Blog Post 82: The Need to Prove Yourself, or Imposter Syndrome
A common component of Type C’s propensity to feel lesser - to feel that other people’s needs are more important than ours - is feeling that we need to prove ourselves. We feel this need intensely so we end up doing a lot for other people, and these “overdoing” actions are reinforced because people appreciate what we do.
The need to prove ourselves overlaps with “imposter syndrome” - the condition of feeling anxious and not experiencing success internally, despite being high performing in external, objective ways. This condition often results in people feeling like "a fraud" or "a phony" and doubting their abilities. And often, people are not even aware of these feelings and resulting actions - it’s all ingrained.
The workplace is a ripe environment for the need to prove oneself. I (Kore) have a patient who chronically feels lesser at work. Despite her success as a high-level executive, she still has thoughts that she is not as smart or as creative as others, and feels she must work harder to prove herself. I (Anna) often felt this way at work, and to prove myself I would work longer hours, always be available, always raise my hand, always be positive/pleasant. Women can really struggle in corporate environments as the workloads are not always balanced, and unconscious gender-based biases may exist.
How can we overcome this need to constantly prove ourselves? We can start to notice if we are perceiving ourselves as lesser, if it’s causing us to act in certain ways, and to notice the costs of those actions to our health and relationships. Can we sit with the painful thought of being lesser and do something different that doesn’t hurt us in the long run, but is still helpful to others? For example, could we let someone else raise their hand to lead the project, and then volunteer to contribute to it in a smaller role. Can we think of it as a journey, where we can be curious and see what happens when we act differently - can we experiment in small ways?
Our minds will always want to return to the “I’m lesser” story, but we can counter that impulse by remembering our performance reviews or asking ourselves how friends would describe us. We can accept compliments and positive feedback and spend some time reflecting on this. We can think of ourselves on a comparative basis; all of our colleagues – in fact all of our friends and family members - have strengths and weaknesses, and so do we.