How do you know if you suffer from The Impostor Syndrome? In his book, The Impostor Syndrome: How to Replace Self-Doubt with Self-Confidence and Train Your Brain for Success, John Graden outlines some possible indicators:

1. Do you sometimes not speak up because you feel people will realize you’re not as smart as they think you are?
2. Do you find it hard to accept praise?
3. Is it difficult for you to take credit for your accomplishments?
4. Do you feel like a fake and fear you are going to be found out soon?
5. Are you a perfectionist who is terrified of making a mistake?

Find out more about The Impostor Syndrome at http://www.JohnGraden.com

@veronicaromm gender shouldn’t be raised here. Because the studies only report the information. However, there are many men suffer form IS also. It just happens to be something according to the studies that women suffer more from it than men.

This is not about putting women down. There are differences in gender, and there is empirical data proving this. It doesn’t follow from this statement that one gender is better than the other. Simply put, all humans, regardless of gender, are all equal in terms of our human value but, we are different in terms of our cultural, psychological and physiological makeup.

I think men suffer from COSP far more than women, if that makes you feel better. The above comment is an example of that :)

as a aside point:
Also, doing things RIGHT is different to being obsessing over it to the point that you become unhappy. If doing things right makes you happy, gives you energy rather than sucking it away. This would be a case of the mind being prudence. And prudence is one of the personal strengths asserted by positive psychology.

Thank you to every one for all your kind words, and to the people that have contacted me directly to say thanks for the post. At the time of writing this post, I didn’t realize how much this post would ’speak’ to people.

Positive Psychology says: we all have strengths and weaknesses. It puts forward 24 positive strengths such as curiosity, love of learning, social intelligence. We will be high in some and low in others. Once identified we can then leverage our innate strengths or what Positive Psychology calls our signature strengths, while working on the development of the strengths that we are low in. Yes, we call all develop and improve our low strengths.

I have written a free eBook for bloggers to help identify those strengths and I have built a reporting website so that individuals can see their own scores and compare them to other bloggers. You can get the eBook and signup here http://positiveblogger.net it is completely free.

Positive Psychology has a lot to say about mental ‘wellness’. By understanding ourselves better we can gain confidence in who we really are and so IS episodes become less frequent.

Thanks everyone for the comments :)
Clarke

As someone with a JD but who has decided not to practice, I can totally relate!!! I always feel so surprised when I find a source that supports what I was saying…I think to myself, “I was right all along, who knew?!”

I really like this series.

I would also like to add something that I have found that fits into a description of an Imposter Blogger – bloggers who try to imitate other successful bloggers.

I would rather read bloggers who are themselves and are true to their own, unique voice. I understand that people want to be popular and get tons of comments, but bloggers need to understand, and you mention this, is that good blogging takes years to master.

Thanks for all your insights.
Ellen

Thanks for sharing
Tanny

I have different kinds of IS for my different jobs, I think — for my day job (lawyer at a BigLaw firm), I’m crippled with self-doubt and second-guessing — a simple e-mail can take 2-3 hours to send. As a anonymous fashion blogger, though, I’m totally fine with the writing and intellectual stuff — but I’m terrified that someone will figure out who I am and say, like, “THAT girl was trying to give advice on fashion? She always looked so weird.”

So, um, yeah. But great post in general; thank you!

One or two of your suggestions could indeed be helpful to people with mild cases, but for anybody ticking yes to more than 4 or 5 of those questions, they’ll be unlikely to offer any help.

In my experience it’s seldom not enough to tell people what to do, you need to tell them how to do it.

I think I just came up with #11. You took this test and saw it as an indictment of you blogging skills.

Well – it seems that I suffer greatly from IS. (I should be in the hospital! lol) At first I thought ‘Oh, no – how can I fix this’, but then I realised that ’suffering’ from IS is only a (necessary) short term thing that I suppose all beginner bloggers go through. The reason why we go through this is because we KNOW that there is always someone better than us out there. It makes us second guess ourselves. But that is what drives me – to be better, no in fact – I want to be the best!

So, welcome to my ‘coming out’ comment on Problogger. (I’ve been watching you all for a very long time…lol.) And I look forward to being a contributing member of this community.