Tina Tian (12) scanned her AP Physics C classroom entering into her first physics test, looking around at all the other students who, in her mind, seemed more knowledgeable than her. While everyone else in her class appeared to easily understand the subject, Tian felt the enormous pressure that she was falling behind.
“Everyone in that class knows the answers without doing the homework,” she said. “I just didn’t understand. I felt like I didn’t belong in the class.”
Long before Tian took the class, she had been experiencing similar feelings of the impostor phenomenon. The impostor phenomenon, or the impostor syndrome, refers to the psychological experience of persistent doubt about one’s abilities and accomplishments to the point where they fear to be seen as fraudulent. They often undermine their accomplishments and internalize their failures. Many of those facing the imposter phenomenon set unrealistic expectations of themselves, leading them to often put themselves down.
Tian said she constantly compared herself to her peers, spiraling to the point where she no longer understood the point of studying when she knew that her peers would outperform her.
“[I just wanted] to stop trying,” Tian said. “Constantly, I was like, ‘I really don’t feel like I belong here.’ It becomes this constant voice in your head just telling yourself that you’re not good enough.”
In her thesis Comparing student-athletes and non-athletes on academic Impostor Syndrome, postdoctoral scholar at the University of Texas at Austin Dr. Kaitlyn Swinney noted that the phenomenon takes place everywhere: from classrooms to extracurriculars to athletics. Being based on factors such as competition and perfectionism, an academically rigorous school like Westview creates an environment where facing the impostor phenomenon is common.
“I experience [the impostor phenomenon] everywhere, in the classroom, when I’m taking tests, or I see everyone around me seem to understand the content so much better than I do,” Tian said. “It makes me doubt why I’m in the class in the first place, and I think Westview having such a hard curriculum adds to that, because it gets more obvious when you’re falling behind.”
University of Michigan Professor of Psychology Dr. Kevin Cokley said that the impostor phenomenon thrives on competition.
“Being in highly competitive environments is like a breeding ground for impostor feelings,” Cokley said. “In a situation where you are always comparing yourself to other people, the emphasis is on being the best. It’s easy to minimize all the things that you’ve done great, all the successes that you’ve had, so it’s recommended that people take the time to document their successes. Then, when you look at it, you can give yourself credit.”
Outside of the classroom, Ellie Mendoza (11) said that she struggles with feeling responsible for every loss in her lacrosse games.
“Since I play a team sport, team losses—even though [they’re] not specifically my fault—feel like [they are],” she said. “It feels like I [should] have done better, and that’s really damaging on how someone could see mistakes.”
As a junior, Tanvi Gupta (11) said that she felt the impostor phenomenon takes place through the pressure of following a particular path to be college-ready at Westview. She said that students fall for “the propaganda” of doing everything for college.
“People sacrifice their personal passions because they want to go on this linear path,” Gupta said. “Everyone has this idea of how their life should be. Do good in high school, go to a good college, get a bunch of degrees, that sort of thing. It feels like I need to be successful. Getting into good colleges and having academic achievements, that’s what has defined success for me. I’m always feeling pressure to do better than I am right now.”
Licensed Clinical Social Worker Tatiana Betancourt affirmed that this is a typical symptom of the impostor phenomenon. Many students who experience it strive to protect themselves by working harder than they normally do in order to refrain from being exposed as a fraud.
“Someone’s [beliefs in] perfectionism related to the impostor syndrome might be, ‘I’m not good enough’ or ‘I’m a failure,’” Betancourt said. “That person might overperform in different areas of their life to compensate for that belief.”
Cokley said that the push to constantly be better can lead to burnout and a warped perception of one’s performance.
“When you’re feeling like an impostor, that often results in an individual working harder to try to prove themselves to not be an impostor,” Cokley said. “Whether it’s school or the work environment, you find yourself working harder, and if that is sustained over time, it can be emotionally exhausting and lead to burnout. No matter how successful, you still believe that you are fooling people.”
Tian said that the impostor phenomenon discourages her from feeling satisfied by her academic achievement.
“I’m an A-minus student, so I’m always borderline B,” Tian said. “A lot of the time, it doesn’t feel like success. It feels like relief, like, ‘Thank goodness this teacher was nice and rounded to an A’ instead of being proud of myself for getting to that point. I did a research project my sophomore year, and I had a lot of help on it. I got first award, and I was sent to States, but I didn’t feel like I deserved it, I didn’t feel that sense of pride. I was happy, but I wasn’t able to be proud of my work because I felt like other people helped me to get to that point.”
Similarly, Mendoza said she felt constant pressure to be better in lacrosse, with her confidence being stripped with each loss.
“The second you do something bad, you feel like you don’t deserve anything good that comes your way, because it’s always felt like, ‘Why couldn’t I have done something better?’” Mendoza said. “It’s really hard to feel any sort of gratitude for yourself. It feels like my work has amounted to nothing, and I’m stuck here. I don’t have anywhere to go.”
For Tian, this led her into a month-long slump in sophomore year, when she was taking six AP classes and yet still feeling like she wasn’t enough.
“I would go to school once a week,” Tian said. “Everything was rough. I felt like I was drowning. I was doing coursework after coursework, but I really didn’t want to do this. Whether I had to skip a meal or pull an all-nighter, I always wanted to be the best, socially and [academically] at the same time. But, I felt like I wasn’t doing good at any of them. Even if I was, I felt like I didn’t deserve to be good at any of them.”
Cokley said that the impostor phenomenon promotes a need for improvement, which can lead to more accomplishment, yet ultimately causes more harm than good.
“There’s an idea that when you have these higher feelings of impostorism, it causes you to work harder, and therefore your achievement might be higher,” Cokley said. “But, even if that is the case, I wouldn’t frame impostor feelings as positive because it comes at a cost. You’re working so hard trying to prove yourself, and it comes at a mental health cost: the burnout, the anxiety, the depression.”
Sophia Vincent (11) said that impostor feelings prompted her to do more and wear herself thin.
“I felt like I needed to do more, because everyone else was doing so much, so in sophomore year, I joined so many clubs, and I was doing so many things,” Vincent said. “I became more confident about public speaking, and I learned that I like working with younger children. But some of the stuff that I did and the clubs I joined didn’t really align with who I was as a person and what I was interested in, so it felt like I was losing my own interests in the process. I forgot some of the things that I want to do in my future of helping other people in a more hands-on community way.”
Many students who face the impostor phenomenon experience chronic negativity that can spiral into a self-fulfilling prophecy and lead them into a negative headspace, says Dr. Lisa Pennie Sims, founder of My Growth Lessons, a coaching service helping people overcome the impostor phenomenon.
“If you’re speaking bad things or talking about yourself in a bad way, you’re not contributing to your growth,” Sims said. “You’re keeping yourself stuck in a space because you don’t think that you can do or be better.”
According to Swinney, reframing one’s thoughts with positive connotations can offer a way out when dealing with the impostor phenomenon.
“[The impostor phenomenon] could lead to you not reaching for future opportunities or being confident in your abilities, which affects how you view yourself in all areas of your life,” Swinney said. “Trusting in your abilities and work ethic will push you to obtain positions and goals you may not have thought you can do. Learning how to deal with failure and continue to pursue your goals will make you a better student, better in your future profession, and better in your relationships.”
To people facing the impostor phenomenon, Sims recommended speaking positively about themselves.
“Say [to yourself], ‘Today is going to be a great day because you’re a great person,’” Sims said. “People say that having those reminders [or] writing them on your mirror doesn’t really mean anything, but I absolutely think that it does. Write them on a Post-it note or write them on your mirror.”
This year, Tian has put effort into doing just that through finding worth outside of academics.
“When I started not getting the grades I was expecting in physics, I realized that I put a lot of weight into my grades,” she said. “That was a wake-up call to put my worth somewhere else. Your worth is so much more than your grades. Your worth is more based on who you are as a person.”
Often, students who experience the impostor phenomenon tend to isolate and scrutinize their own experiences. For Mendoza, realizing that she had support helped her overcome it.
“Support is one of the most important things to combat that issue,” she said. “You’re not alone. Even though you feel alone, you’re surrounded by people that really support you. It’s really important to find some support, whether it be a person or an activity, so you don’t have to fight it alone.”
Vincent found that reflecting on her extracurriculars and sticking only with those that were meaningful to her was a step towards beating back the impostor phenomenon.
“I took a step back from a lot of things,” Vincent said. “If you rank all the activities that you do in your life, you’ll be able to see what you really enjoy and what you don’t enjoy. I grew as a person because I realized that I was doing so much that didn’t align with me as a person that it was more beneficial for me to take a step back because I got more out of it in the end.”
Although the impostor phenomenon may not be something that can be easily erased, Sims said it is very possible to deal with.
“[The impostor phenomenon] is not something that you can get over and never experience again,” she said. “It might rear its head somewhere else [after] years. Identifying it helps you to understand what it is you’re experiencing, and when you experience it again, how to deal with it. Remember what helped you last time, so there’s that muscle memory. [Tell yourself,] ‘This is you experiencing impostor syndrome. You got this. You know what you’re doing. It’s okay.’”
