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| Photo by Rick Hustead |
When I sat down to write my blog this afternoon, I honestly had no idea
what I wanted to say today. And then I came across an article on-line and
realized that I had plenty to say, after all.
The article I discovered is titled “Do
Women Everywhere Suck at Their Jobs?”1
In it, Katy Waldman explores the various reasons why women are more likely than
men to doubt or even disparage their qualifications to do jobs for which they
are very qualified and very skilled. The author explains how decades of social
conditioning and expectations that women’s role is in the home/tending the
hearth contributes to their impression that they are never good enough at or
even deserve to have their job. To compensate for these perceived higher
expectations, women have a greater tendency toward perfectionism and blame
themselves/take personal responsibility for errors as a way to perceive greater
control over their work. Their logic seems to be: “If I take the blame and say
I’m a failure at ‘x’ first, someone else won’t.” Waldman astutely points out
that the risk of this behavior is that these women not only start to expect to
fail; they also don’t recognize or acknowledge their accomplishments when they
succeed. And from there, a vicious cycle of negative self-talk, low
expectations and low self-esteem/self-confidence is born.
It is not uncommon for a person to experience occasional self-doubt
about his or her experience or qualifications to do a task. However, the
“Imposter Effect” is about so much more; it involves the internalization of
generations’ expectations about a person’s role in the work-force and even in
the home. It is “Systems
Approach” in the work-place: every employee has a specific role and
expected behavior, and if those roles are untraditional, if a female employee
is assertive rather than passive, chaos is likely to ensue. Conflict is
uncomfortable in any relationship, but when it happens at work, implications of
those challenges may be catastrophic (e.g. loss of employment). If we take a
more complacent stance—it is better, it is usually more comfortable and in
certain instances advisable to do what is “expected” and not rock the boat—we
start believing the hype. We internalize the negative messages—“You’re so lucky
to have that job!”—and infers the unspoken content, “Are you
good/experienced/qualified enough to do it?”
When a client comes to me in this kind of situation (Imposter Syndrome),
I start the individual on the Mental
Bank Concept to build self-esteem and self-confidence. It is important for her
to experience how much she is worth in both monetary and realistic/symbolic
value. When she records value events (activities and beliefs) in her Mental
Bank Ledger each night, she sees the symbolic value of each task through the
value (dollar amount) that it is assigned. However, the action of writing out
each task (value event) also reminds her or her true value and contributions at
work, in her subconscious mind. Finally, writing nightly affirmations in the
Mental Bank Ledger and the opportunity to practice “experiencing” her greater
self-confidence and higher self-esteem in guided-imagery exercises enables
this client to take these attributes back to work with her.
1 Slate,
Katy. “Do Women Everywhere Suck at Their Jobs?” Slate.com. November 5, 2013
Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist
based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation
Institute in 2005. For more
information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an
appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.
© 2016
