Common characteristics of Imposter Syndrome.  

How many of these do you recognize within yourself?

• Self-doubt, especially fear that you won’t live up to expectations
• Denial of your skills and competence, or the inability to realistically assess them
• Responding to those praising your skills and accomplishments with phrases like, “I’m nothing special. Anyone could do this!”
• Attributing external factors or “luck” as the reason for your (apparent!) success
• Denial of your successes, often by minimizing your performance or outcomes
• Fear that you will be “found out to be a fraud” and that revelation will destroy you
• Applying excessive amounts of energy toward over-achievement because if you produce enough great results, they won’t notice you have no idea what you’re doing.
• Setting extremely high expectations for yourself and doing everything you can to achieve those goals all the while anticipating you will fail miserably because you’re really not as competent as you appear.
• Starting to sabotage your own success as you come closer and closer to achieving success because you’re afraid they’ll find out you’re a fraud once you achieve the goal, and that would be humiliating.

Here’s one woman’s description of her experience that I found in the comments over at impostorsyndrome.com.

I stumbled on the term “Impostor Syndrome” when reading the bio of a well known female representative from New York.  …  I decided to look up the term and discovered I had stumbled on the name of something that has plagued me all my 45 years.

I’m constantly seeking validation from others and always doubt my abilities despite my achievements, to the consternation of my husband and close family.

I’ve worked for the same organization for 20 years, rising to a seat on the board and I’m considering moving on because my mind is dead here. But I’m terrified of moving in case someone finds out I’m not as good as my experience shows I am. I had to create a resume for the first time in 15 years and as terrifying as it was, I was shocked to see all I had achieved. But it didn’t stop me from feeling like a fraud.

Imposter syndrome is very common.  In their 2011 publication, The Imposter Phenomenon, Sakulku and Alexander indicated that it is estimated that 70% of people will experience at least one episode of imposter syndrome in their lives.

Your biggest take-away from this should be that you’re not alone!  While that may not “solve the problem” right now, knowing that most others will face it at one time or another also, could make it easier to start talking about with others.  Normalizing a “problem” is the first step to starting to explore it so you can understand it and begin to address it.

In tomorrows post I’ll be digging in to Imposter Syndrome more deeply and getting us ready to start addressing it with EFT Tapping.

The best thing you can do right now to prepare yourself for the Imposter Syndrome breakthrough is to watch the EFT Quick Start Video Learning System here.

Ref:
Sakulku J, Alexander J. The imposter phenomenon. International Journal of Behavioral Science. 2011;6(1):73-92