Edited by Sophia Savva
Have you ever started something new and felt an intense feeling of fear and anxiety? Has this fear ever led you to believe that you are a huge “fraud” that is going to get your incompetence exposed, despite being very intelligent and competent in reality? It sounds ridiculous, but if you have experienced this, you are not alone. What you have experienced is known as “imposter syndrome” or “imposter phenomenon”.
Despite being called a “syndrome”, imposter syndrome is not actually a documented mental illness, but simply a feeling of fear that seems to be common in many people. Some of the signs of imposter syndrome might be believing that you simply got lucky with your achievements, fear that you might be “exposed” as an incompetent person, feeling like you don’t deserve any of your success and rewards, and feeling constant self-doubt and discomfort about your accomplishments and criticism. It usually occurs when you undertake a huge responsibility or start something new, like a new job, a promotion, or even university.
The term “imposter phenomenon” was first coined in 1978, when Dr. Pauline R. Clance and Dr. Suzanne Imes investigated many high-achieving female students at Oberlin College who reported similar behaviours.
They were extremely accomplished, with amazing grades and test scores, stellar references, and were all-around achievers. However, they expressed anxiety about failing exams, and believed that they were a mistake, or that the college admissions committee accidentally accepted them.
Clance and Imes interviewed 150 such women and published their research in the paper “The Imposter Phenomenon in High Achieving Women: Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention” (1978). They both suggested that women were more predisposed to experiencing this, due to extreme societal burdens and its influence on their perception of themselves.
It was later revealed that imposter syndrome might actually be an experience beyond gender. According to Harvard psychologist Amy Cuddy, men also seem to experience this phenomenon, and usually to a greater effect, due to their burden of the hyper-masculine stereotype and their inability to thus share their feelings of self-doubt.
There is a large variety of people experiencing imposter syndrome, from graduate students and first-year undergrads, to even famous scientists and CEOs. Fun fact: even Albert Einstein is said to have experienced imposter syndrome!
Author Neil Gaiman believed that someone might come knocking on his door and tell him that he didn’t deserve to write and needed to get a “proper job”, and actress Jodie Foster thought that they might take away her Oscar (she also revealed that when she got accepted to Yale, she thought that she was “the dumbest person there”!).
So if you experience something like this, you now know that you are not alone. But how could you overcome this before it gets out of hand?
Well, first you can recognize that your thoughts are not based on reality and are just a consequence of imposter syndrome. Another huge tip that seems to be mentioned with imposter syndrome is growth mindset. Growth mindset basically means recognizing that you can expand and learn, and that your level of knowledge now is not permanent. One way to address imposter syndrome could be to change your thinking from a fixed mindset, which is assuming that if you don’t know something now, you will never know it, to a growth mindset. It’s the different between “I don’t know” and “I don’t know, but I can learn”. It can make a load of a difference.
The most important thing we can all do is talk about it! As mentioned before, imposter syndrome is not actually a syndrome, but a normal feeling of fear and anxiety that we all experience. Students can be especially susceptible to this, by comparing themselves to others and feeling like they are not as competent as their classmates. If you’re in first year, try talking to anyone else who has experienced or is experiencing the adventure that is your first year at university, like parents, professors, counselors, registrars, or even your new friends! You will probably find that it is not an uncommon experience, and you might also get a good support network to reassure you of your accomplishments and competence!
In conclusion, if you feel scared or nervous or un-deserving when in a new situation, you are not alone. No one made a mistake in choosing you, and you are definitely not a fraud. You are deserving of your new position, and you have many people who felt the same way to look up to!
Here are some resources to access if your anxiety gets out of hand:
- Health and Wellness Centre (https://www.studentlife.utoronto.ca/hwc/feeling) (this link has more resources to access)
- Good2Talk helpline: 1-866-925-5454
- Campus Police (http://campuspolice.utoronto.ca)
- Your College/Faculty Registrar
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