk
about this, and this received a lot of criticism, but
I think people really don't put it in context and
really recognize that this was a very important finding in
the nineteen seventies that really began a conversation around how
(37:29):
do we shift this right? And I think that's so important,
And they wanted to suggest it's not a diagnosis. You
can't find it in the DSM, you can't find it
in the ICD, which are diagnostic manuals. It is you know,
something that is super common and can be experienced and
also can be changed. And so I think like it's
a really important distinction. I often say syndrome because nobody
(37:50):
knows it as phenomenon in the academic literature. If you're
searching academic literature, it's always known as phenomenon. Interesting, it's
never known as syndrome. Yeah. So I actually just was
part of an academic book that came out by the
American Psychological Association, so people are interested in this in
an academic way. This amazing book came out in the
(38:10):
spring called The impost Phenomenon. It was edited by Kevin Kopley,
who is one of the leading researchers and imposter phenomenon today,
and it's all these chapters about all these really interesting
ways in which imposter phenomenon appears in different arenas, formats
things you just need to consider. There's a whole chapter
on medicine and the ways it shows up in medicine,
(38:32):
and so it talks about the most recent research and
it's called the imposter phenomenon talks about these most recent
research articles. So it's really blossoming and I hope it continues.
That there's been a lot of backlash around it, sort
of suggesting that you're like oppressing people by telling them
they have it. And in my fifteen years of doing
this work, whether directly doing it or indirectly doing this
(38:54):
imposter phenomenon work, I haven't seen a single person who
felt oppressed by during this conversation. In essence, they felt
empowered to go do something about it. Oftentimes, the people
who told them that they might be experiencing really cared
about them and wanted to see them just take in
their full greatness, and weren't seeing them do that. And so, like,
(39:15):
I think that narrative needs to shift. That narrative is
deeply disturbing to me that this is not something we
need to be talking about and it's oppressive. There's no
research that suggests that it's just become a clickbait kind
of social conversation that I think is really dangerous.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Frankly, I agree, information always feels validating because otherwise you
think that it's outside of you, that it's out of
your control. It's just something that you said that you
have to live with for your whole life.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Yeah, and I've seen people. I've done talks and people
have come up to me and said that they they
have told people that they experienced imposter syndrome, and then
they've said that somebody said to them it doesn't exist,
and they felt so shamed and they felt like they
had to go back into hiding a around it. And
so I think that's what that conversation is doing. Its
(40:03):
shaming people who feel like this, which feels deeply disturbing
to me.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
Yes, Well said, you know, we talked a bit about gender,
and I learned from our conversation that it's less about
context and environment than I anticipated it was, that it's
it's more from childhood. But when you talk about these
symptoms or the way that it shows up, and you
(40:28):
talk about overwork and overperform I can't help but think
of how that disproportionately affects anybody in a minority group
at work. What's the link or the tie there.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
Yeah, So we call it the double impact of imposter syndrome.
So it's this experience when you know, for people who
are marginalized and experience like imposter them internally, like I'm
not good enough, I don't belong here, and then get
external communications from the environment that are discriminatory or bias
to that say, yeah, maybe you don't belong here, maybe
you're not good enough. Maybe you got in here because
(41:05):
of a diversity program, maybe you're a diversity higher. These
kinds of messages then reinforce imposter syndrome and make people
feel like it must be true I'm receiving messages from
the outside world that this is not the case, that
I don't actually belong here. And so what the research
shows is that especially for marginalized communities that having relationships
(41:26):
with people along the identity lines they feel most impacted
at similar levels and at senior levels becomes really important
to them in helping to deal with these external communications
around discrimination and bias. They need someplace to process it
so that they can realize this is discrimination and bias,
and here's the way to sategically deal with it and
(41:47):
don't take this in because internalizing those messages becomes really
then hard to dismantle the imposter syndrome because you then
feel it's coming from both directions.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
That seems really difficult when there's like a lack of
a pipe blind.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Yes and communities yes, which oftentimes means you have to
do it externally, like you have to look for professional
organizations externally that have you know, they may not have
internal but they often they may not understand your unique
circumstance of your organization, but they often understand the dynamics
they've been there, And you want to find somebody clearly
who gets it, who really is kind of mature in
(42:23):
their own racial and ethnic identity in order to kind
of like or you know, sexual identities, to be able
to kind of recognize bias. Somebody might also gaslight you
and say that that's not what happens and everyone gets
it from merit, and if that's the case, they're not
the right person to support you in this.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
My mind sort of spinning hearing you say this, because
I did a morning show in Chicago a few years ago,
and it was the first time that I had another
female co host. I'd always had male co hosts, and
talking to her was the most validating experience I had
ever had in my industry, because she made me feel
like I wasn't complaining, I wasn't crazy that she also
(43:00):
had these feelings, and so she wasn't my senior, she
was my peer. But even talking it through with her
was just so helpful and relaxing.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
That's exactly what I'm talking about, Taniel. Yeah, it becomes
really critically important for you to not feel crazy, to
feel like these are real experiences, but they don't belong
to you. You do not need to internalize them or
even combat them, like in a way that makes you
overfunction or overwork, Like you can actually just know that
they exist and feel like, how am I going to
handle this? Like I know it exists in the world,
(43:31):
in this my particular work world. How am I going
to strategically deal with it? And there are many ways.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
You know. One of the reasons I started Pretty Smart
was when I was going through probably the most difficult
time in my life. Nothing made me feel better. I mean,
I was doing therapy, I was working out, I was
trying all the things, and the one thing that gave
me any sort of reprieve was reading or hearing other
women's stories, and it brings me to that validation aspect
(43:58):
that you're talking about through out all of this. And
so when I think about this podcast, fundamentally, it's about
sharing women's stories, and imposter syndrome fundamentally is about how
we perceive ourselves and how we recall these stories that
we tell ourselves.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
Beautifully quit, Danielle, I love that so much. Yes, thank you.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
Yes, from your experience with this, is there a way
that we can step back and determine what is real
versus what is the story we are telling ourselves in
our heads.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
Yeah. We talk about that in book one, really about
sort of how to recognize like things like automatic negative
thoughts that may be coming up and being triggered for
you to think, you know, like I'm not good enough,
I don't belong here, and really recognizing that part of
your job with an automatic negative thought is to challenge it.
So there's a quote that says, you know, you are
not your thoughts, you are the observer of your thoughts
(44:56):
by Amy Ray. And I really am trying to training
people to you know, this is a very cognitive behavioral
technique that works very well with imposter syndrome to really
help you recognize, like where did that thought come from?
Where's the data behind that thought? Are you know, you
make a mistake and you're like, I'm so stupid, Like
where's the evidence that you're stupid? Like, you know, if
(45:17):
you can't find it, you can't say it, you know,
So it just can't be the fact that you're labeling
yourself without some kind of data or proof and so
and ask other people exactly the way you see me?
Do you see me as And say the words do
you see me as stupid? Like say the words and
sometimes coming out of your mouth you can recognize like
this is going on in my head, but when I
say it out loud, it feels it feels not great.
(45:39):
And so like I think that can help you to
kind of really think about them, why is that part
of my story? And then then thinking about renarrating that
story And we talk about that too, about these narrative
approaches in the book around like how to really rethink
the way you think about your successes, your accomplishments, the
things that you're doing, and the ways that you represent
them to yourself and to others. And to watch the
(46:01):
way that languaging is happening, because I do think that
the story you tell yourself is a very very important
story to the way that you show up in the
world and the things you think you can and can't do.
And so it makes total sense that when you you know,
I've seen that actually with my clients too, that can
be in middle of a really desperate, you know, anxiety
spiral and they'll watch on YouTube people talking about anxiety,
(46:24):
like and they just kind of fall into this like
basally they feel comforted by the stories because they feel
like other people have experienced it too, and I'm not alone.
And so I do think, like, you know, that's really
important to find that camaraderie and also to begin to
recognize that you can tell different stories, like you can
still be you can still be struggling and still tell
a different story about you know that.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
Struggle, Doctor Lisa, I love the idea of asking people
around you that you trust, is this how you see me?
It can be really vulnerable. But I think for me,
part of what hurts about imposter syndrome is this idea
that you have to face it alone in your brain
and it's constantly you against your brain and so to
(47:03):
reach out to your community. There's something so just relaxing
or easing about that.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Yeah, And it can be really scary because oftentimes you
are sharing this for the first time or for very
you know, for very you know it's unlimited ways, but
it is such a part of like dealing with the
shame of it, the difficulty of being stuck in your
head and getting out of your head and having people
around you that I consider like imposters and or confidants
(47:32):
that you can actually share the deep dark thoughts that
really are embarrassing you know, about what's going on internally
and why you're behaving in a certain way, and you
want people who can actually listen and hear it and
don't dismiss it and don't be like why are you
thinking that? Why are you feeling that? You just want
people to hear you and validated you. And sometimes it
takes training them. You have to train them to hear
(47:54):
you and to be like, I appreciate that thought that
I don't deserve it, but what I really need right
now is just a listening ear to just hear me
and just you know, validate what I'm saying, as like
you hear me, and you can you can support me
in that and hearing that I'm not going to stay
here forever, but I need to be here right.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
Now, you know, listening to hear and understand versus listening
to reply yes, yeah, yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
You just don't know. I was trying people to do
it because their instinct maybe to protect you in a
way that just makes you feel bad. But yeah, kind
of saying you shouldn't feel like that. It's like, yeah,
should or shouldn't isn't the question here? It is it's
what I am feeling right.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
The shoulds are the worst. Yes, I always do a
little rapid fire. So I have a few for you.
Which is the first? Is what is your proudest moment?
Speaker 2 (48:45):
Ooh, I think that's a hard one. Like I immediately
came to mind was the first book. And then right
after that thought came my kids giving birth to my kids?
Speaker 1 (48:55):
How old are they?
Speaker 2 (48:56):
They're twelve and fourteen?
Speaker 1 (48:58):
Amazing. If you weren't a psychologist, is there another career
path you would have tried?
Speaker 2 (49:04):
It would have been a hairstylist. That was easy. I
would have an a hairstylist. I tried to go to
hair school. Well, it was in my PhD program, but
they wouldn't accept me because they said, you have to
finish your PhD program my first before you can go.
Speaker 1 (49:15):
To First of all, in both careers, everybody tells you
their secrets, so I get it.
Speaker 2 (49:20):
Yes, it was actually quite a lot of synergy, but
it didn't happen.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
Someone sits in a chair and tells you their secrets. Okay,
something that you're not ashamed to admit you're not so
great at.
Speaker 2 (49:32):
Oh, I'm not very great with my hands. I have
terrible handwriting, and I'm, you know, very sloppy of a handwriter.
So I remember like people saying like I had a handwriting,
I had writing of a doctor, but not in their class.
I couldn't write like that in their class.
Speaker 1 (49:45):
But I got I do have doctor in front of
your name.
Speaker 2 (49:48):
It's okay, yeah, now I do.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
Yeah, Okay, what's something you're great at that we wouldn't know?
Speaker 2 (49:56):
I love crochet. I crochet a lot. I love to crochet.
It's like one of my favorite things that I do.
On the side is I just love it so much.
Speaker 1 (50:04):
That's super cool. Is there a book that you've read
that you think everybody should read, something that really impacted you.
Speaker 2 (50:13):
I think I would say the first ninety days. Okay,
it's a very good book about, like, you know, how
to approach kind of entering into a workplace proactively and
thinking about not only doing your job well, but also
the resources around you to kind of do your job well.
So I think that's a really strategic book to kind
(50:33):
of connect to.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
That's a great book. Starting at a new job is
just one of the worst feelings.
Speaker 2 (50:40):
Yeah, and it can be very triggering for imposter syndrome.
New job, new role can be like some of the
common triggers. So that book is a really good, practical
advice giving book about what you should be doing besides
like just doing your job well and like focusing on
being a hard worker, there's a lot of other components
that are very vital to thriving.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
Thank you for that. Okay, I do a pretty smart question,
So you let me know when to stop stop. Okay,
this is a hard one. Oh No, what do you
know for sure?
Speaker 2 (51:11):
Oh? I know for sure that love is the most
important thing about life, and like building the people that
you love around you, and you know, I think giving
love to the world in a lot of ways is
really important. And so like, you know, these books are
like my love letter to the world. So I think
like that, that's that's the most important thing I always
think about, is love. You know. Amazing.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
My last question is what's the smartest decision you've ever made?
Speaker 2 (51:37):
Marrying my husband that was easy, just the best. I mean,
he just he just brought like wonder and possibility and
risk and like all these really fun things I was
never really comfortable with into my life. You know, he's
really just just open the world.
Speaker 1 (51:55):
It's amazing and beautiful. Thank you for that. Okay, you
know what time it is. Today's a good day. To
have a good day. I'll see you next week.
No one has all the answers, but when we ask
the right questions, we get a little closer, closer to truths,
closer to each other, even closer to ourselves. I'm journalist
Danielle Robe and each week, my guests and I'd come
together to challenge the status quo and our own ways
of thinking by daring to ask what if, why not?
(00:28):
And who says? So? Come curious, dig deep, and join
the conversation. It's time to question everything. Hello, I hope
you're having a beautiful week. Mine is actually really good.
I just got back to la I was in New
York for three weeks for some work. I moderated a
(00:50):
session at the Clinton Global Initiative, which was so we were
going to think this is corny, but so soul fulfilling.
I got to speak to five people who are changing
the world, people who have started organizations like Miracle Messages.
This guy, Kevin f Adler is totally retooling our solution
(01:13):
to homelessness. And I got to interview Nila Ibrahimi, who
stood up to the Taliban in twenty twenty one, and
mong Say Doola, who escaped the genocide in me and
Mar and is the first from his refugee camp to
be enrolled in higher education. It was just really inspiring
(01:38):
to be in a room full of people who are doers,
who are being the change they want to see. And
then also while I was there, I filmed some pretty
smart episodes, and I filmed the Eve episode when I
was there, which was I have to tell you, that
was like one of my favorite episodes. She was so
real and so cool. I think, you know, sometimes celebrities
(02:02):
brains feel like they're broken. I know you're probably not
supposed to say that, but she's just she's like one
of us. Like, she was so normal and cool and
had so much to say. I love that episode, and
a few more are coming out. I can't say who yet,
but I filmed a few more episodes, and then I
(02:23):
was also filming The bright Side, which is the podcast
I do with Hello Sunshine. And actually while I was there,
I got a call that tamer And Hall wanted to
feature The bright Side on her show. So I was
supposed to come home like last Sunday and ended up
extending to do the show, which was great. The only
(02:44):
thing I was sad about was I bought one ticket
to the Thames Concert and I had to miss it,
which was so sad. I actually have never bought a
ticket by myself to a concert, and so that felt
like a big thing for me because I was like,
I really want to go see her so badly. I
don't want to try and figure out who will come
(03:06):
with me. I'm just going to go and enjoy the music.
But I didn't get to see her. I think she's
headed to Europe, so I don't know if I'm going
to catch her at this point, but hopefully at a
later date it'll be meant to be. And then I
came back and we jumped into Shina Way, which is
Hello Sunshine's annual event, and it is like, truly one
(03:27):
of my favorite weekends of the year. It feels like
the Olympics of womanhood. I just love being in that space.
Hello Sunshine has this way of curating the most lovely women,
lovely human beings, and so every room you walk into
is warm, and it's just so rare. If you have
(03:48):
the opportunity to go next year, if it's something that
you feel called to, I would really recommend it, and
I don't say that about a lot of events. It's
just really special and so funny too is our interview
today is on imposter syndrome. And I recorded this honestly
like two months ago. But our session that we did
(04:10):
for the bright Side at Shinaway was about imposter syndrome
and it made me realize that this is a topic
that's maybe even more important to cover than I once knew.
So let's get into it, and as always a quick reminder,
I am still zooming with people. So if you write
(04:30):
a review on the pod, which we've had so many
beautiful new ones because of the Apple spotlight on new
and noteworthy, So if you have written a new review,
or you send the episode to two friends and screenshot
it and then email me Danielle at beprettysmart dot com.
I pick one person to zoom with every single week,
and I've been zooming with you all, which is such
(04:53):
a highlight for me. Okay, so now it's really time
to jump into today's episode. Maya Angelo once said I
have written eleven books, but each time I think, uh oh,
they're going to find out now I've run a game
on everybody, and they're going to find me out that
feeling it's called imposter syndrome, and we're diving deep into
(05:15):
it today. Like I mentioned, this episode is one we've
been crafting for a while, and it feels so crucial
because during a brainstorm with the Pretty Smart team, someone
casually suggested imposter syndrome as a theme and the reaction
from everybody was instant. Every single person in the room, successful, confident,
(05:38):
regardless of their age, felt it deeply. It made me
realize that imposter syndrome is everywhere. It's that feeling of
not being good enough. Some people describe it as that
feeling of they're going to find you out. It actually
shows up for me differently. For me, it kind of
shows up as that feeling of planning a party and
(06:00):
wondering if anyone would show up, just feeling out of
place in the room, thinking how did I get in here?
And what's more is minority groups, whether racial, ethnic, gender based, religious,
or sexual orientation, often feel it at higher rates. An
expert once described the feeling is having like a toxic
best friend in your head saying you don't deserve this
(06:21):
or you just got lucky. What I found out recording
this episode that shocked me was seventy to eighty percent
of people experience it at some point in their lives.
Emma Watson, Tina Fey, Michelle Obama have all spoken publicly
about the feeling of imposter syndrome and talked about asking
themselves that question, Am I good enough? So for this,
(06:45):
I didn't just want to talk about the concept or
hear stories from people. I wanted the facts. Where is
this coming from? And how do we solve it? So
I went back and I read about the history or
the concept of imposter syndrome. Doctor Valeriejung is the co
founder of the Impostor Syndrome Institute, which breaks it down
into five main types. First is the perfectionist, who thinks
(07:09):
anything less than perfect is failure. I think that's me.
Second is the superhero, the person who feels like if
they aren't working harder than everyone, they're falling short. Third
is the expert who thinks they can't be considered credible
until they know everything about everything. For the natural genius,
(07:29):
the person who believes that if something doesn't come easy,
they must be a fraud. And five the soloist, someone
who feels asking for help means they're not capable. So,
because this is a concept, sometimes it can be hard
to distill down. So I'm going to give you a
few scenarios to see if any of this resonates. There's
something called the invitation regret. Imagine being invited to a
(07:52):
high level meeting or an event, and you walk in
and you look around at all the accomplished people in
the room, and suddenly, instead of feeling proud of your accomplishment,
you start wondering, did they invite me by mistake? Any
second now they'll realize I don't deserve to be here.
Then there's the performance anxiety. After receiving praise at work,
instead of feeling satisfaction, there's this nagging thought in the
(08:13):
back of your mind, h I just got lucky this time.
There's no way I can replicate this success again, and
you start doubting your abilities and you're kind of convinced
that the next project will expose you as a fraud,
you know. Then there's the who MEI. You're given a
promotion or award or some form of recognition, and while
everyone congratulates you, all you can think is this wasn't
(08:35):
because of my talent or skills. It's because I worked
really hard, or it's because I was in the right
place at the right time. And despite the external validation,
you feel unworthy or worried that everyone will soon realize
you're not as capable as they may think. So do
any of these sound familiar? Some of them do to me,
some of them don't. And I think that's the thing
(08:56):
about imposter syndrome. It shows up for everybody differently. One
thing I realized talking about this is that I didn't
feel this when I was younger and starting out. It's
kind of crept up on me as I've started being
invited into spaces that I'd always dreamt about. So here
are my big questions today. Is imposter syndrome something we
(09:18):
just have to live with or is there more to it?
Is there something we can be doing about it? And
is it even a bad thing? Does it just signify
that you are stretched to the enth of your abilities
and are pushing forward To help answer these questions and
a whole lot more and to navigate imposter syndrome. We
have the perfect guest today, doctor Lisa or A Austin.
(09:42):
She's a psychologist, executive coach, and one of the leading
voices on imposter syndrome. The reason that this episode has
taken me so long to execute is I was really
specific on who we invited on for this episode to
cover this topic because I think I think it can
be a landmind. It's confusing, and I also think that
(10:06):
the cultural portion of this is incredibly important. Imposter syndrome
is definitely exacerbated when you are underrepresented in your context,
and I didn't want to gloss over any of this.
And I'm just so grateful for our guest time today
and really excited because I feel like there is no
(10:27):
one better to navigate all of this than doctor Lisa
Orbe Austen. She's a psychologist, executive coach, and one of
the leading voices on imposter syndrome. You may have seen
her in Forbes, The New York Times, Good Morning America,
The Today Show. But you know what's so funny, despite
all of her success, she still grapples with imposter syndrome herself.
(10:49):
So enough babbling from me this episode. It is really
close to my heart, and I'm just so grateful for
doctor Orbe Austen's time. A lot of people pull at her,
and I'm just so grateful that she shared her time
with us. I personally learned so much. It's a conversation
I've been thinking about since we've had it, and that's
(11:09):
when I know it's a special one. So let's get
into it. So, Doctor Lisa, this podcast is nearly exclusively
for women, and so I hear the word imposter syndrome
brought up on Pretty Smart probably thirty to forty percent
(11:33):
of the interviews that I do. What exactly is imposter syndrome.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
So it's not shocking that you hear it a lot
because from the research, about seventy percent of people experience
imposter syndrome over their lifetime. So it's a really common experience.
And it's the experience when you are competent, capable, experienced, credentialed,
even expert, but yet haven't internalized that. And as a
result of not internalizing that, you tend to fear being
(12:01):
found out or found that you're a fraud. And often
for you, that doesn't necessarily mean being a fraud. It
means making a mistake, having human issues, having a failure,
all of those things can then feel like as if
you're being found out to be a fraud. In order
to compensate from that feeling of fraudulence, we often either
overwork or self sabotage to cope with it, and then
(12:22):
often get ourselves caught in situations where we are chronically
burnt out and feeling really run down from the experience
of having to constantly overwork or overfunction to kind of
prove that we belong somewhere.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
That's interesting because I don't think that I would have
tied it to burnout at all.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Oh, it's highly tied, and it's correlated to burnout anxiety depression.
But I think what it does is because it makes
you feel like you're not good enough, You are constantly
trying to prove that you are good enough, and often
that comes from a stance of overfunctioning and overworking.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
That makes a lot of sense that it affects women disproportionately.
Then I've always heard that imposter syndrome comes from being
underrepresented in your context, So it disproportionately doesn't.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Yeah, it doesn't come from that. We find in the
research that privileged and disadvantaged groups actually experience it at
the same rates. There's no significant differences, So that's a mythology.
And actually, up until about I would say last month,
I would have also said women don't experience it disproportionally
for men, but a meta analytics study came out this
(13:31):
month that took a look at all the research that's
happened in the last couple of decades and said that
they do find that there is an increase for women.
It doesn't mean that only women experience it, but there
is a slight and significant increase for women. So yes,
we do experience it. I can now say that officially
we do experience it in larger numbers, but that's based
on the research.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Yet I'm glad to hear that in a sort of
twisted way, because I hear women talk about it more
and that could be that men just don't want to
talk about what they're feeling inside. But also I've always
thought it it does affect women more so, so it's
interesting to hear that the research validates that.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Yeah. It just recently did it this month. And I
also do think like there's been an interesting research study
that looked at the differences in men and women who
experience imposter syndrome, and what they found was that women
tended to be counterphobic, so they actually face the thing
that they feared more often when they had imposter syndrome,
and as a result got triggered to experience imposter syndrome
(14:29):
more often where men were more interested in mastery and
getting involved in things. They already felt that they were
good enough, so they tended to affiliate with peers that
were less competent than they were so that they could
feel mastery. And so as a result, you're going to
get triggered less often when you feel better than everyone
and so like, it is sort of like a gendered
potential way of interacting with the world that potentially creates
(14:51):
this experience of experiencing it more.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
That's fascinating. How does it show up? How do you
recognize that it's happening? What signs do you notice? I
think that because it's become such a buzzy term that
people use it to describe a lot of different things.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
I think that's captured beautifully. Yes, it's come to mean
like almost a single thing, like self doubt. It is
not solely self doubt. It is what I consider a
constellation of things. So usually when people identify truly with
the experience of imposter syndrome, they are experiencing a variety
of things. For example, they are feeling perfectionistic and feeling
(15:29):
like they have to do everything right to get credit
for it. They are feeling the fraud experience. Needing to
prove themselves, They're often overvaluing others and undervaluing themselves. They
tend to kind of really catastrophize mistake making and make
it bigger than it needs to be. They tend to
underplay achievement making and having trouble internalizing successes and saying
things like well, it wasn't completely me. It was a
(15:51):
variety of people. So there's a variety and a constellation
of things going on. And when you can identify with
almost a significant amount of the constellation, I think that's
when you where you're experiencing imposter synome. It's not just
self doubt, and it isn't transient. Typically, typically people have
experienced it for long periods of time. Like so if
you've experienced in one situation, chances are and never experienced
(16:13):
it again, chances are probably was imposter them. It just
was discomfort anxiety. But when you have a usually the
people have a significant history of experiencing this over their
entire lifetime.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
So it's not something that can pop up based on
your environment.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Usually it comes from childhood, so usually it's been around
for a long time, and so you can recognize it
from your educational experiences, from the ways you interacted with peers,
the ways you interacted with authority figures. You can see
it usually throughout. So oftentimes people say, oh, my boss
gave me imposter syndrome. Highly unlikely. It may have triggered it.
You may have felt insecure or like not good enough
(16:52):
with them, but that doesn't necessarily mean they gave it
to you. Largely this comes from a very well grooved
early developmental pattern that is so interesting.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
So when you say early childhood, I've heard some things
that say that it's from the role that our parents
played in setting expectations to codependent family dynamics. Actually, what's
your take on how our upbringing affects us in a
sort of more zoomed in way.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Yeah, so I think it affects us in a variety
of ways. We're actually writing a whole new book about
parenting and imposter syndrome, which God has me thinking about
this in a variety of different ways. It's interesting, but
I think that largely, to capture it in a nutshell,
it is about the way our parents like see us,
the way they look at us. For example, we can
often get caught in very siloed roles when we have
(17:41):
imposter syndromes. So you were the intelligent one who things
came easy to or you were the one who was
hard working, who had to work hard for everything. So
you get caught in this idea where you're seeing it
in one dimension and you feel like, you know, people
don't really know the truth about me, and that you're
hiding some part of yourself. And really what you're experiencing
is the humanity of what it means to be you,
but people have not seen you in that full whole way,
(18:02):
so that piece can be a part of it. Codependent
dynamics can really push that people pleasing elements of imposter
syndrome where you feel like in order to be seen
as valuable or valued, you have to make other people
happy and you can't say no, and that often comes
from that codependent environment where saying no is going against
the family family grain, and so that can be Having
(18:24):
a narcissistic caregiver can also create it. So a caregiver
where you are like an extension of them, You aren't
your own person, and they see you as either fulfilling
that extension or not fulfilling that extension. You're punished when
you don't fulfill that extension and cut off. And so
those kinds of things can kind of create it. Issues
with conflict, not managing conflict well, and the family can
(18:45):
affect it, dealing how people deal with success and wins,
and also failures can affect it. So all of these
experiences that we're growing up with that are getting repeated
over and over and over again are laying the foundation
for how it appears in our adulthood.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Been wanting to do an episode on imposter syndrome for
over a year and it was so hard to find
the right guest for this topic. And I was so
excited that we finally found you because you are both
research based and anecdotally personally tied to this topic, which
(19:23):
I found just fascinating. You are an authority on imposter syndrome,
You've written books, you've given ted talks, and yet you
deal with it personally. And I saw that you said
you were totally triggered on the Today Show. What happened there?
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Yeah, well it was when you put out a book.
Ofttimes they ask you like what are your media sources
you want to be on, and like, you know, what
are your dream media sources, and it was one of
my dream media sources.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Who doesn't want to be on the Today Show.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
It wasn't uncommon, but I just didn't think it was
going to happen. And then when they reached out to me,
I kind of was like, Oh my god, it's happening.
And then I think like, as it was happening, I
was like, oh, why am me? Why do they choose
me either? And I because I'm in this field, I
know all these other qualified people on imposter syndrome. I
was like, why not them? And no, why do I
have a unique voice in here? And I really just
(20:15):
started to go back to old patterns. And I think
it was because I was in this moment which can
be very triggering, which I was highly visible, and that
was being seen as an authority on a huge platform,
and it felt really scary to make a mistake, to
missay something, and it just really got me flooded and
it went I went back to an old place. But
luckily I have worked on it so long that a
(20:36):
lot of people said it didn't look like that because
I was able to kind of both perform and feel
the feelings, you know, And so I think that and
then process the feelings. I think that's the thing. When
I had imposter syndrome a long time, you know, had
it more prevalently a long time ago, I couldn't process
the feelings. I felt I was broken inside and that
there was something deeply, deeply wrong with me that was unfixable.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
You know. I think also one of the reasons I
find you to be such an interesting narrator for this
is that you have sort of like expanded the You've
expanded the definition of what this is.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Like.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
I have read so many things that have this very
very narrow definition of what imposter syndrome is, and your
work has brought in really specific and research based examples
of it that I think people can grab onto.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Yeah, it's been really important to me because I lived
it myself. What I really wanted to do was help
everyday people get access to research that felt very far
away and very inaccessible about how to get over it,
like because it felt like for me it felt until
I found the research, until I got my own support,
I really felt like it was going to be there forever.
(21:52):
And now I know it doesn't have to be from
my own research and my experience, and it was like
I wanted to disseminate it to as many people as
I could because I knew how painful those experiences often were.
And so that's been like, my mission is really helping
to kind of give people accessibility to this information in
a way that's super easy to use, read build tools
(22:14):
like That's been really important to me.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Yes, and it often feels obtuse to me and your
work doesn't. You did a TED talk about the topic
called the imposter syndrome paradox. Why is it a paradox?
What does that mean to you?
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Yeah, because oftentimes when you talk about imposter and people
get offended, they're like, I'm not a postor. You're calling
someone an impost It means you're not an imposter. There's
actually a word for people who are imposters. There's a
term for it. It's called the Dunning Kruger effect. And
that's when people aren't experts, but they believe that they are.
And so there's a whole nother word for that. So
(22:50):
you are not an imposter. Likely if you experienced this,
I would say nine point nine times out of ten,
you are not an impostor at all. You've just set
a standard that is realistic to reach, and part of
learning how to kind of move from it is being
able to, you know, understand that you can be expert,
(23:11):
competent and make mistakes and be human and flub And
I think that's what I also think has been really
important to me as someone who speaks about this, is
to recognize my own mistakes, to recognize my own humanity,
to talk about like what it feels like for me
to be inside of it, so you know that I'm
not talking from on high. I actually have lived it.
(23:32):
And my TED talk really talked about one of the
most vulnerable moments of my career where imposter syndrome was
at its height. I remember feeling embarrassed when I would
talk to my family about what was going on at work,
and I would feel embarrassed about the way that they
responded to me. And they were trying to be helpful,
but they were just like, what is wrong with you?
Like why can't you lead this terrible situation? And I
(23:54):
just didn't feel like I deserved better, And you know,
so it was really important for me in the TED
talk to share to share that experience because I know
a lot of people have had really what feels like
super shameful experiences related to this, and I wanted to
help people be able to talk about them.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
If I can sort of expand on that moment, I like, basically,
you were talking about a toxic work environment, and part
of I think what I felt from you was that
you have this Ivy League education, you hold a doctor
it and there was this notable quote from your husband
at the time where he said, if you worked as
(24:30):
hard for yourself as you do for other people, you'd
be unstoppable. And so everyone around you was telling you
how capable you were, how smart you were, and can
you explain why that just didn't help?
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Yeah, because I didn't believe it. I believed it was
all a mistake. Like I believe I got led into
my doctor at the time. I believe I got luck
to my doctor pokem as an accident. I actually even
said that the first day I was there. Yeah, and
my mentor said to me, I was coming out of
the room after a day of orientation on the first
day and doctor programs, you're like one of five students,
And so I came out and I was like everyone
was older than me, had had some of them had
(25:06):
had already had master's multiple master's degrees, and I came
out and I said to my mentor, I said, he said,
how do you feel after the first day. I said,
I feel like I don't belong here, like it's been
a mistake. And he's like, well, I guess we're about
to find out. And so he didn't say you're not
it's not a mistake. He said, like, we're about to
find out if it was a mistake. So then it
made me think, well, then it could have been a
mistake because he was part of the committee as part
so it really just like created then I started overworking overfunction.
(25:29):
But I think that's the reason I never believed any
of it belonged to me. And I think that's been
the process I've had to go through, is really beginning
to accept and take in my credibility, my experience, my expertise,
Like I think you saying, you know earlier that I
am an expert in the field, like it used to
make me anxious. It used to make me feel like
that's not great, really, and now I can hold it,
(25:50):
and so I think it It really took my own
work on being able to internalize the things that had
led me to, you know, to those successes, but it
took it took a while.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Here is where I feel confused personally. I feel like
I go in and out of this. There are moments
where I feel really confident, and there are moments where
like if like similar to what you just said, if
I'm a guest on a podcast and someone reads this
really beautiful, sort of glowing intro, I want to hide
(26:20):
under my sheets, like I am like, oh my god,
and I get really sort of humble and meek almost yeah,
And I'm wondering if it's tied to self worth.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Yes, there is a direct correlation to self worth and
imposter syndrome. And I think that feeling of coming in
and out is going to always be there, right Like
you can see a you know, a quote unquote an
expert in the field and been in a lot of therapy,
and you know, if I'm a thrown person myself and
I still come in and out of it. The difference
today is that I know I can get out of it.
(26:54):
In the past, I thought it was me like I
thought this is who I am. I met actually an
imposter and I say this, and now I have to
prove something that I'm not. I don't believe that anymore.
I know that I am capable, and I sometimes have
to kind of deal with that residual feeling that comes up,
but I know how to deal with it and I
know how to get it back down in a pretty
expedient way. And I think that's the difference. Is like
(27:16):
people ask me all the time, like, you know, does
it ever go away? And I don't. I don't know,
it doesn't really, but the volume goes down on it
like where before it would could shatter an experience, Like
I had an experience early on and I was doing
my first one of my first podcasts and I got
freaked out in the podcast in almost one blank. And
that's how That's how it can actually affect your performance
(27:38):
and actually affect whether or not you're going to be
an expert. Is like really affecting you so badly that
you do start to underperform. And I think that's what
it makes me think about when you're talking about your story,
is like you're minimizing yourself and you're like trying to
be humble and you're down playing yourself in order to
kind of set level set expectations about how fabulous are
going to be instead of standing in that fabulous you know,
(28:00):
And I think that's what I'm trying to kind of
help people do a stand in their fabulousness. It's already there.
There's nothing to do.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Yes. I recently had this revelation about the difference between
self confidence and self worth because I've always felt like
a co I was a confident kid. I feel like
a confident person, and so I kind of ignored the
conversations about self worth and they are totally different.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
They are totally different.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
I have a self worth issue, and so I just
noticed it a few weeks ago. To be honest, it's
interesting that we're having this conversation now. But I do
find and it could be that I'm just talking to
more women, which is very possible. I do find this
to be more prevalent in successful women, women in general,
(28:46):
but definitely career women. Is there any data or research
to back that up?
Speaker 2 (28:52):
From my experience, and this is not from the data,
there's actually been no studies to look at this, but
from my experience in practicing for fifteen years and looking
at this topic all the time and experiencing it different
people's lives. There's two different cycles in imposter syndrome. The
first one is the overwork cycle. So when you get
triggered around your performance anxiety, you're not good enough, you
overwork an overfunction. I think those are the women who
(29:14):
probably become the super successful, super driven. And the second
cycle is self sabotage. And I think there's a lot
of people who experience imposter syndrome who actually do fail
because they set themselves up in a self sabotage cycle
through the performance anxiety. And so I have met many
a person who hasn't lived up to their quote unquote
potentially the things that they wanted to do because they
(29:37):
have to break the self sabotage behaviors that they have
associated with imposter syndrome. So I think there's a whole
subset of people who haven't gotten to where they've wanted to.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Because what is self sabotage? Because what does that look like?
I think of self sabotage like sort of I guess
the more extreme ideas of it, like you know, having
an issue with alcohol or not showing up on time.
What are sort of the implicit ways that we self sabat.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Yeah, So I think the most classic way is like
procrastination followed by intense bursts of overwork. So oftentimes, because
we are capable and competent, we're going to try to
get it done. But sometimes those intense bursts of work
work to get the thing done, and sometimes they aren't
enough because you did need that longer period of time
to deal with it. So in those cases you can
often fall short or not, and then that sort of
(30:23):
becomes a reinforcing notion that yes, I am a fraud,
I don't belong here. Meanwhile, it's really the self sabotage
issue that becomes, you know, the issue itself. And even
if you look at my own story, as I'm talking
about the toxic boss, and I am not doing anything
proactive for my search in the story, I am just
like sitting around complaining with you know, I was miserable,
(30:43):
so I have a right to complain, but I wasn't
doing anything to serve myself to move forward, and so
nothing was changing. And so as a result, there is
a possibility that you know, I think about my life
as a diverge in that moment, and there was a
possibility I could have stayed there for years and then
I would have underfunctioned in terms of my capability. I
would have been stuck in a job. I've been underpaid.
(31:05):
There's a lot of stories like this where people are underfunctioning,
underpaid because they can't help themselves in the ways that
they want to, because they can't break that self sabotage cycle.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
I was interested to see that you wrote that imposter
syndrome isn't just work related. I have only thought about
it in terms of work. How else does it show up?
How does it show up in our personal lives?
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Yeah, because imposter syndrome has such a performance related component
to it, right, you don't feel like you're performing at
whatever level. It's true of like any time you feel
like you are, you know, engaged in something that's being
you know, potentially evaluated, or that it matters in some
dynamic where there's some other person involved. So I've seen
it in people's parenting. I've seen it in people's relationships.
(31:50):
So because of all the other dynamics, right, because there's
issues around codependence, and there's issues around overfunctioning, all of
these dynamics often show up in other parts of them
of their lives. And what I found, interestingly enough in
my clinical work as I work with people on imposters
rome and eradicating it. We focus mostly in the beginning
on work, and so we deal with it and we
(32:11):
get through sort of like in my book the Nine
Steps and everything, and they begin to feel like they're
releasing themselves from imposters in rope, and then they sort
of start to look at their personal life and they're like,
oh my god, it's here too. And then they start
to then start to do the work around their personal
lives and it disentangling it from their personal lives as well,
which can be also really freeing but also really scary. Yeah,
(32:33):
because work is like we can change workplaces, it's really
harder to change personal lives. That work is a lot deeper.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Do you think it presents in romantic relationships?
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Almost certainly, you know, the idea of overfunctioning, that the
idea of not feeling good enough in the relationship, the
feeling that you know you're gonna be left, because I
think a lot of people worry, you know, when they're
having posters room about being fired. You know, it's like
it's the same concept relationship of being left. You know,
they're like, I have to work hard because you know
(33:03):
they're cutting people, and you know I'll be the one
who's cut if I don't, you know. And the same
kind of like a frenzy can be in a relationship
as well, you.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Know, is that if we're talking about sort of the archetypes,
that's maybe more for the anxious people.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Yeah, anxious, codependent people pleasing those kinds of dynamics that
are occurring in the impostition of just replicate in personal
because you eventually you developed this in the first place
from a personal relationship. This came from your early experiences,
so the fact that it would still it would be
still be there makes complete sense.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
I've definitely experienced that in romantic relationships and wasn't aware.
I was aware that I was doing it, but I
was unaware of where it was coming from. And yeah,
I had a therapist who said something that sort of
feels close to what you're saying, which is this feeling
might never go away, but just noticing it will help
(33:59):
you ease whatever is happening. And the noticing is what
I think is so important here.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Yes, I mean, I think that's critically important. So the
awareness can lead to behavior change, right, because if you
see it, you then feel like, do I really want
to do that next behavior again? Like might there be
something different that I might do this time that actually
might be healthier or helpful for me. And so I
do think that's the fundamental piece I'm really trying to
(34:27):
promote with people is really getting an education into the
idea of it, what it really is, and if you
do struggle with it, thinking about being aware in a
way that just changes even one thing, you know.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
So, I saw you post on Instagram some imposter syndrome
self love languages, which I loved reading about. And the
reason I loved reading about it was it made me
feel like this is not all doom and gloom. There
are ways, like you said, to notice it, to maybe
not heal it, but make it settle more. So, what
(34:59):
are some tactical things that we can do to show
ourselves a little love when we are feeling it, when
we do notice it.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Yeah, So I think like one of the things is
really learning how to recognize the compliments or relational and
that you know, when somebody gives you a compliment, they're
actually trying to extend and connect with you, and to
really receive that back without trying to dismiss it or
qualify it or make them, you know, disconnect from you,
because it's a disconnection when you're like, well, you know,
(35:28):
because then they're feeling like, oh god, I maybe I
shouldn't have said it that way, maybe you know. So
I think it's really important just accept it, and I
think really take it in and thank them. And what
I often tell people is like, actually jot it down.
Maybe you can't hear it right now, but maybe you
want to actually jot it down and write it down,
put it somewhere for you to read later, because part
of that is really working on in one of the
factors in terms of developing self esteem is really being
(35:52):
able to take in other people's perceptions of your work
or the things that you're doing. And so without doing that,
you're missing this element of self esteem building that you're getting.
So it is it is a love language that we
really reject, but we have to work on accepting. And
I do also think the other pieces of sort of
the things that we can do are really also appreciating
(36:12):
a small win, really being able to not have to
have some mind blowing win in order to feel like
you can celebrate yourself. But even the tiny wins, even
the wins with that are fraught with mistakes and issues
and all of those things being able to celebrate those
as well. And I think also for me, like there's
another love language that I learned along the way, which
is setting boundaries. Like I was always afraid of setting
(36:34):
boundaries and feeling like if some if I set a boundary,
someone wouldn't like me or love me anymore. And to
be honest, the people who love me the most accept
my boundaries and respect my boundaries. And so it's brought
me all kinds of better relationships in my life.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
You gave us three great ones. Thank you for that.
I think I've been calling this imposter syndrome because that's
what we know it as colloquially, but you call it
an impostor phenomenon. From here on out rebranding, we're calling
it a past phenomenon.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Phenomenon.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Yes, why is it a phenomenon?
Speaker 2 (37:07):
Because it's a it's a common occurrence, right, it's not
a And I think that that's how it was originally
termed by plants. And i'ms in like nineteen seventy eight
when they did the original paper that began to talk
about this, and this received a lot of criticism, but
I think people really don't put it in context and
really recognize that this was a very important finding in
the nineteen seventies that really began a conversation around how
(37:29):
do we shift this right? And I think that's so important,
And they wanted to suggest it's not a diagnosis. You
can't find it in the DSM, you can't find it
in the ICD, which are diagnostic manuals. It is you know,
something that is super common and can be experienced and
also can be changed. And so I think like it's
a really important distinction. I often say syndrome because nobody
(37:50):
knows it as phenomenon in the academic literature. If you're
searching academic literature, it's always known as phenomenon. Interesting, it's
never known as syndrome. Yeah. So I actually just was
part of an academic book that came out by the
American Psychological Association, so people are interested in this in
an academic way. This amazing book came out in the
(38:10):
spring called The impost Phenomenon. It was edited by Kevin Kopley,
who is one of the leading researchers and imposter phenomenon today,
and it's all these chapters about all these really interesting
ways in which imposter phenomenon appears in different arenas, formats
things you just need to consider. There's a whole chapter
on medicine and the ways it shows up in medicine,
(38:32):
and so it talks about the most recent research and
it's called the imposter phenomenon talks about these most recent
research articles. So it's really blossoming and I hope it continues.
That there's been a lot of backlash around it, sort
of suggesting that you're like oppressing people by telling them
they have it. And in my fifteen years of doing
this work, whether directly doing it or indirectly doing this
(38:54):
imposter phenomenon work, I haven't seen a single person who
felt oppressed by during this conversation. In essence, they felt
empowered to go do something about it. Oftentimes, the people
who told them that they might be experiencing really cared
about them and wanted to see them just take in
their full greatness, and weren't seeing them do that. And so, like,
(39:15):
I think that narrative needs to shift. That narrative is
deeply disturbing to me that this is not something we
need to be talking about and it's oppressive. There's no
research that suggests that it's just become a clickbait kind
of social conversation that I think is really dangerous.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Frankly, I agree, information always feels validating because otherwise you
think that it's outside of you, that it's out of
your control. It's just something that you said that you
have to live with for your whole life.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Yeah, and I've seen people. I've done talks and people
have come up to me and said that they they
have told people that they experienced imposter syndrome, and then
they've said that somebody said to them it doesn't exist,
and they felt so shamed and they felt like they
had to go back into hiding a around it. And
so I think that's what that conversation is doing. Its
(40:03):
shaming people who feel like this, which feels deeply disturbing
to me.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
Yes, Well said, you know, we talked a bit about gender,
and I learned from our conversation that it's less about
context and environment than I anticipated it was, that it's
it's more from childhood. But when you talk about these
symptoms or the way that it shows up, and you
(40:28):
talk about overwork and overperform I can't help but think
of how that disproportionately affects anybody in a minority group
at work. What's the link or the tie there.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
Yeah, So we call it the double impact of imposter syndrome.
So it's this experience when you know, for people who
are marginalized and experience like imposter them internally, like I'm
not good enough, I don't belong here, and then get
external communications from the environment that are discriminatory or bias
to that say, yeah, maybe you don't belong here, maybe
you're not good enough. Maybe you got in here because
(41:05):
of a diversity program, maybe you're a diversity higher. These
kinds of messages then reinforce imposter syndrome and make people
feel like it must be true I'm receiving messages from
the outside world that this is not the case, that
I don't actually belong here. And so what the research
shows is that especially for marginalized communities that having relationships
(41:26):
with people along the identity lines they feel most impacted
at similar levels and at senior levels becomes really important
to them in helping to deal with these external communications
around discrimination and bias. They need someplace to process it
so that they can realize this is discrimination and bias,
and here's the way to sategically deal with it and
(41:47):
don't take this in because internalizing those messages becomes really
then hard to dismantle the imposter syndrome because you then
feel it's coming from both directions.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
That seems really difficult when there's like a lack of
a pipe blind.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Yes and communities yes, which oftentimes means you have to
do it externally, like you have to look for professional
organizations externally that have you know, they may not have
internal but they often they may not understand your unique
circumstance of your organization, but they often understand the dynamics
they've been there, And you want to find somebody clearly
who gets it, who really is kind of mature in
(42:23):
their own racial and ethnic identity in order to kind
of like or you know, sexual identities, to be able
to kind of recognize bias. Somebody might also gaslight you
and say that that's not what happens and everyone gets
it from merit, and if that's the case, they're not
the right person to support you in this.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
My mind sort of spinning hearing you say this, because
I did a morning show in Chicago a few years ago,
and it was the first time that I had another
female co host. I'd always had male co hosts, and
talking to her was the most validating experience I had
ever had in my industry, because she made me feel
like I wasn't complaining, I wasn't crazy that she also
(43:00):
had these feelings, and so she wasn't my senior, she
was my peer. But even talking it through with her
was just so helpful and relaxing.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
That's exactly what I'm talking about, Taniel. Yeah, it becomes
really critically important for you to not feel crazy, to
feel like these are real experiences, but they don't belong
to you. You do not need to internalize them or
even combat them, like in a way that makes you
overfunction or overwork, Like you can actually just know that
they exist and feel like, how am I going to
handle this? Like I know it exists in the world,
(43:31):
in this my particular work world. How am I going
to strategically deal with it? And there are many ways.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
You know. One of the reasons I started Pretty Smart
was when I was going through probably the most difficult
time in my life. Nothing made me feel better. I mean,
I was doing therapy, I was working out, I was
trying all the things, and the one thing that gave
me any sort of reprieve was reading or hearing other
women's stories, and it brings me to that validation aspect
(43:58):
that you're talking about through out all of this. And
so when I think about this podcast, fundamentally, it's about
sharing women's stories, and imposter syndrome fundamentally is about how
we perceive ourselves and how we recall these stories that
we tell ourselves.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
Beautifully quit, Danielle, I love that so much. Yes, thank you.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
Yes, from your experience with this, is there a way
that we can step back and determine what is real
versus what is the story we are telling ourselves in
our heads.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
Yeah. We talk about that in book one, really about
sort of how to recognize like things like automatic negative
thoughts that may be coming up and being triggered for
you to think, you know, like I'm not good enough,
I don't belong here, and really recognizing that part of
your job with an automatic negative thought is to challenge it.
So there's a quote that says, you know, you are
not your thoughts, you are the observer of your thoughts
(44:56):
by Amy Ray. And I really am trying to training
people to you know, this is a very cognitive behavioral
technique that works very well with imposter syndrome to really
help you recognize, like where did that thought come from?
Where's the data behind that thought? Are you know, you
make a mistake and you're like, I'm so stupid, Like
where's the evidence that you're stupid? Like, you know, if
(45:17):
you can't find it, you can't say it, you know,
So it just can't be the fact that you're labeling
yourself without some kind of data or proof and so
and ask other people exactly the way you see me?
Do you see me as And say the words do
you see me as stupid? Like say the words and
sometimes coming out of your mouth you can recognize like
this is going on in my head, but when I
say it out loud, it feels it feels not great.
(45:39):
And so like I think that can help you to
kind of really think about them, why is that part
of my story? And then then thinking about renarrating that
story And we talk about that too, about these narrative
approaches in the book around like how to really rethink
the way you think about your successes, your accomplishments, the
things that you're doing, and the ways that you represent
them to yourself and to others. And to watch the
(46:01):
way that languaging is happening, because I do think that
the story you tell yourself is a very very important
story to the way that you show up in the
world and the things you think you can and can't do.
And so it makes total sense that when you you know,
I've seen that actually with my clients too, that can
be in middle of a really desperate, you know, anxiety
spiral and they'll watch on YouTube people talking about anxiety,
(46:24):
like and they just kind of fall into this like
basally they feel comforted by the stories because they feel
like other people have experienced it too, and I'm not alone.
And so I do think, like, you know, that's really
important to find that camaraderie and also to begin to
recognize that you can tell different stories, like you can
still be you can still be struggling and still tell
a different story about you know that.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
Struggle, Doctor Lisa, I love the idea of asking people
around you that you trust, is this how you see me?
It can be really vulnerable. But I think for me,
part of what hurts about imposter syndrome is this idea
that you have to face it alone in your brain
and it's constantly you against your brain and so to
(47:03):
reach out to your community. There's something so just relaxing
or easing about that.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Yeah, And it can be really scary because oftentimes you
are sharing this for the first time or for very
you know, for very you know it's unlimited ways, but
it is such a part of like dealing with the
shame of it, the difficulty of being stuck in your
head and getting out of your head and having people
around you that I consider like imposters and or confidants
(47:32):
that you can actually share the deep dark thoughts that
really are embarrassing you know, about what's going on internally
and why you're behaving in a certain way, and you
want people who can actually listen and hear it and
don't dismiss it and don't be like why are you
thinking that? Why are you feeling that? You just want
people to hear you and validated you. And sometimes it
takes training them. You have to train them to hear
(47:54):
you and to be like, I appreciate that thought that
I don't deserve it, but what I really need right
now is just a listening ear to just hear me
and just you know, validate what I'm saying, as like
you hear me, and you can you can support me
in that and hearing that I'm not going to stay
here forever, but I need to be here right.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
Now, you know, listening to hear and understand versus listening
to reply yes, yeah, yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
You just don't know. I was trying people to do
it because their instinct maybe to protect you in a
way that just makes you feel bad. But yeah, kind
of saying you shouldn't feel like that. It's like, yeah,
should or shouldn't isn't the question here? It is it's
what I am feeling right.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
The shoulds are the worst. Yes, I always do a
little rapid fire. So I have a few for you.
Which is the first? Is what is your proudest moment?
Speaker 2 (48:45):
Ooh, I think that's a hard one. Like I immediately
came to mind was the first book. And then right
after that thought came my kids giving birth to my kids?
Speaker 1 (48:55):
How old are they?
Speaker 2 (48:56):
They're twelve and fourteen?
Speaker 1 (48:58):
Amazing. If you weren't a psychologist, is there another career
path you would have tried?
Speaker 2 (49:04):
It would have been a hairstylist. That was easy. I
would have an a hairstylist. I tried to go to
hair school. Well, it was in my PhD program, but
they wouldn't accept me because they said, you have to
finish your PhD program my first before you can go.
Speaker 1 (49:15):
To First of all, in both careers, everybody tells you
their secrets, so I get it.
Speaker 2 (49:20):
Yes, it was actually quite a lot of synergy, but
it didn't happen.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
Someone sits in a chair and tells you their secrets. Okay,
something that you're not ashamed to admit you're not so
great at.
Speaker 2 (49:32):
Oh, I'm not very great with my hands. I have
terrible handwriting, and I'm, you know, very sloppy of a handwriter.
So I remember like people saying like I had a handwriting,
I had writing of a doctor, but not in their class.
I couldn't write like that in their class.
Speaker 1 (49:45):
But I got I do have doctor in front of
your name.
Speaker 2 (49:48):
It's okay, yeah, now I do.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
Yeah, Okay, what's something you're great at that we wouldn't know?
Speaker 2 (49:56):
I love crochet. I crochet a lot. I love to crochet.
It's like one of my favorite things that I do.
On the side is I just love it so much.
Speaker 1 (50:04):
That's super cool. Is there a book that you've read
that you think everybody should read, something that really impacted you.
Speaker 2 (50:13):
I think I would say the first ninety days. Okay,
it's a very good book about, like, you know, how
to approach kind of entering into a workplace proactively and
thinking about not only doing your job well, but also
the resources around you to kind of do your job well.
So I think that's a really strategic book to kind
(50:33):
of connect to.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
That's a great book. Starting at a new job is
just one of the worst feelings.
Speaker 2 (50:40):
Yeah, and it can be very triggering for imposter syndrome.
New job, new role can be like some of the
common triggers. So that book is a really good, practical
advice giving book about what you should be doing besides
like just doing your job well and like focusing on
being a hard worker, there's a lot of other components
that are very vital to thriving.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
Thank you for that. Okay, I do a pretty smart question,
So you let me know when to stop stop. Okay,
this is a hard one. Oh No, what do you
know for sure?
Speaker 2 (51:11):
Oh? I know for sure that love is the most
important thing about life, and like building the people that
you love around you, and you know, I think giving
love to the world in a lot of ways is
really important. And so like, you know, these books are
like my love letter to the world. So I think
like that, that's that's the most important thing I always
think about, is love. You know. Amazing.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
My last question is what's the smartest decision you've ever made?
Speaker 2 (51:37):
Marrying my husband that was easy, just the best. I mean,
he just he just brought like wonder and possibility and
risk and like all these really fun things I was
never really comfortable with into my life. You know, he's
really just just open the world.
Speaker 1 (51:55):
It's amazing and beautiful. Thank you for that. Okay, you
know what time it is. Today's a good day. To
have a good day. I'll see you next week.
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