Imposter syndrome: Why success often feels like a fluke

They say you are “worth it.” That you deserved out-of-turn promotions.

- DEVINA SENGUPTA

Your bets have worked well for the company, and hence you have been allotted a senior position. But then a creepy feeling rises at the nape of your neck when you face an experienced group of contemporaries or hear a hushed whisper after you make a point, with perplexed looks around the table signalling that you may have missed your mark. A voice whispers in your head: You are not worth it.

Apart of you clamps up. You retreat into your cabin. You work harder than ever to ensure they do not detect flaws. They don’t. Your rise in the company is meteoric now. But every now and then, that hushed feeling creeps back in. An old mocking voice whispers: You are faking it, and sooner or later, you will be exposed.

“Imposter syndrome’ was coined by psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes in 1978 in their paper ‘The Imposter Phenomenon in High-Achieving Women.’ It described a persistent sense of phoniness among highly capable women.

“The term impostor phenomenon is used to designate an internal experience of intellectual phoniness which appears to be particularly prevalent and intense among a select sample of high-achieving women. Despite outstanding academic and professional accomplishments, women who experience the impostor phenomenon persist in believing that they are really not bright and have fooled anyone who thinks otherwise,” the paper noted.