Imposter syndrome is extremely common and very unpleasant.  Characterised by a highly critical internal voice, feelings of fraudulence and the inability to appreciate your own successes, imposter syndrome is often accompanied by low level stress and anxiety.  

It’s entirely normal to feel an “imposter moment” when you step out of your comfort zone. But when it persists beyond this, “imposterism” can be really debilitating. It is often rooted in childhood events that led to you forming unhelpful subconscious beliefs that continue to pop up and hold you back.

Louise (not her real name) is a highly respected and over-achieving director. But she didn’t believe in herself.  She thought she got the job only because of a lack of other decent candidates, and she constantly felt out of her depth and anxious.  She would work hard on strategy and direction but when it came to communicating her ideas she would clam up and often delegate that task to others. 

When I work with clients on overcoming imposter syndrome, my aim is to help them uncover the root cause of their identity-level belief that they aren’t good enough or that their success isn’t real.  Because it’s from the sense of our own identity that everything else flows – our beliefs, our capabilities, our performance and how we feel.  And it’s surprisingly easy to make that identity level shift when you work with the subconscious.

So with Louise, we quickly uncovered the underlying cause of her fraudulent feelings.   When she was at secondary school, she was badly bullied over a number of years.  Louise’s experience therefore of being the centre of attention, at an impressionable age, was very negative: humiliating, demeaning, painful. So her subconscious mind, whose role it is to protect us, decided it was not safe for her to be the centre of attention.  There was a belief, at a deep level, that when all eyes are on her, it’s a painful, nasty experience – something to be avoided at all costs.  So no wonder, years later, something within her was holding her back from stepping into the limelight at work.  

And there was something else going on too: as a young child, Louise had on occasion exaggerated her successes.  When she’d come 6th in a race, she told her parents she came 2nd.  When she’d come in the top 10 in the year, she made out it was top 5.  So when she was getting praised for these achievements, she knew it wasn’t real and she felt a fake.  And this too became an embedded pattern: she found it impossible to accept praise as an adult, even when that praise was entirely deserved.  And getting positive feedback made her feel even more of a fraud. 

Once we uncover what’s going on at the subconscious level, I use various techniques to help my clients clear away those blockers and line up more resourceful states and responses.  And in Louise’s case, in the week after the session, she told me she did an all-staff presentation without any hesitation and was starting to feel really good about her role as a director.  Once you make the right shift at the subconscious level, and upgrade your sense of identity, everything else falls into place.