It is a doubt that leaves a shadow over the greatest successes: what if all this was not deserved? What if it was just a stroke of luck? What if it was not so impressive, and even a little mediocre? The “impostor syndrome” spares no feat, and manifests itself in those who experience it by a deep conviction not to deserve their success, leading to a feeling of fraud and a constant fear of being unmasked.
Students, professionals at the start of their career or at the height of their glory, retirees … Anyone can be affected by this sickly doubt, and women are, without surprise and like racialized people, the first victims. The first works on the subject, carried out by psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Ament Imes, who invented the expression of “impostor syndrome” in 1978, focused on women.
“We have worked (…) with more than 150 women who have brilliantly succeeded – women with a doctorate in various specialties, professionals respected in their field or students recognized for their academic excellence. However, despite their diplomas, their school distinctions, their excellent results with standardized tests, praise and professional recognition of their colleagues and respected authorities, these women do not feel a feeling of success. They consider themselves “impostants”. ”
According to a recent study published in Naturemental health would constitute a determining factor in this feeling of insecurity:
“People with anxiety and depression tend to present a lack of persistent self -confidence. Their biased judgment on their own capacities can lead them to avoid new tasks, even when they can accomplish them ”explains Sucharit Katyal, one of the authors of the study, postdoctor in the department of psychology at the University of Copenhagen.
How to fight this syndrome?
Doubt is not inevitable, however. As Katyal notes, it is possible to fight against this “Metacognitive distortion”in particular by focusing more on the materiality of the successful successes and the recognition they can arouse in others, than on the internal insecurity that can be felt.
“Some people need help to take their own judgments with tweezers; Otherwise, they will keep a distorted and negative vision of their own capacities ”estimates the researcher. For the psychologist Lisa Orbé-Austin, learning to accept the compliments made by others also makes it possible to lighten these doubts: “A compliment is relational. We lose this relational moment when someone tells us that we have done a good job, and that we do not accept it. ”
Easier to say than to do: in his autobiography, published posthumously, Agatha Christie, who remains to date and by far the most translated author in the world, still wrote: “In fact, and I think this is the case for many authors if not all, the impression of making myself pass for what I am not, because even today, I do not feel really a writer. I always feel in the depths of me this absolute conviction that I play a role, that I affect to be a writer. ”
