SUMMARY KEYWORDS

drinking, imposter, imposter syndrome, syndrome, without drinking, navigate, high achieving women, imposter phenomenon, disease, disorder, pathology, white heterosexual male of privilege, WHMP, Psychology, likeable, likeability, alcohol, stop drinking, coping mechanism, comfortable, discomfort, anxiety, poor sleep, uncomfortable, embrace, live with the discomfort, function, cost, burning out, burnout, experiential avoidance, avoidance, feel, self-doubt, imposterism, work harder, smarter, motivate, motivation, changing your relationship to your thoughts, values, practicing these psychological flexibility skills

SPEAKERS: Casey McGuire Davidson + Dr. Jill Stoddard

00:02

Welcome to the Hello Someday Podcast, the podcast for busy women who are ready to drink less and live more. I’m Casey McGuire Davidson, ex-red wine girl turned life coach helping women create lives they love without alcohol. But it wasn’t that long ago that I was anxious, overwhelmed, and drinking a bottle of wine and night to unwind. I thought that wine was the glue, holding my life together, helping me cope with my kids, my stressful job and my busy life. I didn’t realize that my love affair with drinking was making me more anxious and less able to manage my responsibilities.

In this podcast, my goal is to teach you the tried and true secrets of creating and living a life you don’t want to escape from.

Each week, I’ll bring you tools, lessons and conversations to help you drink less and live more. I’ll teach you how to navigate our drinking obsessed culture without a bus, how to sit with your emotions, when you’re lonely or angry, frustrated or overwhelmed, how to self soothe without a drink, and how to turn the decision to stop drinking from your worst case scenario to the best decision of your life.

I am so glad you’re here. Now let’s get started.

 

Hi there.

Today, we are talking about

imposter syndrome.

 

But when you’re listening to this, you will hear that we’re not going to call it that anymore.

My guest is, Dr Jill Stoddard. She is passionate about sharing her expertise in Psychology to help women flourish in their work and health.

She’s an international and TEDx speaker, award winning former professor, 3 time book author, licensed Psychologist, Coach, and Co-host of the Psychologists Off the Clock podcast, which is ranked in the top 0. 5 percent worldwide.

Dr. Stoddard is an entrepreneur who founded Flexible Communications, LLC in Massachusetts, and the Center for Stress and Anxiety Management in California. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages and include the big book of ACT Metaphors, Be Mighty, and Be Free and Imposter No More.

Her thoughts have appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, Women’s World, Today. com, Psychology Today, Scary Mommy, Thrive Global, The Good Men Project, Mindful Return, The Blast, The Boston Globe, basically, everywhere you might be reading and she regularly appears on podcasts and as an expert source for various media outlets.

She lives in Newburyport, Massachusetts with her husband, two kids and a disobedient French bulldog.

Jill, I’m so excited you’re here.

I’m so excited to be here, Casey. Thanks so much for having me. And luckily, that disobedient French bulldog is not in my office right now. Otherwise, you can sometimes hear him snoring in the background.

Oh my gosh, that’s awesome.

I was interviewing someone who does yoga for sobriety, and she lives in Bali, and we could hear the roosters crowing, because it’s like 5 in the morning. Dogs, I am used to.

That’s awesome. Well, so I reached out to you because I loved your book, Imposter No More. And I know from talking to my audience and from my own experience that feeling like an imposter, especially for me at work, was a big trigger for me to drink because you’re going, I worked in Tech. It was a very male dominated field. Then I worked in beauty where everybody was gorgeous and incredibly put together. And I just felt really intimidated, but also like most people who feel imposter syndrome, I was the primary breadwinner. And I was like, Oh my God, they’re going to figure out, I don’t know what I’m talking about, or we’re not going to make the numbers or whatever it is.

And it was really stressful.

 

Yeah, yeah. I mean, and you just like hit the nail on the head. That is such a perfect description of what this phenomenon typically looks like for people. And I think, you know, especially when you have this history of being told, whether it’s overtly or covertly, that maybe you don’t belong at all the tables, like a woman in STEM or any other male dominated Industry, you know. It stands to reason that you might question whether you belong at all the tables. And it, it’s really hard to navigate.

I don’t know. Have you heard of Kristi Coulter’s book, Exit Interview at all?

No, but her name sounds familiar, but I don’t think I’ve seen that one.

Yeah, she also wrote, Nothing Good Can Come From This. And the reason I loved her book was it was this inside look at Amazon. com. And it, which is like, sort of the biggest bro culture in tech that you can imagine and she was describing. She spent half of her time. They’re drinking half of her time. They’re sober, but just sort of describing how you literally could not win, like capture all, you know, take notes because you want your ideas captured, but don’t take notes because you don’t want to look at a sec.

Like a secretary like dress so you can emphasize X but never to emphasize Y. You know what I mean? Yes.

Yeah, it reminds me of the America Ferrera monologue from the barbie movie right, where she says, it’s literally impossible to be a woman and then talks about exactly that. Yeah.

Well, so tell me about Imposter No More.

 

And what led you to write it? Well, I mean, what led me to write it is, you know, they say research is me search, or I think the, the, the, the, the saying I heard more recently that I think is brilliant and hilarious is your mess is your message, right? And I’m like, Oh, yeah, that’s so resonates with me. And, what really got me to dig in wasn’t the existence of the imposter phenomenon, you know, I went and spoke to a mentor before I went to my PhD program, and he sat me down and said, Listen, Jill, like you’re going to go out there and you’re going to look around and be like, Oh, my God, I don’t belong. Everyone else belongs here but me.

Any minute they’re going to figure out I’m a fraud. fraud and I just like my chin dropped like, how did you know? And I, I knew I felt that way, but I never knew there was this concept with this name. And so then sure enough, I did go and I did feel that way, but it still didn’t peak a huge curiosity because, you know, he had said this will probably happen.

Cause it happens to all grad students. Right. But then it was when a few years passed and I’m achieving and I’m, you know, if I’m like, I just thought once I. built up my portfolio enough, then like the day would come where you outrun it, where you’re like, okay, like now I have arrived. Now I am legitimate because I won the award, or I got the promotion or whatever it is.

And that never happened. And so that’s what got me digging into it. And then sure enough, I find that this imposter phenomenon is actually correlated with success and that it seems to be the case that the higher you climb, you know, the more it may increase. That’s not always the case. It’s context dependent.

 

And a person who struggles with this doesn’t struggle with it every minute of every day. Sometimes you feel it. Sometimes you don’t. It might be present at work, but not at home or vice versa. But that just really got me thinking because it just seemed like common sense. You should be able to prove that you’re not a fraud over time.

And that doesn’t happen. And we don’t know exactly why, but it seems to be something related maybe to expectations that what you’re, you know, what I was expected to know as a first year PhD student is very different from once I’ve been licensed for many years and I’m running a clinic or I’m supervising students or, you know, training clinicians. So that the expectations are higher, the higher you go and you have a reputation that you need to hold up.

Right. So like, I think often of Oscar winners, you assume they won an Oscar and they’re like, okay, here we go. I have, you know, won the ultimate award, but then they feel like now everything they do, they have to live up to being an Oscar winner. And often feel like they didn’t really deserve that award in the first place and now they have to be really good to defend that, sort of, “title” in a way.

Yeah. I actually, when I was reading your book, I always write down a lot of notes next to, you wrote this sentence and next to it. I was like, oh, my God, this is a bummer.

It said, there is no achieving your way out of imposter-ism.
The higher you climb, the more you are expected to know and is someone who has always sort of struggled with anxiety.

 

I have felt that, but I was like, Oh, that really sucks. I know that’s the bad news, but I think it can be bad news and good news because If that is the truth, whatever truth is, you know, but if, if that is that, if that is so, then it kind of means like we can give up the struggle and all of the efforting that we’re doing in this attempt to outrun it.

You know, I think so many of us, you said, you, you know, a lot of your listeners are kind of these like high achieving, successful women. And I think so many of us jump on this hamster wheel of achievement. Go, go, go, go. Do, do, do, do, do… To the point of burnout. Often because we’re trying to outrun some feeling of insecurity, this feeling of being outed as a fraud, this, these feelings of anxiety, and then go home and drink, you know, if we’re feeling that and not outrunning it and, and because we’re feeling burnt out.

And so, it’s like, well, if I know, no matter what, this is going to be a long for the ride, then maybe I can stop trying so hard to get rid of it.

Yeah, absolutely. I, I think that’s really interesting. And hopefully when we get a little bit older and we do some of this work and we have more honest conversations with other women, we realize we’re not alone and find some ways to negotiate around it.

Like I remember the, the idea or the quote around, like when you get older, you realize that no one knows what they’re doing. We’re all pretending. And I weirdly find a lot of comfort in that.

Yes. Right. Well, and a lot people ask me all the time, you know, like, what can leaders do in organizations when they know that, you know, lots of the work face workforce may be struggling with these issues.

I’m like, they can admit that they are too. You know, I think the most powerful, powerful thing you can do as a leader, a mentor, a model to people in any way is to say, Hey, like, I feel this way, too, because then people look and go, Oh, wait, you, like you have succeeded in all these ways. And even you feel this way, like it hasn’t stopped you.

So, like, maybe it doesn’t have to stop me either. And like you said, and then, you don’t feel so alone. But so often, people don’t admit it because if I say like, Oh Casey, I feel like everyone’s going to figure out. I don’t know what I’m doing. The fear is that you’re like, you don’t know what you’re doing.

And that, I’ve essentially outed myself as not knowing what I’m doing.

So, yeah, I talk about, I know, and there, there’s so many different things I wanted to highlight when you were going through this book, because a lot of things resonated with me, including, like, giving up opportunities because you didn’t want to be exposed as an imposter.

I can’t tell you how many VP jobs I turned down because I was like, I can’t even handle the anxiety at a directory level and so much more. But. When we, before we get started, I would love you to dive into your perspective on why we shouldn’t call this imposter syndrome and what we should call it instead.

Yes, I think that’s so important. Thank you for asking that question. Because, you know, syndrome is so pathologizing. A syndrome, I mean, if you look up the definition, it says like, disorder, disease, pathology, and there are several reasons why. The first is, when this was identified in the late 70s by doctors Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes, they called it the imposter phenomenon.

 

Now, they thought at the time that it only affected high achieving women, which we now know isn’t true. But at the time, they published their paper, said this imposter phenomenon affects high achieving women, and like this quick, I’m snapping my fingers even though people can’t see me, our culture, this was the late 70s, was like, Oh, wait, high achieving women are having some insecurity must be a syndrome, must be a disorder, disease or pathology.

 

So, the sexism is just baked right in to that term “syndrome”, because, you know, we don’t want to, we don’t want to let high achieving women like come to power and succeed. We got to try to keep those ladies down. So let’s, let’s talk about this syndrome that they all have. So, that to me is kind of the first and foremost, the other is just how common it is.

 

So, interestingly, you know, if you Google these words, there’s like imposter syndrome. There’s hundreds of millions of hits. But if you look in a scientific database, there’s like hundreds of hits. So, even though there’s all this interest, there’s not a lot of science. So, I just, I always like to say that from the outset, cause a lot of these are empirical questions. When you do look at the studies out there, the prevalence rates vary pretty widely. I’ve seen as low as 6. 6 or 9 and as high as 86. But most studies report a prevalence rate between about 40 to 70%. So, what we’re saying is, half of us experience this.

Tell me what other disease, disorder, or pathology exists in half the humans on the planet. None. Zero. It wouldn’t be a disease if it affected half the people on the planet. So, this is a normal experience.

And then, the last one is that I and other people in this area suspect that experiences of marginalization or othering may contribute to the, to the development of this. Again, this is an empirical question.

We don’t really have a solid empirical answer. And part of that is because scientifically people just ask, is it more common in men or women? That’s it. You know, and some studies say yes, some studies say no, or one study only says it’s more common in men in this particular sample, every other one sees says it’s either more common in women or equal.

Okay, well, I think it doesn’t make sense to split it between men and women. It should be split between people who have been othered or marginalized, which would include men, you know, men of color, men in the LGBTQ community, etc., and people who have not. And I think if you did that, that is really where you would see the difference.

And so, again, that means Having these experiences when you’ve been told you don’t belong at all the tables, again, right, if you’re a person of color who’s been told you don’t belong at white tables and women don’t belong at men’s tables, you’re going to question whether you belong at the tables. And so, I think we’re more vulnerable to having these thoughts and feelings when we have been othered, when we’ve been marginalized.

And certainly we would never want to pathologize. That’s not a pathological disease process, right? That is the result of oppression.

Yeah, when I read that and heard you talking about it on your podcast about how it was labeled a syndrome, I was like, Oh my God, yes, that is so sexist and so classic and really annoying.

I circled another thing you wrote because it made me laugh really hard. I, my husband, white man, to be fair hates it when I say this, but having worked in the corporate world for so long and talking to other women there, my favorite phrase is like, God grant me the confidence of a mediocre white man because I’ve worked with them.

And I’m like, Oh my God, you are. So, like, C plus work. How are you not freaking the fuck out? Cause I freak out when I do like B work and you wrote about this idea of a WHMP. W H M P, meaning white heterosexual male of privilege. And the idea that these are people that in theory imposter syndrome doesn’t really impact very much.

Can you tell me about that?

Yeah, so that’s the question people always ask me like, so who doesn’t experience this? I’m like, well, we again, empirical question don’t entirely know for sure. But probably it’s like, you know, the people who are narcissistic. Right. Like with big, big, big, big ego and confidence problems, the people who are subject to a cognitive bias, that’s called the Dunning Kruger effect, which is essentially people who overestimate their competence and aren’t competent enough to know that they’re overestimating their competence.

And then that, that term WHMP that you just mentioned, that comes from Dr. Janet Helms who’s a psychologist. And does a lot of work in spaces around marginalization and whatnot. So she, she did a talk at a conference I was at, and that just stuck with me, white heterosexual male of privilege. And you know, so that’s just an example of a person who is in all of the majority groups.

And so, you know, similar to your husband, I use my husband as an example. He is also, he’s a WHMP, but growing up, I actually. He’s a male of privilege because he’s a cis straight white man. However, growing up, he was not. He was economically disadvantaged. You know, his family did not his family were not educated.

They had very little money. And he was very tiny, like a very small, small person. So, he was bullied mercilessly, right? So, you can still grow up and be a WHMP, but also end up having some of these issues. If you’ve had experiences of marginalization, you can still be marginalized, even if you’re a straight white man.

Right. And so I think that’s the piece that’s, that is really important.

Yeah. Yeah. And it makes sense to me, because what I’ve found and read is that even the way that, for example, women are evaluated in the workplace, both, I think there’s this company it’s in Seattle called Textio and what they do is take job descriptions and they rewrite them.

To take out the sexist bias within it. So, a lot of job descriptions are written in ways that highlight the need for skills that are typically associated with men and also performance reviews are written in the same way. And because typically right? White heterosexual males of privilege are the bosses.

They often have things written in ways that the skills that got them where they are, are the skills that are valued. And so, I think it’s normal to feel like you’re an imposter if everything you’re being evaluated against is written for someone else and then being told that you’re not quite measuring up.

And then not to mention, there’s hordes of research that show. Women who are seen as competent in the workplace are rated as unlikable, but women who are seen as likable are rated as incompetent. So, it goes back to what you were saying before is like, you feel like you can’t win.

There is a great new book that came out recently called Likeable Badass by Alison Fragale and she’s a professor at Yale. And she talks about how to kind of overcome this likability. I mean, yeah, the likability competence trap and, and likable badass, her research has found is the combination of assertiveness and warmth. So, there you go. There’s a little tip if you can do assertiveness and warmth.

You know, you can kind of overcome this, but, but I mean, it’s just, it just feels like I interviewed someone on my podcast named Alicia Menendez. Actually, people might know her because she’s an MSNBC anchor, but she wrote a book several years ago called, The Likeability Trap. And it’s all about gender and all the ways in which being a woman puts you in these double binds. I think she calls it the Goldilocks conundrum. And it’s that you just can’t win kind of place. And so, like, of course we feel like imposters who are going to be out at is, frauds. Cause it’s like, you know, when I’m out there and I’m being super competent, no one likes me, so I must be doing something wrong, but if I’m likable and everyone, you know, thinks I’m great, but like, I’m not being promoted or I’m not, you know what I mean?

 

It’s like, well, then I must be doing something wrong. I just, I can’t get it right. I must be a fraud. I’m, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. I remember when I was like. 29 I worked at this media company and I was in charge of entertainment, imagery and video. That was my like product marketing management area and the company was right.

It was Getty images run by all white British men. And my boss literally told me, okay, this is the best product plan I’ve ever seen. But you need to talk more slowly because you sound like you shouldn’t be taken seriously. The way you speak. I was just like, All right. That’s really hard for me to change.

And he was like, you’re young, you know, and I was like, but I’m my customer base. We’re the ones who love entertainment tonight and people magazine. And what you’re saying is I need to sound more like you. Well, and I can’t change my age or the fact I’m 5’3 you know what I mean?

Right. So yeah. It’s yeah.

Okay. I’m going to get both of those books, the Likeability Trap and Likeable Badass cause they sound good.

I will, I will say I love Alicia’s book. It is a little depressing because it’s mostly all the bad news, but Allison’s book is like what to do about it. So, you get both of those things. Like you get all the research in, in Alicia’s book, but then you get the, the strategies and some of them are things you can act upon right away that aren’t heavy lifts.

So yeah, she’s great. That’s great.

Well, so tell me about what you do, right? 70 percent of us, 50 percent of us, a lot of high achieving women and marginalized groups feel this imposterism. So, you are not alone, even though we don’t really talk about it in the way you’re feeling. What do we do to, cause you talk about not getting rid of it, but trying to embrace it and live with it in some way.

 

I’m not sure I’m saying that right. That’s it. No, that’s exactly it. And it’s kind of like, that’s the good news. Bad news thing again is, you know, if you’re able to get rid of it, great by all means do. And in fact, I talk about one of the people in, in my book Jamil, I don’t, he’s the, the, he’s a pediatrician and emergency doctor pediatrician, like Stanford, Harvard.

I mean, just this. Yeah. He was an incredibly successful guy, but he was an immigrant, he’s black, he was adopted, you know, he had a lot of these factors that really contributed to him experiencing this, but he actually said he did manage to kind of outrun his eventually and what he found is that he was sort of lucky and this is another way to answer the question like what can leaders do?

Is he, time and time again, he ended up in settings where the people in charge, the leaders were constantly drilling into them. If you are here, you deserve to be here. Like you are smart. You earned this. If you are here, you deserve it. And he was able to take that in. And so that was really helpful to him.

Of course, many of us never have that experience, but that is something leaders can do to try to help people sort of like build a little bit of that confidence, but you know, most of the time we’re sort of suffering in silence and the higher we climb, the more we feel this. And so, if you’re able to get rid of it, great, fine. I hope that works for you. The problem is that’s what most of the other like books and blogs out there are like, you know, 5 steps to building your confidence. And what I hear from most of my therapy and coaching clients is I’ve tried all these things and they haven’t worked. So, now I feel even more like a fraud because I can’t even get this under control, right?

So, like now, I feel like a fraud. Failure, and it’s so demoralizing. And so the alternative to trying to strong arm and change all the thoughts and feelings is to change your relationship to them instead, to understand, like, I actually think, you know, people say, what causes this? And of course, we’ve talked about this marginalization learning history type stuff that I think can certainly contribute.

But honestly, Casey, I think this is baked into us through evolution because like, think of it this way. early humans did not have sharp teeth. They didn’t have claws. You know, they didn’t run at high speeds. They had each other and early humans who hunted and gathered and traveled together had a survival advantage.

And if you got kicked out of your tribe, you were literally dead. And so, think about the way you would have to think and feel to prevent getting kicked out. Am I adding value? Do I measure it up? Do they think I’m contributing enough? If they find out I’m not doing as much as that guy, they might kick me out.

I better make sure no one finds out. Right. So, like this kind of self-doubt I think was adaptive and protective, you know, a hundred thousand years ago. And even now. We know after what, 8 decades of research at this point, the number one most robust predictor of human beings overall mental and physical health and well-being, mortality, morbidity, all the things, is the presence of quality relationships.

And so, making sure that nothing threatens your human bonds is literally necessary for survival. And so, you know, I don’t want you to find out that I’m a fraud because that threatens our bond, right? So, this is all just a big, long way to say this is so normal. And if it’s normal and it’s baked in, then like, of course we’re not going to get rid of it.

Like, any more than a skunk is going to get rid of its smell. And they need that smell to be protected from predators. And so, that’s the bad news.

Good news. Like, sorry guys, you can’t fix it, but good news. Like let, okay. Like let’s let go of all of the efforts to try and let’s just relate differently when these thoughts and feelings come up.

And so, there’s loads of ways to do this. And if people want like all the details that can certainly get that in the book, but some of the, the, like, I’ll give you the kind of 3 basic big picture ways.

First is well, so the 2 ways are essentially Getting comfortable being uncomfortable, like if you think about how many decisions you make and drinking certainly relates to this. How many things do you choose to do or not do simply because you don’t want to feel a certain way, right? And when we’re coming home stressed at the end of the day and opening that bottle of wine, it’s typically because we don’t want to feel whatever the ick is that we’re feeling. And we do want to feel whatever the benefit is that alcohol is giving at that time, right? So ,it’s all about doing things to control how we feel, even when there’s a cost. So like if you go take a bubble bath and it feels good and there’s no cost, great. There’s nothing wrong with that. But what we’re talking about here is. If everything you’re doing is all about diving for your comfort zone, that’s going to be pretty life limiting.

And so, you can learn how to get comfortable being uncomfortable. Which means when those imposter thoughts and feelings show up, you don’t have to avoid the opportunity because it’s uncomfortable. You can take the opportunity, but you have to be willing to do it in the presence of some discomfort.

 

Yeah, I loved, I, I dog eared the page because in your book you actually talk about using alcohol like it works until it doesn’t.

So, you talk about that, like the discomfort example is anxiety. The experiential avoidance, and I want to ask you about that term, is drink alcohol. The function like it works is feel relief and relaxation in the short term until it doesn’t, right? So there’s the function and then the cost, which results in double the anxiety, headache, irritability, guilt about drinking too much.

 

And honestly, if you’re stressed about time and effort, you get that brain fog and you lose a lot of time and you sleep poorly. So, I was going to say, don’t forget poor sleep. I don’t know if I put that in the book, but you didn’t put it in there.

Yeah, but I mean, it makes sense. And a lot of things that we do when you stop drinking is you have to figure out other coping mechanisms and sit with being uncomfortable.

 

You don’t have this quick fix, right? Where you’re like, I’m bored, lonely, scared, feel intimidated. I’ll take a drink and then it’ll go away. You actually have to find other means to sit with that, which isn’t as immediate and takes longer and takes more effort, but then you don’t get the cost, right? But you don’t get the cost.

You don’t get the cost. So, tell me what experiential avoidance is, because I actually hadn’t heard that term before.

Yeah, so that’s a term that, I mean, you know, avoidance. Experiential avoidance, you’ll hear it a lot in, in Psychology. And so, really, it’s anything that you do or don’t do to try to control how you feel.

 

Typically, it’s trying to, Feel less of something you don’t want to feel but it could be anything and it is only problematic if it has a cost. So, you know, like when I go to yoga or Pilates, does it change the way I feel? Absolutely. Does that technically fit the definition of avoidance? Yes. But if I can afford the cost of it. If it’s not taking so much time that it’s taking me away from other things that are important, you know, it’s good for my body. It’s not injuring me, then it’s fine. Now, if I am like so unwilling to feel anxiety that I’m going to yoga every night for four hours and never seeing my children. And, you know, I care about being a good mom, now it has a cost.

So, it’s really looking at, like, what is this behavior in the service of? Is it avoidance? You know, another example I really like is if you, like, let’s say you’re, it’s raining outside, and you decide to use an umbrella. Well, that’s going to change the way you feel. You’re going to be, like, warmer and drier if you’re using an umbrella.

Is that avoidance? Yes. Is it bad? Well, probably not if you’re just walking down the street in your neighborhood, but let’s say you’re like at a Seattle Mariners game, right? You’re in Seattle and it starts to rain and you put up your big giant umbrella and now the water’s dripping off the sides on the people next to you, and you’re blocking the view of the people behind you, and you happen to care about being a courteous citizen.

Now it has a cost. And so, when that is the case, the alternative is, can you sit at that game and let yourself be a little bit cold and wet because that’s more consistent with your values of being a good citizen in that context. I like idea of the cost, right? Because everybody does want to avoid feeling uncomfortable, feeling anxiety, feeling self-doubt.

One of the things I thought was really interesting with that, I think we’ve all done, but it was on the, the, this has a cost. Part of experiential avoidance was you’re feeling self-doubt. You’re feeling imposterism. You wrote down overwork and overachieve, which for some people, myself included for a long time, seemed like the perfect solution and one technically without a cost, right? Like, I feel self-doubt. I feel like I’m not good enough. So, I’m just going to keep working. And the cost you said was, you know, you, you feel more in control temporarily and like, you won’t be revealed as a fraud. That’s why it works, but it leads to burn out and it doesn’t cure imposter feelings in the long term, which you think it would, right? I’m just going to keep learning. I’m just going to overachieve. I’m just going to meet the goal.

 

Why doesn’t that cure the imposter feelings in the long term? Well, we think it’s that like the higher you go, the more you have to prove, you know, and that you have to You have to defend that reputation The more the more you go and then this whole thing becomes this cycle of negative reinforcement Because now what you’ve taught yourself is the only way for me to get rid of this self-doubt is to work more and to work Harder and does that work in the short term?

 

Yes. But then, it backfires, right? And then, you’re like, Oh, so now the next time I feel this self-doubt, what do I need to do? Achieve, achieve, achieve, achieve. And so, it’s that constant, you know, need it. The more you do it, the more you need to do it. Kind of like drugs or alcohol, right? It’s like the more you, the more you drink, the more you need to drink to like get that feeling that you’re trying to get.

And ultimately, the cost of that is burnout and you’re not. You know, they’re there. So, everyone knows who Adam Grant is. He’s a very famous Organizational Psychologist, and he talks a little bit about how there might be some benefits to this imposter phenomenon. And he talks about how, like, it might make you work harder like it’ll motivate you to work harder because you feel like you have something to prove.

 

It can motivate you to work smarter because if you’re doubting yourself, like you might rethink your strategies. It might make us better learners or leaders because doubt might help have us go seek other ideas or second opinions. But I think the problem isn’t in what we’re doing. I think it’s in why we’re doing it.

And so while what he’s saying may be true, if you’re just on this hamster wheel of achievement trying to outrun it, you know, he’s not talking about the cost of burnout. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so it’s like we’re either saying no to opportunities like the example you gave because we don’t think we deserve it and we’re not smart enough or whatnot.

So, we miss out on those opportunities or we’re over, over, overdoing it and we end up burning out. And what I encourage my clients to do is to get in touch with their values. So I said, I’m going to give you three ways to deal with this. So one, we talked about getting comfortable, being uncomfortable, and we can also talk about a few ways to do that specifically. And one is changing your relationship to your thoughts, which we can also talk a little more about, but then that third is getting clear on your values. And that’s like, I call that the me, the me I want to be is like, how do you want to show up in the world? Who do you want to be having a why? Because if you’re going to be willing to sit in discomfort, like if you’re going to sit at night and not have that bottle of wine and deal with all of that discomfort, you’ve got to have a really good reason.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson 

Hi there. If you’re listening to this episode, and have been trying to take a break from drinking, but keep starting and stopping and starting again, I want to invite you to take a look at my on demand coaching course, The Sobriety Starter Kit®.

 

The Sobriety Starter Kit® is an online self study sober coaching course that will help you quit drinking and build a life you love without alcohol without white knuckling it or hating the process. The course includes the exact step by step coaching framework I work through with my private coaching clients, but at a much more affordable price than one on one coaching. And the sobriety starter kit is ready, waiting and available to support you anytime you need it. And when it fits into your schedule. You don’t need to work your life around group meetings or classes at a specific day or time.

This course is not a 30 day challenge, or a one day at a time approach. Instead, it’s a step by step formula for changing your relationship with alcohol. The course will help you turn the decision to stop drinking, from your worst case scenario to the best decision of your life.

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And, you know, I always think about exercise for many years. I really, really struggled to motivate to get myself to exercise. And I kept trying to connect to a why, like, I don’t know, like my health and living longer. And, and it just, it didn’t work. And then one day I had this epiphany. My husband is one of those people who like, He has a very beautiful body and doesn’t do jack to earn it, which I both love and hate because I love to look at it, but I hate him for it.

Right. If you’re married to him. Yeah. He’s nice to look at, but I hate it as well because it’s not fair, but I had this moment where he was like sitting on the sofa and I was like, Oh my God. Our children cannot grow up with two sedentary parents. Like, they have to have someone that, they don’t do what we say, they do what we do.

So, they need to have someone who’s modeling to them that, like, moving your body is just a thing that you do, not because you’re trying to get skinny or whatever, like, it’s just what you do. And it was that day that my why clicked. And now, I’ve been a regular exerciser ever since. And it’s been many years.

And so, you know, I think in order to be able to do things that are really hard, you’ve got to have a good reason. And it can’t be a should, it can’t be because somebody else thinks you should do it or society or whatever it had, you have to get really clear on your why. So like, why do I want to do this?

And that’s what I think is missing in Adam Grant’s whole thing about maybe this is good for you, is I think we need to understand what is it in the service of what is our why. Am I saying yes to this opportunity because it’s really consistent with my career goals and who and how I want to be in the world? Or am I just saying yes to everything in an effort to try to outrun this self-doubt at the risk of burnout?

 

I love that because saying, No to an opportunity can be avoidance or values driven. Yeah. Saying yes or no can be avoidance or values driven.

Yeah. Yeah. And it can give you more comfort versus being like, oh no, I’m disappointing someone, or I’m not stepping up, or I’m, there’s something wrong with me if you know that it’s in alignment with your values.

When I went to coaching school and it was like three years after I stopped drinking, we finally did values work as part of that, which was amazing. And I realized that my whole life I had been living according to the values I was told that I should have, like from my parents, from society, like I’m going to never let you down.

I’m going to be competent. I’m going to be X, Y, Z. And when I went through that, I was like, Yeah, I don’t care about all of that. You know what all of those aren’t my values and yet that’s why I’ve been so unhappy pushing myself and feeling so much anxiety and everything else it’s because it was like I was trying really hard to be something for someone else and not measuring up. Totally, and so much of that is coming from the be a good girl like, all the good girl rules.

 

Yeah. Right. Ugh. It’s exhausting. So that was terribly fulfilling.

Number three. Right. So, we talked about being comfortable. So, identify your values. And then, once you know your why, it’s sort of like, okay, like how do I, in an ideal world, like if I weren’t feeling uncomfortable, if I did have all the confidence in the world, what would I be doing?

 

Like, what would I be saying yes or no to? And then what’s getting in the way of that? Well, probably discomfort and a big loud inner critic saying you’re an imposter. Who do you think you are? Yada, yada. And so what do I do when all that stuff shows up? And I think, first of all, I want to reiterate the, like, you can’t get rid of it, and honestly, if you’re doing something that is both challenging and that you care about, it would be utterly ridiculous to expect to be doing it completely confidently without fear or self-doubt, right? Like, so I always give the example. If you think about the last time you were lying awake at night with your wheels spinning, because we’ve all been there, right? It’s 2 a.m. You cannot fall asleep. Spin, spin, spin. Think about what it is that you were worrying about. I always joke, it’s like when you’re lying awake at night, wheel spinning, it’s probably not fretting over the fact that Game of Thrones isn’t coming back for another season, even if it was your favorite show. Right?

It’s your family. It’s your, you being competent at work. It’s your health. It’s the state of the world. It’s stuff you care about. And so, when you care about being competent, doing a good job, whether it’s at work or as a parent or whatever it is, and it’s challenging, of course there’s going to be some anxiety or self-doubt or, right?

Like, it’s ridiculous that we think we should be confident. And a lot of that is coming from more like masculine, outdated and misleading models about confidence. So, it’s like, yes, of course, we’re going to have these feelings. Now, can we choose to do these things that matter to us, that are challenging, if they matter to us?

And, and yes, we can’t, but we have to be willing to do it in the presence of that discomfort. The good news is that can be trained. You can build your willingness muscles. And there are so many fun ways to do this. It’s like my favorite thing that I do and all of my like public speaking and my, and my coach with my coaching and my, and my therapy clients.

And we can all do this together. As long as you’re not driving in your car while you’re listening, this is just one really quick, simple way.

So, if you just fold your hands. Like, the way that feels comfortable and notice how it feels, you know, kind of like prayer mode there, like interlace your fingers, interlace your fingers.

I’m like, yeah, how do you describe that? If someone can’t see what you’re doing? Yeah. Interlace your fingers. Okay, now switch it so that you’re one finger off. So, it’s like the funny feeling way. Okay. And now notice how that feels. It’s icky. It’s weird. We don’t like it. We desperately want to either let go or go back to the way that feels comfortable.

Notice that urge. Cause that’s the thing we give into. And can you sit, and breathe, and open, and allow? And I always give people like a little mantra. I do it as a repeat after me when I give talks, right? So it’s This is uncomfortable, but it’s just a feeling. It is not dangerous. It is temporary, and maybe most importantly, I can handle it.

And so that little five part mantra is how we change our relationship to discomfort. Yes, feelings can be hard when they’re intense, and I don’t mean to sound invalidating when I say it’s only a feeling, but it’s about not taking your feelings quite so seriously, because really at the end of the day, they are just feelings!

Right? They’re not going to hurt you. They’re just feelings. And think about how much our lives would change if our feelings were no longer in charge of what we’re choosing to do or not do. Like the hard conversations we’d have, the opportunities we would take on, the times we would say no when we want to say no.

And you can practice this discomfort, sitting with discomfort a thousand different ways. So, I always give the example, I swear this is true. I wish I had my wallet. I could show you. So, I like to have, if I have cash in my wallet, I want it to all be facing the same way in denominational order because I’m not a psychopath. Like, doesn’t anyone, everyone want their money that way? You will absolutely not. Mine’s like folded up in little things that like stuffed in.

Well, then maybe you’re a psychopath, Casey. No, I’m just kidding. Probably. No, really. Like, clearly, I’m the one who’s neurotic, that I want to have my money this way. But you will never find my money this way. I get the cash from the cashier, and I stuff it in just like you do with yours. And I hate it, and I want to fix it so bad, and I just let it be. And then, it goes away, and I forget about it. Until I talk about it on a podcast. So it, and I have been doing this in my own life, you know, practicing these psychological flexibility skills, which is what we’re talking about.

I’ve been doing this for what, probably 25 years at this point. And I still practice every single day. So, you could make your shower a little too hot or too cold. You could brush your teeth with your non dominant hand. You can use the internet for, use your senses, look at things you don’t want to look at, you know, for me, that would be like feet or puss. Listen to sounds like mouth sounds or sirens or nails on a chalkboard. You can literally find anything online. Eat food you don’t like. So, I have in my desk drawer right here, I get my clients to purchase Bamboozled jelly beans and we eat them together. And they’re those jelly beans that you get the pink one, you spin a spinner and it says, okay, eat the pink one. And it might be strawberry banana smoothie, or it might be vomit. But at the end of the day, it’s just a jelly bean. Right? And so, you can just practice, practice, practice. And over time, you really learn by experience that like, these are just feelings. They don’t have to be in charge of what I do. And then, you can like work your way up to the stuff that’s really, really hard.

Bigger stuff. The bigger stuff and you can even there’s even a between your senses and the stuff in real life. That’s really hard There’s even harder practices. Like if you have a politician you can’t stand go get on YouTube and watch them give a speech Trust me. This is hard. You could watch like the last five minutes of Marley and me Do you know that movie?

I know the movie. Yeah. Well, it’s a dog dying. Yeah. I was going to say it’s the dog dying, right? Awful. It’s awful. Okay. And you can sit and watch that and learn and open up and make space for sadness. Notice the ways you try to stuff it down and open and allow. It’s just a feeling. It’s temporary. It’s not dangerous.

You can handle it and, and, you know, but it’s at the end of the day, it’s just a movie, although it is based on a true story. And my listeners too, like if anybody wants to reach out to me to like brainstorm different ways to do this, I did it with an audience once of teenagers and had them all hold bubble wrap and not pop it.

And they were like, Hey, thank you. It was, it wasn’t my idea. It was a colleague’s idea and it worked. Brilliantly, because there was also the social pressure. I was like, you guys, if you pop it, we can all hear you, right? So, that’s so funny. And the whole talk was about not being impulsive, you know, not sending off that angry text when you’re feeling mad, right?

Can you have an urge and sit and not respond to it? Yeah, and I can totally see that because in the beginning when women aren’t drinking you have to sit through a craving to not drink But then you also have to sit through we were talking about triggers like being irritated being annoyed being resentful being overwhelmed Whatever it is going out on a date with your husband or you go out with your girlfriends and not drinking.

That’s really uncomfortable And then once you get past that, you’ve done that a couple of times. So you have other ways to cope. You realize it won’t kill you. You realize the craving will go away, but then it comes to someone in my group was just saying that the other day, like, then it comes to, oh my God, I had to put down a boundary with another mom and text her and tell her that this was not okay.

And then you have to sit with that and like not backpedal and not take it back and not drink and like it just being like, okay, I’m really scared. This is really uncomfortable. She may not like me. I don’t like this and not take it back. And then the next time, like it’s a muscle to be built, right? The next time.

It’s a hundred percent right. And we know people habituate over time that it just, you know, like. Your initial anxiety and your max anxiety and the time it takes for it to go away. All of that gets better over time. But what’s really happening is new learning is you have this prediction. I can’t handle this without a drink.

I can’t possibly confront this other mom because terrible, terrible things will happen and my whole life will blow up, right? And once, and that’s what causes us to avoid, because why would you do that? You know, but then once you do it over and over, what you see is, Oh, what my mind is telling me. And my mind is here to try to protect me, but it overdoes it.

You know, like those car alarms that go off when the wind blows, like our minds overdo it. So, my mind’s trying to protect me. But when I look at what my mind says is going to happen to what my experience actually says happens, these two things don’t match up. And that’s how new learning takes place. Oh, I can handle it.

Oh, it is temporary. Oh, the sky didn’t fall. So I can keep doing, keep building. Yeah, you [00:47:00] know, it’s what helped me also in reading your book. I believe it was after the Adam Grant section where you talked about the benefits that he shared. Like, it can motivate you to work harder because you have something to prove.

It can motivate you to work smarter, better learners and leaders. So after that, I used to go to my therapist or say to myself all the time, like, what is wrong with me? Why can everybody else? Somehow navigate work and deadlines and, you know, KPIs without having sort of a huge anxiety attack and I can’t, and of course, nobody really could tell I was having it.

It was all internal, but one made me feel better to know that so many people are feeling this way. And we’re just not talking about it because we’re so afraid people will know we don’t know what we’re doing. So, but the other thing you talked about there. All right. Was about the fact that it’s a defense mechanism and you wrote like individuals who fear being exposed as incompetent attempt to salvage their diminished sense of self-worth by taking other focused approach.

What helped me there was the idea of not like, oh, my God, what is wrong with me? Why can I not handle my life when everybody else can? But hey, this is a defense mechanism and it serves a purpose. And you can navigate life without it, but it’s not this inherent identity that is unshiftable that I apparently cannot handle life.

Right. I don’t know why. Yes, absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely. And, and it is, it is not an identity or a constant or, and I’m sure, you know, our brains only pay attention to, we have a negativity bias. Right, we pay attention to the stuff that might hurt us or kill us in some way. And that’s even true of social stuff, not just like physical danger.

And, you know, we fail to see the evidence to the contrary. And there’s also this confirmation bias where we only pay attention to the data that supports what we believe to be true. And so, part of the challenge is to, you know, when someone is stressed or anxious or worried, our attention narrows to the perceived threat and that’s adaptive, right?

Focus on the threat. The other stuff doesn’t matter. If there’s, if you’re in the bank and a robber comes in, you don’t want to, it doesn’t matter if the bank teller has perfume that smells good, you know, you’re going to focus on the threat and try to keep yourself alive. But in these kinds of contexts, what we want to do is sort of pull back and really like broaden our field of vision so that we’re not only focused on the threat, the negativity and the data that appears to confirm all that stuff, but to pull back and like really look at all of the data.

Cause we, you know, it only, it’s like, it takes one car accident out of driving your car 500, 000 times. It only takes one accident to be scared of driving and your brain doesn’t go. Yeah, but you’ve driven 499, 999 times and been safe, so this is probably safe, right? And even if you were like, that’s just not how we’re built, you know?

Yeah. So, it takes work to change your relationship to those thoughts. And again, like you can try to change the thoughts and convince yourself you’re awesome. For most of us, that doesn’t work because our mind goes, yeah, but. Yeah, but yeah, but like, let me give you all the data that proves you wrong, right?

If you gave me your CV, your resume, I could sit here and talk about how amazing you are. And your brain would be like, yeah, but what you don’t know is this, right? So, typically that doesn’t work if it does fabulous, but if it doesn’t, you can change your relationship to those thoughts by treating them for what they are, which is.

Just thoughts. They’re just sounds, they’re syllables, they’re images, they’re not truths with a capital T. Kind of like feelings are just feelings. And you can get good at choosing, like, if I listen to this thought, is that going to move me in the direction of my values, the life I want to live, the person I want to be, or not?

So like, let’s say I have the thought You know, Jill, last night you were pretty inattentive with your kids. You had your face in your phone an awful lot when they were trying to get your attention. That was kind of a bad mom move. Now that’s an inner critic, right? That’s a critical thought. But that thought is actually telling me something really important.

And what it’s telling me is I wasn’t showing up and acting in ways that are consistent with my values as a mom. So even though it’s a critical or negative thought, I do want to listen to that one so that then I can go, Right, that’s not the mom I want to be, so today I’m going to apologize to my kids for that.

And model to them, we all make mistakes, sorry, right? And we apologize and take responsibility. And I’m going to do a better job of being the me I want to be as a mom, which is present and attentive and loving and whatever else. Now if that thought was like, Wow, you are such a horrible mother, you should probably just abandon your family, cause they’d all be better off without you.

Like, even if there’s some of that that feels true, if I’m like really in the depths of feeling bad about something, I’m not going to listen to it. Because that is not consistent with my values. And so, we have to get good at thinking about thinking, or metacognition, and choosing when to listen and when not to.

And then, there are also lots of strategies for like getting distance from your thoughts and not taking them so seriously and all that good stuff, too. I have to say that getting, like, clear on your values, I love that, because it was one of the things that finally let me sit with being uncomfortable with my boss not approving of some of the choices I was making.

So my boss was like, at L’Oreal, just high achieving, single, no kids, wanted to be a GM, traveled all the time, worked all the weekends, whatever. And I Had two little kids and honestly preferred to be home and all that, you know, to the point where she was like, you’re too nice to your direct reports. You need to not care about their lives and not be friends with them.

She was like, very like hardcore and she took this as like a negative for me as a boss. Like this was, this was. Performance feedback of things I needed to work on, but what helped me was the idea of like, finally looking at it and being like, do I share her values? Do I want her life, her schedule, her relationships, her responsibilities?

And the answer was no, that’s not what I wanted for my life. But then the step that helped me was saying, If that’s true, by definition, I’m going to have to disappoint her because if I don’t, it means I’m living by her values. And so that at least made me more comfortable with her because before I was like, Oh my God, she doesn’t like me and she doesn’t think I’m doing a good job.

Right. That was crushing for a good girl who, you know, had fears of losing my job and my income. And then finally, like, just knowing that wasn’t my value made me be like. Yeah. If she doesn’t approve of you, that means you’re living according to your values, not hers. Well, and it’s hard because you want to be good at your job.

And this person is trying to say you’re not good at your job. And what you did there was to be able to say like, well, according to her, I’m not doing my job the way she does hers and thinks other people should, but how do I define good at my job? And if those two things are discrepant, can I get okay with that?

And that is hard as hell, but you are right on. The money. I mean, that’s it, right? I tell my clients. So, with my coaching, I do like professional health coaching, but in therapy, I see all anxiety disorder patients. And so, I tell my clients, you know, I’ve been, and I do acceptance and commitment therapy with them.

And it’s all about building psychological flexibility, which is what we’re talking about right now, even if we’re not using those words. And I tell all my clients, I’ve been doing this in my own life for 25 years, and I am more anxious than I’ve ever been. And you should see their faces because they’re coming to me, you know, hoping to fix their anxiety.

And they’re like, wait. What? I’m like, I know it sounds like bad news, but it’s anxiety I choose. Because what it means is like with the podcast, for example, I’m sure you’ve had this experience where you want to reach out to someone, but you’re like, I couldn’t possibly talk to them. They’re too big and famous and important.

They won’t want to talk to little old me. And back in the old days. I would have listened to that voice and not done it now. I will reach out to absolutely anyone. And that makes me really uncomfortable, you know, speaking in front of big audiences, doing keynotes, doing that is terrifying. But for me, like everything I do professionally is about.

teaching as many people as possible about psychological flexibility, not just in therapy, because not everyone has the resources, right? So podcasts are free books are cheap. When you go do public speaking, the corporation pays for it. So all the staff can get the information, but it, and so it’s my mission to try to share this powerful stuff with people.

And it’s terrifying. So could I get rid of that anxiety? Absolutely. Just never knock on another stage again.

Yeah. Exactly. Right. So it’s yes, I’m more anxious than ever, but I also have more meaning and purpose and vitality, you know, like I just feel judged when I’m doing this stuff, even if I’m also anxious.

And, you know, one of the things I often talk about on, on stage is like, what are you willing to feel to have the life you want? Because if you want to feel the incredibleness of love, you have to be willing to tolerate the possibility of loss.

Yes. Right? Like, and we’re all going to experience the loss of someone we love.

And the only way to not feel that pain is to not have love. And that seems like a pretty shitty trade off. If you really want to go after success, you have to be willing to maybe fail. If you’re creative, oh god, I think this is the hardest. Like, if you want to put your creative work out into the world, it is being put out there for critique.

Right? So you have to be willing to deal with the pain that not everyone is going to like your stuff. So it’s like, what are you willing to have, to feel, to go after the life you want? Because it’s like this pain joy stuff. It’s like two sides of the same coin. Yeah, so what I’m hearing there, and tell me if I’m interpreting this in the wrong way, it’s, you’re not going to get rid of the fear of But you should, to some extent, feel the fear and do it anyway.

Is that right? Or am I? That’s it. That’s it. Like the title of my keynote is like, do it scared. That’s the okay part. You know, and then there’s like a whole subtitle after that. But yes, that’s exactly it is like. You got to feel the fear and to, because of course there’s fear, that’s the part that people think they should be able to get rid of it somehow and then do the thing.

I was terrified to start my podcast and to become a coach and to tell, because I was like, Oh, there are people who have been sober for longer than me. And what do I know? And X, Y, Z. And one of the things that helped me I don’t know if you know her, but she’s a big like online pot business podcaster, Amy Porterfield.

I’m a huge fan of her podcast. Yeah, and what I loved about her, she said once, and I actually printed it out and put it on my vanity.

It said, there are people less qualified than you doing what you want to do, simply because they decided to believe in themselves.

And somehow that just helped me be like, yes, I’m scared, but I want to do this. And if I chicken out, like it’s just because I don’t believe myself, you know, like I couldn’t do it. People may criticize me. I may suck, but you know, well, and I would actually tweak that a little bit because I, I, I think like most of the people that I would talk to would be like, yeah, but I don’t believe in myself and I’ve tried to believe in myself and I can’t believe myself.

So I guess I can never be that person that goes and does it because I don’t believe in myself. So I would tweak that to say like. There are lots of people out there doing the thing that you do and maybe with the whole beginning of that. Even if they didn’t believe in themselves, like they were willing to do it even in the presence of doubt and uncertainty and fear.

So it’s not about believing in yourself and then doing it because then [00:59:00] some of us might be sitting around waiting forever. I actually call that the gap trap, which is we get trapped in stagnation, not moving forward because of a perceived gap in confidence, certainty. Knowledge, expertise, skill, whatever.

And we think we have to fill the gap before we move forward, and of course, that’s a trap. So really, the idea is like, you need to have enough knowledge and skill to do the thing, but like, only that much. You don’t have to know, like, I got invited to do this giant podcast interview about imposterism before I wrote my book, when I really did not know much at all.

And I almost said no, because I was like, who am I? I’m not an expert. And I was like, well, hold on. I have expertise in act and psychological flexibility. I have expertise in anxiety. I’m a podcaster myself. Can I? Do I know enough or can I get myself up to speed enough to talk about this responsibly and competently for one hour?

Because that’s all I need. No one is saying you have to be the world’s top expert who knows every single thing there is to know about the imposter phenomenon. I just needed to know enough to talk in a way that would help listeners for one hour. Right. And so can you do that? And then otherwise don’t wait to have all the knowledge, all the skill, all the expertise, all the confidence, like do it in the presence of.

All that’s not there. Yeah, and I want to encourage everyone to go to your website because you have a quiz on there about you know, what type of imposter are you? I thought it was super interesting, but I got, and I think you have it too, the expert imposter, which means like you have to read all the things and take all the courses and be an absolute expert before you somehow feel confident enough to put yourself out there to do the thing. Right.

Yeah, yeah, and it, it drove me crazy, but it is good to be like, okay, you can still be scared and do it anyway.

That’s right.

And what I love, those are, those subtypes were created by Valerie Young, who also does work in this area. And then, I took her subtypes and turned it into this quiz, and it’s basically the things that we do to try to avoid being outed as a fraud, but they all backfire.

So, there’s like, you know, the perfectionist, which is self-explanatory. You just explain the expert. There’s the soloist, like it only counts if you can do it alone. So, if you have to ask for help, you’re a fraud. There’s the natural genius. Like either, you know, it, or you don’t. You should be able to hear it once.

You know, know everything perfectly. And then, the superhuman is the one that’s like doing all the things all the time, perfectly unruffled smile on your face. And, you know, the thing about awareness is like, it’s necessary, but insufficient. So I love this quiz because you’re like, Oh my gosh, I’m the expert.

Well, knowing you’re the expert, isn’t going to make you stop. Like, isn’t going to cure you of these, like, these struggles, right? But now you know what to look out for. So, the next time you’re like, I feel like if I, maybe I’ll just take one more class. You can go, hold on a second, Casey, you’re doing that expert thing.

Do you really need one more class? And listen, if you have a value of being a lifelong learner and you love to, like, just always know what’s on the cutting edge, there is nothing wrong with that, but you can learn and do at the same time. So, it’s really watching out for, like, again, what is this in the service of?

Am I just signing up for one more class because I’m trying to chase away these feelings that I don’t really have any business doing this, I need to know more, I don’t know enough? Or is it more I just want to be as good at this as I possibly can. And I love to learn and that’s a value for me. And it might be both, which is where it can get really tricky.

But as long as part of this is about your values and it’s not preventing you from doing the thing, then you’re good to go. So, I love those subtypes because I think it really does make you go, Oh, Oh my God, I’m doing that thing. You know, I didn’t even know that was a thing before. I thought I was just getting better at stuff, you know?

Yeah. Great segue. So, where can people find that on your website? What’s the address?

Yeah, it’s just jillstoddard.com/quizzes.

Okay, easy. Very cool. And if people want to follow up obviously your book is Imposter no more you can buy it right anywhere that books are found. Where should they go to learn more about you to follow you?

Yeah, you can just go to jillstoddard.com. Everything is there. Podcasts, books, you can sign up for my Substack. I do evidence-based tips and psychology that I sent, well, I say monthly, but really it’s more like every 6 to 8 weeks when I have time, but I keep it nice and short, you know, and try to just give some like evidence based fun tips that people can implement.

So all that stuff is there. And then if anybody, you know, I have a separate speaker website so that if anybody wants to really learn details about my speaking, that’s actually at thewellbeingspeakers.com and my speaker reel and everything is there.

Will you tell us about your book, Be Mighty? I thought that interesting.

Yeah. Well, so everything, just like I was saying, like everything I do, my whole professional mission is about sharing psychological flexibility skills with the world. So, all of my books are about that.

My first one, The big book of ACT Metaphors is really just for ACT therapists but it’s, it’s all sorts of exercises and metaphors and whatnot that people can learn to do in therapy.

My second book is, Be Mighty, and so that’s psychological flexibility skills for women with anxiety, worry, or stress.

And then, the imposter book is psychological flexibility skills for people struggling with this imposter experience. And so, it’s all the same ideas, but with different tools focused on different struggles.

 

Very cool. Well, thank you so much for coming. This has been hugely helpful. I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much for having me. It was so great to chat with you.

And really, if people want to reach out to me, I welcome hearing from people. I mean it. And when you’re like, oh no, she doesn’t want to hear from me, see if you can change your relationship to that thought and do it anyway.

That’s awesome. I love that.