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Her.meneutics is edited by associate editor Katelyn Beaty and online editor Sarah Pulliam Bailey.

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June 14, 2010

Women with the Self-Doubt Syndrome

Some high-achieving women have the 'impostor syndrome' — the ingrained sense that they don't belong at the table of influence.

Lynn Cohick

A few years ago, a colleague of mine asserted that pride was the original sin shared by everyone. I thought for a moment, and had to admit that I did not resonate with his assessment. Pride assumed that one had more confidence than they should, or that it was misplaced. But I — and many of my female colleagues and students — hardly suffered from that. Instead we struggled to believe we had anything to contribute. Self-doubt, not pride, was our demon.

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Call this the impostor syndrome, a psychological term for someone’s overall inability to internalize their own accomplishments, and the topic on Scot McKnight's blog recently. Sufferers attribute successes not to their gifts and achievements but to luck, sheer timing, affirmative action, or their ability to trick others. They tend to downplay success when someone congratulates them. According to a study cited by McKnight, “This syndrome is thought to be particularly common among women who are successful in their given careers and is typically associated with academics. . . . It is also widely found among graduate students."

McKnight cited an e-mail from a female colleague, an academic who, due to ingrained ideas about intellect and gender, had internalized the sense that she didn’t belong at the table:

Even being a woman myself, I'm aware that I don't value women as much as I value men. While I read many books by and about women or girls when I was younger, as I got older I somehow acquired prejudice against them. I even noticed that if I was enjoying a book and then found out the author was female I would be disappointed and immediately, on those grounds alone, think less of it. I'm starting to recover from that now, as I learn that being female or feminine does not make someone or something intrinsically worth less in significance, value, or virtue. It's nice not feeling I have to distance myself from all things feminine to have value or be valued by other people.

Perhaps impostor syndrome's prevalence among women is a result of the deeply rooted idea that women belong only in the household sphere while men own public life. The ancient world borrowed this model from Aristotle, and the Victorians echoed the sentiment as they responded to the industrial revolution by bifurcating family structures. But the gospel of Christ undercuts this vision of divided society as it enables both women and men to engage their gifts and accomplishments in God’s service.

By labeling as “impostor syndrome” the failure to internalize levels of expertise, we take steps to control and manage it. Once I know that others believe themselves to be impostors, suddenly I am no longer fighting a personal battle alone. Instead, I experience together with others a social pressure that minimizes our accomplishments, or at least suggests that it is not ladylike to have them. Once a larger social community is aware of the syndrome, steps can be taken to mitigate its effects. The simplest and most effective way forward is for those not suffering from this syndrome to be sensitive to others who might be.

As a professor at a Christian college, I should be especially alert to students (and there will be more females than males in this category) who resist positive feedback and risk selling themselves short in terms of further education or career choices. To my colleagues (again, mostly female), I should model sincere interest in their work, take their contributions seriously, and encourage them to reach beyond what they think they can do. I regularly ask my female colleagues to read my work and comment on how I can improve it. And I make myself available to read their work.

I am also fortunate to have received encouragement from several male colleagues, who not only repeatedly push me to write but also read my drafts and offer helpful suggestions. In my case, it is especially important to have male input, as academia is generally seen as a male domain. Having women in positions of authority, such as department chairs, deans, or college presidents, also helps shape expectations for women’s competencies in academic settings. As more women take up leadership responsibilities successfully, fewer men and women assume that women as a group are inferior to men in achieving workplace goals.

Finally, Christians have the opportunity to challenge the impostor syndrome in at least two ways. First, we can critique the assumption that a person has value based purely on how productive or intelligent he or she is. Second, we can address the implicit competition that makes scholarship and learning a zero-sum game, with only winners and losers. Instead, we can view each person’s growth and success as a benefit to the wider goals of greater knowledge and more active service.

Lynn Cohick is professor of New Testament at Wheaton College, and author most recently of Women in the World of the Earliest Christians (Baker Academic). She has written for the women's blog about men and women on the Titanic, Jesus' mother, and mammograms.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty on June 14, 2010 11:25 AM

Comments

Lynn,
Thank you for this much needed good word. I am glad that you are creating a conversation and adding much to it. I can't tell you how many times I've been ignored and made to feel invisible simply because of my gender (in some Christian circles they gush about the importance of women...as long as those women stay in their places). Luckily, I have a professor husband and several male and female professor friends here at Cedarville that seek out and affirm my input. Thanks again and please keep writing!

Posted By: Marlena | June 14, 2010 2:35 PM

Oh, boy!

Self-doubt is just one side of a coin; the other side is self-pride.

Suffering from self-doubt is on the same slope as self-pride.

Posted By: Ounbbl | June 14, 2010 10:47 PM

I was born in the early 80s, into a generation taught everywhere we turned that we could do anything we put our minds to; that there were no limits on what a person could do. You can do anything - anything! - if you just try (and drink your milk ;D ).

I wonder how much of the current wave of impostor syndrome is caused or catalyzed when a person discovers that he or she can NOT, in fact, do *anything* they want. My secret career dream throughout high school was being an army combat engineer. That fell apart slowly and painfully as some adults around me kept insisting that I could succeed at higher-level theoretical maths if I just tried harder, but in truth it became increasingly apparent that I simply couldn't wrap my mind around that stuff. It was gibberish to me, and still is, but those around me would not accept that. Later on, chronic health problems pretty much guaranteed that I'd never be able to complete the physical requirements even if I could understand engineering math.

Since high school, I've learned that there are lots of things I can't do; thanks be to God, I've also become satisfied with the fact that I have limits. And I wonder how much self-doubt stems from the horrible lie, disguised as self-esteem training, that we can do anything. When you're told you can do anything, and then find out that you actually can't, well, why wouldn't you suddenly wonder if there's something wrong with you, you're not actually good at anything, and all your successes are due to luck etc.?

Posted By: elly | June 15, 2010 10:03 AM

Excellent, excellent post.

Posted By: Robyn | June 16, 2010 1:25 PM

excellent!!!

Posted By: Dawn Housley | June 17, 2010 2:26 AM

With all due respect to your viewpoint, Isn't self-doubt the same thing as pride? Self-doubt seems to be the inferior side of pride as opposed to the superior side, when you think you are better than someone. Inferior pride is exemplified when someone is over self-conscious, hard on one's self, concerned about what others think. As humans, we all tend to look at ourselves and don't see that we match up to particular standards, in this case women matching up to men.

Posted By: Jeff | June 17, 2010 5:32 PM

In my previous comment. I meant to say the article by Lynn is excellent. It's the best I've read on this website and most websites dealing with women issues. I'm really glad Lynn wrote the article. It's been a blessing for me to read this writeup.

Posted By: Dawn | June 17, 2010 8:27 PM

I wasn't going to write anything pertaining to this article but Elly influenced me to do so. I am a 53 (almost 54) year old African American woman who was married for 19 years with 2 teens experiencing divorced as my husband decided he wanted to be with someone else. I endured the separation and divorced and continued to mother my 2 teens who are now 26 and 27 years old with their own families. God and I became and still are very close. I am a ministry leader at a new church (my former church is where I reared my children so I left after 25 years) and I met my new husband there at my new church. We are celebrating 2 years of marriage June 28, 2010. Additionally, I received my Masters in Christian Education in 2008. To Elly, my sister in Christ,it is important to know that on earth we do have limits but only through Christ can we succeed with whatever we need to fulfill. God placed in all us the abilities, skills, and talents that he chose to show Himself off. We are God's masterpieces. If you desire to do whatever, ask and talk with God FIRST and listen.

Posted By: Dale | June 19, 2010 11:10 AM

Great Article. I was one of those born to the generation where women were barefoot, pregnant and kept in the kitchen, that was the only thing we had worth of. I am married for 30 years and have no children, funny isn't it? My husband is a pastor and he encouraged me to follow God's calling and get ordained as well. I love the ministry, but am so insecure because of comments, like "women should shut up in church" etc. Yet, inside I am burning with messages from God to share with His people.

Posted By: Sharon Hurkens | June 22, 2010 9:26 AM

Elly: Great point! I never thought that the self-esteem movement might be responsible for the kind of self-doubt this blog post refers to, but I've thought for a long time that it was a dangerous thing to teach our children they can do anything they set their minds to. When you think about it, it isn't really even Biblical. The Bible teaches us that we CAN'T rely on our own strength!

Instead, I think we need to teach kids to be more realistic. When little Timmy says he wants to be an astronaut, I think we should say something like: "That sounds exciting! But it also takes a lot of very hard work to be an astronaut, and only a few people ever get to do it. Together, we can ask God to help you find the right job, whether that's as an astronaut or something else."

I don't know if kids would ultimately struggle less with self-doubt, but at least they wouldn't feel so entitled while growing up and so bitterly disappointed when they don't achieve their inflated dreams.

Posted By: TheLordIsMyShepherd | June 27, 2010 4:41 AM

It is very appropriate that we be told we can do anything. One typically must over-reach in order to arrive where one is supposed to arrive. However, it takes years to develop the ability to temper that. As for bravery in life, I have developed the attitude that my emotions are just emotions, and if I set them aside and continue, the outcome will not be as dire as the emotions tell me they will be. Remember that estrogen helps to tangle that situation, as is evidenced by lunar mood swings. Our emotions do not have to be as integral as we make them. They are just one component of who we are. Set them aside, plan and move forward.

I am an inveterate risk-taker. Although I do not wish to lose what ground I have gained, in the end I am not afraid to risk it where it is necessary in order to advance. This can be best quantified by a division that applies to both men and women: there are those who are extremely cautious, do only 10 things in life and do each one extremely well. They are terrified of failure. There are those who do 100 things in life, and do 60 of them well. Those in group A tend to give those in group B a "D" for a life grade. They are cautious and stick to the mainstream grading system. However, they accomplished only 10 things in life where the others accomplished 60 things. Those in group B view those in group A as yesterday's news, as group B-ers are too busy doing and accomplishing to waste time worrying on what others think. Praise God people like Thomas Alva Edison and Albert Einstein were group B-ers, or where would we be?

Our sense of success or failure is in our head. Anyone, man or woman, who questions their sense of success in irrationally negative terms gets what they create for themselves - self doubt, lack of accomplishment, lack of feeling good about accomplishment. It is in your head. Deal with it.

Posted By: Rachael Drake | August 4, 2010 6:06 AM

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