Anxiety often tricks us into believing that we are destined to encounter dangerous situations and situations. Imposter syndrome is a false and unhelpful belief that we are incompetent and therefore powerless to deal with life’s many complex situations. Combined, these can create a pernicious combination that convinces us of our incompetence in the face of risk.
Imagine this: You feel anxious about your performance at work, even though there is no solid evidence that your job is at risk or that your performance is substandard. There is evidence to the contrary, such as positive reinforcement from superiors and annual salary increases. This is disturbing. It’s the unfounded worries and fears that pervade safe situations. And that anxiety leads to beliefs that you can’t actually do the job, that you’re incompetent, or that you’re just fooling everyone by appearing competent. This is impostor syndrome: a false sense of confidence in one’s abilities. This example shows how one feeds the other.
When anxiety and impostor syndrome work together, they can lead to a general feeling that not only are you not safe, but you are not able to overcome that dangerous situation. In the example above, you might start assuming the worst about your job. This means you will definitely be fired and your livelihood will be at risk. None of this is true, but it feels like a certainty. That’s the strength of anxiety and impostor syndrome. How can I overcome this? Simply put, if you root out your anxiety, impostor syndrome will go away. This begins by addressing anxious thoughts and beliefs with rational and logical counter-thinking. When you’re worried about being fired, it’s better to think of it as, “I just received positive feedback on my annual review.” Going further, the words “I am incompetent” are countered with the words “I am good at my job and I know how to do it.”
Recognizing our abilities is not an easy task. We humans have a tendency to minimize our positive qualities and magnify our negative ones. This negativity bias can lead us to false beliefs about ourselves. If you do this often enough, it’s easy to see why we come to think of ourselves as incompetent impostors. Think for a moment about the many things, big and small, that you have accomplished in your life. Think about your successes as much as your setbacks. Remind yourself that you were worried about something and it turned out to be okay. Give yourself due credit for the time you spent navigating the complexities.
Once we accept that anxiety and impostor syndrome feed off each other, we also recognize that challenging one can have a natural alleviating effect on the other. When our world starts to feel safer, we start to feel more confident. Similarly, the stronger our faith in ourselves becomes, the less scary our world becomes.
