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Rethinking Imposter Syndrome. | Joan Rosenberg, Ph.D. | TEDxSantaBarbaraSalon

Mar 21, 2024
I'm Dr. John Rosenberg and, as Mark mentioned, I'm an author, I'm a speaker, I'm a trainer and a college or university professor, I should say, and I teach graduate psychology at Pepperdine and my focus for our conversation today is

rethinking

the

syndrome

.

imposter

, you know, we walk around helping a hundred people to the tedx stage here in santa barbara, we understand that a lot of people don't feel ready or why they should be the ones to bring this idea to the world and I'm sure a lot of people when we say impostor

syndrome

something comes to mind, but you are our authority today, what do you mean when you say

imposter

syndrome?
rethinking imposter syndrome joan rosenberg ph d tedxsantabarbarasalon
Well, let me start with what the people who developed it meant well then and then and then let me talk about what I mean by this, they, the people who developed it and they were two psychologists, uh, Pauline, Pauline Clance and Suzanne Times, This was back in the late 1970s and what they did was they actually described something they called the imposter phenomenon and somehow over the years it became imposter syndrome, but think about imposter syndrome in general as a kind of pervasive feeling of doubt or insecurity that is fueled by an unrelenting fear that you will be discovered as a fraud and found abroad despite countless different types of achievements or successes that you have already had, so that is the context for this and my way of thinking about it.
rethinking imposter syndrome joan rosenberg ph d tedxsantabarbarasalon

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rethinking imposter syndrome joan rosenberg ph d tedxsantabarbarasalon...

This is that it's not a syndrome at all, but my opinion is that it might just be vulnerability and kind of a disguised feeling that we might have the kind of emotional, physical, mental feeling that we might get hurt. It's interesting that you say vulnerability. because I know that when we coach speakers, and even ourselves, we try to get to that place where we are as vulnerable as possible and through coaching we believe that vulnerability is contagious and therefore, if I could, if I could. be vulnerable then you will like me or you will, it will be better but what you are saying is different, it makes me think differently about vulnerability, well not really, we are probably aligned, there is a mark of vulnerability where I am.
rethinking imposter syndrome joan rosenberg ph d tedxsantabarbarasalon
I think we'll all experience it and for me, on the other side of vulnerability, there are unpleasant feelings, so the pain we're talking about is feelings like being embarrassed, disappointed, angry, sad, that kind of thing and so on. What we don't want to do is be in quotes and be discovered in that way, in such a way that we then experience shame or disappointment, that type of reaction and there is another side of vulnerability where I absolutely believe that when we can choose to be vulnerable we want to run. risks, we want to learn something, whatever it is, that when we can choose to be vulnerable, we are actually at our greatest strength, but when we don't manage it. unpleasant feelings Well, vulnerability feels like a weakness when we manage unpleasant feelings in a very effective or adaptive way, then vulnerability feels like a real strength.
rethinking imposter syndrome joan rosenberg ph d tedxsantabarbarasalon
This reminds me of the concept you've coined around emotional mastery, so like you said, I learn. how to deal with this feeling is like, oh, if I became a master at this feeling, for those who haven't seen the, none of the 1.9 million people who have seen it, just give us the headlines about emotional mastery because that was A brilliant talk, thank you very much from me, it focuses on one's ability to experience and overcome eight unpleasant feelings, and my bias is that if you can experience and overcome or manage one or more, that's it. Really all of them are eight unpleasant feelings, you can go for whatever you want in life and the eight feelings are sadness, shame, helplessness, anger, vulnerability, embarrassment, disappointment and frustration, so if we can manage those eight feelings, we really can go find what we want.
I specifically remember it having a big impact on me, but there was one conclusion I had that was, uh, you call them these waves. Remember when I first talked to you about this you said that the wave of that feeling only lasts about 90 seconds? a long time if I remember correctly and if we can if we can get through that then that's the first thing and all that stuck in my head was um is this the first 90 seconds is this the first 15 seconds and and then when I'm talking to someone who is experiencing some anguish. I'll say, "Wait, Dr.
Jones says it's only going to be 90 seconds. I'm here with you, so let me, to me it's one or more waves of one or more of eight nasty fields, so I never say it's just one, it's one or more, but the idea here is that they are short-lived, the other part so people understand that the whole context is that most of us come to know what we feel through bodily sensations, so think, I think they get hot in your face with shame, we come to know that we are ashamed because we feel that heat, so we all have different markers for different feelings, but the key is if you can ride one or more of those waves of short body sensations. duration, then you can stay present in the feeling that you are like that and then bring it back to the imposter syndrome or the vulnerability or that, you know, when I talk to people who have that, I don't feel like they're faking it until you make it or that They're trying to be fraudulent at all, no, they're worried about being found out to be fraudulent, etc. let me explain a little bit the way I think about this, yes, if I take a person or a person who has little experience, has little skill, a low skill set or not, it's not a strong skill.
As a whole, they don't have a lot of experience, they don't have a lot of experience, the knowledge base is low and there is no mastery, then someone is likely to walk into a situation and be given a task or asked to do something. to feel like an impostor is like I'm not good at this and in my opinion that makes sense because all those skills or all that knowledge base is not adequate enough for the task, but if we or someone in the beginning of learning a skill, they may have some basic knowledge, but they don't have me, they haven't incorporated the experience, they have consistently applied practice to knowledge and when we do that, we gain experience. and we, when we gain experience, we gain the skills, we gain mastery, etc., when someone comes in and that's where the imposter phenomenon or impostor syndrome was kind of the name when someone comes in with a you know. great skill set they have an expansive knowledge set they have great experience they have they have the mastery and the experience and they go I feel like an imposter in my mind that doesn't make any sense at all and and That's where I think a lot of other things are happening that then they lead to imposition again, impostor syndrome, which in my opinion is probably just vulnerability, but there are a lot of factors that contribute to that vulnerability increasing and that's where I really want to It's kind of a challenge, this idea, let me see if I can connect a dot in my own head because I feel like the person who doesn't know it yet or, let's say, is a white belt in this skill. there and they are and now they are put in a position where they have to act and act as if they are expected to know more than they actually know, um, that was the first case, I would do it in my language.
I would say it's conscious incompetence, they're aware of their incompetence, yeah, right, and then the second case, which is from the outside, they're competent, like, oh my God, all the markers line up, but they don't feel like that's the case. . unconscious competence oh well I think they probably have unconscious competence, actually they have everything, but they are doing a lot of other things that diminish their experience of that and that, so tell us, there you go, tell me about that, what are they ? doing because it's there, I think there's some transition from unconscious conscious incompetence or competence true god that heart those words why did they choose those words to conscious competence where like I have or unconscious or I have this I have it so what are those self- sabotaging the things they do, I actually think I probably haven't told them.
I'm going to guess eight or ten of them, but let me go over the different ones I have, so one of them is one of them. it's that you don't really, you don't handle unpleasant feelings very well, okay, and I would say especially disappointment, shame and vulnerability, so for me, that's the first one, you just don't handle those feelings well. The second is that you find it difficult to be vulnerable, so again you have the feeling that you might get hurt, so you don't want to expose yourself, you don't want to expose yourself, why, because you might have to, if you do, then you might experience one or more of those eight unpleasant feelings, then the second one is not happening because the first one is not happening.
So the third mark is that someone engages in harsh self-criticism and to me harsh self-criticism is actually a distraction from unpleasant feelings. I think of harsh self-criticism as a thought appropriation of unpleasant feelings, so we have again in this unpleasant feeling things. that the basis of another is that someone does not recognize it or downplays their own successes. and achievements uh there are more I would like to give myself a couple more okay they then do not recognize the successes and achievements another is that you devalue you diminish or discard the praise of others and so if you are committed Think about this if you are immersed in harsh self-criticism and at At the same time you reject praise.
Wow, that adds up, yeah, there's no room for the good to come in properly. So how can I recognize my own real, genuine experience if I don't? allow the good to come in or be here wow, how do you break it? I mean it's a dynamic duo of distrust or something, how do you break that well again? For me, it is one of the first. What I have started to do from a practical perspective is ask people to start breaking away from this harsh self-criticism. What I think is that it is incredibly damaging and there is the heart.
Self-criticism has no equivalence with unpleasant feelings. Unpleasant feelings are. well, they pass, there is no harm, you engage in your self-criticism and there is a lot of harm that you end up doing to yourself and it is exponential in my mind, you are the expert on this, not me, but I have to think that if you have a little voice in your head telling you that you are not good enough or that you are being critical, that voice is now internal but at some point early in childhood there was an external voice coming to you. I'm right or wrong, yes, no, that's absolutely true, it could have emanated from there, but again I think you might like this too.
Mark, it's that we can use our past as an explanation, but my thing is that we never use it as an explanation. Excuse me, oh wow, well there's a t-shirt for all of us, so, yeah, maybe that's where it started, but then we understand who it was that said it, what was going on with them, are they really the authority on you now in terms of? your current life experience and therefore it is updating the person in terms of their own experience, so if someone who is listening to this resonates with the scene, oh man, hey, you got me identified sometimes making that change in the way I think in life it's an instant boom, yeah, yeah, I make a change and then it's just remembering and getting better at it.
This is the kind of symptom, if you will, or a behavior that you can change quickly or have. some advice for someone who feels this way about what they could say to themselves to overcome this problem. You're talking about heart self-criticism itself in general, yes, for me, heart self-criticism specifically is increasing. your awareness of how much you're involved in it the second is the moment you're aware that that's what you're doing you take a breath, you take a step back and you're okay, what was it that I wish I was experiencing? right before you start being hard on yourself, to be able to become aware of what is the feeling that is difficult for me to know or bear, this goes back to that sense that we have talked a lot about on the show, is being present, right? that self-awareness is probably that state we're all trying to get to so we get to your point, oh I'm doing that again, I need to stop right now, there are others, I can go to the others too If you want me to add here, I think what I want to do is create a link.
Have you written about this Joan yet? I haven't written about this yet. Oh, this is the beginning. You guys are excited. This is the beginning. Joan. I really appreciate how you help us understand this and will make this talk required listening for anyone in my future who professes to have imposter syndrome. Okay, that sounds good. Thank you very much and again I look at it from the point of view of your vulnerability.

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