The Trick to Deal With Imposter Syndrome Once and For All

IT TOOK A literal disaster for me to realize that I needed help beyond therapy. Friday, September 2024, Hurricane Helene swept through my hometown of Asheville. The power went out first. Then the internet, and the water soon after. A buddy texted me about the rivers rising just before cell phones died. My last connection to the world. After the storm passed, I walked down my street to find an unsolvable maze of downed oaks and tulip trees. My wife and I took inventory: three days of food at best, maybe even less of water.

My first thought was that I wanted to solve the problem. If only I had a chainsaw—and knew how to use it. And then my next thought: If only I were more of a man I could fix this. It was a thought I’d been at the mercy of so many times before, along with the feelings that came with it: unprepared, incapable, not good enough. So instead of taking action, I hunkered down.

Two days later a city crew came to clear our street with backhoes and their own chainsaws. After my wife and I evacuated and marked ourselves safe, I made the decision to address this nagging sense of feeling incapable. I wanted—no, needed—to un-learn my inferiority and believe that I’m competent. If there’s another disaster, or whatever Life Event comes next, I didn’t want the crushing feeling of not being good enough to trap me. Not again.

ONE BIG THING I’ve learned about myself during my last five years of therapy is that I need to feel capable. To change the oil on my motorcycle. To adjust the whatever-it’s-called preventing the washer from spinning. To essentially fix things when needed. If I can’t feel capable, I freeze or say “fuck it.”

For just one example, a few years ago a friend who works at a performing arts hall in Fort Lauderdale asked me to moderate a discussion with a celebrity—on stage in front of a few thousand strangers. In my mind, I already know what I would feel like backstage beforehand, sweating, dry-mouthed, heart racing. I thought about how everybody in the audience would be wondering what I was doing there, a two-bit journalist finally discovered as a fraud.

I said no. I passed on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity out of fear of self-doubt.

Instances like this have happened to me professionally, and with friends, more times than I can remember. This sense of not feeling good enough has a name, I now know: imposter syndrome.

The phrase has been around since the late ‘70s, but really caught on during the pandemic, when so many of us were in self-reflection mode—and when I started therapy. Almost everyone, as much as 82 percent, have experienced imposter syndrome. It happens no matter your age or experience. High-achievers experience imposter syndrome even more, an indication that the condition might not have anything to do with actual competency.

What’s tricky is that there aren’t yet a widely agreed-upon guidelines to the diagnoses and treatment of the condition. And what causes imposter syndrome can range from low self-esteem to feelings of inadequacy to intellectual self-doubt. (Squishy stuff.)

Luckily there are experts who have solutions. Valerie Young, EdD, has been studying imposter syndrome since the early 1980s. At the time, “imposter phenomenon” (as it was originally called) was something that predominantly affected women: the soul-crushing expectations of being a perfect mother, maintaining a career, keeping their high-school figures. But research began to show men regularly feel it too. Males, too, can suffer from societal expectations, Young says. “You pop the hood and you think, ‘I should know what to do.’”

In her doctoral research, Young created the first educational approach to address imposter syndrome. Now, through her company, the Impostor Syndrome Institute, she’s brought in by workplaces to help “stuck” employees who have been identified as high potentials. (She says it’s law firms who call her most often, wanting help with young associates who arrived with promise and are now wracked with feelings that they faked their way into a job.)

When I talked to Young, she mentioned something that unlocked a piece for me. A writing coach told her back in grad school: “You have everything you need to achieve the majority of the goals you set for yourself in life.” That sentiment—of already having what she needed—gave her the confidence to realize, in moments of self-doubt, that she’s already smart enough and has prepared hard enough to succeed.

I’d heard some version of this before, but I hadn’t actually heard it, if you know what I mean. Two years ago, after telling my therapist about how I’ll often freeze before sending a pitch to a magazine I’m convinced is far too good to print my work, she said: “You know you are a very capable person, right? You know that, right?”

She pointed out that I’ve rehabbed four houses with little more than sweat equity and YouTube instructional videos, how I pride myself in being the guy a friend will call to help unclog his roof drain, how I’ve worked in the same field now for three decades. Hearing Young reinforce my capability again, I was finally ready to accept that I was actually capable.

More specifically, Young says, I was ready to become a “humble realist.” This helpful state of mind comes from accepting the reality of the moment, instead of the falsehood I’d convinced yourself is true. Instead of wondering why I couldn’t cut my way out after Helene, I could’ve told myself that even the most competent people don’t know how to run a chainsaw, let alone have one in the garage gassed up and sharpened, ready to cut through an oak as thick as a Nissan. Instead of feeling like I don’t belong in my group of friends, if I’m a humble realist I can remember how much I’ve shared with these guys, the ups and downs of life, literally thousands of hours.

Humble realism, Young says, is walking into a room and switching your thoughts from everybody is smarter than me here, to what a chance to learn from these similarly intelligent people. The humble realist knows those feelings of being less-than can actually be an asset, because it gives you a chance to reassess and realize you’re better than this.

A MONTH AFTER Helene, when our power and cell phones started working again, but water still ran murky with mud, I did buy a chainsaw. I watched YouTube videos on how to avoid cinching the blade, on sharpening, and on safety. One cold morning in November of last year, I stood over a pile of Helene debris in my yard, holding a death stick in my hands that spun at 8,000 revolutions per minute. I’ve prepared for this moment, I told myself. I’m capable.

The feeling of the wood shavings hitting my legs surprised me as the blade started to cut. Then a log fell with a reassuring thud. Then I cut again. Each log I stacked, in a pile that soon stood taller than me, was like one more piece in competency mountain.

The path to feeling competent has major benefits: the neuroplasticity of learning, dopamine-spiking breakthroughs, and an overall sense of accomplishment. It’s not about dangerous risk-taking behaviors but instead accepting it’s okay to wade into the unknown, to pull out these proven psychological benefits of trying something new—even when it doesn’t lead to success. (Failure, Young says, is a learning moment. Humbling, yes, but not a sign that you’re incapable.)

After that first day with my new chainsaw, I had a tougher challenge with a Norwegian maple. The tree had fallen onto a steep part of my yard on ground slick from mud and rotting leaves. As I began to cut, I could feel the tree cinching on the blade, threatening to kick back in my face. I heard the little voice, telling me I wasn’t good enough for this. But I remembered the videos I’d watched, how to cut at angles and come up from below, how to stop when you feel the first signs of a cinched blade. By the end, I had a new stack of debris, limbs, and logs. I was sweaty, winded, and my muscles ached.

I was proud. And I was humbled.