Pauline Rose Clance, Suzanne Imes

The term impostor phenomenon is used to designate an internal experience of intellectual phonies, which appears to be particularly prevalent and intense among a select sample of high achieving women. Certain early family dynamics and later introjection of societal sex-role stereotyping appear to contribute significantly to the development of the impostor phenomenon. Despite outstanding academic and professional accomplishments, women who experience the imposter phenomenon persists in believing that they are really not bright and have fooled anyone who thinks otherwise. Numerous achievements, which one might expect to provide ample object evidence of superior intellectual functioning, do not appear to affect the impostor belief.

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    The Imposter Phenomenon in High Achieving Women:
    Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention

    by Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes

    http://www.paulineroseclance.com/pdf/ip_high_achieving_women.pdf

    Therapy

    Evidence of the impostor phenomenon has typically emerged after an individual has been in a group or individual psychotherapy for several sessions. It is rarely stated as the presenting problem since it is a well-guarded secret, which is not shared immediately. The “imposter” is so convinced her belief is correct that nothing could be done to change it anyway. She also believes that if she revealed her assumed unique feelings of phoniness she would meet with criticism or at least very little understanding on the part of others. It is generally her anxiety about achieving a particular goal, which leads her to disclosed feelings of intellectual phoniness.

    A multi-modal therapy in which several therapeutic approaches are used concurrently seems most effective in altering the impostor belief in a client. A group therapy setting or an inter-actional group in which there are some other high achieving women experiencing the impostor phenomenon is highly recommended. If one woman is willing to share her secret, others are able to share theirs. They are not astonished and relieved to find they are not alone.

    A group setting is also valuable because one woman can see the dynamics in another woman and recognize the lack of reality involved. Mary cannot believe that Jane thinks she is stupid. After all, Jane has a PhD from an outstanding university, is a respected professor, and is obviously bright. In a group setting, the ways in which an individual negates positive feedback and maintains her belief system emerge in clear relief and can be brought to the attention of the client.

    The client needs to become aware of the superstitious, magical aspects of her impostor belief and must consciously experiment with changing her ritualistic behaviors. For example, she is encouraged to study for an exam with the expectation, “I will do well on this exam” rather than, “I may fail.” When she is able to succeed without the self-doubting beforehand, she has made a major breakthrough in undoing her ritual of predicting failure. Weekly homework assignments to practice new ideas about the self as well as to decrease compulsive work habits (which perpetuate “effort” attributions) can also be very useful. However, we have found that such assignments must be suggested in small, incremental steps. Since the old phoniness feelings and hard-work habits are so powerfully associated with at least overt success, trying to give them up too quickly, before other attitudes and habits have been experienced as personally more satisfying, can result in acute anxiety and/or reversion to the relative security of old ways.

    One effective Gestalt experiment is to have the client recall all the people she thinks she has fooled, to tell them in fantasy how she conned or tricked them, and to have her imagine out loud how each person would respond to her. “I did not give you an award in English because you charmed me. I did like you as a person but I honored you for your outstanding work,” or “I’m angry that you think I’m so stupid that I can’t judge competence when I see it,” or “I don’t like your negating me and my opinions.”

    A helpful homework assignment is to have the client keep a record of positive feedback she receives about her competence and how she keeps herself from accepting this feedback. After she becomes aware of how she denies compliments, she is instructed to experiment with doing the opposite — to listen, to take in the positive response, and to get as much nourishment as possible out of it.

    Another producuive Gestalt technique is to have the client role-play the opposite of “I’m not bright,” i.e., to have her act out being bright, feeling it and expressing it in the presence of the group or therapist. Reactions to this role play are varied. Frequently a woman gets in touch with and is able to reveal a heretofore hidden fantasy that she is special and outstanding — a facet of the self-image that lurks beneath the overriding feeling of self-doubt. She can then work through the fears and guilt that accompany the fantasy of specialness and can move toward a realistic and self-affirming view of her own abilities, neither overestimating nor underestimating them. This role play helps some women confront their fears of success. This usually happens when a client is particularly resistive to the exercise, having difficulty acting out such an “arrogant” position. Through confronting her resistances to the exercise, the client confronts her catastrophic fantasies about the consequences of being successful. She may discover she is frightened that others would consider her exhibitionistic, snobbish, or unfeminine. Such fears are often accompanied by memories of concrete experiences, such as being kidded by other children when teachers singled her out for outstanding work or being shunned by boys who felt intellectually inferior. In taking the stance of being bright and capable, many women experience a rewarding sense of their personal power. If, as is often the case, they receive applause from other group members for such self-affirmation, their fears about acknowledging their brightness begin to subside.

    For a woman who has used charm and/or intellectual flattery to gain approval from authority figures, much time is spent on increasing awareness of those times when she is being phony — when she does or says something she does not want to in the hope of gaining approval. She is encouraged to risk “being herself” and seeing what happens. Usually the catastrophic expectations do not occur. Also, by eliminating approval-getting behaviors, the woman can begin to accept compliments from others regarding her intelligence as being “real” and can internalize the external reinforcement she does receive. In the course of therapy, these clients are also encouraged to seek out people who will support them in their struggle to be authentic and not to depend on those who would be threatened by their abilities and achievements.

    As a result of a combination of such therapeutic interventions in conjunction with a commitment to change, a high achieving woman who has previously considered herself an impostor begins to allow herself to state and feel, “I am intelligent. I have learned and achieved a tremendous amount. It is all right for me to believe in my own intellectual abilities and strengths.” She begins to be free of the burden of believing she is a phony and can more fully participate in the joys, zest, and power of her accomplishments.

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