Suppose you are very good at your field. You might be a student with excellent academic results. You might be a good businessman who has achieved tremendous amount of profits so far and very successful. You might be a person of any profession actually and you are very good at it, you are very successful at it as well. Now even though you are so much successful, you are actually not happy with this achievement, rather you’re depressed and sad. You’re constantly thinking that everything that has happened so far is just because of luck, and even you should never have achieved that at the first place. You get a feeling that you’re a fraud and actually not good enough to get these achievements. This is actually a mental health problem, specifically known as “The Imposter Syndrome”. So, how do we define The Imposter Syndrome? Imposter Syndrome refers to psychological problem where you always doubt your skills and achievements, and also think that you’re not actually good enough. The Imposter Syndrome can be categorized into 5 types, according to Leading Imposter Syndrome researcher Dr. Valerie Young.
- The Perfectionist
- The Natural Genius
- The Rugged Individualist
- The Expert
- The Superhero
“The perfectionist” people always possess the tendency to everything perfectly. And sometimes that can’t be achieved due to various reasons. So, when they face this situation of imperfection, they get very upset and depressed as well. They don’t even acknowledge and appreciate the hard work they put in as they are so obsessed with achieving perfection. So, as a result, they often restrict themselves from trying new things as a fear of failure in achieving perfection in that work, at the very beginning.
“The natural genius” people think that everything should be done by them naturally. To be more specific, every kind of work, they should get them done at their first try as they might have achieved skills in their life at first try. So, they feel it would work every time and in case it doesn’t, they feel embarrassed often.
“The rugged individualist” tries to do everything by themselves. Actually they feel, they should be able to do everything by themselves and themselves only. They refuse to ask someone for help and also refuse if help is offered to them as they have set the standard of doing thing by themselves.
“The expert” people wants to know every information of their task. For example, if they are given a chapter to study, they might spend their whole time gathering information and learning about a topic of that chapter rather than completing the main task of reading the chapter. Thus, they often fail to complete the main task as they feel they should know everything and every little details of chapter.
“The superhero” people want to be successful in everything they are involved in. For example, if someone is a parent and an employee at the same time, they hope to be very much successful in both. According to them, their success in both fields measures their competency. So, if they fail to meet the criteria, they feel that they are incompetent. But it’s really normal that sometimes their work performance might get a bit bad due to parental responsibilities and vice versa.
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Thank you
Swapnil Majumder
Admin & HR Intern
YSSE
