I haven’t experienced imposter syndrome, and maybe you haven’t either

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In recent years it’s become trendy to discuss how we all apparently suffer from this imposter syndrome – an inability to internalize one’s accomplishments and a persistent fear of being exposed as a “fraud”.

I take two issues with this:

  • it minimizes the impact that this experience has on people that really do suffer from it.
  • we’re labelling what should be considered positive personality traits – humility, an acceptance that we can’t be right all the time, a desire to know more, as a “syndrome” that we need to “deal with”, “get over” or “get past”.

It’s not an officially recognized syndrome (yet?), but you can have medical diagnoses that are like imposter syndrome. A general feeling that you’re faking it or don’t know as much as you should isn’t it.

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