PSYCHOLOGY – Have you ever had the feeling that your past successes were just a fluke, and your future ones a mirage? Rest assured: weapons exist to get rid of it… and not pass it on to your children.
“I won’t make it, and if I succeeded last time it was a coincidence.” Everyone, or almost, has felt at one time or another what psychologists call “impostor syndrome”. A range of very unpleasant thoughts, which make us skeptical of our own successes. “I think it would be impossible for someone to say that they never felt the symptoms,” says Stacey Callahan, professor of psychopathology at the University of Toulouse. When it only pops up once in a while, no problem. But when it becomes too present and paralyzes us, how do we get rid of it?
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First, you have to understand what it is. It is not a disorder, because the symptoms are not stable either in terms of intensity or duration, unlike, for example, personality disorders. Three fundamental aspects characterize the impostor syndrome: first, a feeling of illegitimacy, of self-depreciation despite our previous successes and of imposture…
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