That’s not imposter syndrome you’re feeling

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By Dr Rachel Morris

The catch-all label has become a way to convince ourselves that major problems we face in medicine are rooted in personal crises of confidence. That’s seldom true.

I have a bone to pick with leadership development experts, confidence coaches and resilience trainers. Stop telling doctors that they have “imposter syndrome”.

Imposter syndrome was originally coined as the “imposter phenomenon” in 1978, by the clinical psychologists Professor Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes. The pair, who were working at Georgia State University, published their research observing high achieving women who, despite evidence of their excellent performance, felt like frauds who would be “found out” any minute.

This concept was taken up by mainstream pop-psychology writers, changed into “imposter syndrome” and used so much that you might even think it is an official psychiatric diagnosis (it’s not).

Not being able to achieve the impossible is not imposter syndrome

And whilst apparently there are some common symptoms that you need to have, imposter syndrome is less a syndrome and more a list of thoughts and feelings which act as an alarm bell – a signal that something might be amiss.