Imposter syndrome has historically been viewed from a pathologizing lens that is not trauma-informed. I wrote this article to address why I believe that viewing imposter syndrome as "inaccurate thinking" is a red herring.

Excerpts:

When someone has received hundreds of thousands of corrective/negative comments by their 20s, I would propose that most people, neurotypical or otherwise, will have internalized some forms of nervous system distress and cognitive distortion. That seems normal to me, that our bodies and brains react in defensive ways in order to survive psychologically unsafe environments. I see no benefit to pathologizing people who have experienced this form of disprivilege or promoting the idea that we need to “fix” what is a completely normal physiological adaptation, a part of how our bodies fundamentally operate.

Even the idea that “everyone thinks I’m competent but they’re mistaken and when they find out they’ll hate me and reject me” can come from some real basis in past experience. This has never happened to Bob, so when Alice shares this with him, Bob thinks Alice is out of touch with reality. However, this archetypal scenario has played out at least once, if not several times in Alice’s life.

[...] when people take chaotic/creative/unconventional paths to success, there are no efficient ways to reduce epistemic uncertainty about one’s capabilities (even more so in a comparative sense). Self-doubt is natural and logical. Cognitive strategies miss the point and do not lead to resolution or acceptance.

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Self-doubt is natural and logical.

 

Maybe in our achievement-driven, how-are-you-contributing-to-unrelenless-growth society. Indigenous cultures don't exhibit self-doubt. Neither do Buddhists. I just talked about this on my podcast.
 

In a meeting between the Dalai Lama and a group of American psychologists in 1990, one of the psychologists brought up the concept of negative self-talk. Since there are no words in Tibetan that translate into low self-esteem and self-loathing, it took quite a long time for the psychologists to convey what they meant. But this wasn’t a translation problem. It was a problem of conceptualization. Self-loathing? People do that? The Dalai Lama was incredulous. Once the Dalai Lama understood what they were saying, he turned to the Tibetan monks in the room, and after explaining what the psychologists were suggesting, he asked, “How many of you have experienced this low self-esteem, self-contempt, or self-loathing?”

Complete silence.

Here was a psychological state of mind so ubiquitous in our culture that everyone experiences it from time to time, if not every single day. Yet the Tibetans—trained since childhood in the art of a mental exercise they call meditation—acted like they were being told about some alien life form. The Dalai Lama turned back to the psychologists and asked a simple question:

“Why would you ever let your mind get like this?”

Excerpt from The Awakened Ape

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