You Impostor!

Hey, you. You’re an impostor.

Me?

Yeah, you. I know it, you know it, and soon, everyone else will know it too.

What are you talking about?

You don’t belong here.  You’re not smart enough, you’re not strong enough, and people don’t really respect you.

Sound familiar? Those nasty internal arguments seething with contempt, reminding you that you’re running a scam.  Somehow, you got through college and charmed your way into a job, now you’re in over your head.  It won’t take long until the fraud is exposed.  Every report, every paper, every presentation screams that you don’t belong here.  You’ve got everybody snowed. 

But wait, your data is sound, your presentations are well-received. You do your job well, and nobody has ever complained about you.  You’ve even been up for awards.  What’s wrong with this picture? 

Wikipedia defines Impostor Syndrome as “a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their skills, talents, or accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear for being exposed as a ‘fraud.'” Much ink has been spilled already regarding impostor syndrome in high-achieving women, so I’ll just link to the Clance study and to the Hoang paper for additional reading.  However, as with most things, little has been written about the varieties of impostor syndrome felt by women in STEM. 

The mental framework for generalized impostor syndrome has developed from factors such as gender stereotypes, early family dynamics, culture, and attribution style.  In STEM, the gender stereotyping is compounded by the boys’ club / locker-room mentality, and by the persistent meme of only the most geektastic individuals succeeding.  The hierarchical culture of most STEM fields also promotes intellectual self-doubt.  Women are still the outsiders fighting for a place at the table, and once there, fighting to keep their place at the table.  We don’t have time for the little impostor demons to ratchet up our anxiety, but there they are, lurking in the dark recesses of our minds.

So we as women in STEM have to overcome both internal factors and external factors that contribute to impostor syndrome.  We all understand what it’s like to be in the minority at work.  When we are young professionals, we wonder if we were token hires, brought in just to meet a diversity quota.  Everyone seems so much more experienced and smarter than we do.  It’s so easy to fall into the impostorism trap from the beginning.  We are often expected to take on a nurturing role, like “team mom” or “dutiful daughter”, and perform it with a smile.  We hear that the customers respect men more, so we are expected to stand aside and let the men present and talk.  We internalize that we are lesser members of the team, and wonder if we are even supposed to be there.  We do our jobs well, but are too afraid to ask for a promotion or raise, because we believe our successes were just lucky or could easily be attributed to other team members. 

It’s time to tell the voices in your head to shut up.  Things you can do to silence the haters within:

1. Remember that you have earned your place at the table. Throw some elbows and take up space.  You’re here, they might as well get used to it.
2. Be yourself.  Nothing compounds the anxiety like trying to maintain a façade.  You don’t have to be one of the boys to succeed. Wear pink, with heels if it suits you. Elle Woods took over a courtroom and won her case when she reverted to her Cali roots. 
3. Come up with an self-affirming personal mantra, and repeat it to yourself when the little impostor voices start in.  Mine is “You’re the best of the best, and none of the rest can touch you.” (Feel free to steal it.)
4. Be clever or witty.  When you get comments about how you don’t belong there, turn them around.  Something disarming, like “Well, my Hogwarts letter never arrived, so here I am.” Snide comments are the equivalent of mashed potatoes in a food fight.  Easily flung, easily dodged. 
5. Never apologize.   Do you make mistakes? Sure.  But your actions that led to the mistake had reason behind them. Embrace your failures and learn from them. 
6. Smile or laugh it off.  Have you noticed that Kamala Harris always smiles when she is stuck or lost for words?   Smiling gives you confidence, which beats back the impostor voices. Laughter releases endorphins, which are the happy chemicals, and decreases cortisol, the stress hormone.
7. Keep a file of your wins.  A win is a win, no matter how small or trivial it may seem.  This list will also come in handy at annual review time.
8. Get a mentor.  A more seasoned professional can help you keep things in perspective.
9. Stop thinking like an impostor.  Be aware of what’s going on in your head when you start having feelings of impostorism.  Your feelings manifest as your reality.
10. Remind yourself of what really matters in your career: your skills, your talents, and your personal values.  You were hired for a reason (that doesn’t involve a diversity checkbox.) Your boss saw something great in you.

Eleanor Roosevelt famously said, “Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.”  You’ve worked so hard for everything you have; don’t let self-doubt take away from your accomplishments.