Your success can't cure this.

By Natacha Montemuino, MD  ·  3 minute read  ·  Issue #5

It’s a hot and sticky morning in July 2024 and I’m sitting on a vintage velvet sofa in a floral-themed espresso bar in Chelsea, New York. Orchids, potted palm trees, and a variety of other plants create a lush backdrop that transports me mentally to a different environment. As I open my laptop to work on social media content for my coaching business, I take a deep breath to appreciate the progress that I’ve made over the last six months.

Six months earlier, my days looked very different. I was struggling to recover my voice. Years of chronic stress in high pressure corporate environments had caused a partial paralysis of my right vocal cord. I remember sitting across from my speech therapist, every Wednesday, blowing bubbles through a white plastic straw into an inch of water at the bottom of a small clear solo cup. I was learning how to use my voice again and wondering if I’d ever sound like myself.

At the same time, I was building an online business as a public speaking coach that depended on my voice. The irony of that made me feel like an imposter. Here I was, teaching high-achieving leaders to speak clearly in high-stakes moments, while I was still recovering the use of my own voice. I’d record talking-head videos and delete them. I was terrified my audience would hear the rough edges of my recovering voice.

I think about that time often, because I hear the same doubt from the quiet high-achieving leaders I coach. Many of my clients experience anxiety and overwhelm with every new project, which leads to procrastination and last-minute scripting. Then, they dismiss their success as “luck” or tell themselves “I’m not enough” when something goes wrong. And this perpetuates the cycle of self-doubt and feeling like an imposter.

What about you?

Have you ever doubted yourself even though you know you're 100% capable, based on your deep expertise and track record of past achievements? Have you ever told yourself, "I'm not ready" when faced with an opportunity that takes you out of your comfort zone? Have you ever felt like you're a fraud?

We all have some version of these thoughts. This kind of intense self-doubt is especially common among high achievers who want to deliver exceptional results and lead at a high level.

The imposter experience

Imposter syndrome is when you doubt your skills and think you're not good enough, even though you have a track record of success. It's essentially intense self-doubt, and it plagues some of the brightest and most accomplished professionals I know.

In the research world, this experience is usually called the “imposter phenomenon”, a term coined in 1978 by psychologists who studied highly successful women.

Imposter feelings are something almost everyone experiences, including the people you'd least expect. In fact, a 2022 survey of US physicians found that they report more intense imposter feelings than workers in other fields.

Imagine that. The most credentialed professionals in the building doubt themselves more intensely than the workers around them.

So, if you've been telling yourself you should be over your self-doubt by now, the evidence says otherwise.

The pattern behind self-doubt

So where does all this intense self-doubt come from?

It comes from the external pressure of the environments you grow up in. Your home, schools, and workplace. It comes from having to continuously prove yourself in various institutions and systems that make up our social constructs. And maybe somewhere along the way, an authority figure questioned your worth. Then, over time you start to question your own worth as you develop a habit of internalizing and believing what other people say about you.

In general, with few exceptions, the systems we're raised in, educated in, and work in are all designed to have us rely on external validation.

When you get good grades in school, your teacher praises you. If you're lucky, your parents reward you too. Exceeding expectations in your corporate role leads to a strong performance review and a fat bonus you can use to remodel your kitchen.

As a result of the environments and systems we experience throughout our lives, we blindly become conditioned to rely on what other people say about us. The problem with this subconscious training is that our self-worth begins to fluctuate based on the feedback we receive or don't receive. If you get amazing feedback on your performance review, you feel great. Receiving lukewarm feedback after a presentation, on the other hand, can make you doubt your capabilities for weeks.

To cope with the pressure, a lot of us develop habits to protect ourselves from our own self-doubt. We try to be perfect, work harder, or take on more responsibilities when we’re already stretched. Or we stay quiet.

Where this leaves high achievers like you

If this resonates, I want you to know that you are not alone. Intense self-doubt and the resulting protective patterns are a common part of the human condition. I hear it all the time from my private coaching clients, and I lived it myself during my corporate career and while I was learning how to use my voice again.

But I want to remind you that as a human being, you have agency, which is the ability to make your own choices, take intentional actions, and influence your own world. You are the one who gets to decide and choose what you think and believe about yourself and who you are when you speak.

Your identity is a decision and a choice. And the moment you understand this, you stop asking "Am I really qualified? Do I belong here?" and start asking "Who do I choose to be when I speak?"

That's a very different question.

Take 30 seconds to answer this question right now: Who do you choose to be when you speak?

Reply and tell me. I read every response, and I love hearing from you.

See you in two weeks.

Dr. Natacha

PS: In the next edition, I'm going deeper into the decision itself: how to build your speaker identity, step by step, the way I teach it to my clients. That edition will be part of the new paid version of this newsletter. Stay tuned.

Sources

1. Clance, P. R., & Imes, S. A. (1978). The imposter phenomenon in high achieving women: Dynamics and therapeutic intervention. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice, 15(3), 241-247. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0086006
2. Shanafelt, T. D., Dyrbye, L. N., Sinsky, C., Trockel, M., Makowski, M. S., Tutty, M., Wang, H., Carlasare, L. E., & West, C. P. (2022). Imposter phenomenon in US physicians relative to the US working population. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 97(11), 1981-1993. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36116974/