How to Avoid Imposter Syndrome

“Imposter syndrome” is all too common.¹ It’s that feeling of

• not belonging,
• not really measuring up,
• not wanting to be found out.²

It comes and goes. It might be a dim memory one moment—“Ah yes, I remember feeling like that in the past.” The next can bring a fresh wave after a biting critique or off-hand remark.

“Maybe, I don’t actually belong,” you think. “Maybe, I need to hang it up, shrink my aspirations, or do something else.”

Basic Responses

It’s a feeling quite a lot of people know. Some might surprise you when they admit it. Some handle the waves in better-adjusted, more emotionally intelligent ways. Others cope

• by avoiding the admission,
• by acting the part of the omnicompetent,
• by deftly hiding where their competence stretches thin, and
• by letting you know—directly or indirectly—how much better they are than you at whatever particular point they happen to choose as “what really matters.”

You can find yourself with a case of imposter syndrome at any time. There’s no time when it isn’t in circulation. But like influenza, there may be some seasons when you’re more likely than others to come down with imposter syndrome.

One of those seasons is “conference season.” So, before attending a conference, it can be helpful to get a “booster shot.” That shot isn’t about boosting your ego to the size of other (oversized) egos you might encounter.

Try that, and you just perpetuate the problem. To treat imposter syndrome, you can’t “shove it way down.”³ Nor can you effectively (or ethically) medicate it at others’ expense. Thankfully, however, imposter syndrome does have a vaccine that’s safe and effective. It comes in the form of “imposturing.”

Posturing and Imposters

In your academic life, you naturally want to make good impressions on friends and colleagues old and new. That’s no less true when you attend a conference. In some ways, that context might bring out that desire even more since academic conferences collect higher densities of stronger experts.

This normal, understandable desire can quickly go to seed, however. When it does, it turns into academic “posturing.”

At an academic conference, it may not take long before you run into this kind of behavior. And in general, it seems more common with larger conferences. Though, thankfully, there are also many exceptions to this.

Posturing bends your interests and attention around promoting your own

• work,
• knowledge,
• scholarship,
• status,
• position,
• prestige,
• institution, and such.

It leaves you with little energy or inclination for interest in others’. As it fosters “imposter syndrome,” three dimensions of this kind of posturing are worth noting.

1. You’re misleading yourself.

First and most obviously, if you try to promote yourself in overly inflated image, you know deep down you don’t measure up to that image. You don’t buy your own bravado, however smooth it sounds. Imposter syndrome is a natural result.

2. You can always find someone else who’s better at something.

Second and reflexively, if you compare yourself to others’ public images, you’ll always always find someone else with more or better something than you. The point of comparison could be

• expertise,
• status,
• institutional affiliation, or
• anything else.

Comparison too carries the germs of imposter syndrome.

3. Sometimes, those who think they’re better at something will find you.

Third, it’s always possible—especially at larger conferences—that you’ll run into or give a paper in a session with some seemingly omnicompetent polymath in the audience. And that polymath might have an arm’s length worth of reasons you don’t measure up, or even just a skeptical glance. These kinds of interaction can also spread imposter syndrome.

Imposturing and Openness

Or you can take an alternative approach. Instead of posturing, you can try its opposite—“imposturing.”

Imposturing doesn’t mean you avoid talking about your work. It doesn’t mean you don’t or shouldn’t think you have a real insight, even if you weren’t able to communicate it to the satisfaction of an omnicompetent polymath.

A Different Orientation

Instead, imposturing requires a fundamentally different orientation.⁴ It’s a kind of academic humility that requires not “thinking less of yourself” but “thinking of yourself less.”⁵

A Different Kind of Question

Imposturing means you turn away from the question “What do they think of me?” Instead, you ask questions like

What can I glean from this interaction? What can I contribute that might enrich it for others?

As you do, you’ll likely find the voice of imposter syndrome quite down—maybe even vanish.

Questions That Create Dialogue

“What do they think of me?” creates a one-way evaluative judgment. “What can I glean? And what can I contribute?” create imposturing dialogue. The better dialogue is, the more it opens you to others—and them to you—in a way that bypasses imposter syndrome.⁶

Of course, this dialogue might break down. Someone you meet or a session you attend might not match your imposturing attitude. They might instead go for posturing.

You can’t control that. But you can choose a different response.

Rather than posturing in return, you can choose to imposture. You can choose to

• say a firm, inner “no” to imposter syndrome;⁷
• respond with kindness and grace, extending the compassion that posturing shows others to need so badly; and
• orient yourself toward dialogue and learning, even if that orientation isn’t reciprocated.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it’s sometimes striking how some of the sharpest scholars wear their scholarship most lightly. It’s always encouraging when those at the forefront of whatever sub-field clearly have an imposturing attitude themselves. And this is definitely something we should all strive to do more of—both for our own sakes and for the sakes of those we engage.