Where you learned it

In chapter 1 I said your doubt is selective, and that something so selective was probably learned. It's worth drawing the map. Where is your doubt strong? It might be at work but not at home, or with figures but not with people, or around older men, or around anyone with a certain kind of education. Where is it missing? Most people find the map has a logic to it, and the logic usually points back to somewhere.

What follows are common sources. They're my summary of what people report, offered as examples, and only you know which apply.

Some people grew up in a home where mistakes drew comment and successes didn't. Nobody was cruel. The ninety per cent on the test got "what happened to the other ten?", and it was meant as encouragement. A child in that home learns to find the faults first, before anyone else can.

Some were compared, usually with a brother or sister who was "the clever one" or "the sporty one". The comparison hands the child a settled opinion about what they're not.

Some had the opposite, and it surprises people that this can lead to the same place. They were the clever one, praised early and often for being bright. There's research by Melissa Kamins and Carol Dweck in which young children who were praised for what they were coped worse with a later setback than children praised for how they'd gone about the task. My reading of that, and it goes beyond the study, is this. If you're loved for being clever, every hard task is a threat, because struggling might show that you aren't. Holding back protects the label.

For some it was a single event. A teacher read your work aloud and the class laughed. A first boss picked your work apart in front of people, week after week. One humiliation at the wrong age can set a rule that lasts thirty years.

And for some it came with moving between worlds. You were the first in your family at university, or you changed country, or class, or you work in a field where few people share your background. The unwritten rules were unfamiliar. Everyone else seemed to know them, and you concluded that the lack was in you, when it was only in what you'd been shown.

I've listed these because of what they have in common. In each case, stepping back was a sensible response at the time. A child with a critical parent does better by checking everything twice. A teenager who's been laughed at is wise not to volunteer. The habit was a fair solution to a real problem, and no fault in you.

The trouble is that it was never reviewed. You carried it into rooms where the critical parent isn't present and nobody is going to laugh. And because of the mechanism in chapter 2, it never gets checked against the new rooms. Each step back prevents exactly the experience that would show it was out of date.

Now for the case where the room really is the source. Some researchers have argued that the phrase "impostor syndrome" puts the problem in the wrong place, as though the person had a disorder, when the feelings often depend on how that person is being treated. The 2020 review from chapter 4 included eleven studies of people from ethnic minorities, mostly American university students. Impostor feelings were common among them, and in one study they went along with the stress students reported from being in a minority. If you're interrupted more than others, if your ideas tend to be credited to the person who repeats them, if you're asked to prove what colleagues are assumed to know, then some of your doubt is simply an accurate perception. You are being doubted.

If that's your position, I'd suggest keeping two sentences apart. "They doubt me" is one. "I'm not good enough" is another. The first is a fact about them, and it can be completely true while the second is completely false. The trouble starts when the first gets quietly translated into the second, which is easy to do after enough years of it.

The record from chapter 8 is especially useful here, because it gives you evidence that doesn't depend on the room's opinion of you. The remedies for the first sentence are different too. They include allies, finding others in the same position, raising it where that's safe, and sometimes moving to a better place. Those are changes to the situation, and they shouldn't be mistaken for a self-improvement project. I won't pretend the method in this book fixes an unfair workplace.

I will say one thing, carefully, because it's unfair and still true. In a room that already underrates you, stepping back costs you more than it costs other people. Your silence gets read as confirmation. That isn't your fault, and it's a reason to put your points on the table even though it takes more effort for you than for them.

A word about one harsher case. If someone close to you, a partner especially, regularly tells you that your memory is wrong, your judgement can't be trusted and you'd be lost without them, the doubt you feel is being produced on purpose. That's a form of abuse. A domestic abuse helpline is the right first call, and a therapist can help with what it leaves behind.

Knowing where the habit came from won't make it go away. It does help in one way. When the general doubt next speaks, you may recognise the sentence. It's often word for word what someone once said, or what you concluded at twelve. You can then see it as something old, learned in a particular place for good reasons, and you needn't treat it as a report on today. And something you learned can be replaced by learning something else, which is the business of the next chapter.