Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 574: Do You Feel Like an Imposter? | Dr. Valerie Young (Co-Interviewed by Dan’s Wife, Bianca!)

Episode Date: March 22, 2023

The phrase imposter syndrome has increasingly crept into the culture. If you haven’t heard of it, it basically means that you feel like you’re a fraud, despite evidence to the contrary. As this term has gained more purchase in our culture, it’s also been subjected to an increasing amount of scrutiny and criticism, and also confusion. So, today we’re going to try to cut through some of that with Dr. Valerie Young, who’s been an internationally recognized expert on imposter syndrome since 1982.Young is the co-founder of the Imposter Syndrome Institute. She wrote a book called, The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer from the Impostor Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It. As you’ll hear her explain, imposter syndrome is not just for women — men deal with it, too, as do many other people along the gender spectrum.This is the second installment of our ongoing work/life series.In this episode we talk about:The three things that define impostor syndrome Dr. Young’s contention that imposter syndrome impacts both men and women, but tends to hold women back moreWhat it means to shift from impostor thinking to thinking like “a humble realist”Why we need to learn to reframe competenceWhether or not impostor syndrome is limited to the professional sphereThe impact of identity/social group Three tools for dealing with imposter feelingsWhether or not imposter feelings ever go awayWhat to do if you’re in a relationship with someone with imposter syndromeAnd whether there are any upsides to imposter syndromeFull Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/valerie-young-574 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, everybody. The phrase imposter syndrome has increasingly crept into the culture. If you haven't heard it, it basically means that you feel like you're a fraud, despite abundant evidence to the contrary. In my own life, I hear a lot about imposter syndrome because my wife, Bianca, who's an incredibly highly trained physician, has long struggled with sometimes crippling feelings of being

an imposter. In fact, when I first told her that perhaps she might be suffering from imposter syndrome, she thought, well, that's interesting that some people feel like imposter, but that doesn't apply to me because I'm actually an imposter. And again, this is somebody who, and she's going to kill me for saying this, graduated number one in her class at a prestigious medical school and then went on to do training programs at some of the most renowned academic hospitals in the world.

Sorry, Bianca, I know you are congenitally modest, but I like bragging about you as your husband. In any of it, as this term, imposter syndrome has gained more purchase in our culture, it has also been subjected to an increasing amount of scrutiny and criticism and also confusion. So, today, we're going to try to cut through some of that with a woman who's been an internationally recognized expert on imposter syndrome since 1982. Her name is Dr. Valerie Young. She's actually the co-founder of the Imposter Syndrome Institute.

She wrote a book called The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women, Why Capable People Suffer From Imposter Syndrome and How to Thrive In spite of it. As you will hear her explain, Imposter Syndrome is not just for women. Mendel with a two, as do many other people, all along the gender spectrum. Dr. Young was recommended to me by my wife, Bianca, who is also in the midst of researching her own book on this subject. I have a creeping suspicion, she'll get hers done before I get mine done, and then it will trounce me on the bestseller list. Anyway, I actually asked Bianca, who's, as I said, in the midst of her research to conduct this interview with me jointly. So,

you're going to hear her ask some questions here. That's a first for us. Pretty cool. In this conversation, we talked about the three things that define imposter syndrome. Dr. Young's contention that imposter syndrome impacts both men and women, but tends to hold women back more. What it means to shift from imposter thinking

to thinking like a humble realist, why we need to learn to reframe competence, whether or not imposter syndrome is limited to the professional sphere, the impact of race and group identity, three tools for dealing with imposter feelings, whether or not it ever goes away, what to do if you're in a relationship with somebody who has imposter syndrome, I ask that for a friend, and whether there are any upsides to imposter syndrome, I asked that for a friend, and whether there are any upsides to imposter syndrome. Just to say this is the second installment of our ongoing work-life series. If you missed it, go check out Monday's episode with Professor Scott Galloway. Next week,

we have episodes on work conflict for the Juicy One, and whether mindfulness actually works at work. What does the research say? Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist, Kelly McGonical, and the great meditation teacher, Alexis Santos, to access the course. Just

download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% .com all one word spelled out okay on with the show. Hey y'all it's your girl Kiki Palmer I'm an actress singer and entrepreneur. I'm a new podcast baby this is Kiki Palmer I'm asking friends family and experts the questions that are in my head. Like it's only fans only bad, where the memes come from. And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. Valor young, welcome to the show.

I am thrilled to be here. Bianca Harris welcome to the show as well. Same here, happy to be here. Okay, so we got a lot to talk about. Let me just jump in with an incredibly obvious question to you, Valerie. What is imposter syndrome? Imposter syndrome or imposter phenomenon, as is known in the world of academia and amongst clinicians, is this belief that deep down inside we're really not as intelligent, capable,

competent, talented, qualified as people seem to think that we are. And we explain away our accomplishments. And as a result, we have this fear of being found out. The term was actually coined by two psychologists, Dr. Pauline Clans, and Dr. Susan Eimes in 1978, and it's just gotten tons of traction in the last decade or so. How and when did you become interested in it? last decade or so. How and when did you become interested in it? Ah, I was a probably at that time, 26 year old doctoral student at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, first generation of my family to go on to graduate school and not a lot of folks went to college and somebody brought in the paper by Clance and I, I started reading

and describing how all these people, the people, the people of the year, fooling folks and they were going to be found out. And I just sat there nodding my head like a bobblehead doll, like, oh my God, that's me. And then I looked around the room and all the other graduate students were nodding their head. This was stunning. This is remarkable because I knew their work. I knew they deserved to be here.

So as the story goes, we started a little imposter support group. And we started meeting after class, talking about our intellectual fraudulence, how we're fooling all of our professors. And then the thing that happened was about week three, I started to have this nagging sense that even though everyone else was saying they were an imposter, like I knew I was only real imposter. So I didn't realize at the time, but clearly I was the Beyonce of imposter. Well, Bianca might be the, I don't know, the reanna of imposters because what you just said is something I've heard her say to me many times.

Yeah, it's incredibly common, you know, that statistics that are thrown around is anywhere from 50% to 70% to in some occupations as high as 90% of folks have had these feelings at one time or another. I feel like you should go for Nicki Nicki Minaj of impostor syndrome. I'm not really sure. But this idea, I mean, you just heard or say, I've heard you say, yeah, well, I get that there's this thing called impostor syndrome, but doesn't apply to me because I'm actually in a posture. Oh, absolutely. I mean, being in medicine and just around high achieving people, I've known what imposter syndrome is and it never quite literally never occurred to me that I had it until about two years ago when you told me you thought I had it.

I genuinely felt that I was the one sort of sneaking by under the radar, fooling everybody, and it was only a matter of time before I was found out. I was the real one. I was not an imposter because I really, really was the person that was going to be revealed as the dummy. So, Beyonce is impostor syndrome only suffered by women or is it all genders? Yeah, that's a great question. When the original paper came out, it was called the impostor phenomenon amongst high achievingachieving women. It wasn't based on any empirical study, by the way. They were observing what was happening in counseling sessions with therapy, right? And they also were doing personal awareness, growth awareness, kind of groups for women

at a university. And that's where they observed this phenomena. So they didn't rule out that men experienced it. They were just seeing it primarily amongst women. That was the focus for a long time. I wrote my dissertation based on that hunch that they had. That was more problematic for women. But research has since found, and certainly when I got and speak into workshops, I would say half of the folks there are also men. Half. That's interesting. Yeah, especially in certain fields.

I think women are more likely to raise their hand and say, I have a problem or I'm looking for a solution or want to talk about it, because that's how women deal with stress is by talking it through. So you don't probably see as many men maybe going to therapy, but certainly when given the opportunity to attend a session for, they're an associate at a big global law firm or they, you know, work for a major corporation and there's going to be a virtual session or a live session and I'm going to be speaking on impostor center.

It is half the room or men. Is there a difference between self doubt and imposter phenomenon? That is a great question because I think today everybody's using it as synonymous with self doubt, you know, any little bit of hesitation or fear like, oh, I've got imposter syndrome. That is a great question because I think today everybody's using it as synonymous with self-doubt You know any little bit of hesitation or fear like oh, I've got imposter syndrome and maybe you do But part of my goal is to really normalize fear and self-doubt In other words sometimes we think I was really competent. I'd be confident So the fact that I even struggle with confidence much prove I'm an imposter because we have this picture in our mind that people who are successful who don't feel like imposter are confident 24-7.

And the reality is you're not going to feel confident 24-7. That's unrealistic. So I want folks to really recognize that, of course, I'm nervous. Of course, I'm anxious. Of course, I feel self-doubt in this situation. It's perfectly normal in this moment. As much as I'm interested in definitely talking more about women, all everybody, and what the risks are in one's childhood and subsequent adventures in life for this issue, I'm also curious about the people who don't have it. And I'm wondering if any of your research has really been able to sort of contrast and compare and see what kind of backgrounds people who don't have it might actually have, or if that's just too difficult to do because it's such a spectrum of presentations and of

variables to look at. There's a lot of variables to look at. I don't do academic research. I want to be really clear on that. And to your point, I'm actually recommending that maybe we're studying the wrong people. Let's just take that 70% statistic that's thrown around. That 70% of people have these feelings at one time or another. My question is, what's up with the other 30? Why aren't we studying them? And some part of that 30 are, you know, they have irrational self-confidence syndrome. Their belief in their knowledge and their abilities exceeds their actual knowledge and abilities, which has been proven. It's called the Dunning Kruger Effect, named after Professor

Stunningh and Kruger at Cornell University. But there's a subset of that population who I think we really can learn from. These are people who are genuinely humble, but have never felt like an imposter. And the point that I always make is that people who don't feel like impotions, again, I'm setting aside that arrogant, narcissistic, smartest guy in the room. That's not who we're going after being like, but that subset, I call them humble realists.

There are no more intelligent, capable, competent than the rest of us. It's just in the exact same situation where Bianca, you and I might have this imposter thought, they're thinking different thoughts. And it's not a pep talk, right? You've got this and you can do it and you deserve to be here, like all of which are true,

but they're thinking differently and this truly comes out of my original research. They think differently about three things, competence, what it means to be competent. They have a realistic understanding of competence and they have a healthy response to failure and mistakes, constructive, even non-constructive, but negative feedback, and also to fear. So it's about shifting and going from thinking like an imposter to thinking like a humble

realist. I just want to clarify something. You said before that 50% of the people who show up are men, but you've addressed many of your writings specifically at women. So do we have a reason to believe that is mostly women who are suffering from imposter syndrome and if so, why? Well, we have a reason to believe that Random House wanted to sell books. And...

Well, I write books for Random House too, a big, quite reasonably one, want to sell books. Right. And they kept saying men don't buy self-help books, but they made it a business book, which I do think it's a business issue, which is another conversation. Here's the thing, there are a lot of men who feel like composers.

I think in some ways it does hold women back more, but I'm often surprised. I walked into a room once at Boeing, and I literally thought I was in the wrong room for my talk. It was 80% men. Oh I was in the wrong room for my talk. It was 80% men. Oh, excuse me, wrong room. And, you know, it was very illuminating to hear these middle age white men talking about the sheer terror that they feel when they're given this project that feels beyond them. So I think it's less talked about with men. I think, again, for

a host of reasons, I think it does hold women back more, but certainly, there are a lot of men who experience imposter feelings. Why does it hold women back more? I'd love to hear more with them. Well, I think you can't separate the internal from the external. So we all know what it's like to sit in a meeting or a class and not understand, but we don't want to raise our hand because we don't want to sound stupid. And then somebody else asked the question,

they go, that's billion. And you're like, oh, damn, that was my question. The point I make is two things. One is competence isn't knowing everything. Competence is not knowing with confidence. Being the person is, excuse me, I'm not following. What do you mean? I don't understand.

But if you're that woman in the room, you're the only woman, you're the youngest person. You're the person of color. You're the person with the disability. In other words, you're the person who's on the receiving end of social stereotypes about competence or intelligence. You might feel more vulnerable being the person who speaks up and says, you don't understand. I think that that's one reason. I think another reason, and I don't have data on this. This is just what I've observed. I think that that's one reason. I think another reason and I don't have data on this. This is just what I've observed. I think for a lot of women, there's less kind of compartmentalizing. So when somebody says to me, you know, your report was inadequate, I hear I'm inadequate. Right. I think it becomes more personalized. We met it, let it mean more about who we are, especially

constructive feedback. We let it mean more about who we are as a person. more about who we are, especially constructive feedback, we let it mean more about who we are as a person. That reminds me of the original study by Clanson Ims where they looked at or at least talked about differences in men and women who had done poorly on an exam. And for men, again, apology for the generalizations, but as it was reported, for men, a poor score on the exam was a result of the exam being poorly worded. And for women, it was a real reflection of incompetence. Isn't there something structural at work here? I read a book, and I'm forgetting the author and the name, but the author, she said something to the effect of the modern workplace was created by men for men. And that has created these structural inequities in the workplace.

We can add it was created by white men for white men. And I'm just wondering that must, I'm just assuming that must feed into imposter syndrome. Well, sure, yeah. I mean, in the higher higher you go, I mean, the fewer people who look like you, there's less of a sense of belonging, right? So you walk into a conference room or a meeting or a workplace or the executive level in an organization,

then why people who look like you probably the more confident you feel. And I think the reverse is true. You know, I've spoken over 100 universities around the world. One of the biggest groups to always show up are the international students. And when you were doing your doctor,

because they're largely medical students or doctoral students, and another language, and another culture, you're gonna be more susceptible. There's less of that feeling of belonging, so I think a greater vulnerability. But back to that, whatever the title of that book is, it reminds me that there is a lot of evidence in the communication field that in conversations that women are interrupted, whether comments are ignored, you know, at a

higher rate than that amunxment. And I think for many of us as females were socialized to be polite and to kind of wait our turn. And if you don't understand that you're operating in a different culture, is that a better culture? It's not a worse turn. And if you don't understand that you're operating in a different culture, is that a better culture? Is that a worse culture? But if you don't understand that you're operating in a different culture, then you're not gonna be,

you're gonna leverage your talents as much. You might have to jump in there and interrupt when that's not your first instinct to speak over people. I remember once during my fellowship where a research fellow was giving a presentation on her experiment. And it was a big division conference and those tend to be pretty stressful. And very, very smart and competent. And she started off by saying what she didn't know.

And so it came across as obviously self-conscious and not as secure as she should have been. And I remember one of the professors in the audience called her outright away and just said, you should never ever start with what you don't know. A man would never do that. But it was, I mean, it's true. So it was a good lesson. And I can think back on presentations that I've given at journal clubs and stuff like that, where just sort of conversational, they've been like,, I didn't know this, but, blah, blah, blah.

And that matters how you come across, can then feedback on how you see yourself. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I have a chapter in my book, a section that called, I don't know if you saw this, but that Ted couple changed my mind. Yes, I did see that. Yes. I don't know if you want me to tell that story on the air. No, I do. I do want to say with some sadness that it's entirely possible.

There are many people listening to this who have never heard of Ted Coppill. So you might want to explain who he was or is. I'm very aware. I have to really spell out many cultural references that I didn't use to have to. But Ted Coppill had a show called Nightline, which was on for maybe

a couple of decades. It was in between the two comedic late-night shows, and he would interview heads of state and scientists and all kinds of authors and important people and so on. And I read this article in Newsweek decades ago, and I think it was John's and Alter. At the Newsweek, put the question to him, do you ever feel like you don't know enough about a subject to ask the really tough questions in an interview? And Kabul said, no, I don't worry about that. He said, I like to be as informed as possible, but I don't consider it a handicap

when I know next to nothing. He would not explain for two reasons. One, he figures his job as to be a conduit for the audience. So if he doesn't understand, they probably don't understand, that makes sense. But it was the next part that really knocked me off my my seat He said I figure I can big up enough information and a short period of time to build a bullshit my way with the best of them And that ladies and gentlemen I do think is a big difference between men generally and women generally is that boys go up for survival reasons boys have to act

Braver and tougher than they really feel for survival as kids, right, with other boys. Girls have other stuff, but that's not it. So I think boys learn how to bluff and how to boast. And, you know, the fish was this big and more happened with the girl than really did. And so it's more familiar to kind of wing it. So with women, I really have to get them to shift their thinking. I actually told that story, I'm going off track for a second at Cornell University. I went to the engineering professor, raised his hand.

He said, not only is it a skill for boys going up to learn how to BS, but if you're really good at it, then you're considered a bullshit artist. I had no idea. So with women, I have to really invite them to think about what was Coppall really saying. He's a distinguished award-winning journalist. What are you talking about lying or being deceitful? So it's about kind of reframing what he was saying. He was improvising and winging it and seat of his pants

and going with the flow and being curious. So from that point of view, I do think a lot of reframing needs to be done. How does that land for you, Dr. Harris? I mean, that's absolutely right. I've done some of that maybe sort of accidentally over the years as I've tried to really understand the roots of why I'm the way I'm in order to sort of take the next steps in my career. But it did make me recall something that Adam Grant said, which is that really, and I think you alluded to this also, that really it's just about trust in yourself that given the resources that you could figure it out.

And for me, my self image over the years or my assessment of my capability for intelligent thinking came from this faulty memory of hearing or telling myself when I was much younger that your intelligence is what you're naturally born with and what you basically can do and know without trying too hard. And so the fact of needing or allowing yourself to not know, but then having the confidence to go find out is really all I think you need to sort of take that next step forward and not feel like a fraud. Just for people who don't know who Adam Grant is, he's an organizational psychologist from Wharton.

They've been on the show many, many times. He's incredible. Valerie, do you want to respond to that? Or I have a million more questions, but I just want to make sure. Yeah, yeah. I mean, to me, the core solution is to, I'm going to go back to what I said, is to reframe what it means to be competent. And for one person, that might be that natural genius that I talk about, like ease and

speed. Like if I was really intelligent, I wouldn't even have to study. I wouldn't have to work at it. I'd just be naturally gifted at this. For someone else, their notion of competence might be, I have to do it all by myself. If somebody helped me, if I put in the door, if I have to go ask for mentoring or tutoring, then it doesn't count, right? Competence is doing it all by yourself.

For somebody else, it's knowing 150% before they even walk in the door. I mean, then of course you have perfectionists over here. And then there's this kind of subcategory of people who I call kind of superhumans who think they need to excel across multiple roles. Very different skill sets, right? They need to be the big thinkers strategist, but also the nitty-gritty kind of detailed person. They need to be the amazing scientific researcher, but also be a great leader and manager.

Or for women, especially, I don't know, I don't hear men talk about this, but I think for women, especially, they feel like they have to excel not don, I don, I'm trying to stop, but it's just because I think women have more to feel inadequate about. I think that's also part of the problem. But yeah, I completely agree and that truly was kind of what came out of my dissertation and the conclusion I have reached is that at its core, it is fundamentally about changing how we think about what it means to be competent. You raised something really interesting. Imposter syndrome can overflow the riverbank of the professional sphere.

It seems like I'm hearing from you that we can have imposter syndrome in many areas of our lives. I don't. No, I mean, I think we can feel inadequate in different areas of our lives. But I'm seeing people use imposter syndrome for many bizarre things like I went

to a nudist hotel with my friend and we had imposter syndrome because we weren't comfortable being nude in the lobby. No, that's not imposter syndrome. One guy had Tampa Bay Super Bowl imposter syndrome because they got Tom Brady, so it doesn't really count. I'm like, no, that's not in Bosnia syndrome. So to me, the core definition, there's kind of three pieces, right? You externalize your accomplishments, you minimize them, you dismiss them, and you've got this kind of core fear of being found out, and that you don't feel as intelligent capable competent as people think you are. So if those three things are operating, then yes, it can happen in other parts of your

life. But I don't think it's the same as not feeling that you're being authentic in a relationship. Would you say Bianca, that those three qualifications applied to areas of your life outside of the professional? Sometimes. And I think that's why I'm so interested in understanding the origins of how I've learned to think about my own intelligence and competence because a lot of that came out of formative years with a dysfunctional family and sort of not a whole lot of, I think,

modeling for actual confidence and self-esteem. So if it's going to start that early, which I imagine it does for many people and is then further shaped by your environment and your experiences and certainly in medicine, it's like fodder for, you know, imposter syndrome on steroids, then it's going to affect your life in other ways and they're going to be some patterns, I think, that are similar. Well, I want to bring up the medical part because you raised that Bianca. And, you know, I really talk about kind of seven perfect, good reasons why you might feel like fraud.

One of them is being raised by humans, which we can talk about later as well. But another one is people in STEM fields who are in very information, dense, rapidly changing fields are going to be more vulnerable to imposter syndrome because going back to that notion of competence We think if I were really competent I would be able to keep up on everything and the reality is no you wouldn't and Nor could anybody else but the thing about medical culture I have a slide I use in my talk and all it says on the screen is You work for an organizational culture or you're in an organizational culture that fuel self-doubt So I'm speaking at Stanford University a young man raises him and he says what if you're in a culture?

There's a lot of shaming. I said are you in medicine? He said yes So you know that's that shaming for not knowing things. I did a podcast for the British medical journal and There they were lamenting it was a medical student in a resident lamenting the lack of positive feedback. Like you work so hard and you get no feedback that's positive. The best you can do in the UK and your final medical exam is no concern. We have no concern about you, right? So the point that I want to make to them is like that.

You're not, you're not a complete fuck up. Is that the best? That's the best. So the point that I want to make to these two young women is, you know what, you didn't know that that was the culture you were signing up for, but that's the culture you're in. And why I want them to know that is so that they can normalize their experience and go, well, of course I feel this way. I'm in this particular culture so that we can contextualize more and personalize less.

Coming up, Dr. Valerie Young talks about the risk factors for imposter syndrome, the impact of race and group identity and three tools for dealing with imposter syndrome. Life is short and it's full of a lot of interesting questions. What is happiness really mean? How do I get the most out of my time here on Earth? And what really is the best cereal? These are the questions I seek to resolve on my weekly podcast, Life is short with just and long.

If you're looking for the answer to deep philosophical questions like, what is the meaning of life? I can't really help you. But I do believe that we really enrich our experience here by learning from others. And that's why in each episode, I like to talk with actors, musicians, artists, scientists, and many more types of people about how they get the most out of life. We explore how they felt during the highs. And sometimes more importantly, the lows of their careers. We discuss how they've been able to stay happy during some of the harder times, but if I'm being

honest, it's mostly just fun chats between friends about the important stuff. If you had a sandwich named after you, what would be on it? Follow Life is short wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen to Add Free on the Amazon music or Wondering app. You mentioned something about being raised by humans as a risk factor for imposter syndrome. Can you say more about that? Yeah, I guess maybe because I'm not coming from a clinical point of view and my observations are really with again hundreds of thousands of people and all walks of life, I think it's important to step back and look at family messages. I worry

sometimes people get stuck there, but it is important to look at family messages. So if you were the kid who came home with four A's and one B, and your family's only response was, what's that B doing there? You got this message that the only thing that was acceptable was perfection. But let me put that into a social context. Maybe you grew up in a family of very highly educated people. So that was kind of this norm, right, of pushing kids academically to excel as is the family tradition. But you also could have grown up an immigrant family for whom education is seen as the path to success, or perhaps even survival in some cases. So there's a social reason why kids are pushed.

Very often black parents will push kids to achieve academically. And the message is you have to be better to be considered equal in the end, there's tons of research that actually bears that out on unconscious bias. So that message can come up for folks and other kids come home and they get no praise at all, right?

They get excellent grades and they get no praise. And it's not because they're bad people, right? Well-intentioned parents might send some messaging that would lead folks to go up and fill like imposter's. It could be they didn't get it growing up, so they don't know how to give it. It might be cultural. It might be other kids were struggling like,

you know, we got to help, you know, little Billy's fine. We got to help Susie, she's struggling in school. Maybe you were like the quote unquote smart one in the family. And they didn't want to make you see more special than other kids. Maybe they didn't value education. That's only one way to measure success. Success might have been going into the family business. You're going into the military or producing grandchildren someday.

Like, we don't care how successful you are. We're those grandchildren. So there's many reasons, but it doesn't matter for the kid, because for kids, praise is like oxygen. And then some kids got too much oxygen, right? They were told everything that it was remarkable, and then it gets harder for them to kind of parse out as an adult, kind of good from grade from average. And they also, I've seen, become very dependent on getting a lot of positive feedback.

Well, I actually spoke at this Women in Telecommunications or Conference in New York. scene become very dependent on getting a lot of positive feedback. I actually spoke at this Women in Telecommunications or Conference in New York. Young woman sitting at my table, she said, when she sends an email out, she kind of waits for that positive feedback about her email. I said, well, that's a problem because people are busy. They don't have time to flatter your every email. So that can be an upshot of that. I think there's very few parents.

And there's a lot of dysfunction. Let me be clear. There's trauma. There's things that happen to people. But I think overall, there's very few parents who raise kids to be humble realists, who raise kids to have a healthy response to failure and mistakes. And it's tough being a parent, right, because you want your kids to excel. What's that school, the Dalton school?

On the Upper East Side, well, the parents brought me in to speak. And for folks that don't know, very elite, private, K-12 school in New York. And you know, a lot of these kids very early, they have a very robust tutoring program, but they won't go to tutoring because they don't want the other kids to think they're stupid. That's discouraging, for sure. What are the other risk factors for impostor syndrome? Well, we mentioned occupations.

I mean, the STEM feels, people in creative fields. I mean, the reason why you hear Viala Davis, Tom Hanks, a Billie Eilish, David Letterman, you hear so many people talking about impostor syndrome is when you're in a creative field, as you well know, you're only as good as your last book, your last performance. You're being judged by subjective standards, by people whose job title is professional critic. So you see a lot of folks in creative fields, writers, actors, musicians who talk about imposter

syndrome. I think people who work alone are more vulnerable. You're not getting that performance feedback from other people, you're not getting folks bounce ideas off of you can get in your head. I think that can make you more vulnerable. Being a student, so much of the research on imposter syndrome is done particularly with undergraduate students.

And as a segment of the population, like why wouldn't they have higher rates of imposter syndrome, right? They are in a position where they are literally having their knowledge and intellect measured and graded, tested like day in and day out for years on end. And if you're a doctoral student, it's like almost by definition, you're going to experience in post-rescendant. Dr.al students are my favorite audience for two reasons.

Number one, they're in such pain and I get it and they get my joke. So it's like a perfect combination. But they are suddenly in this world where they're supposed to be scholars, but they're not really trained to be scholars. And again, it goes back to the culture. Like nobody tells them coming in like, guess what? Nobody's going to be writing in the margins.

Great insight, good proposal. Like that doesn't happen in academia. Like all they're doing, it's a culture of critique. All they're doing is telling you how to make it better. And if you don't know that, you're going to take it personally. So those are, I think, some of the primary risk factors. Again, I think I mentioned highly competitive fields that I can make you more susceptible as well. And not having that sense of belonging, whenever you belong to any group

for whom there are stereotypes about intelligence or competence, you're gonna be more susceptible. And especially if you're one of the few people who look like you or maybe sound like you or the only one of the first. And that part of the reason I don't buy into the narrative that imposter syndrome is fundamentally you feel unworthy. I don't know Michelle Obama.

I've never counseled Michelle Obama, but I'm gonna go out in the limb here, but I did read her autobiography. I don't think she feels like an imposter because she's talked about imposter's in her because she feels unworthy. I think it's when you were the first, as she was, you got that pressure to represent your entire group.

I have a friend at work and she talks about the hidden tax that black women pay that nobody else knows about, which is that they have to be eight times better than everybody else because their entire race and gender is being judged by their performance. They're representing countless people. You're representing Kevin Cochley, University of Michigan has done quite a bit of research on this and His expectation was it was going to be highest amongst blacks, but he's done several studies There's other studies after him that shows it's actually highest amongst Asian Americans and they're assuming it's for a couple of reasons One it goes back to racism the expectation of being the model minority ever striving ever achieving ever excelling

But also less of an individualist, cultural sense of success and more of a collective sense of success. And so you're succeeding for the family and the community as well. Interesting. We talk on this show a lot about how individualism can have so many pernicious impacts on human happiness because we are designed as a species for communication and collaboration and connection. But this is an interesting downside to coming out of a more community-oriented background, which is that in a professional context, you might feel like you're representing in a way that can add a lot of pressure.

Yeah, absolutely. I don't know if you've done a segment yet, add a lot of pressure. Yeah, absolutely. I don't know if you've done a segment yet, Dan, on stereotype threat. I'm familiar with what it is, and I believe it's been brought up on the show before, but please define it. So Claude Steele originally at Princeton,

and then he was at Stanford, him and Jason Erinzen, I think it was, came up with this concept called stereotype threat. And what they found is that the fear of confirming a negative stereotype causes stress, which impacts performance. And it's counterintuitive, but the more accomplished you are,

the more the effect shows up. So I'll just give you two examples to make it concrete. They would give undergraduate students a math exam, just adding a box for, and it was a binary choice male female, just adding that box, because it unconsciously triggered the reminder of one's gender, in this case, again, binary choice.

The scores of the female students went down, who had that box? Because it unconsciously reminded them, oh yeah, girls can't do math. When they added a box for race, the scores of the Asian-American students went up, again, that triggered that unconscious stereotype. Or, yeah, Asians are supposedly good at math.

And there's been many other examples. In a classroom, when the person administering the test in the front of the room is black, the scores of the black students went up. When the person mentioned the test is white, the scores went down. And the hundreds of tests have been corroborated many, many times. So I think that that is also a factor that we have to consider that your social group does also play a role in a posture syndrome. Absolutely.

And as Bianca has pointed out to me, you're really, you've been at the forefront of initiating this discussion. So at this point in the conversation, I think we've done a, by we, I mean, the two of you have done a very good job of setting the table here on what imposter syndrome is, and of course, there may be more to say, but I would love if you're up for it to switch the orientation of the discussion toward what do we do about it? And so can you say a little bit about what your approach looks like? Yeah, to me, it fundamentally comes down to three tools, if you will.

I mean, there's the information, the insight, all that's important, but in terms of actually doing something about it, the first one is to normalize and posture syndrome to get back to recognizing, again, those perfectly good reasons why you might feel like a fraud. And the goal is to contextualize more and personalize less. So the next time you have what I consider to be a normal imposter moment,

it's about kind of hitting that mental pause button and going, okay, let me kind of step back. Like, of course I feel stupid, I'm a student, right? I'm here to learn, or I'm the only person who looks like me in this group, or I am in a highly competitive field, or I'm in STEM or whatever it might be, and to be able to say to yourself, well, of course I feel this way, most people would in this situation, to make it more contextual and again less

personal. The next one is to reframe. I'm going to get back to the point I made earlier that the people who are humble realists, they're no more intelligent, capable, competent. They just think differently about competence, failure, mistakes, and constructive feedback and fear. So to make that actionable, because it starts with our thoughts, right? So when you have that imposter thought, hit the pause button again, and then step back and say, how would somebody who is humble but has never felt like an imposter,

how would they reframe this situation? What would they feel differently? What would they think differently? What would they do differently? And then third, it comes down to acting. Acting like you really believed that new thought. Like what was somebody who believed that? How would they act differently? An example I use, it was a guy in my town,

I live in Western Massachusetts, and he lost his election for town council. He'd been on the town council for 12 years, so boss the election. So you'd be crushingly disappointed and maybe embarrassed or whatever, but you're not happy. So what did this guy do? The very next day he goes down to Boston, he takes out papers to run for state office. In his comment in the newspaper was, it was the next natural move. And I remember thinking, that's not intuitive to a lot of us it was the next natural move. And I remember thinking that's not intuitive

to a lot of us, that the next natural move following a setback is to shoot higher. But why not? I mean, clearly he knew how to do government, right? So why not? But that's not how people who feel like imposters think. Like, Dan, in the beginning of this, you couldn't remember the name of that book.

You just kind of rolled with it, but there are people who trust me who would like, they would obsess about that. They would get off the podcast, they'd be driving home, they're thinking about it over and over their head, right, and really get in their head about it in a very obsessive kind of way. And so it's about being able to just kind of let things roll off you and not take things too seriously. I was speaking in front of a group of healthcare executives in Orlando and I started coughing. You know the kind of cough where you can't

continue. You have to step to the side of the stage and take a drink and took me a minute right, I come back. I said, how many of you will be mortified right now? If that happened to you and a bunch of people raised their hand, I said, yeah, I don't care. And it's not that I didn't care. It's just like, I have an in perspective now. Like nobody stormed out of the room. I'm not talking to that coughing woman one more time. I'm not listening to Dan.

If he can't remember the name of a book, I am not listening to that podcast. You know, we have to put things in a perspective and just allow ourselves to be human and to laugh it off. Dan said something very helpful to me once when I was training and obsessing over something I said or didn't say or what have you. And he basically said, nobody really cares. Nobody's thinking about you. They're thinking about themselves. And it sort of points to something we were speaking about before that enters into relationships where having imposter syndrome

can be somewhat narcissistic and that you do think that all these negative attributes are what people are responding to in the world when most of the time they're not even noticing. Absolutely. They're really not how many times do we the same thing? You go give a talk or something and then you realize you forgot to make some minor point you're beating yourself up It doesn't matter. They got good information and we have to be so much more forgiving and realized it's not all about us So how do we get to that point because you just described these three Tools. Yeah, there are tools. So how do we learn how to implement these in our lives?

I think it takes practice. You know, somebody said to me recently, they said, well, easier said than done. Said you're absolutely right. Everything is easier said than done. So it's a matter of if it's important to you and you want to kind of unlearn and posture syndrome, then you will make that conscious effort to be more mindful of something that is largely an unconscious phenomena. And to do that, stepping back, pausing, I think you have to learn that there is an alternative way to look at things before you can even change the thinking.

So I think it also starts there. I mean, I think in many ways, humble realist thinking is very similar to entrepreneurial thinking. It's like try something, see if it works, doesn't work, try something else, like, oh well, we learn something, no matter what you learn something from it. Entrepreneurs seek out information to get better. People who feel like imposters were crushed by even constructive feedback. But a humble realist, they'll say, how could I've done that better?

Is it one thing I could have done to improve? And they want information to constantly get better. I don't do a bunch of coaching, but I did coach this very senior executive, so I was really curious about this guy's imposter syndrome. And he was the guy who was the big picture visionary and as this company grew to $300, $400 million, they started bringing in all these MBAs with their standard operating procedures picture visionary and as this company grew to $344 million,

they started bringing in all these MBAs with their standard operating procedures near spreadsheets and his brain is like exploding. He's a big picture guy, which I get, because I'm like him. And I said, well, you know, John, I said, it sounds like you're expecting yourself to be the star picture, the star batter,

star runner, the star outfielder, right? I think I looked at me and said, oh my God, I said, I'm a sports guy, I just got it. You know, that plumber doesn't feel badly because they don't know what the electrician knows. I have to say laughter helps. I mean, you have to be in a safe enough place with yourself and your life to be able to laugh.

But I had an experience a couple of years ago where I was writing a note in the electronic medical record. And I was reviewing other notes on one patient. One of them was scanned. It was older than we use now, the direct typing into the system. And as an attending at that time, so fully trained, seeing my own patient's situation, I started reading the note of a fellow. So somebody's not yet in attending in my field. And I was thinking to myself, my goodness, this person knows so much, this note is so well written, the handwriting's beautiful, you know, and the subtext being like, I'm not like that, I can't think like that, that's not my

handwriting. I can never do that. And I scanned to the bottom of the page and it was actually my signature from when I was a visiting fellow like 10 years before. And I had no choice but to laugh. I mean, it was ridiculous. And it was a turning point for me. It just doesn't serve, doesn't serve me anymore. It might have actually served me at one point, being too scared to belong at many times, having this imposter confidence that there's an imposter self doing the job actually got me through a lot of scary times. Because I know I could show up. I just didn't identify with that person, but I could play the role. And sometimes that's what you have to do. You don't necessarily believe the new thoughts. I'm not asking anybody to believe the new thoughts.

How could you, you've been living with the old thoughts, but how can you act like somebody who did believe the new thoughts? I go on meditation retreat sometimes in ways that are inconvenient for my wife and one of my principal teachers is that, Joseph Goldstein and one of the things he talks about quite a bit is, they probably, it would be an inappropriate use of the term

in posture syndrome, but I do get a lot of self doubt on retreat. Am I doing right? Am I doing right? How am I doing? And Joseph will sometimes tell people in my situation, count the self judgmental thoughts. And by 282, you can't help but laugh because,

and this is where he uses a lot and is teaching in Bianca, used it earlier, it's ridiculous. And that is really liberating. I mean, truly impotrassum is absurd. And this is what I think, and I know this is not what everybody else thinks. But I honestly think that deep down, I don't care how much somebody says they feel like an imposter. I think deep down, we really do know we're no imposter. I think that deep down, we know we have everything we need to achieve the majority of goals we set for ourselves in life.

Not easily, not quickly, not without help, not perfectly. But we really do know that we can do it. I think it's just that this debris of imposter thinking gets in our way. Before we take a break here, that book, whose title I couldn't remember, it's actually called, that's what she said. What men need to know and women need to tell them about working together. It's by Joanne Lippmann. Okay, coming up, Valerie is going to talk about whether or not imposter syndrome ever goes

way, what to do with imposter syndrome as a parent, or imposter syndrome as a spouse, what to do if you're in a relationship with somebody who has imposter syndrome, and whether there are any upsides to all of this. One of the things you talk about in the book, which again, I know it sounds like you were a bit strong armed into aiming it towards women, but since we've talked quite a bit about women, one of the things you talk about is the role of the female drive to care and connect and that there can be pitfalls to being to other oriented. Can you say a little bit more about that?

Yeah, I think having another orientation kind of complicates the imposter picture for a lot of people. So related to gender, and this is actually something that came up in my dissertation, women, whether it's societal, whether it's innate, you know, nobody's ever going to answer that question, but tend to be relationship oriented and care deeply about how people think about them. And the impact of their behavior and other people. So, to make the choice to, for example, relocate for a job or take a promotion very often I think not uniquely but especially for women are more likely to think about how is this going to impact my kids if we have to relocate or if I take this

big promotion it's going to take more hours away from other people. But I think it's also true for other people as well that if you are moving across the country of the world to go to school, for example, or you grew up working class and now you're this big thing, that success can separate us from other people, either just literally geographically, we're no longer near, you know, our family or people who are like us or care about us. But it can also make us different than the people that we grew up with, again, depending on if you grew up working class, first generation, professionals and students for that reason are also more susceptible to imposter syndrome. So there tends to be this focus on the impact of my success on other people,

but also between myself and other people. So let's say I'm offered this promotion in my company. And now I am managing the people who I used to work with, many of whom I might have considered to be my friend. That can feel complicated because now I'm their boss. And now maybe I'll be going back to kind of that pressure to represent. So I think we have to step back sometimes when people feel like imposterous. I'm not saying it's not imposter syndrome, but a piece of that is, I think women, again,

not uniquely, but generally have a more layer definition of success. Men for better or worse have been kind of forced fit into historically a definition of success that was power, money, and status. And I think women's, because of that other orientation, also include meaning and balance and relationships into that mix. So sometimes it's hard to sort out. Am I afraid to step up my game and play big,

whatever that means to me? Because I don't think I can do it, or do I not want it. Am I having a conflict around the career or is it that I know this is going to make me really different from the people that I grew up with or to be successful? You know, I'm a black person and now has to move to rural Maine to work in this health center and there's really not going to be a lot of folks who look like me. I think that all of those considerations are sometimes in the back of our mind, but it gets framed as imposter syndrome.

So it's being able to parse out decisions that could have an impact on our relationships. This thing you're putting your finger on here and you write about it in the book too, that some women might not want quote-unquote success. That's pretty rich area because a lot of this discussion and it's very easy for me to fall into this, presupposes that people want to be successful in the traditional sense because that's what I want. But I think there are a lot of people women

and otherwise who may come from a different point of view either because they grew up in a more community-oriented situation where they don't buy into the Western individualistic, a different point of view either because they grew up in a more community oriented situation where they don't buy into the Western individualistic, capitalistic hierarchical thing. And so in that way, this discussion can be even more complex. Yeah, absolutely. And therefore, it kind of takes me farther away

from my overall world view. But it gets back to defining success for ourselves. I've been entrepreneur for probably 30 years and I was an unfortunate 200 company. I worked in corporate. I never wanted to build an empire. And I'm very aware I could have built an empire a long time ago.

I didn't want to have an HR department. I didn't want to have levels and layers. Like I was trying to get away from that kind of complexity. So to me, it's about succeeding on my own terms, which for me is about working at home and having control of my time and to the extent possible that we can. And doing something that personally has meaning. And I think contribution is also important to a lot of people. And working on Wall Street, you know, you make a lot of money.

And if that's what you value, that's what you value. But for someone else, it might feel like it wasn't serving in any way. It wasn't contributing. So they might shy away from that and it might look and feel like imposter syndrome. And again, maybe it is. That's why we have to get clear in our own heads, you know, which is if I had all the confidence in the world, would I still be afraid to do whatever it is? Does imposter syndrome ever go away?

You know, I think for some people it can. That's never been my particular goal. My goal is to give people information inside and tools so that they have a normal imposter moment. They can talk themselves down more quickly. But certainly I have met people who have said I used to feel this way. And actually this kind of interesting thing, Dan, I've talked to a couple of different men recently.

One is a PhD in chemist, works for a big pharmaceutical company, and he said, I did not feel like an imposter when I was younger. I felt like I was a genius and everyone else was an idiot. He said, but the more he figured out how much he didn't know, the more he started feeling like an imposter. So it kind of goes again, going back to that competence and knowledge and that kind of thing. I think that's

fascinating. That's something that I don't think has been really studied. That kind of reverse reverse track, you start out super confident and you can go to the other side. Yeah, in that case, I would call it progress. I would too. I would too. Because to me, that person, you know, they had more emotional intelligence once they realized how much they didn't know. I mean, I think that's one of the most important parts of recovering from this. If that's possible, it's saying, I don't know.

And being okay with uncertainty, which is especially difficult in medicine. But being comfortable saying, I don't know, is quite a relief. Yes. I love that Mark Twain quote. I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said, I don't know. Do you have thoughts on what some people refer to as having imposter syndrome as a mother?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, to be a mother, I mean, there's a certain amount of guilt that goes along with being a parent. And I think with social media, there's so many other people that now should compare yourself to. And being quote unquote,

working mothers, I mean, all mothers are working. But to have a job outside of the home and inside of the home, how do you ever know if you're doing it right? I mean, there's just no, I don't care how many books they are on it. And experts,

I think it's the hardest job in the world. And I think if you didn't have an ounce of doubt about parenting, then that would be a problem. I think it should be studied. I really do, because it really could have all the hallmarks, you know, you're with a group of other mothers. And interestingly, we're not talking about fathers here, so we can bring Dan and on that.

But I'm not a parent, right? But I could totally see sitting with some other mothers and thinking, oh're not talking about fathers here so we can bring Dan and on that. But I'm not a parent, right? But I could totally see sitting with some other mothers and thinking, oh my God, I've no idea what I'm doing. And they all have it together and I don't. So that sense of feeling like you're fooling people and if they only knew, or it's only because I have a lot of help, again, kind of dismissing the ways that you are good at something and chalking them up to,

I just got lucky that time with that kid. So I could see that and having a fear of, you know, kind of being found out to be inadequate. Or even on the flip side, your kid is acting up in public and that's a reflection on you. And then you feed that back on your history of all the bad things you've done that maybe, you know, amounted to this situation that really you had no control over or was totally normal, but again, worrying what people think about your performance

is the core point. And Dan, when you're out in public and you're kids acting up, do you feel like people are judging you as a father? I feel vaguely homicidal, but not like an imposter. Dan does not have imposter syndrome. Well, not right now. I'm early in my career when I was a 28-year-old network correspondent and then sent into war zones and things like that. I definitely had it. Speaking of Ted Coppel, I remember being in Afghanistan, I was one of the few reporters to get into a kind

of embed situation with the Taliban while they were still in control of Afghanistan after 9-11. They're back in control now, unfortunately. And I was reporting from, you know, Taliban control of Afghanistan and I was doing a story for Nightline. And Ted Coppel was asking me questions and we were taping it. So he then had a chance to say something to me that wasn't going to go on the air. And he basically said, you seem giddy. You seem inexperienced. And it was totally crushing.

And then I got home, actually, and there was like a negative review of my work in the New York times. So yeah, I had lots of imposter syndrome then, but now I've been doing what I do for a long time. And so as an interviewer or whatever, I don't feel a lot of imposter syndrome. What about as a husband? Yes, actually. Yeah, well, there have been times

as a husband where I felt it. Actually, this brings us to a question I wanted to ask you, Valerie, but how people who are in relationships with those who have imposter syndrome can or should handle it, because this is an area where I've had some imposter syndrome, because I feel like I've probably handled it incorrectly over and over again by responding in ways that inflame the situation rather than soothe it. And so without saying too much, I can say more if you want, but I'd be interested to hear if you have any insights for people like me who are in relationships with somebody

who's really struggling with this. Yeah, I'm guessing you probably say things, Dan, like, oh, come on, you're great at what you do and you're being ridiculous. And you can do it and don't worry about it or just stop thinking about it. You're thinking about it. You're overthinking it. I don't know if it's anything along that line. I wish it was that.

My mistakes are worse is what I guess I'm not trying to say. I would do two things. One is because I'm so anxious as a person, her anxiety would, we, this is kind of a truism, we often react very negatively to the behavior of others when we see something in their behavior that we don't like about ourselves. So her anxiety would provoke all sorts of discomfort

for me, which I don't think I discharged or handled in a good way. So she would get a lot of negative, energetic feedback from me when she was getting anxious. And I think that problem persists until this day. And then the other thing is that I would sometimes point out with some accuracy, but not a lot of, you know, the Buddha, when he was talking about right speech or how to speak with skill. He would say, say that, which is was talking about right speech or how to speak with skill, he would say, say that, which is true and that which is helpful. And I would point out, I think truthfully that there was a certain amount, as Bianca said earlier, of self-absorption in imposter syndrome.

You can get so wrapped up in what is everybody thinking about me that you're not available. But I would do that at the wrong time and often in an overly harsh fashion that I'm now embarrassed about. And is that because you were kind of tired of hearing about it over and over? Yeah, well, I think for a number of reasons. One, what I said before about me being uncomfortable with her discomfort, two, being self-centered myself and wanting to have all of her attention on my issues. That's a whole nother story. Well, I'll have to get you to deep therapy.

We've done plenty of deep therapy. We've, there's a reason why we can talk about it here. No, I'm kidding. I mean, I'm sure Bianca, you have obviously, you're in it, right? You have more thoughts, but I clearly made an assumption because what very often happens, whether it's friends, whether it's family member, whether it's a partner, significant other, very often happens, whether it's friends, whether it's family member, whether it's a partner, significant other, there's often a tendency to want to give folks a pep talk or say,

you always do fine, you're worrying about nothing, which is not helpful because if a pep talk worked, nobody would have a posture syndrome. It's not about a pep talk. It's about, I'm to be a broken record here, but helping people give them tools. And I think often when people are talking about impotions, and they're not looking for a solution,

they want just to be hurt. They want to kind of talk it out, and that is the solution. Brunei Brown, what was on the show years ago, and said this thing. She might say it all the time, or she may not remember even having said it, but I've really stuck in my head,

which is she was talking about how she deals with her children and when they come to her with a problem. And she said that she often says to them, I can't fix your problem, but I can sit in the dark with you. Mm-hmm. As a spouse, not being able to fix your wife's problem is that also something that feeds back negatively

on your sense of competence as a husband? No, no. Well, at least from my head right now, when somebody comes to me with a problem, which is not an infrequent event, I actually know enough now to know that my job is not to fix the problem. It's to sit in the dark with them.

And so that part of it doesn't. The only time I ever felt that way was when you had breast cancer and you had just had this major surgery and you were in a ton of pain and I couldn't do anything that I didn't feel like an imposter, I just felt frustrated. Not frustrated or maybe a better word for that would be bad for you and frustrated that I couldn't alleviate the pain. Right, this sense of helplessness. I think what can be more problematic is when you're with a group of people who all feel like imposters,

and then it can get into this kind of spiral with each other. I was speaking at NASA, and this young woman raised her hand, she was a doctoral student, doing an internship, and she said, boy, we talk about this all the time back with my cohorts back at the university, And this young woman raised her hand. She was a doctoral student doing an internship. And she said, boy, we talk about this all the time back with my cohorts back at the university. Every day we talk about imposter syndrome.

I said, great, are you doing anything about it? And she said, no, we just talk about it. And the research has actually shown that it's called co-ruminating that adolescents who dwell on negative thoughts and feelings with their friends actually experience higher levels of depression and anxiety. So, sometimes we can get kind of mired down in talking about it, but not actually taking

steps to change it. Well, that leads me to a question that, and I want to give credit to the Nicki Minaj of Imposter Syndrome for giving me this idea to ask you this question. But your approach really relies heavily on, to use your term, tools, as opposed to another term that you, who's somewhat facetiously just a few minutes ago, which is deep therapy and really trying to understand the roots of it. So, is it your view that that kind of therapy might lead one to overly ruminate and doesn't actually give you something to do about it now?

I think therapy is incredibly useful for a lot of people, especially if there is also might lead one to overly ruminate and doesn't actually give you something to do about it now. I think therapy is incredibly useful for a lot of people, especially if there is also depression or anxiety in combination with it. At the same time, the clinical view is that everything originates in childhood and there is this searching and searching for this wound. I've gotten letters from people that said I've spent four years in therapy, and I had a pretty normal upbringing, and I had healthy parents and everything. They couldn't find the thing, and like, what if I can't find the thing? And so I don't think it always goes back to

a deep-seated kind of womb in therapy. So there are some people, it can really delay or derail their search for a you know, a solution in a different path. If they think that's the only way to get there. I have a friend of the therapist, she works with doctoral students all the time and I'm like, why don't you just tell him, of course, you feel like an imposter. Why wouldn't you? Why do you help that person normalize that experience and that I'm only focusing on if it's not one thing at your mother. Valor, you've been, this has been fantastic. We only have a couple of minutes left. I just want

to check in with Bianca. Are there other questions you want to ask before we let her go? Oh, I guess, you know, we talked about can go away. what are the potential upsides to having imposter thoughts? I'm so glad you asked that. I'm very aware of a school of thought out there that says not only is it a good thing, but it's your superpower. And the reasoning is a few things. It says it means you're learning,

and so that's a good thing. But that begs a question. So by definition, do I have to feel like an imposter to be learning? The other reason is it motivates us to work harder. There was a, now it was not empirical research, but it was, or surveyed that rather that was done at Stanford with engineering students,

undergraduate students, and amongst the males, I don't have the numbers right in my head, but it was like, of the young men who felt like imposter, like 50% of them said it was a good thing because it motivated them to work harder, only 7% of the young women said that. So I think for some people it caused us to pull back not to charge ahead. I think, you know, women as a group are probably working hard enough already. The other big reason is people say it keeps us humble. And I think it's a false choice. This idea that I can be an arrogant jerk, or I can keep my imposter syndrome is a false choice. And that's why I want to offer people a third

narrative, which is to be a humble realist, which to me is more aspirational and attainable than trying to be quoting non-imposter. It gives me something to strive for, to be that the humble realist, and to learn to think like a humble realist. So I reject the, it's a good thing. I think there's so many downsides that it just kind of, to me, wipes away anything that's supposedly positive. Anything else, Doc? My goal is to be a humble realist. Love it. Valerie, is there anything you wish we had asked but failed to ask? No, funny.

I wrote a little note. I said, I wrote down good thing, question mark. That's the thing that I was hoping that I was hoping that we would get to. So I'm glad that it did come up. Before I let you go, can you please plug your book, anything else you've written, any other resources you're putting out into the world so that people who want to learn more from you can do so. Sure.

The book is called The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women, and I just talked random house into changing the subtitle to say, and men. So it's going to say The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women and men, you know, had to kind of unlearn apostasy and essentially exist. So you read the book, that there is a lot of focus on women, but I really, I'm told that by many men that they found it helpful as well.

You know, I launched something called Imposter Syndrome Institute, co-founded it with a friend of mine, Carolyn Herfers, a couple of years ago. And we're really looking to kind of scale the solution to bring it into more corporations and more universities with the mission being to kind of scale the solution to bring it into more corporations and more universities with the mission being to kind of stamp out a poster syndrome around the world. Such a pleasure to talk to you and Bianca, thanks for assisting in this interview and or actually that doesn't give you enough credit for provoking this interview into being and

tackling it head on. Thank you. You're not an apostor. You are no an apostor. Thank you so much. Thank you again to Dr. Valerie Young. Thank you to Bianca. Thank you to you for listening. Please go rate or review us. Seriously, that genuinely helps us. And finally, thank you to everybody

who worked so hard on this show. 10% of happiness produced by DJ Cashmere, Gabrielle Zuckerman, Justine Davey Lauren Smith, and Tara Anderson. Our supervising producer is Marissa Schneiderman and Kimmy Regler is our managing producer, scoring and mixing by Peter Bonaventure of Ultraviolet Audio, Nick Thorburn

of the great Indy Rock Band Islands, wrote our theme. We'll see you all on Friday for a bonus. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and ad free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash Survey.