It took four drafts to write this blog post. I deleted the first 3 attempts because they were guilty of leaving a very unsatisfactory feeling behind upon rereading. I couldn’t shake the dissatisfaction off, so I kept editing, postponing, rereading, moving it to the bin, and repeating. The reason I chose this topic is not incidental; it is a testimony to the everyday struggle I’ve had since deciding to make a career change in my mid-30s. That step took a big chunk of my self-confidence with it, but in the battle to regain it, or rather, rebuild it in a field in which I daily feel less than eloquent, I gained wisdom and knowledge of myself, which I believe I would’ve not been able to crystalize otherwise. As this feeling of not being good enough pervades my working hours, I pass the same harsh judgment upon myself while trying to write these words in which I express what so commonly plagues us all. The other, unsuccessful attempts at composing my thoughts and sharing my knowledge around the Impostor Syndrome subject were full of quotes from lead experts, clinical research, books, and articles I’ve read on the subject. That came to be because I felt too incompetent to talk about this subject because there are other people who are more knowledgeable and smart than me on it. While that is a fact of life that there will always be someone better and smarter, it doesn’t need to translate into my experience and knowledge, which are useless.

So I decided to take the most vulnerable stance I can take, which might sound overly dramatic for people who are not suffering from shattered self-confidence, and write down my subjective truth on this topic. Consider this my disclaimer.

Impostor syndrome is that ineffable urge to discredit oneself. It can be defined as a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persist despite evident success. 'Impostors' suffer from chronic self-doubt and a sense of intellectual fraudulence that override any feelings of success or external proof of their competence. We should make a distinction between actually being:

- unsuccessful: failing to deliver tasks, evident lack of measurable growth, failure to take responsibility for underwhelming performance and thus failing;

- successful: everything opposite of unsuccessful, yet feeling continuously inadequate.

Credit image: xkcd.com

Why does this happen? The answer to this question will be a broad one, and I will attempt to answer it from multiple angles. In what now seems like a lifetime ago, I was working in music education, and it was fascinating and saddening at the same time to witness children struggling with their emotions when being compared (by themselves or, unfortunately, by adults) with their peers. The world of classical music, which is driven by yearly competitions and public performances, is a cruel one on the psyche of the little humans whose age is still in the single digits. I myself was not a stranger to that, venturing to my first competition at the ripe age of 8 and experiencing the horrors of a jury, being judged, compared, and picking up the'skill' of feeling less than when I didn’t win the first prize (I ended up being second). This was not the Olympics, where you feel good just for participating. Being first and the best mattered. At least it did for the adults.

With me, it was violin playing; with other people, it will be a subject in school or something entirely different. There are various reasons and circumstances why a person has come to feel as they do, and unraveling that particular emotional yarn is a personal duty and one that can shed light on the issue at hand. An impostor feeling story can start at home with the family, continue with other significant adults in one’s life, like teachers and mentors, and can only improve by self-reflecting. It is of great interest to discover what the definition of success is instilled in us by our primary caregivers. How you deal with failure and what personally constitutes success have everything to do with the way we were raised. Parents had high expectations for grades. So much so that eventually only good grades were a ‘condition’ for you to feel loved and approved of? Had a successful sibling that you always felt bad about yourself in comparison to? Were you the class superstar in high school, got the Cum Laude in university, and still felt like a fraud because your dad wasn’t proud? Did you have a neglectful family where success was not celebrated or encouraged but criticism was a constant? The list goes on. Suffering from impostor syndrome is a fertile soil where lots of mental mold grows, and family relationships are considered a powerful fertilizer. While the origin of these feelings can easily be very complex, it’s important to recognize that none of it happened in a vacuum. Context matters greatly, and the more you can track it, the easier it will become to recognize it when it happens on the workfloor. So now, factoring in contexts like personal stories, trauma, and experiences, we can start talking about the shape the impostor syndrome takes in one’s life. I put together a list of the most prevalent behaviors I witnessed in my students and myself:

● Fear of underperforming: one may fear that their colleagues and supervisors expect more from them than they can manage. They may feel unable to deliver (which doesn’t mean they are not delivering), so they are always working hard to compensate. This happens despite the good feedback they get.

● Holding back: people with impostor syndrome may focus heavily on limited tasks instead of taking on additional duties that can prove their abilities. Why? People suffering from impostor syndrome often have maladaptive perfectionistic concerns, thus standing in their own way. If I can’t do it perfectly, I won’t do it all.

● Chronic self-doubt—not the healthy kind that pushes you forward to read one more book and do extra research before the presentation, but the kind that prevents you from recognizing your own success when you achieve it. Doing a good job and still having doubts nurtures the belief that everyone will find out that you don’t know as much as they think you do. often comparing with others and justifying the conclusion that, by default, others are better and more competent than oneself.

●  Denial of competency: impostor tendencies have an impact on career attitudes and progression. It eats at your courage to ask for more work, for a promotion, or for more out of life because, you know, you just can’t do the job or whatever is needed. There are far more competent people out there that are more deserving than you, all of this despite the academic success you have achieved and the effort you put in daily to stay up to date with the research in your ever-changing field.

● Job dissatisfaction: In some cases, a person may not feel sufficiently challenged in their work, but a fear of failure or discovery stops them from voicing it. However, in their misplaced attempt to further prove themselves to their superiors, they might self-inflict burnout. There is no happy ending to this scenario except for a trip to the nearest therapist's couch. Finding one’s voice (instead of waiting for praise, which might not come) and a sense of self-worth are imperative.

Research says nearly all of us have or will experience impostor syndrome at some point in our lives. This in and of itself isn’t the issue. It is actually ok to experience it; it is even healthy and expected. As long as it goes away and you can be joyful about your successes, you are in the clear. The problem is when it becomes a hindrance and anchors your progress.

Dr. Valerie Young is considered the foremost expert on impostor syndrome, a co-founder of the Impostor Syndrome Institute, and the author of the fantastic book 'Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer from the Impostor Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It”. If you feel drawn to learn about the topic of impostor syndrome, I highly recommend reading it, regardless of your gender. It’s an all-encompassing guide from an actual authority on the subject, and it has the power to change your mind about yourself, should you be open to it.

In the aforementioned book, Dr. Young suggests 5 types of ‘impostors’, meaning people with a specific mindset, thinking, or personality, if you will, that are most vulnerable to it. For all of the types, you will notice that the ‘I am not good enough’ feeling is the main fuel for the drive described in each and every type. I felt it was appropriate to give every type a small summary, borrowing the author’s words, and include it here.

The expert will not feel satisfied when finishing a task until they feel that they know everything about the subject. The time spent searching for information can make it hard to complete tasks and projects; hence, self-sabotage without related capability ensues. You can see how the ‘I am not good enough’ mantra pervades their experience.

The perfectionist experiences high levels of anxiety, doubt, and worry, especially when they set themselves extreme goals that they are unable to achieve. A perfectionist will focus on areas where they could have done better rather than celebrate their achievements. There is no success successful enough for them.

Natural geniuses master many new skills quickly and easily, and they may feel ashamed and weak when faced with a goal that is too hard. Learning that everyone needs to struggle to achieve some goals may help. Above-average talented individuals struggle greatly when the ease with which they cruise through school gets challenged. And when they hit that obstacle, it feels very daunting and sometimes leads to crushing depression.

The soloist, or “rugged individualist,” prefers to work alone, fearing that asking for help will reveal incompetence. The person may turn down help in an attempt to prove their self-worth. Superheroes often excel due to extreme effort, as in “workaholism.” This can lead to burnout, which can affect physical and mental well-being and relationships with others.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is the polar opposite of the Impostor Syndrome. It’s defined as the tendency of people with low ability in a specific area to give overly positive assessments of their ability. It’s characterized as a cognitive bias and a tendency to engage in erroneous forms of thinking and judging. So while feeling like an impostor means you underestimate your ability despite positive feedback and validation, the Dunning-Kruger effect is the overestimation of ability despite negative feedback. At the core of every human insecurity lies a comparison, or a judgment. But if one ends up being victorious in every comparison or conversation or ends up always feeling guilty and unsuccessful, chances are you have slipped to the dark side of either of the poles, neither of which is good or balanced.

And now comes the part in which I offer my unsolicited advice. I called this part learners and mentors. I have been on both sides in various contexts, as you’ve read earlier, but career-changing has been by far the most painful transition I’ve had as a learner. In the age of information, but also on the workfloor, I was able to connect and discuss at great length the problems and internal and external struggles alike with people who went through the same career transition.

For the learners: The point of being a learner is to become as open-minded to the process of learning as you were when you were in school (hopefully, minus the bullying and trauma, though I will recognize that not every workplace is without its courtyard bullies and toxicity). In the best-case scenario, you will meet people who have walked the same road as you are now; they will be able to relate and help you down the familiar beaten path. Should this not happen, I encourage you to seek out support online or via meet-ups with other career changers, so you can lend some strength and wisdom on how to stay strong during steep learning curves and difficult times.

Journal your growth. I made all of my students do it, and I do it too. It helps going back down memory lane and realizing that 3 months ago I didn’t know at least 10 different things and 3 libraries that I now do. When there is no one there to remind you of how much you have progressed, you need to do it for yourself.

Stop comparing yourself to other developers. particularly the ones for which software development was their primary career choice. Accept that it will take years, if not a decade, to come to their level, and that is absolutely fine. The only comparison worth doing is the one relative only to yourself, and if the graph of learning is going up, that is all that counts.

Get comfortable with being uncomfortable is the sentence that I’ve heard so many times from senior developers. In truth, I never managed to get comfortable because I couldn’t understand why I was so disturbingly uncomfortable in the first place. With the help of skilled individuals, I learned that the emotion that fills up my stomach cavity every time I stare into the abyss of my own ignorance and feel helpless in front of a complex problem is shame. shame and embarrassment. Shame is a very difficult emotion, arguably the heaviest of all human emotions. It’s defined as a self-conscious emotion arising from the sense that something is fundamentally wrong about yourself. In the past, before having these insights, I would feel inadequate and full of self-doubt, but these experiences were outside of my conscious awareness, and I was in no way understanding that underneath them or above them, I was feeling deep and profound shame. If you can learn how to manage shame, you will learn how to get out of your own way. It doesn’t need to be your kryptonite; quite the contrary, if you manage it right, it can become your superpower. My final words on this are: stay vulnerable. Stay open, despite the odds, and want to run from the situation that makes the shame arise. Accept that growth comes at a price, and the only price you are paying is your pride.

Managing personalities is a part of everyone’s job description, but it becomes a special hassle when you are a learner and you depend on others for knowledge and help. The hard truth is that people will get snappy with you at times. You will become an inconvenience; they will be too busy to help you; there are deadlines to be met; and clients to be made happy. Some days are too hectic, and that is just how it is. And some people are just lacking manners, and depending on those will hurt the most. Part of being an adult is learning to navigate the rough terrain with grace. Finding humility also helps. But no matter the situation, asking for help is half the battle to overcome all of your problems.

For the mentors: rarely is there anything so wonderful and noble as uplifting others. It has been my greatest privilege in life to be an educator. Getting someone out of the proverbial darkness of ignorance is a satisfying feat like no other, and even though I am heavily biased on this, it’s still a fact. On the work floor, the way you treat a colleague who is in training or doesn’t possess your level of knowledge can make or break their career. As is in the academic halls, one can come to love or resent a subject (or a profession, in this case) by how they are being taught about it. When the privilege of introducing someone to a job has been handed over to you, you, unfortunately, take upon the responsibility to either help them out of their impostor phase or enhance it. If you think back on your own educational or professional past, you will find that this has always been the case for you too. So I beg of you to not take this responsibility lightly and try to find joy in your protege’s success. I am very passionate about teaching, and I have taken great care to learn the psychology of successfully transferring knowledge. I should apologize in advance if this part comes off as preachy and too much for a workplace, but this is how I genuinely approach the transfer of skills towards anyone, because I strongly believe in sharing knowledge that makes us all better off.

Get to know who you are teaching, because otherwise you make decisions about their next steps based on an assumption, and assuming is one sure way to make mistakes. Understanding how they think and where their core strengths and weaknesses are is pivotal to making decisions on what is the best way to advise them and how they will fit in their new role and team.

Let go of the assumption that they are always wrong, even when they ask questions that don’t immediately make sense. Every individual has their own reasoning style, and being dismissive isn’t going to help communication or the growth of trust between you. ‘Even a broken clock is right twice a day’ is an age-old wisdom that I’ve had to repeat to myself many times when faced with beginners, because it’s very easy to slip into thinking about them as not experienced enough to ‘get it’. As a mentor, you are simply obliged to fight your prejudice. Listening to the problem instead of enforcing your way of solving it can go a very long way in expanding your own horizons, too. Patience benefits everyone, especially when the gap in knowledge is this wide.

Ripping off the band-aid: not every story is a success story. It’s the nature of things, one we simply cannot help. I’ve had students whose parents’ ambition was disproportionately greater than the talent of the child, and that means telling hard truths that the recipient is not ready to hear. As a mentor, you might find yourself in a position to have to decide that someone is not a good fit or that their ambitions and capabilities are not in agreement with their current position. Is it pleasant? Absolutely not, but it’s the right thing to do. Aptitude should never be overlooked, and as a mentor, you need to be able to recognize and determine if someone’s capability is going somewhere. Therefore, a well-established individual plan, preferably a time-boxed one, and clearly communicated expectations every step of the way save everyone a lot of trouble.

And with that, I will unsubscribe you all from the stream of my thoughts about the impostor syndrome.

Thank you for taking the time to read, and I hope you are finding your way out there in the binary jungle.

Sanja