Mira Cooper first felt like an impostor when she was a freshman.
As a civil engineering major, Cooper has been surrounded by individuals throughout her academic career who not only had interests in their fields but also seemed to know exactly what they were doing.
“They have all this talent for it, and I see them getting A's on exams and stuff, and I’m sitting there with a solid C maybe,” Cooper, a senior, said. “I’m just like, ‘I’m not good enough for this. I don’t know what I’m doing.’”
Cooper was finally able to “put the phrase to the feeling” while reading articles on Career Contessa, self-described as a “career site for women,” this year.
Coined in 1978 by psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes, "impostor syndrome" is an experience in which individuals believe their achievements in life are undeserving and that they are “fooling people,” according to Valerie Young, author of The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer from Impostor Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It.
“Even if there’s obvious evidence of (their) abilities, (they) have a hard time internalizing or owning their success,” Young said. “Either they dismiss it (as) ‘I was just lucky’ or ‘it’s because I worked harder than the other students.’”
As a freshman, Cooper first had that experience when she began working in chemical engineering at a lab. The pressure she felt from her low self-esteem was accompanied by the high expectations her bosses had for her.
“I had the lack of confidence that a lot of freshman have, not knowing what you were doing and feeling like you need to know what you’re doing, but you don’t,” Cooper said. “The whole time I was scared out of my mind that they would find out that I’m not as good as I pretend to be.”
Cooper is far from being the only one who experiences these feelings.
A 2003 study by psychologists David Dunning and Joyce Ehrlinger found that women were more likely to underestimate their abilities compared to their male peers — who would overestimate their abilities — despite both having similar results, according to The Atlantic.
Women are “more likely to internalize failure, mistakes and criticism,” while men as a group would “blame mistakes or failures” on other factors, Young said.
While it is important to note that women are more susceptible to impostor syndrome, Young emphasizes that “there are a lot of men who painfully experience these feelings.”
“Whenever you belong to a group for whom there are stereotypes about competence … people could assume you’re not as intelligent,” Young said.
M. Geneva Murray, the director of the Women’s Center, said she has also dealt with the feeling of questioning her own abilities and capabilities whenever she makes a mistake.
“(I think), ‘Surely other people don’t make the same kind of mistakes that I do,’” Murray said. “Which, of course, is silly because other people make mistakes as well, but because I’m a perfectionist, the smallest mistake becomes a snowball.”
To Young, many individuals who experience impostor syndrome tend to avoid challenging their abilities because “they’re waiting until they’re confident.” She added that the first step for an individual who wants to stop feeling like an impostor is to stop thinking like one.
“What everybody wants is to stop feeling like an impostor, but that’s not how it works. You have to do the thing that you don’t think you can do (and continue doing it) no matter how it turns out,” Young said. “Learn from it, and then keep going regardless of how you feel. The more you do that over time, you (will) start to feel more confident.”
Both Young and Murray agree normalizing the feelings that accompany impostor syndrome is an important step to help people overcome it.
“We need to know that other people feel this way as well,” Murray said. “It’s not just us. We are good, qualified people, but we’re not perfect. No one is.”
Although she still feels the effects of impostor syndrome, talking to people around her has helped Cooper throughout the past few years.
“When you realize that everybody else is just as lost as you, it really helps,” Cooper said. “You don’t feel as much as a fake when you realize that everybody else is just flopping around in the dark.”
