What is imposter syndrome?

Do you feel like you never deserve what happens to you? Do you not feel legitimate or do you have difficulty accepting compliments?

So you suffer from imposter syndrome.

But rest assured, more of us feel it than we think.

According to a study, 20% of the population would present this symptom and 70% would be confronted with it at least once in their life.

This term was coined by Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne A. Imes, two American clinical psychologists in 1978.

Please note that this is not a pathology and there are solutions to get out of this state.

Before addressing this point, let's go back to the causes of this syndrome.

What are the causes of this phenomenon?

This " wrong " would particularly affect perfectionists, self-taught people or even women, especially if they have high-responsibility positions.

This would be directly linked to childhood due to a lack of affection, parental pressure, and devaluation of those around him.

For my part, personally, I know that I tended to seek my value at school. Being a very good student (top of the class until the second year), I think that I found in the eyes of my teachers the recognition, affection and merit that I fatally lacked in my family.

So this creates a form of self-sabotage once you become an adult.

So we end up comparing ourselves to others.

We think our success is due to luck, no merit to be taken from it.

This feeling of illegitimacy becomes episodic or permanent.

It can affect different areas of life (work, romantic relationships, friendships)

This perpetual competition can therefore trigger a lack of confidence in oneself and one's abilities.

We are very demanding of ourselves, not allowing ourselves to make any mistakes.

During major challenges, we are in full doubt, anxiety and stress develop

But not everything is black and we can change this state of affairs.

What solutions are there to free ourselves from it?

• Accepting compliments

• Remember your successes and accomplishments and write them down to reread when you feel down.

• Avoid projecting by creating disaster scenarios in your head

• Take a step back from all this

• Learn to love yourself more, stop judging yourself, denigrating yourself and comparing yourself to others. Thus, the goal is to deconstruct your limiting beliefs.

• Detaching from performance and evaluation

• Accept having flaws, shortcomings and imperfections. Stop seeking perfection at all costs.