"Imposter Syndrome"

[Justin Mallone]

From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome

> Impostor syndrome (also spelled imposter syndrome, also known as impostor phenomenon or fraud syndrome) is a term coined in 1978 by clinical psychologists Dr. Pauline R. Clance and Suzanne A. Imes referring to high-achieving individuals marked by an inability to internalize their accomplishments and a persistent fear of being exposed as a "fraud".[1] Despite external evidence of their competence, those exhibiting the syndrome remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve the success they have achieved. Proof of success is dismissed as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be. Some studies suggest that impostor syndrome is particularly common among high-achieving women,[2] while others indicate that men and women are equally affected.[3]

One explanation for this phenomenon: people are second-handed, have no standards for judging their success besides using socially approved criteria.

Part of their mind doubts whether these socially approved criteria are valid & whether the criteria correspond to things like actual real world competence at worthwhile things.

These doubts are framed by society as mental illness.

:-(

-JM

[anonymous FI]

another explanation:

smart people have trouble understanding and accepting how stupid other
people are.

smart people don’t think there is anything special about what they do.
they think it is fairly easy, and anyone could do it if they wanted to.

but other people seem to think that the smart person is like really
smart and doing amazing things.

so the smart person thinks he must be tricking people into thinking he
is better than he is. because he’s really not doing anything amazing.


the same thing can happen to people just for being competent. they just
show up on time, stay until the are supposed to, and actually do their
job properly when they are at work.

they think they are doing the bare minimum. because doing anything less
than what they do would be lying, or not doing their job properly.

in fact, they might think they are slacking off because they don’t put
much effort in. they never really “give it their all”.

but they get told they are doing a really great job. that they are
really good employees. and they don’t understand why. they think they
must be tricking people somehow.

they don’t realize that a lot of other people are just completely
incompetent. they show up late. leave early. skip work altogether. and
then when they are at work, they don’t even do their jobs properly.
they go on reddit. they don’t do stuff they are supposed to, if they
think no one will notice. they don’t follow instructions or do things
properly.

[Alan Forrester]

Another explanation: the person actually sucks, but hasn’t been caught out because other people suck more.

Explanation 3: the person doesn’t suck but thinks that not sucking is about knowing everything there is to know about a subject, rather than being able to learn quickly.

Explanation 4: the person is good at some things, but thinks he ought to be good at other things that he dislikes doing. That person may be better off focusing on the stuff he likes doing.

> These doubts are framed by society as mental illness.

Yes, this is a serious problem. When people frame a problem as mental illness, they make serious discussion of it extremely difficult. At best any discussion is indirect and full of jargon that implicitly contains shitty ideas. For example, psychopath and sociopath are both just jargon for "bad person".

Alan