School psychologists at all levels are plagued with imposter syndrome.
Imposter syndrome is defined by Merriam-Webster as “Persistent doubt concerning one’s abilities or accomplishments accompanied by the fear of being exposed as a fraud despite evidence of one’s ongoing success.” You may jump into your school psych graduate program feeling under prepared. You may feel overwhelmed with responsibility. If you don’t deal with it, you can spend your entire career feeling like a fraud.
When imposter syndrome creates a sense of inadequacy, low confidence, and anxiety, it can lead to self sabotage.
This can be even more pronounced as someone who is part of a marginalized community.
According to this website, there are 5 different types of imposter syndrome. I changed them around to fit the types of school psychologists I’ve come across in my career. You may have one or more of these archetypes. Imposter syndrome runs on a spectrum that looks different for different people. Knowing what trap we fall into when it comes to imposter syndrome can help us overcome it.
#1: The Perfectionist
The Perfectionist has high expectations for yourself and others. You want everything to be flawless. Flawless behavior plans, seamless evaluation meetings, and conflict free relationships with coworkers. The Perfectionist wants to avoid friction.
The Perfectionist is perfect 90-95% of the time.
You also, unfortunately, focus on the 5-10% things that do not go right. Over time you neglect that 90-95%. You focus on the evaluation meeting that goes sideways with an irate parent. You focus on the FBA/BIP that doesn’t get implemented by their team. You may spend hours tweaking reports or ruminating over meetings. This pushes you to do more, be more, and neglect themselves in the pursuit of perfection.
You think you’re the common denominator of why things went “wrong”.
Being a perfectionist is exhausting, but an easy way to combat it is:
- Having a good enough standard. The fact is that your “good enough” is better than some people’s best.
- Practice Self Compassion. Sometimes no matter what you do, things won’t go your way. Forgive yourself for when things don’t go according to plan. Extend grace to others when they don’t meet your expectations.
- Admit your mistakes, take responsibility, and remedy the situation. We all make mistakes, it’s what make us human. 90% of people won’t take responsibility for their mistakes and often try to blame others. If you make a plan to fix the 5% of mistakes you make, you’ll find yourself letting a lot of things go in the long run.
#2: The Superhero
The Superhero attempts to prove their value to others by taking on more and more work.
With great power comes great responsibility is their personal motto. You’re the one that’s trying the fix the system from the inside. You feel like you should be doing more to help children, families, teachers, and admin. You overload their schedules with a need to always be everywhere. You’re often the one who comes to work early and goes home late, still never getting anything done. The inevitable conclusion of your superhero story is that you’ll burn out.
You feel like the more you do, the more people you can help.
Being the Superhero leads to burn out. That’s the nature of the Superhero’s Journey. You can’t be everywhere and you can’t save all the people. You can fight burn out by:
- Connecting and collaborating with decision makers. You can work together to make a bigger impact instead of going it alone.
- Taking care of their little corner of the world. All you’re asked to do as school psychologists is to test, write report, and hold a meeting. If you focus on streamlining the core of our job description, you’ll be free to do more.
- Leverage our time. Superheroes want to be everywhere and know what’s going on at all time. You can make more of an impact if you leverage your time. Instead of talking to one teacher at a time, you can 15 minute training to present to all teachers. Instead of doing one to one counseling, you can work with 5-7 students at a lunch bunch or recess play group. It’s all about leverage.
#3: The Genius
The Genius is the one who excelled in classes, everything came easy, but now you’re out in the real world. All that theory and practice doesn’t feel like there will ever be enough.
The Genius may feel like an imposter because being in the field isn’t as easy as it was in grad school.
You need the grade to feel like you’re contributing to the group. Most work as a school psychology goes unnoticed. It’s not that you need tons of accolades or validation. Yet, without the external rewards or feedback, it’s easy for The Genius to shut down. When you positive feedback, you are more inclined to see these as exceptions.
Being the Genius is difficult because there are no external markers of success. It’s hard to get feedback because most people don’t understand what you do. This is how to you can overcome imposter syndrome as a Genius.
- Recognize your strengths and weaknesses. Focus on leveraging your strengths and managing weaknesses.
- Make a list of your accomplishments. Write a list of accomplishments and keep them where you can see them. Any time imposter syndrome kicks in, you’ll have a tangible reminder of your impact.
- Reframe Your Thoughts. When you engaging in negative self talk, stop, redirect and reframe your thoughts. If you catch yourself being harsh, think “would I say this to a child if they were having a rough time with something?”If the answer is no, then why are you saying it to yourself?
#4: The Lone Wolf
The Lone Wolf works alone and is hesitant to collaborate for others.
The Lone Wolf may be a school psychologist who didn’t have a positive career experience. You might have been in a situation where you were criticized. You didn’t feel supported throughout their careers and experiences. You feel like you can’t ask for help or support because you’ve been burned in the past. Any signs of questioning your work feels like a personal attack because they had to figure out on their own.
The Lone Wolf may sabotage by isolating themselves and taking a “sink or swim” mindset with their team. This can be tackled by:
- Joining a team or committee where their expertise and viewpoint is valued. It doesn’t even need to be school psych related. This means that you find your value in being present, not your knowledge or expertise.
- Being open minded. As The Lone Wolf, it’s hard to be open to new ideas because you spent most of your time figuring it out on your own. Taking an “all ideas are welcomed” approach will help you lower your defenses.
- Taking a teaching role vs. figure it out role. Instead of getting frustrated, teach your team about the expectations of your role. You can write a standard operating procedures guide. Share this with your team so you don’t feel like the gatekeeper.
#5: The Expert
The Expert has numerous degrees, certificates, all the CEUs and PDs in the world, but you still feel like a fraud.
There are many situations as a school psychologist that can’t be taught in a book or case study. You have a zest for knowledge and learning, which is is wonderful. Your self sabotage comes from researching the problems instead of taking action. This form of research is a way to procrastinate making decisions. It’s one thing to look into the research to validate ones knowledge or experience. It’s another thing to look for every possible solution to every single problem. Problems can escalate while you look for the perfect solution.
The Expert feels like an imposter when you don’t have a positive outcome, despite all your efforts. This can be addressed by:
- Detaching Yourself From the Outcome. School psychology is as much intuition as it is hard science. Being invested in a student’s future and wellbeing is likely why you got into the field. Yet, there are so many things outside of your control that has nothing to do with your ability or effort.
- Focus on the things you can control. You can do the best work you know how, you can research things and focus on producing quality work. That increases the likelihood of positive outcomes.
- Set a time limit on your research. You have all the knowledge inside you already, that’s what makes you the Expert. However, it’s easy to get stuck looking for things that valid our knowledge. Approach solutions like experiments. There are so many evidence based solutions out there, but you won’t know what works until you try. Don’t let the perfect solution halt progress.
The 5 archetypes of imposter syndrome are:
- The Perfectionist
- The Superhero
- The Genius
- The Lone Wolf
- The Expert
These archetypes illustrate the nuanced struggles of imposter syndrome, especially for school psychs. These can affect us by highlighting our insecurities. It can also butt heads with others dealing with their own imposter syndrome.
Which one are you?