Women, BIPOC, and Impostor Syndrome—2021

What's new in Impostor Syndrome is knowledge about how it can be complicated by membership in an equity-seeking group. While I can confirm that white men get impostor syndrome, this blog post will be directing readers to a true expert in the field: Dr. Lisa Orbé-Austin, author of Own Your Greatness: Overcome Impostor Syndrome, Beat Self-Doubt, and Succeed in Life Paperback, 2020.

Dr. Orbé-Austin recently published an important article entitled: Stop Gaslighting Women When They Say They’re Experiencing Impostor Syndrome. The article includes a description of "the “double impact” of Impostor Syndrome, which is the experience that while you are feeling that you are a fraud internally, that simultaneously the external world, as it perpetrates discriminatory behaviors toward you, related to your salient identity(ies), conveys to you that you are considered an impostor or incompetent, and/or receiving unfair advantage based on your identity. This serves to make the experience significantly harder to overcome, because you are contending with the internal and external experience of being told you are an impostor, one that may serve to reinforce early personal narratives, and the other that serves to reinforce historically & culturally oppressive narratives."

Dr. Orbé-Austin's article can be found here.

As always, an accurate understanding of both oneself and external reality is critical for making progress toward your dreams.

Best regards,
Shayne

Bio

Dr. Shayne Taback is a pediatric subspecialist, research educator, and executive coach for physicians across the continuum from new graduate to C-Suite Chief Medical Officer. To learn more about him and our other coaches, please click here. Or to contact Shayne, please e mail shayne.taback@physiciansupport.ca or click here. To regularly receive blog posts, please sign up to our newsletter below.