IN YOUR PROFESSIONAL AND PERSONAL LIFE

Do you ever doubt yourself or worry about others discovering that you’re not good enough despite your skills and experience? Is it hard to accept compliments and recognise your successes, dismissing them as luck or nothing special compared to others?

Do you avoid social or professional events because you worry about being exposed as inadequate in some way? You may find yourself in cycles of analysis paralysis, overworking, overpreparing, focusing on small details, and overthinking situations that slow down your decision-making.

You’re more than likely already aware that these patterns are sabotaging the next level in your career and impacting your quality of life.

Sometimes, these patterns have been operating unknowingly for so long that you don't notice them because they’re just your normal way of being and thinking.

Your inner saboteur, the imposter, amplifies your negative inner voice, especially when you’re trying to elevate your life or business.

It can derail your goals and aspirations, making it harder and longer than it needs to be to move forward and enjoy your well-deserved achievements 

You’re not alone if you’re experiencing these feelings. Many successful leaders, business owners, and creatives, including Michelle Obama, Sheryl Sandberg, and Meryl Streep, have talked about feeling like impostors.

In this blog, I share the five main types of impostor syndrome, how they manifest in different areas of our lives, and how rapid transformational therapy can help you identify and resolve the underlying causes, transforming feelings of being an impostor more quickly than traditional talking methods.

What Imposter Syndrome Isn't

Let’s start with what it isn’t. Imposter Syndrome isn’t a “Syndrome” 

Although it can be debilitating, it isn’t a psychological condition or disorder. 

It’s considered a “psychological phenomenon”, which sounds mysterious but simply means we experience a specific set of thoughts and feelings associated with self-doubt, worthiness and insecurity about our ability and accomplishments despite evidence of success. 

Labelling ourselves with a “syndrome” doesn't help us when it’s a normal behaviour pattern experienced by so many of us.

We know our thoughts influence our emotions, which can lead to self-perpetuating actions and behaviours. I prefer to refer to it as the Imposter feeling, a temporary self-doubt to diffuse the thought that it’s a permanent part of our identity. It’s more normal than you may realise. Research has found that as many as

• 82% of People experience impostor feelings (Bravata et al., 2020) 

• 72% of Executive women say they’ve experienced impostor syndrome. (KPMG, 2020)  

• 80% of CEOs feel out of their depth in their role. (Dropbox & School of Life Study, 2017)

• 84% of Entrepreneurs and small business owners report experiencing impostor syndrome. (Kajabi, 2020)

  (From the website of Dr Valerie Young-Imposter Syndrome expert)

• Another study revealed that women need to feel 85% confident to speak up and be more visible, compared to men who only need 15% certainty. 
  
  

The 5 Imposter Patterns

Psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes first introduced the imposter syndrome concept in 1978 after they studied 150 high-achieving women and students and noticed that despite their accomplishments, they all felt they weren’t as intelligent or capable as others perceived them to be and attributed their success to luck or external factors instead of their own abilities. 

Dr Valerie Young later identified five main patterns of the imposter after interviewing hundreds of thousands of people across different professions at all stages.

You may have one predominant pattern or recognise a few in different areas of your life. All of which are normal. These are the five main patterns.

The Perfectionist

Characteristics:

• High Standards: Setting extremely high, often unrealistic, standards for yourself.

• Fear of Failure: You view any minor flaw or mistake as a major failure.

• Overworking: You spend excessive time and effort on tasks, so they’re perfect.

• Self-Criticism: The harsh self-talk gets louder for even the smallest mistakes or imperfections.

  
  

Underlying Beliefs & Thoughts:

“I am not good enough”

“I’m a Fraud”

"I must be perfect and never make mistakes."

"If I don’t do everything perfectly, I’m a failure."

The Superhuman

Characteristics:

• Workaholic Tendencies: You feel the need to work harder and longer than everyone else to prove your worth.

• Overcommitment: Committing too many tasks and responsibilities leading to exhaustion, mental fatigue or burnout.

• Fear of Being Outdone: Constantly feeling the need to measure up to others and prove your capabilities.

• Neglecting Personal Life: Sacrificing your personal life, health and well-being for work.

  
  

Underlying Beliefs and Thoughts:

• “Others Are More Capable Than Me"

• “I need to work harder than everyone else to succeed."

• "I can’t relax or take a break; I have to keep proving myself."

  
  
  

The Natural Genius

Characteristics:

• High Expectations: You believe you should naturally excel at everything you do without much effort.

• Avoidance of Challenges: You avoid tasks that don’t come easily, fearing you’ll be exposed as incompetent.

• Discomfort with Struggle: Feel shame or discouragement when you don’t master something quickly.

• Self-Doubt: You doubt your abilities when you encounter difficulties.

  
  

Beliefs and Thoughts:

• “I must always know the answer”.Not knowing is a sign of failure.

• “If I were truly competent, this wouldn’t be so hard."

• "I should be able to do this easily."

  
  

The Soloist

Characteristics:

• Independence: You feel you have to accomplish things on your own, and asking for help is a sign of weakness.

• Reluctance to Delegate: You struggle to delegate tasks or collaborate with others.

• Self-Isolation: You prefer to work alone to avoid showing any perceived weakness.

  
  

Underlying Beliefs and Thoughts:

• "I should be able to do this all by myself."

• "Asking for help is a sign that I’m not competent."
  
  

The Expert

Characteristics:

• Need for Knowledge: You feel the need to know everything before starting a project or task.

• Fear of Being Exposed: You worry about being seen as inexperienced or unknowledgeable.

• Continuous Learning: You’re continuously taking additional certifications or training to feel qualified.

• Reluctance to Apply: You hesitate to apply for jobs or opportunities unless they meet every requirement.

  
  

Underlying Beliefs and Thoughts:

• "I need to know everything before I can start."

• "I’m not an expert yet, so I shouldn’t take on this role”

• “I’m not good enough”.

How The Imposter Protects You

Although it can feel as though the imposter is conspiring against you by fueling fears and shame, which are uncomfortable emotions, its sole purpose is to protect you and keep you safe from vulnerability, rejection, abandonment, failure, and even success.

Your mind and body are doing their primary job to keep you safe from perceived "danger" by driving these behaviours. These protective coping mechanisms may manifest in the following ways.

Protection from Vulnerability:

Fear of Exposure: By constantly doubting your abilities and fearing being found out as a "fraud," you’ll inevitably avoid putting yourself in situations where you might feel exposed or vulnerable.

Perfectionism: Striving for perfection can be a way to avoid potential criticism or judgment, protecting you against the vulnerability that comes with being seen as imperfect, even though perfectionism doesn’t exist.

Protection from Rejection:

Overachievement: Working excessively hard and achieving high standards can be a way to avoid rejection. You may have an underlying belief that if you’re perfect and successful, you’ll be accepted and valued by others.

Avoiding Challenges, Growth and New Experiences: Avoiding taking on new or challenging experiences reduces the risk of failure and the possibility of being rejected for not meeting expectations.

Protection from Abandonment:

Approval Seeking: You may need more validation and approval from others to ensure you’re not abandoned or dismissed. You may have an underlying belief that your value and worth are tied to your performance and the recognition you receive.

Self-Isolation: You may be distant or isolate yourself to avoid disappointing others and facing abandonment or judgment.

Protection from Failure:

Fear of Failure: The intense fear of failure drives many behaviours in imposter syndrome. By setting unrealistically high standards and working excessively, you try to mitigate the risk of failing.

Procrastination: Delaying tasks or not starting them can be a defence mechanism against the fear of not succeeding. If you don’t try, you can’t fail.

Protection from Success:

Fear of Increased Expectations: Success can bring higher expectations and more pressure. With the imposter, you might fear not being able to meet those expectations consistently or at all. You might downplay your achievements, avoid seeking higher positions, start your business or take your business to the next level to stay within your comfort zone.

Unworthiness: Believing you’re not worthy of success results in sabotaging your own achievements to avoid the responsibilities and visibility that come with success.

The Imposter shows up in different ways in our business and personal lives. It might be the case that you don’t experience the imposter in your career, only in your personal life. Here’s how it can operate in different areas of our lives.

Friendships, Family and Work Relationships, Community

• Comparison: Constantly comparing yourself to others and feeling inferior or less accomplished.

• Fear of Judgment: Worrying excessively about being judged or not measuring up to others’ expectations.

• People-Pleasing: Going out of your way to please others, often at your personal expense, to prove your worthiness in the relationship.

• Avoiding Social Situations: Avoiding events or activities due to fear of being exposed as inadequate.

• Withdrawing from Friendships: Withdrawing from people because you believe you’re not good enough to be part of the group.

• Reluctance to Seek Support: Avoiding asking for help or support because it might be seen as weak.

• Superficial Interactions: Keeping conversations superficial or focussed on others to avoid deeper connections revealing your perceived flaws.

• Difficulty Trusting Friends: Struggling to trust others’ intentions and support fully, worrying they’re only friends out of obligation or pity.

• Feeling Like a Burden: Believing you’re a burden to others and that they’re better off without you.

• Apologising Excessively: Frequently apologising for perceived mistakes or shortcomings.

Romantic Relationships:

• Doubting Desirability: Feeling unworthy of a partner's love and affection, questioning why they’re with you, and worrying they might realise you’re not as good as they think.

• Overcompensation: Going out of your way to please your partner and prove your worth, sometimes at the expense of your own needs and boundaries.

• Fear of Vulnerability: Avoiding deep emotional intimacy because of a fear that being truly known will lead to rejection.

  
  

Fitness and Body Image:

• Insecurity at the Gym: Feeling like you don’t belong in a gym environment, believing others are judging your body, performance or fitness level.

• Dismissing Achievements: Downplaying progress, such as weight loss or better fitness, attributing them to luck or temporary effort, not hard work and consistency.

• Perfectionism: Setting unrealistic image, fitness and weight goals and feeling like a failure if you don’t meet them perfectly.

  
  

Diet and Nutrition:

• Guilt and Shame: Feeling undeserving of eating certain foods or indulging, and experiencing guilt or shame if you do.

• Overly Restrictive Diets: Adopting extreme diets to prove discipline and control, and worrying that deviating is a lack of willpower.

  
  

Parenting:

• Questioning Parenting Skills: Constantly doubting your parenting abilities and decisions, feeling like you’re not doing a good job.

• Unrealistic Expectations: Holding yourself to impossible standards as a parent, believing you always have to be perfect to be a loving parent.

• Fear of Judgement: Worrying excessively about being judged by others, including other parents, family, and society.

• Burnout: Experiencing burnout from trying to do everything perfectly.

• Emotional Availability: Struggling with being emotionally available to your child due to your own emotional struggles and feeling inadequate.

Professional Life

• Fear of Asking for Raises or Promotions: Believing you don’t deserve higher pay or promotion and fearing you’ll be exposed as a fraud if you try to advance.

• Overworking: Working excessive hours to prove your worth and avoid being seen as incompetent leading to burnout.

• Avoiding New Opportunities: Avoiding projects, leadership roles, or public speaking engagements because of a fear of failure or being exposed as not knowing enough.

Entrepreneurship:

• Undervaluing Services: Setting lower prices for your services or products because you doubt their worth and fear customers will feel cheated.

• Reluctance to Promote: You may hesitate to be visible and market or promote your business because you fear that people will discover you’re not as skilled or knowledgeable as you present yourself.

• Needs to know all the answers: Avoiding asking for help or delegating tasks because you fear others will realise you don’t have all the answers.

Solutions to Resolve the Imposter

It is possible to stop the Imposter from sabotaging your success and happiness. The key is to retrain your thoughts and emotions.

How you approach it depends on the type of support you prefer and how quickly you’d like to overcome it.

Different approaches exist to address thought patterns and beliefs. Examples of this include

Cognitive Restructuring:

• Identifying and challenging negative thought patterns associated with imposter syndrome.

• Recognising and questioning self-doubt, perfectionism, and other cognitive distortions.

• Reframing negative self-talk by replacing irrational beliefs with more balanced and realistic perspectives.

  For example, "I'm not qualified for this promotion," a reframe might be "I have the skills and experience needed for this opportunity."
  

Mindfulness and Acceptance:

• Cultivating present-moment awareness and accepting thoughts and emotions without judgment.

• Learning to observe your thoughts and feelings without judgment, to let go of self-critical or perfectionistic tendencies.

• Practices may include mindfulness meditation, body scans, and mindful breathing exercises.

  
  

Positive Affirmations and Visualisation:

• Positive affirmations and visualisation techniques to shift negative self-perceptions and beliefs.

• Daily affirmations and visualisation exercises to reinforce positive self-concepts and future success.

• Visualising yourself achieving your goals confidently. For example.

  "I am competent and capable" or "I deserve success" vividly imagine successful outcomes and confident behaviours.

Eft tapping is also a popular technique.

With consistent practice and patience, these methods become effective and helpful over time and may be enough to transform your feelings of being an imposter.

However, if you have unresolved emotions, past trauma, underlying limiting beliefs and struggle with worthiness, these top-down approaches to change your thoughts logically without engaging the unconscious mind and body don’t resolve the underlying root causes or create lasting permanent change.

The fastest path to resolving the imposter is subconscious and nervous system rewiring.

The imposter’s protective mechanisms operate unconsciously to control the anxiety of waiting to be found out and avoid exposure.

But as we know, it can have detrimental effects, amplifying stress and leading to mental and physical exhaustion, burnout and depression.

These patterns are deeply rooted in the subconscious and nervous system and are often developed in response to past experiences, such as childhood conditioning, societal pressures, or traumatic events. As I mentioned earlier, the main goal is to protect you from emotional pain and psychological distress.

The fastest way to overcome imposter syndrome is to address its root causes: the thoughts, beliefs and emotions that lead to these coping behaviours. Addressing these makes it easier to transform your thoughts and actions.

My approach prioritises strengthening your inner foundation. When your foundation is based on healthy self-perception and empowering beliefs such as worthiness, you can more easily transform your patterns and behaviours because your emotions and thoughts are aligned with your goals.

When the root causes are resolved, the more rational methods above can help maintain your new thought patterns. Without starting from the inside out, there’s an internal conflict, and your efforts may not last or take longer than necessary.

EMOTIONS OVERPOWER RATIONAL THINKING

Methods that only involve rational and logical approaches aren’t enough to resolve the inner barriers at the root of self-sabotaging patterns like the imposter.

When unconscious limiting beliefs exist, they create competing needs. For example, if your core belief is 'I am not good enough' or 'More success and wealth aren’t available to me,' all your efforts to attract a new relationship, increase your impact, or create more financial abundance will feel like an uphill struggle because your need for safety to protect you, and desire are in conflict. The weight of this emotional conflict will slow your progress. You’ll be out of alignment, and all the intellectual strategies you use will be overpowered by your inner beliefs.

Our brain is also wired to respond quickly to emotions stored in the body, even before we think logically. This means your body can react to stress before realising what's happening- triggering the negative thinking. Many of us are disconnected from our bodies, so we might not notice this is happening.

REWIRING SUBCONSCIOUS LIMITING BELIEFS

The most effective and lasting way to do this is to take a holistic approach that engages the conscious mind, unconscious, and body.

I offer this approach through my RTT hypnotherapy and integrated coaching. We resolve the root causes of imposter feelings and sabotaging patterns, beginning holistically from the inside out. We uncover thought patterns, core beliefs, and stuck emotions and heal and upgrade them.

Engaging the unconscious mind and nervous system, where 95% of our emotions, experiences, beliefs, and memories reside, helps uncover and resolve the root causes of imposter syndrome more rapidly than discussing surface-level symptoms intellectually.

It’s faster because we’re reprogramming deep-seated beliefs, healing, releasing emotional blocks, and fostering positive behavioural changes by communicating directly with the unconscious mind.

How Rapid Transformational Hypnotherapy Works.

Identifying Root Causes:

• Uncovering Past Experiences: We use hypnosis to access the unconscious mind to understand how past experiences have contributed to your feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt. We never relive past traumas or even have to discuss them. The key is to heal and transform the interpretation and meaning you’ve created about yourself as a result of these events
  

• Understanding Triggers: By identifying the specific events or messages from the past that trigger imposter feelings, you gain more awareness and power about why you developed these thought patterns.

Reframing Negative Beliefs:

• Reprogramming Limiting Beliefs: We recode and install new limiting beliefs through guided suggestions and positive affirmations in hypnosis.

• Creating New Associations: You create new, positive associations with past experiences, transforming how you perceive their abilities and worth.

Emotional Release:

• Processing Emotions: You are guided to gently process and release trapped emotions from unresolved wounds linked to your imposter feelings. This emotional release frees you from the intensity of negative emotions associated with self-doubt.

INFLUENCING Behavioural Change:

• Retrain your Mind to embrace new Habits: We rewire new thought patterns and positive habits and behaviours to reinforce your upgraded self-belief and confidence.

• Improving Self-Worth: Your self-worth is strengthened, releasing your energy to take action without fear of not being perfect or enough.

Conclusion

A small dose of imposter fear, uncertainty, and self-doubt is normal when we want to move past our safe comfort zone and into the next level and make meaningful changes.

As long as you can keep moving forward, feel balanced and confident, knowing it’s a part of growing into your next level.

When the imposter keeps you stuck in self-limitation, holding you back from elevating your life, new experiences and possibilities, success, fulfilment, and the quality of life you desire and deserve, the right support can help you alleviate the inner barriers and free the emotional energy you spend trying to control it.

I support professional women in overcoming their inner saboteurs through my Rapid Transformational Hypnotherapy and integrated empowerment coaching services. This personalised integrative approach provides significant shifts within weeks.

We’re now at an advantage because so many alternative approaches to traditional therapy, such as hypnotherapy, are available online. They take less time and are backed by science and psychology.

All methods have their strengths and benefits; most importantly, you need to find “your” method to stop losing time, energy, and opportunities stuck in the imposters’ limiting patterns, begin to feel good enough at your core, and appreciate your well-deserved accomplishments.

Hi, I’m Maria

I help ambitious women to transform the underlying reasons for self-sabotaging patterns, fears, and overwhelm. Together we unlock True Inner Confidence.

I'm a Clinical Hypnotherapist in Rapid Transformational Therapy™—a Mind and Confidence Coach, also certified in Somatic Trauma-Informed Coaching.

If you’re interested in a free introduction call to see if we would be a good fit, click below