I have a confession to make…I suffer from imposter syndrome, big time. I know that I’ve accomplished a lot in my life — graduated from great schools, landed into a hot career field, and placed myself firmly in the middle class. But somehow, sometimes, it all still feels like a fluke. And this feeling that I’ve somehow faked my way into my successes is inevitably followed by doubt, stress and anxiety. Lucky for me, when I’m at a point where these feelings are dominating my psyche, I try to frame my doubts as another exercise in stepping out of my comfort zone.

I’ve talked before about the importance of pushing the boundaries of one’s comfort zone. It’s that space where we know we are safe, capable, and surrounded by the familiar. But unfortunately those feelings can lead to complacency and missed opportunities. So now, when I find myself experiencing imposter syndrome, I center the situation on the opportunity to push my boundaries, rather than how capable or deserving I am of working on or achieving an outcome.

A Personal Story

This year I was selected to take the lead on analytics for a special project. I was honored, of course, but I was also a bit terrified. Why did leadership think I was deserving or capable enough for this task? It was a domain in which I had little to no experience, with data that I had never worked with and didn’t know where to find. I was out of my depth. But I resolved to try to do whatever needed to be done to knock my task out of the park  (which I’ve read is a common response of those who suffer from imposter syndrome).

I’m not going to lie, the first few weeks were rough. I faced bureaucratic and technical obstacles that stalled my progress. And now that I’ve gone through those obstacles I know that I should have handled some of them differently. Those roadblocks put huge pressure on my deadlines and I responded by working obscenely long hours and placing a lot of stress on myself to provide the most accurate and useful results. Like so many people who go through the imposter syndrome cycle, once my work was done I received praise and validation that the work was good and useful — my stress and fears had been unwarranted.

Imposter Syndrome Cycle

About Imposter Syndrome

But that is what imposter syndrome is. I felt that I had to prove that I belonged in the role, rather than accepting that my prior work and skills indicated that I was more than capable of doing the job, and that this would be an opportunity to grow new skills and knowledge. This is the inherent battle between imposter syndrome (IS) and using pushing the boundaries of your comfort zone as a paradigm for success.

I’ve read that imposter syndrome is experienced by a majority of people at least once in their lifetimes, and that high achievers are particularly affected. Because the driving characteristic of IS is that the afflicted does not believe that they are capable or deserving enough to be in a certain position, space, or opportunity, they tend to work hard to prove that they’re not the fraud that they believe themselves to be. And so it was the case for me on the special project.

I wish that I could say that this is not a factor, but that feeling of needing to prove that I  belong in certain spaces, I believe, is exacerbated by being the only black data scientist and one of just a few women data scientists on the team. If the world is sending you signals that people like you don’t inhabit certain spaces and roles, it’s not a huge leap to begin to believe that you don’t belong in those spaces. So what do we do with that?

Reframing

The discourse that is currently out there suggests that acknowledging your feelings, talking to others, and reflecting on the things that you do well are helpful techniques to combat the doubts and stress that go along with imposter syndrome. The idea is that although people may never get rid of IS, by being more thoughtful and open about it, one can give themselves perspective that can help ease their doubts and other negative symptoms.

I believe that so many people suffer from imposter syndrome because it’s normal to have doubts when you’re embarking on something new. It’s normal to have doubts when you are representing an underrepresented group in a certain space or position. And it’s normal for these doubts to cause some anxiety. When we begin to frame these things as normal symptoms of expanding the boundaries of our comfort zones, we can begin to focus less on feeling fraudulent or undeserving, thus removing the skepticism of the kudos we receive and reducing the torturous over-preparation aspects the IS cycle. We can acknowledge that, yes, perhaps we are out of our depth; but you can only swim to new depths by venturing out further than you had gone before.

Have you ever experienced imposter syndrome? How did you handle it? Please leave a comment and share if you thought this was helpful.