Creating a Personalized Coping Toolkit for Imposter Syndrome

It is rather frequent to find very successful individuals who do not celebrate their success, but who instead fret over whether they deserved to be successful and whether their success was the result of good luck rather than their efforts.

These exceptionally accomplished individuals are in no way helped by the unflattering term “impostor syndrome”. This article aims to explain what the syndrome is and how to deal with it by addressing its thought patterns and emotional toll. To keep it manageable, I’ve divided this article’s content into three sections.

To understand and confront Imposter Syndrome, the solutions at hand must be more than just temporary and superficial; they need to be deep and personalized and they need to get at the heart of what makes each person’s manifestation of this condition unique. It doesn’t work to just try and smooth over it with an “I am enough!” mantra (though that can be part of it), or a “reframe your thinking” kind of approach (also part of it), or some other universally applicable bandage that might work for one or two people but not for everyone. Instead of that, I think it’s much more useful to recognize some different, not so tasty, flavors of imposter syndrome.

After that, I’ll mention a few different ways that (we hope) will help you to be more resilient against it—so that no matter what circumstances you find yourself in, you’ll be able to keep on keeping on without letting these insidious doubts obstruct your path to your self-defined success.

The approach here is not just to help with the on-the-spot hiccups that may arise and cause one to tumble but to also set a trajectory for a clearer path in the future. Emerging from a hiccup or a stall, one should use the moment to figure out how it happened, and if possible, how not to let it happen again, so one can reemerge and keep on keeping on.

Understanding Imposter Syndrome

Imposter syndrome is a belief system where people doubt their achievements and possess an almost haunting fear of being outed as a “fraud.” These individuals feel that they are not as competent as those around them and that their successes have been won under pretenses (Clance & Imes, 1978).

Many people brush off self-doubt as part of a natural process. But when self-doubt becomes a part of your identity—for some, it even has the potential to become a means through which someone sees the world—it can thwart ambition, undermine confidence, and lead to anxiety and depression (Rohrmann et al., 2016).

Signs and Symptoms of Imposter Syndrome

Acknowledging that one has the syndrome can be the most significant step to take toward effectively managing it. The common symptoms include a “not good enough” mentality, an inability to internalize successes, fear of being found out, and a sense that one’s success is due to luck or the timing of events rather than the successful individual’s hard work and determination.

The experience of being a “success” without any internal understanding of how or why one succeeded is a much more common experience than many might realize, indeed so much so that it has its own syndrome (hence this website). 

The Psychology Behind Imposter Syndrome

Imposter syndrome has many root causes, but they are all well-mapped and understood. Some of the causes involve societal forces. Women and people of color, for instance, are much more likely to feel like frauds than white men (Majer, 2009). Why? Because our society often sends the message that we are not supposed to occupy the spaces that we do. Some of the causes of imposter syndrome also have to do with families—parental pressure to achieve and sibling dynamics that set ridiculously high (and often unfair) standards for success. Finally, some forces at work in our lives amplify the “feeling like a fraud” phenomenon—workplaces that encourage unhealthy competition, for example, or workplaces that simply feel unsafe.

All of this is true across occupational lines and is also true for people at all levels of accomplishment.

Combating impostor syndrome not only requires us to recognize its presence; it urges us to understand how it affects various aspects of our lives—both professionally and personally. While we know that some individuals are more susceptible to feeling like impostors than others, we do not fully understand why these feelings accompany certain people and not others. What we do know is that when we feel like impostors, our brains are not operating under the basic premise of rational self-assessment; they are not working in a space where we have the license to think and feel that we are competent individuals who have earned what we have achieved.

The Importance of a Personalized Approach

When combating imposter syndrome, it is not enough merely to select coping mechanisms; one must also personalize them. That is because imposter syndrome is not a cookie-cutter phenomenon. Its most apparent manifestation—that is, the paradox of feeling intensely accomplished while simultaneously believing oneself to be a fraud—might look similar across individuals. Yet imposter syndrome runs far deeper than this surface appearance.

It tends to strike people with certain kinds of identities (typically, those held by many of us in academia). It subsists on specific life events (like getting a graduate degree or landing a particular job) and contexts (like holding a particular career and moving within it). Imposter syndrome even has its day-to-day rhythms, with some folks feeling more fraudulent on some days than others, usually when pressure to complete a task is increased. 

Recognizing Your Imposter Triggers

To combat the sensation of being a fraud that is characteristic of imposter syndrome, it is crucial to understand and recognize your imposter triggers (Clark et al., 2014). Identifying what sets off these feelings can help you strategically apply coping mechanisms, with the aim of defusing the “bomb” moments in which you might feel like a total fake. Imposter triggers can differ widely from person to person but often occur when we have to display our capabilities—like in front of an audience, during a meeting, or when receiving feedback.

Recognizing your imposter triggers is only possible with the presence of a mindful state and the act of self-reflection. It requires paying close attention to the internal dialogue you have with yourself, during moments that make you feel less than, especially as it relates to your purported talents and abilities (Beck & Beck, 2011). It takes a good amount of meditation, almost, to truly observe oneself in those moments when a person feels like an impostor. It’s easy enough to see the bright, shiny reasons why one might feel doubtful (giving a talk to an audience, for instance), but what’s not so clear is why one’s brain decides, in certain situations, to serve up the self-doubt platter.

For some people, being praised can trigger a “you must be joking” response. For others, it’s all about contexts where they have to show what they’re worth. Coping mechanisms can be as varied and as personalized as the reasons someone feels like an impostor.

The triggers are also closely tied to our expectations of ourselves and tallies we keep in our heads of what others have achieved. In therapy, I was encouraged by my therapist to keep a log of incidents when I felt like a fake and to analyze what was going on in my head at the time. The exercise is not about coming up with a definitive answer for why we feel the way we do but rather about arriving at a greater understanding of ourselves.

When you allow these dialogue moments to happen unchecked, you eventually conclude that you must be an imposter—because that’s what the voice inside your head is telling you.

Moreover, monitoring your triggers can provide insight into the root causes of your imposter syndrome, allowing you to deal with them more directly and efficiently. Some people find that the steadfast reminder of their worth, offered by a friend in even the most timid way, goes a long way toward restoring confidence.

Others have found that mentors who share their own stories of doubt can help them regain their perspective. For some, it might even be straightforward cognitive therapy that gets them up and running again (Beck & Beck, 2011). The key thing is that a plan and a support network can make the difference between a framework and a breakdown.

Taking a proactive approach to pinpointing and managing the triggers of imposter syndrome can allow individuals to maintain their mindfulness and stay in the moment. This approach makes it possible to disperse the fog of self-doubt that accompanies imposter feelings and provides a clear path to maintaining the necessary mindfulness for optimal functioning. When individuals can see clearly, they can also lead clearly.

Building the Foundation

It is of utmost importance to develop a strong self of self-compassion and validation  (Wei et al., 2020). When you don’t feel like you earned your place in the world, it is easy to look to self-deprecating thoughts as a reason for your worthlessness. Self-compassion—kindness toward yourself in the face of failure or inadequacy—helps in countering that tendency. It allows you to give it a rest; it allows you to stop shaming yourself for not being perfect or for not doing everything at 100 percent capacity.

After self-compassion, is validation. Unlike self-compassion, which is all about the messiness of life and learning to treat yourself kindly in that space, validation is about going on the offense. It is about countering thoughts that you are not good enough or that you don’t belong in your space (Beck & Beck, 2011).

To nurture self-compassion, people can begin by being mindful, a practice that helps individuals become more aware of the types of feelings and thoughts they have in the present moment. When someone is being mindful, they are more attuned to their “emotional landscape” at any given time.

This might make it easier for them to recognize the kinds of self-critical thoughts they have without suppressing those unpleasant feelings (which is often not very helpful even though we sometimes tend to do it in our efforts to be more positive). Meditation, deep breathing, and even walking mindfully can help us in this regard (Lewinbuk & Grady, 2023). When we’re being kind to ourselves, we might also be sort of “sitting” with the kinds of feelings that are making us a little bit or a lot angsty right now. Just remember that when you are mindful of all your feelings, you can also recognize the positive ones.

Moreover, it’s extremely important to set not just goals but also realistic goals in this process. Trying to attain a type of perfectionism that is essentially unperfectionable can make one’s experience with imposterism worse (Cusak et al., 2013). This is because perfectionism creates a situation in which there are two different levels of expectation: one level that is true to the individual’s abilities and one that is related to the situation being ideal and not at all aspirational.

By breaking things down and being more process-oriented, the individual’s experience becomes much more meaningful and much less “torturous.”

Coping Mechanisms for Imposter Phenomenon

When dealing with imposter syndrome, it’s important to have a range of coping mechanisms to draw from—ones that suit your individual experiences and emotional requirements. Starting off with journaling can be extremely beneficial. It allows you to externalize the fears and self-doubts that you typically keep bottled up.

You may think that journaling is a step back in terms of your identity as a revered intellectual, but don’t underestimate its power. It can be a path to real freedom and, in the hands of a pathologized person, a means of personal transformation. You should also know it has evidence-based efficacy in treating various mental disorders (Lent, 2009). So you might as well treat yourself to this exercise without worrying about being a public figure.

An additional potent method is to use positive affirmations and visualization techniques. They can be tailored to counteract the particular self-doubts of a person experiencing imposter syndrome.

For instance, someone who feels unworthy of their talent and success might say to themselves, “I am talented and deserving of all the good things in my life.” Pairing this affirmation with a potent visualization, like imagining oneself confidently achieving a goal or receiving a much-deserved round of applause, can help someone overcome the imposter mindset.

• Journaling:  When you keep track of the times you felt like an imposter but managed to succeed, you begin to accumulate proof that counteracts the beliefs that fuel your imposter syndrome.
• Affirmations:  Continually prompting yourself to remember the distinctive abilities, achievements, and worth you possess can, over time, alter the internal story you tell yourself from a doubtful one to a confident one.
• Visualization techniques:  Thinking of yourself as someone who has achieved their goals can be a potent motivator and can reinforce the belief that you are deserving of success and not an imposter.

Finally, it is extremely helpful to set achievable goals and to acknowledge small successes when you have them. Imposter syndrome often stems from the pressure we feel to accomplish great things. But if we break down those things into smaller tasks, they become more manageable and offer a kind of pseudo-workout. Recognizing these milestones is vital for building self-efficacy and reminding oneself of the progress made:

• Divide your projects or ambitions into smaller, manageable tasks that are easy to direct your focus toward.
• When you complete a task, celebrate that accomplishment as part of the project or goal you are working toward.
• Remind yourself regularly of the successes and of what you are capable of achieving.

Making use of these various coping strategies for the feeling of being an imposter can bring about really important changes in how one views oneself. These mechanisms can help lessen the hold that imposter feelings have on a person and improve their overall mental health. Why do these strategies work? Well, they encourage a person to not only live with their self-doubts but to also understand and even embrace them as part of being a human.

Leveraging External Support and Resources

If you are dealing with imposter syndrome, asking for help and making good use of resources can sharply increase your chances of not only overcoming it but also thriving in the wake of it. The help that you can seek and the resources that you can use are many and varied. They include, for example, finding a mentor, talking to a professional counselor, or joining a peer support group.

However, the most useful and practical avenue to reinforce your mental health and the more confident side of your personality may well be the first one listed: finding a mentor.

The people who guide us and give us feedback in our lives have an enormous influence on us—especially when it comes to our self-image or how we perceive our worth. If we think about it, the people in authority or the experts who tell us we’re doing a good job or that we have potential are undoubtedly helping us avoid the hazard of imposter syndrome.

Moreover, when someone has achieved a lot and is still modest, and when that person serves as a role model and tells us we’re okay and we’re going to be alright, that’s powerful.

Everyone’s journey to overcoming imposter syndrome is different, but you don’t have to walk it alone. Relying on people around you can help you manage doubt and give you a stronger sense of belonging in your community or field. It doesn’t mean you’re not capable or that you haven’t earned your place; it just means you’re using the tools at your disposal to keep yourself mentally healthy.

Knowing when and how to ask for help is an important part of that. It turns out that being open about needing a little reassurance can make you less likely to wallow in self-deprecating thoughts.

Adapting Coping Strategies Over Time

An essential part of the personalized path is changeability, and flexibility. People are not static. They grow. They change, both personally and in their careers. What worked for an individual to cope with imposter syndrome 5 years ago might not work for them now or, more crucially, 5 years down the road (especially since we hope for some growth in 5 years). This is especially true if the tools or methods being used seem dated or provide evidence that they haven’t fostered an individual change.

Using cognitive behavioral techniques (Bravata et al., 2020), a system for mindfulness, or talking with a trusted confidant are all methods that can promise the workings of a growth mindset to keep the change aspect of adaptability bubbling along.

When people adapt the advice given for dealing with imposter phenomenon to fit their unique situations, they make that advice personally relevant, which increases the likelihood it will be helpful. And when they perform these acts of personalizing and impacting the advice, they’re also engaging in a significant act of “rewriting” the narrative of their personal and professional lives. Overcoming the imposter phenomenon, requires a fair bit of storytelling. And the trick is getting good at telling that story in a way that leads to a happy ending.

Developing Resilience and Maintaining Your Toolkit

Building resilience to the subtle and stubborn sensations of imposter syndrome is not a one-time achievement—it’s a work in progress. To get to the other side, you need to identify and refine the go-to coping mechanisms that help you feel more centered. They should be as individual as you are because what works for one person may make another feel worse.

You and you alone must make the calls about your personalized toolkit. And it’s imperative that you do keep an up-to-date toolkit, assessing not just your current Coping Cards but also your past.

One of the most important factors in maintaining a strong and resilient defense against imposter syndrome is the integration of coping mechanisms into daily life. They are simple but effective practices that any aspiring individual can incorporate into their daily or weekly routines. These can be reframed as acts of self-kindness or as fulfilling the basic requirement of headspace necessary for a healthy and functional mind. They are acts too often neglected until the water is already over our heads. Practices that promote remembering the good things we do and the good things that happen to us.

For some, these acts come in the form of journaling or songwriting. For others, it might be a daily meditation on mindfulness. The research here is fairly clear. If we do these things with regularity, we are far more likely to maintain resilience against imposter syndrome.

Maintaining a resilient outlook means being open to finding new resources and strategies as one encounters different challenges. Coping mechanisms that once worked well for the “imposter phenomenon” may need adaptation or even replacement as careers progress. For example, if someone derives strength from privately coping through the experiences, they might next explore how sharing those experiences and “mentally reframing” them can also serve as a way to confront the syndrome. Coping mechanisms are highly personal and contextual.

What aids one person at a moment in time is unlikely to have the same effect two minutes, two weeks, or two years later. But overcoming the imposter phenomenon in any of its many forms allows individuals to face future challenges fortified with a personalized and adaptable toolkit.

At its core, countering imposter syndrome is a self-awareness and self-help dynamic that the person has to participate in of their own volition. There is no resilience against imposter syndrome seminar that you can attend, no magic elixir that you can drink. What works in this space is not anything rooted in personality or a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach. Rather, what I believe is most effective, and what the research suggests, is a set of high-level principles that lead to two contrasting low-level effects—either you boost your self-confidence or, if for some reason that’s not working, you modulate your self-acceptance.

Conclusion

It is very important to have healthy and effective responses to the feelings associated with the imposter phenomenon.

I am sure that not everyone who has these feelings will need therapy, but many people will—and those who don’t may benefit from the types of coping strategies that might also be recommended in tandem with therapy. I know a couple of people who have been bright, accomplished students and have felt imposter syndrome so deeply that they’ve even quit school for a time.

Marking achievements, no matter how minor they may appear, affirms their reality and resists the tendency to discount the validity of one’s success. Regular self-reflection nudges one away from concentrating on perceived inadequacies and toward a greater acknowledgment and celebration of true accomplishments.

Reinforcing our self-talk can also play a role in altering the internal narrative of imposter syndrome. Tools such as affirmations and visualization serve excellent purposes in this regard. When one uses an affirmation, it is best to word it positively, focusing on what one wants to reinforce and not what one wants to negate. It can also help to express the affirmation in the first person and as if the described situation is already true. Visualization is another helpful tactic. It involves picturing, in as much detail as possible, a scenario in which one achieves the success one yearns for and deserves.

Combating imposter syndrome begins with setting realistic goals and recognizing every tiny step made toward achieving them. Too often, we set overly ambitious goals without stopping to consider the kind of progress that we’re somehow still managing to make. The progress may be slow, but it exists, and it’s totally valid. If we can train ourselves to see the smaller, attainable goals that we’re setting—and even more, to celebrate each one’s attainment as a moment of personal victory—we might also begin to see ourselves as a bit more worthy of our success than we currently do.

Not only does this method instill confidence, but it also serves as a tremendous confidence builder. The trick is to keep it on the down low while you are in the process of achieving something. If you have managed to get something done that you are proud of, don’t go shouting it from the rooftops. Instead, act as if you are just going about your normal day. And when you think about it, you are going about your normal day, because anything you achieve makes you more normal and not less.

References:

• Beck, J. S. & Beck, A. T. (2011). Cognitive behavior therapy, second edition: Basics and beyond (2nd ed.). The Guilford Press.
• Bravata, D. M., Watts, S. A., Keefer, A. L., Madhusudhan, D. K., Taylor, K. T., Clark, D. M., Nelson, R. S., Cokley, K. O., & Hagg, H. K. (2020). Prevalence, predictors, and treatment of imposter syndrome: A systematic review. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 35(4), 1252-1275. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-019-05364-1
• Clance, P. R., & Imes, S. A. (1978). The imposter phenomenon in high achieving women: Dynamics and therapeutic intervention. Psychotherapy, 15(3), 241-247. https://doi.org/10.1037/H0086006 
• Clark, M., Vardeman, K., & Barba, S. (2014). Perceived inadequacy: A study of the imposter phenomenon among college and research librarians. College & Research Libraries, 75(3), 255-271. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl12-423
• Lent, J. (2009). Journaling Enters the 21st Century: The Use of Therapeutic Blogs in Counseling. Journal of Creativity in Mental Health, 4(1), 67–73. https://doi-org.alliant.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/15401380802705391 
• Lewinbuk, K., & Grady, K. (2023). Empower the Imposters in the Legal Field: Teaching & Practicing Mindfulness for Letting Go of Unproductive Thoughts. N. Ill. UL Rev., 44, 109. 
• Majer, J.M. (2009). Self-efficacy and academic success among ethnically diverse first-generation community college students. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 2, 243-250 
• Rohrmann, S., Bechtoldt, M. N., & Leonhardt, M. (2016). Validation of the impostor phenomenon among managers. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 821. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00821 
• Wei, M., Liu, S., Ko, S. Y., Wang, C., & Du, Y. (2020). Impostor feelings and psychological distress among Asian Americans: Interpersonal shame and self-compassion. The Counseling Psychologist, 48(3), 432-458.