The Cure for Imposter Syndrome? It's Learning About Imposter Syndrome

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Do you feel imposter syndrome?

Trickier question: Do you feel imposter syndrome, but also feel embarrassed because imposter syndrome really should be for someone else?

I have a way to make you feel better — and it starts with understanding where imposter syndrome comes from.

I don't mean in the brain. I mean in popular culture.

Imposter syndrome has a long and strange history. People have spent decades arguing over exactly who it impacts, and why. And once you see this, you'll understand that there's no reason to be ashamed.

Ready to go back in time?

Let's start with where the concept began in 1978, with this paper in a scientific journal:

As you see by the title, “imposter syndrome” at first was believed to only impact “high achieving women.”

I wondered how this news was reported at the time, and that sent me down a newspaper archive rabbit hole. The concept seems to have taken a few years to reach national awareness, but then newspapers were hot on the story of this Scary New Thing Impacting Women!!!

Here’s a Canadian wire story from 1984, describing women who feel like "inept clods":

The Ottawa Citizen (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) May 1, 1984

Not long after, groups started running ads to offer support for “imposter syndrome”:

The Province (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) November 17, 1985

Imposter syndrome also made it to TV, squeezed in between a presidential assassin’s parents and summer jobs for teens:

The News and Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina) May 24, 1985

There was soon debate over whether imposter syndrome exists at all — or who else it might impact.

This clip below, from the local newspaper in Dayton, Ohio, in 1985, is pretty rich. A local man, who runs the Buick dealership that his dad built, can’t imagine how someone else might not feel at home in their success.

Dayton Daily News (Dayton, Ohio) March 3, 1985

But a healthier narrative was also developing.

I found a few pieces that broaden out from these “high achieving women” to acknowledge that imposter syndrome impacts many successful people. Here’s one 1985 story from Newhouse News Service:

Star-Gazette (Elmira, New York) December 5, 1985

…although, perhaps to be predicted, the image they run is of a woman, hand on face, looking very worried.

By 1993, the narrative had shifted more. That’s when one of the authors of the original 1978 paper coauthored a new paper, this time acknowledging that “imposter syndrome” could impact a far wider variety of people.

And where are we today?

Well, in one way, we're still talking about imposter syndrome as a thing that impacts select groups of people — like, for example, this 2021 Wall Street Journal story...

Wall Street Journal - August 14, 2021

But we also know that imposter syndrome is NOT special to millennials, or to women, or to men, or to anyone in particular. Let’s be very plain about it: You, me, and everyone will feel imposter syndrome. It is felt by people regardless of generation or gender. We should be open about that, because the more we realize that everyone feels it, the less we’ll feel trapped by our own individual experience of it.

I’m sure everyone has their own personal experience with this — but I’ll share one insightful moment of my own.

A few years ago, I had lunch with the CEO of IAC, a multi-billion-dollar company. I told him about how, when I first became a manager, I felt like I had no idea what I was doing and had to make things up as I went.

“Everyone does,” he replied.

In other words: This CEO, who operates a massive company and has thousands of employees, was telling me that he also once felt (and maybe still feels!) like he didn’t belong, and was just trying to figure it out.

I shared that story in Entrepreneur, and got some interesting replies. One came from an old friend who is (ahem) a “high achieving woman”, and she wrote: “I absolutely hate the idea of impostor syndrome. It’s a made-up term, not an actual diagnosis. It’s normal to feel anxious about trying something new. That just makes you self-aware and not a sociopath 😂”

That's a healthy perspective. People are complex, feelings are normal, many things can be true at the same time, and we do ourselves a disservice by trying to simplify complex things. Call it imposter syndrome or call it “self-aware and not a sociopath”, but the point is the same: We are normal. In fact, Entrepreneur last year ran a nice collection of 10 leaders sharing their experience with imposter syndrome.

Here's the bottom line:

You feel how other people feel.

Other people feel how you feel.

We often suffer alone together.

The more we can acknowledge that, and be at peace with it, and break the barriers down, then the more we can move forward together.

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Cover credit: Getty Images / mikkelwilliam