Book Review: The Imposter Cure
Review by Casey Douglass
I’m a sucker for the
self-help genre. I sometimes fantasize that my tombstone could say
“Self-help this!” in my darker moments. I think it comes from
struggling with my mental and physical health, and always wanting to
try to get some kind of fresh perspective on life that might help me feel better.
Imposter Syndrome is a topic that has somehow passed me by. Until,
that is, I flicked through Dr Jessamy Hibberd’s The Imposter
Cure in Waterstones one day. I saw mention of the way that
freelancers can be prone to it, because of the nature of how they
have to “bid” or “win” jobs. With a rush of hope I thought it
might help me to find out more, and a month later here I am, writing
this review.
If you are anything
like I was, you might know that imposter syndrome is a fear of being
found out as not being as “good” or capable as others might think
you to be. While that’s true, as with most things, there are far
more layers to unpick than just this simple understanding. The
Imposter Cure does this in a gentle, friendly way, the opening
few sections paving the way for a self-compassionate look into
something that our minds can still struggle to accept. We have all
sorts of beliefs about how feeling like an imposter can keep us
humble, safe or alert, and stay ignorant to the ways it’s actually
harming our lives. Imposter syndrome is also more common than we
might think, and a lot of people might be affected by it at different
times in their lives.
The first section that
clicked with me described the five competence types that someone
might fall into. These are: the perfectionist, the natural genius,
the soloist, the expert and the superwoman/man. Someone’s
competence type dictates how they will experience failure-related
shame and the mindset that they are likely to take into tackling
tasks. This might be the Perfectionist’s approach of feeling
strongly that there is the right or wrong way to do something, or the
Expert’s desire to know everything about something before they
start. I found it very helpful to see the categories I fell into,
many of which I would have put down to a “simple” lack of
self-confidence before reading this book.
I’m a fan of diagrams
with labels showing how our thoughts, actions and emotions create
spirals of mental health, whether it's feeling bad about something or feeling better. Maybe it’s
from my days of having Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for my OCD, or
maybe I just like things being defined and laid bare. Either way, The
Imposter Cure features a number of these diagrams, showing the
cycles that reinforce or undermine our feelings of competence. This
got a thumbs up from me. The book also looks at why we might be prone
to feeling those imposter feelings, looking at our personality traits
and past experiences and how they might have laid the foundation for
feeling so conflicted about success. One example is someone who might
be very gifted at school, always performing well, but only being
given praise when they perform “above and beyond” their usual
highest standards. It doesn’t take much thought to see why this
might set that person up for not really appreciating their successes
going forward.
This is one of the most
important messages that The Imposter Cure carries, that people
who suffer from imposter syndrome don’t internalize their successes
in the way a non-sufferer might, their beliefs and mind-set
minimising what they’ve done and laying their success at the door
of luck, good timing or just working hard, which “anyone” can do.
The Imposter Cure challenges these beliefs and mental
filtering, picking apart the Luck Myth and the way that the coping
strategies we use harm us more than help us.
Dr Hibberd calls these
coping strategies the Imposter Twins, and they are Overworking and
Avoidance. They are two sides of the same imposter coin, a coin that
shouldn’t really be legal tender if you ask me. Each coping
strategy is broken down into how it might manifest, what drives it
and why it’s actually harmful. Tidbits that I found useful in this
area were the explanation of why having success doesn’t end the
cycle of overworking, and why the fantasizing about doing less
creative, more menial work, is just an avoidance strategy rather than
a deep seated belief that I’m not cut out for what I want to do. I
also took solace in the notion that sometimes life requires a certain
level of “bluffing”, something that I feel really averse to doing
most of the time, even in the most minor of ways.
The Imposter Cure also covers other areas that interplay with the core issue. Besides
working through ways to address your beliefs about what success means
to you and your view about yourself, it gives advice about how to
handle social media, anxiety and low mood, as well as to address
confidence issues. These sections are brief and useful, but if it’s
the first time a reader encounters some of the concepts, I’d
recommend buying a book about them in their own right. That’s not a
criticism, just a thought that occurred to me as the topics arose. A
good starting point though.
Did reading The
Imposter Cure help me? Yes. It emphasizes that you need to put
time and effort into the techniques and information it provides, and
I did. Ironically, part of my mind is saying “Did you put enough
in? Did you really?” and that just goes to show what a pest
imposter syndrome can be. By reading the book, I gleaned some nice
insights into something that previously, I had little awareness of. I
think it will take time, thought and another reading to really dive into the stuff that is going on in my head. The book is certainly no magic
cure and it doesn't claim to be one. It feels promising though, and
sometimes a bit of hope is a rare thing to find.
Book Title: The Imposter Cure
Book Author: Dr
Jessamy Hibberd
Publisher:
Octopus
ISBN-13:
9781783253326
Published: 13th
June 2019
RRP: Paperback
£12.99
