The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - Imposter Syndrome: Why You Feel Like a Fraud (And How to Overcome It)

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

In this episode of the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast, Dr. Marianne Trent dives deep into the concept of imposter syndrome. She explores why so many of us, despite our achievements, feel like we don't belong and are on the verge of being "found out." Dr. Trent breaks down the psychological roots of imposter syndrome, how it manifests, and offers practical strategies to help you overcome these feelings. Whether you're an aspiring psychologist or navigating self-doubt in your career or personal life, this episode provides tools to reclaim your confidence and start celebrating your successes.________________________________________Key Takeaways:• What imposter syndrome is and why it affects even high achievers.• Common signs of imposter syndrome and how it manifests in different areas of life.• Practical strategies for reframing thoughts and reducing negative self-talk.• The importance of developing a growth mindset and celebrating your successes.________________________________________Highlights:00:00 - Introduction to Imposter Syndrome and Episode Overview00:45 - What Is Imposter Syndrome and Why Does It Happen?02:12 - The Impact of Imposter Syndrome Across Careers and Life Stages03:49 - Childhood Experiences and How They Shape Imposter Syndrome05:34 - Cultural and Societal Influences on Feeling Like an Imposter06:57 - Recognizing Self-Doubt and Negative Self-Talk08:32 - Signs of Imposter Syndrome: Undervaluing Accomplishments10:15 - Reframing Thoughts and Celebrating Small Wins11:14 - Developing a Growth Mindset and Learning from Mistakes12:05 - Building Confidence: Owning Your Successes and Mistakes13:00 - Actionable Advice: Write Down Three Recent Successes💻 Check out my short courses for aspiring psychologists and mental health professionals here: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/short-courses🫶 To support me by donating to help cover my costs for the free resources I provide click here: https://the-aspiring-psychologist.captivate.fm/support📚 To check out The Clinical Psychologist Collective Book: https://amzn.to/3jOplx0 📖 To check out The Aspiring Psychologist Collective Book: https://amzn.to/3CP2N97 💡 To check out or join the aspiring psychologist membership for just £30 per month head to: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/membership-interested✍️ Get your Supervision Shaping Tool now: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/supervision📱Connect socially with Marianne and check out ways to work with her, including the Aspiring Psychologist Book, Clinical Psychologist book and The Aspiring Psychologist Membership on her Link tree: https://linktr.ee/drmariannetrent💬 To join my free Facebook group and discuss your thoughts on this episode and more: https://www.facebook.com/groups/aspiringpsychologistcommunityLike, Comment, Subscribe & get involved:If you enjoy the...

Hi there, it's Marianne here. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to quickly let you know about something exciting that's happening right now. If you've ever wondered how to create income that works for you, rather than constantly trading your time for money, then you'll love the Race to Recurring Revenue Challenge with my business mentor, Lisa Johnson. This challenge is designed to help you build sustainable income streams. And whether you're an aspiring psychologist, a mental health professional, or in a completely different field,

the principles can work for you. There are also wonderful prizes to be won directly by Lisa herself. And if you join the challenge by my link, you can be in with a chance of winning a one-to-one hours coaching with me, Dr. Marianne Trent. Do you want to know more? Of course you do. Head to my link tree, Dr. Marianne Trent, or check out my social media channels, or send me a quick DM and I'll get you all the details. Right, let's get on with today's episode. Have you ever felt that you're not good enough despite all of your achievements? Like any

moment someone might find you out and realize you don't belong. That is imposter syndrome and it affects even the most successful people. In today's episode I'll break down exactly why this happens, how it can undermine your confidence and most importantly how you can stop it from holding you back. Whether you're starting a new career or just feeling the pressure to be perfect, imposter syndrome can creep in. But here's the truth, you do belong. And today we're going to talk about why. Stick around for some practical strategies which will help you change the way you think about yourself for good. Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist podcast. I am Dr. Marianne and I am a qualified clinical psychologist. Now you might be like, well, of course she doesn't

have imposter syndrome, what with being qualified and all. But this does happen for people in all walks of life and all stages of their career. And I can assure you it does crop up for me from time to time. And people across all ages and backgrounds and job roles can experience it and it can be really debilitating. It can of course affect mental health, career growth and personal development. And let's get to grips with it so that you can take control of it rather than vice versa. So what exactly is imposter syndrome? Well, it's like an internal sense that you are not enough or that somehow all of the things you've achieved are not actually down to you. It's down to luck or chance or someone's done you a favour and you haven't earned what you've achieved

or you don't deserve to be there. It might be that awareness that others are way more qualified or more appropriate to kind of speak or be doing what you're doing. It's basically like a real focus on everything you've got being down to external factors, so things that are not internal, not within your control. And that can leave us feeling quite diminished and quite small. And kind of, of course, if we feel that way, it makes sense that we think that we shouldn't be there. And whatever your job role, perhaps you're working in mental health, perhaps you're working in the psychology field, or perhaps you're doing something completely unrelated. If you kind of find yourself being praised for something, or you're being put forward for a new role, or perhaps even you've got a new

role, you've got a promotion, this can be really common times that that sense of imposter syndrome come in. If you are working in academia, perhaps you've got a book coming out or you've published an important paper and it can kind of strike you at key moments like that. So why does it happen? Well, firstly, it happens because we're human. We've got an awareness of ourselves and where we fit in society, in culture, in our families, in our social circles, in our workplaces. And we've got an awareness of where others fit as well. We can create judgments about ourselves, but we can also create judgments and have opinions of others. Of course, whether we've had experiences in the past where we've been treated nicely, kindly, considerately, compassionately can also impact

on how our self-worth has developed. Perfectionism, fear of failure and high expectations either from yourself and or others can all fuel feelings of inadequacy, of not being enough. And if when you were young you were constantly compared to siblings or others in your class or humiliated for not knowing certain things or not being good enough or others being better, you might find that that perhaps creeps in more as a sense of imposter syndrome when things are going better for you or when you do have kind of the trappings of things going well, like a higher salary or, I don't know, perhaps a nice car or a home that feels comfortable and safe and within your control. It can make you feel, well, who am I to have these things? Because I'm just that kid, you know, did X, Y, and Z and wasn't enough. And,

you know, people were laughing at, or my parents didn't even think I was good enough. And so if you're getting that feedback that actually you are credible, you are worthwhile, you are worth listening to, that can tap into the earlier roots that make you perhaps feel that you're not. And of course, there's cultural and societal influences as well. So your gender may come into play here. You know, is it safe for women to achieve? Is it safe for men to achieve? Is it safe for people of different ethnicities, different backgrounds to be in the role that

you are in or to be striving for the role that you are in? If people are vocal saying that people of your background, your upbringing, your wealth, your class should or should not be in particular areas, it can leave a little bit of an Achilles heel, a little bit of a weakness that kind of can get in on a bad day, on a day where you're feeling at a low ebb and really give a chance for that imposter syndrome to ramp up and make you feel like you're not enough. So what are the common signs of imposter syndrome and how might you notice if you are experiencing it? So this is where the self-doubt and the negative self-talk

might creep in. It can be really helpful to just tune in to your inner voice and just imagine if this was someone in your team or in your family or in your friendship circle whether you would consider them to be a positive person or whether you think they might be somebody who tends to put you down and not always be that nice and if you think about carrying them around with you all the time on your shoulder or in your head is that someone that is actually on your side? Or is it someone that's making you feel bad about yourself and all the situations that you might find yourself in throughout the day, throughout the week, throughout the month, throughout the year? Of course, what we know is encoster syndrome is not just linked or limited to our work,

our education settings. It can crop up in friendship circles. It can crop up in family circles. If you're a parent, it can crop up there, believe me, making you think, oh, wow, how am I old enough or experienced enough to be the one that has to know the answers for this? I was in London recently with my children, one in each hand as we were navigating our way through the tube. And it just kind of made me, I had this moment of, oh, how is this my job? How am I the one that's in charge? How am I the one that is looking at all the kind of tube maps and working out where to go? There's surely someone that is far more experienced and far more capable

and maybe more fun as a parent than me for doing this. So it doesn't just crop up for our professional lives. You might find that you're undervaluing your achievements. So if you've done something cool or big or new, like a presentation or got a new job offer, or maybe even just, you know, smashed your trip out of the park, taking your kids to London, you know, you might undervalue those accomplishments. You might be like, well, you know, anyone could have done it or there weren't enough people applying for that job and so there was, you know, fewer people to pick from or, you know, it wasn't a real test because the trains all ran on time. You know, there might be things that you were using to undervalue the fact that you did really well and you held it together and you, you know, you had a good result.

Another sign of imposter syndrome might be that sense that you are a fraud you should not be doing what you're doing it's just luck that you are maybe you feel like people can see it on you you know perhaps your skin feels marked and people are talking about you behind your back there can be a little bit of paranoia creeping in there as well of course what we know about people that rise up through the ranks is that sometimes people will have things to say about you. They might well be saying some of these things, but it doesn't make it true. If you've got evidence of your success, there has to be a time and a point and a place where you begin to lean on those, where you begin to believe, connect and kind of hold

those achievements, those successes, put them under your belt, use them as scaffolding to help you know, to help you feel that you do belong, that you have earned your stripes. Another sign of imposter syndrome might be over-preparation or perhaps what we call procrastination, kind of doing everything apart from the thing that is going to move your project across the line or get it to a point where it could come to reality. That can be a little bit like getting in our own way or not wanting to do the thing, prepare the thing for fear of judgment or for fear of it not being good enough, for fear of that being then open to ridicule or public comment. So now we have noticed the symptoms, the signs,

or the imposter syndrome, what are we going to do about it so that we can take control and have it be shrunk down to a more manageable size? Firstly, we're going to acknowledge and reframe our thoughts and our thinking. We're just going to notice when those thoughts crop up initially. We might find it helpful to note them down just to kind of get a little bit of an overview over the days or the weeks of what kind of thoughts and feelings crop up. We're then going to encourage a reframe of them. Try to imagine what you know your best friend or someone close to you might say to help you feel differently about them. If you have a feeling that something is happening or should be happening or shouldn't be happening, we're going to try and turn down the volume on that a little bit. And we're going

to try to look for more reliable, predictable external factors. We're going to look at facts, not feelings, because facts are more measurable. We're also going to be encouraging you to talk about this, to talk about this with your friends, to talk about this with your supervisors, to give it some oxygen, to give it some air. Because what we know is that things that kind of hide in the damp, in the dark, can have a tendency to breed, to become bigger. Because when we take control and we talk about them, it absolutely can help them to diminish, to shrink, and for you to be in control and to kind of have all the evidence you need to feel like this is not true, that you do belong, that you do deserve to be there, and you can do what you're striving to do. I absolutely hope and think that when you do give that the airtime that you need to to honour yourself. You will be getting the message of just how common

imposter syndrome is. Other people will drop in examples of their own and validate and normalise your experiences, which can be so important. Another way of kind of grappling with this and overcoming it is that we're going to begin to celebrate our successes, no matter how small. Even if you're really enjoying a dinner that you've cooked for your family or your friends, you're going to kind of say, I really love this. Like, I think I've done a great job here. It might feel really uncomfortable to begin with. But also, if you've done a big thing, you know, if you have submitted a really important assignment, or you've got a great mark back from something that you've put in, or you've had a grant approved,

or, you know, you've got promotion, or you've got an interview mark back from something that you've put in or you've had a grant approved or you know you've got promotion or you've got an interview we're going to celebrate those steps no matter how small or inconsequential they might be because they are worth celebrating they are markers of our success of our progress through whatever life stage or career you find yourself in it isn't arrogant it isn't braggy. It's really important that you begin to show up for yourself positively, with compassion, with grace, with praise and admiration, not just criticism, shame and derision. And our last tip is that we're going to develop what's called a growth mindset. We're going to reduce perfectionism and we're going to allow mistakes in and know that that's a really important learning journey and that that happens for a reason. We need to be able to learn

from setbacks along the way and to talk about them and to reframe them and to own them as well. We don't get to high stages of our career without making some mistakes along the way. That is normal. That is part of being human. But of course, we need to learn from them too. I'm reminded where we were having a roof redone on our house and a trainee roofer fell through the ceiling and I was told it only happens once because we learn from our mistakes we learn from that pain and we learn to kind of look and be more cautious about where we place our feet and whilst I hope you won't fall through a roof, the same is true from what you are doing in whatever job role you are into. If you are experiencing imposter syndrome, please know you're not alone. It is super, super common. Everyone faces self-doubt at times, but that doesn't mean that you are not deserving

of your successes. It doesn't mean that you can't pass go, that you can't collect £200 and go to the next stage of your career. Little monopoly reference there. As a little action point here, why don't you write down three things that you've done recently that you think have been good enough or that you're proud or pleased have happened. Really reflect on what it's taken from you to achieve those things, to get them in the bag, to make them happen. Thanks so much for your time in tuning in today. If you're watching on YouTube, please do subscribe, like, drop me a comment and share with anyone you think might find this useful too. Please do come and connect with me on my socials where I'm Dr. Marianne Trent everywhere

and join my free Facebook group, The Aspiring Psychologist Community, which is the unique home of Marianne's motivation and mindset sessions. If it is your time and you're ready for the next step in progressing your psychology career, please also do consider checking out the Aspiring Psychologist membership, which you can join with no minimum term from just £30 a month. Thanks so much for being part of my world. I will look forward to bringing you the next episode on YouTube from 10am on Saturdays and wherever you get your podcast from 6am on Mondays. Take care. then let this be your guide with this podcast at your side you'll be on your way to being qualified

it's the aspiring psychologist with dr marianne my name's yana and i'm a trainee psychological well-being practitioner i read the clinical psychologist collective book i found it really interesting about all the different stories and how people got to become a clinical psychologist, it just amazed me how many different routes there are to get there and there's no perfect way to become one. And this kind of filled me with confidence that no, I'm not doing it wrong and put less pressure on myself. So if you're feeling a bit uneasy about becoming a clinical psychologist I'd definitely recommend this just to put yourself at ease

and everything will be okay. But trust me you will not put the book down once you start.