Imposter Syndrome Part 1

Hello everyone, welcome to the Said in Therapy Podcast. Have you ever considered going to therapy and you ended up not going? My question is why? In my humble opinion, I believe everyone can benefit from therapy. In fact, I believe everybody should go at least once in their life.

My name is Iman Tohami, and I'm a psychologist. This podcast tells you all about everyday cases with everyday people who have everyday problems and difficulties and sometimes they carry around really deep wounds. These are their stories.

The imposter syndrome.

In the second part that I would like to release next week, I'm going to talk to two of my patients and I want to give them the opportunity to speak their truth and to share their own experience with the syndrome.

I'm doing this in two parts because I believe that first, for you to understand their story, you need to have a little bit of background information. So let's just jump into it. What is the imposter syndrome? Remember the DSM-5 and the ICD that I introduced in the last episode?

So for those who didn't have the chance to listen to it yet, the DSM is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, short DSM-5, because it's the fifth edition. And the ICD is the international classification of diseases that comes from the WHO.

Those are the handbooks that we use to diagnose mental illness. Imposter syndrome is not recognized by any of them, but both acknowledge low self-esteem and a sense of failure as associated symptoms of depression. So why is the imposter syndrome a thing now?

I have a theory myself. The demands have changed so drastically in the last two decades, and with the digital age, things are so quick and so fast-paced that people needed a label for how they are feeling. And to some extent, I agree with that.

First things first. What is the imposter syndrome and how is it defined? So I looked it up in my smart books, and one definition I liked was the imposter syndrome, a psychological circumstance in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments.

So far, so good. Let me tell you 70% of the people I treated with this specific syndrome come from the tech field. This does not mean that others are not affected by it. But generally speaking, the faster the industry and the required pace to keep up to date, the quicker the feeling of failure is established.

Now, if you have ever been to a conference, a professional development course, or a leadership event, you will have no doubt heard about imposter syndrome. It's a thing. Everybody is talking about it. Some say it's just simply the lack of confidence.

The other notion is, however, I feel like a fraud. But nobody clarifies what it means and how to deal with it. The imposter syndrome is a psychological term referring to a pattern of behavior where people doubt their own accomplishments, have internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud.

Not an actual disorder in a psychological sense, but it was actually defined by two psychologists, Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes, if I'm not mistaken. I'm sorry, found in 1978 that despite clear external evidence of accomplishments, people with imposter syndrome remained convinced that they don't deserve the success they have.

They call their success luck or good timing or totally dismiss themselves believing everybody else is better, more intelligent, or more competent. So I will tell you a little secret. We all suffer from the imposter syndrome. I'm not joking, we all do.

I have treated most senior staff and men who struggle with it day in and day out. And yes, it impacts women every day as well. You know how it goes. You get a promotion at work, and your inner narrative is, oh my God, am I really the right person for this?

Do I really deserve this? Or you are an entrepreneur and you have a great win, your business is doing really well, and you will simply say, wait a second, that was probably by sheer chance. Or you're getting ready to give a presentation and you secretly think that you're about to be found out how hopeless you really are.

Or you're sitting in a big meeting and you just know that the boss will walk in any minute, tap on your shoulder, and tell you, you know what, you're fired, you're not good enough, you don't deserve to sit here.

You may realize that I approached the topic with a little bit of sarcasm. There's a reason for that. I see myself and everything I just told you. When I started working, especially in the field of therapy, when I started treating people, I was always so afraid that what I'm doing is not good enough.

And whenever I finished a case successfully, I had a feeling that this was just my luck, that people basically healed themselves, and that I didn't do anything worthwhile helping them through their difficulties. And it didn't matter that majority of my cases were finished successfully, those cases that I had to refer to someone else, they left a mark in me.

And I really thought, okay, these were the cases where people realized that I was not good enough, or where I realized that I was not good enough. But sometimes it's very simple. Sometimes you are not equipped for the specific difficulty that you are treating in this very moment.

And it's just like when you're going to a doctor and they tell you you have they have to refer you to someone else. It took me a while to get there. So yeah, maybe the reality is here that I'm the third patient that I had to treat, because in a way I had to talk to myself a lot and to revisit all my accomplishments a lot to realize that I really deserve the place I am in

right now. To give you a little bit of insight, since I made myself the third patient of the imposter syndrome chapter, I want to share with you what happened when I first moved to Dubai to start my career in the Middle East.

I was working in an autism center that used the therapy form ABA, the applied behavior analysis. The therapy form has a lot of merits, but to be very honest with you, it wasn't and still is not my most favorite therapy form.

Working with children on the spectrum was challenging as is, but the way they literally trained children felt very unnatural to me and forced. Full disclosure, I wasn't very good at it. I didn't feel comfortable. I liked other therapy methods better.

But because of that, I felt like an imposter. There I was, fully trained, yet not good enough to work with children, or at least those children with that therapy form. I had my successes for sure, but it really didn't register with me.

It took me a couple of weeks and some other obstacles that I had to overcome to realize that I wanted to apply for other jobs, which I eventually did. What I want you to take from the story is this.

We all have our weaknesses. Sometimes it's okay to recognize where we lack. I could have made the decision to work on my ABA skills a bit more, but I decided otherwise. This didn't make me an imposter. It made me honest.

However, I still believe I could have done better. Looking back though, I think it was the best decision at the time. As you can see, the solution for snapping out of the thought process is not always staying or forcing it or rationalizing it.

Sometimes it's scanning the problems and finding solutions elsewhere. But hey, that doesn't mean that you should quit your job or drop out of university tomorrow. Okay? Now let's get into how you can combat the situation. For me, this is probably the most important point.

Failure is okay. It is how we learn and this is how we improve. Without failure, we are stuck. We don't learn when we do well. We don't learn when everything is positive. We learn best when we make mistakes.

Second, talk kindly to yourself. When you evaluate how you accomplish something and you notice that you cheated, well, asking for help or looking up something is not cheating. This is actually how we learn. It's called research. Third, acknowledge the expertise that you have.

You can't know everything, but if you specialize in one thing and you can do it well, you can easily call it expertise. For instance, I don't do well with grief. I reach my limits with this one, and sometimes I do refer to someone else.

Fourth, talk about it to your colleagues or friends in the same field. They know how you feel. They know what you're going through. I guarantee that. Also, if you can talk to a mentor or someone in a senior position, remember what I told you.

We all suffer from it. I'm sure they remember how you feel if they don't feel like that themselves. You know, you have to remember that if you're feeling like an imposter, that means you have some degree of success in your life.

And instead of focusing on that, I would suggest try to be grateful for everything you have accomplished. Being grateful, gratitude is such a powerful tool. Don't be crippled by the fear that you could be exposed. And as I told you, try to talk to someone.

And if you have done everything and you still feel like an imposter, maybe it could be beneficial to seek help from a mental health professional.

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed the episode so far. If you have any questions or suggestions, please don't hesitate to reach out. You can find me on social media Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. The handle is always @saidintherapy.