Foreign Secretary David Lammy says he’s suffered from it at “every stage” of his life. Michelle Obama reveals that in her multimillion best-selling autobiography Becoming that she was paralysingly afflicted by it. Many hugely successful individuals who seem to exude confidence and authority insist it stops them in their tracks.
What am I talking about? Impostor syndrome. You might be crippled by IS yourself. If you are, you’ll be all too familiar with the symptoms. One minute you’re striding forth oozing vim, vigour and enthusiasm, the next you’re gripped by anxiety and ask yourself with mounting panic: “How can I convincingly pass myself off as capable when, deep down, I know I’m an unqualified fraud?”
Somehow you’ve managed to fool all the people all of the time, but your cover is about to be blown. You’ve constructed a career and identity out of smoke and mirrors.
You’re a sham, an ignorant interloper and your inadequacy will be exposed. Then, when you are revealed as a fraud, your disgrace will be so humiliating your reputation will never recover.
You’ll be sent packing from your firm, family and even your country with your name reviled in perpetuity. Even descendants will pretend they had nothing to do with you.
There are exceptions. Journalist, news- reader and presenter Clive Myrie asserts that he’s never experienced it, offering an insight: “If you’re not from the right milieu you start to doubt yourself. But I didn’t doubt myself. Impostor syndrome I don’t have.”
But many of us do feel that we’re winging it and are frighteningly aware of our inadequacies. Perhaps our parents and teachers told us that we’d never amount to much, yet somehow no one else seems to have realised.
We’ve quoted Alice Through The Looking Glass so many times that we almost believe we’ve read it ourselves – and we know that a house of cards always comes tumbling down.
No wonder we don’t feel grown up enough to believe we deserve to be adults or sufficiently knowledgeable to take important decisions without spending tortured nights pummelling the pillow.
What a rotten waste of our time is imposter syndrome. It impedes our progress and robs us of enjoyment and satisfaction. Shouldn’t schools start treating children for IS before it messes up their lives?