7 Imposter Syndrome Coping Strategies You’ll Want To Ditch Today (And What You Can Do, Instead) [Episode 64]

There are seven imposter syndrome coping strategies you need to stop using today. And in episode 64 here on the Ditching Imposter Syndrome podcast, I'm going to take you on a tour of them and what you can do instead. Plus, the problem with what I call the bridge of coping strategies, and how normalising imposter syndrome is actually keeping people stuck in fear and anxiety and preventing them from fulfilling their potential. Hello and welcome. Today, I have looked at seven of the most common imposter syndrome coping strategies.

And if you're running imposter syndrome, you've probably been using them. If you've got people in your team or colleagues or clients, they're probably using them too. So I'm guessing a lot of these are going to feel pretty familiar. But they've become so familiar, so normalised, that we don't realise they're actually causing us a huge problem. So I'm going to take you on a tour of them, how to spot them, what the problem is with them, and for each of them, I'm going to give you practical suggestions you can do today to let them go and start setting yourself free from imposter syndrome.

So I talk from my research studies about a model I call the bridge of coping strategies. It covers the imposter syndrome gap. The imposter syndrome gap is the gap between who we see ourselves as being and who we think we need to be to do or achieve something. And because we don't always have the option of running away and self sabotaging, sometimes we need to succeed despite imposter syndrome. To get over the imposter syndrome gap, we build what I call the bridge of coping strategies.

These are all of the things we do to be able to succeed with imposter syndrome running in the background. Now, there's a problem with this approach. What happens when who we see ourselves as being or who we think we need to be? Shifts. For example, we get the tap on the shoulder for a golden opportunity.

Somebody asks us to speak up with an idea, we have an opportunity to shine or be more visible. Suddenly, the imposter syndrome gap widens, and the old bridge of coping strategies risks falling into the ravine. It's no longer wide enough. So we either have to desperately put energy and time and effort into building a better bridge of coping strategies with yet more planks, or we self sabotage and we walk away from the opportunity we'd been dreaming of. What this means is that imposter syndrome, whilst you might be coping with it, dealing with it, handling it, it's always there in the background, waiting for the trigger.

That means that even if it was previously dormant, it's going to come back out to play. And most of us secretly know that's what's happening. And that worry takes time, effort and energy, and it steals our happiness. But there's a second problem with this whole bridge of coping strategies approach. It normalises imposter syndrome as something we just have to put up with, to handle, to deal with, to succeed.

In spite of normalising imposter syndrome is like saying to somebody, I know your wrist is broken, but hey, you kind of got used to the pain. Should we just crack on with things? No pun intended there? Yeah. When we normalise imposter syndrome, we actually risk keeping people stuck with it.

We're actually trapping them with imposter syndrome. We're helping them to fall for this horrible myth and limiting belief that somehow it's incurable. It's just a normal part of everyday life. You just have to suck it up and get on with it and pretend it's not there. And even worse, something that I've seen a huge increase in over the last two years is reframing imposter syndrome as a good thing.

Now, I did a whole podcast episode on this recently. Episode number 62. Imposter syndrome is a good thing. Really? No, it's not.

Spoiler alert. That's episode 62 of ditching Imposter syndrome. Wherever you love to get your podcasts. The problem with reframing imposter syndrome as a good thing is we feel like we're stuck with it then forever. So we have to post rationalise it as being a positive thing to feel less awful about it.

Oh, time for those coping strategies that it's time for you to ditch today and what you can be doing instead. I'm going to start with my favourites. Number one, I'm giving you four in one here, okay? The four P's of imposter syndrome. This came from my 2019 research study into imposter syndrome.

The four P's are perfectionism, procrastination, project paralysis, and people pleasing. They are four of the most common coping strategies for imposter syndrome. You can see them, I've got a whole podcast episode coming up very soon on them, but you can see them in people overworking, setting standards incredibly high for perfectionism, writing it over, flu, call luck if they achieve them. Procrastination. It's that busyness.

It's not just cute cat videos on social media. It's almost like you're running on the spot you're so busy and overwhelmed, but you're not making progress. Project Paralysis is the classic freeze response, the rabbit in headlights, ignoring whatever it is that imposter syndrome is being triggered by. Until you can use the stress and adrenaline of the deadline to push on through. And people pleasing is about over giving, not having boundaries, going into a meeting with one set of priorities, coming out with another, and generally feeling pretty exhausted.

So these four P's, combined with something called hypervigilance, which I'm going to talk about in a minute, are one of the reasons why imposter syndrome has a causal link with burnout. And it's not hard to imagine why. What can you do instead? The four P's are coping mechanisms for imposter syndrome. So if you clear your imposter syndrome, you no longer need those coping strategies, but in the moment.

Because clearing imposter syndrome, whilst it can be really, really quick and powerful when you've got the right strategies and techniques, it does still take a little while. So in the moment, right here, right now, what you can do when you catch yourself procrastinating, running perfectionism, stuck in project paralysis, or people pleasing, is just pause and ask yourself, what is this doing for me? And there's a flip side question that can produce a really useful answer. What is this allowing me to avoid? So, coping strategy number two that I'd love you to ditch today.

Pushing on through the fear. This is possibly the most common coping strategy that I see people using with imposter syndrome. I am not saying that you should wait until there is zero fear before you take action, but pushing on through the fear is a really bad idea. Why? Well, let's start with the brain.

A little bit of simplified neuroscience. When you push on through the fear, you trigger the body's fight flight free stress response, which reroutes blood flow from the brain, from the bit that does your brilliant thinking to the primal part that only cares about survival. So pushing on through the fear is going to trash your performance. It's going to make it hard to concentrate, it's going to destroy your productivity. Pushing on through the fear on a routine basis means you will be stuck in chronic stress, constantly wired.

I mentioned hypervigilance just now. This is actually a biological state where the body gets stuck on red alert. And it's the kind of thing that's only meant to happen in horrific circumstances like war zones. But what we're now seeing in the western world is people running this because of their day to day jobs due to something I call toxic resilience, where you feel an expectation to take the brown stuff that hits the fan and bounce on back as though nothing had happened. This hyper vigilance means you're constantly on the lookout for alerts.

You're going to have a very short fuse. You're going to be reactive. You're going to be constantly stuck in fight, flight, freeze, fawn, that stress response. And it's a fast track to burn out. Pushing on through the fear destroys productivity, because when we do it scared, we do it worse and slower, with more mistakes.

And it leads to long term chronic anxiety, worrying, what ifing, catastrophizing, and even clinical anxiety and depression. What's the answer? What can you do instead? Clear the fear and do it anyway. Take the action to actually clear the fear.

And for most of our fears, I talk about two types of fear. We've got what I call legitimate fear, which is you're about to do something that's genuinely physically dangerous. And it's really useful then to have your body looking after you. And the other type of fear I talk about is mind story fear. The stories we're telling ourselves about what might go wrong when you learn how to clear those, how to press pause on those stories, how to rewrite those stories, change the stories in the brain and the body.

It sets you free to do things from a place of excited rather than terrified. And the key here is it's not just the brain. You cannot think your way out of imposter syndrome. Changing your thought habits only eases the symptoms. It doesn't actually cure it, because imposter syndrome runs deeper than our thoughts.

If you've got the imposter syndrome hacks app and you're a courage club member, there's a course in there for you called the 62nd Courage creator. You can find that inside the monthly hacks trainings. 62nd Courage creator is a brilliant way to be able to diffuse that fear in the moment when you don't have time for self analysis and navel gazing and take the action from a place of grounded okayness rather than scared of. So, number three, the coping strategy for this one I'd love you to ditch is saying, yes. Okay, now, this goes back to the people pleasing that I've already talked about from number one in those four P's.

But actually, it's such an important side effect of imposter syndrome, it deserves its own point today. So what happens when we're doing the people pleasing is we want to belong. It's a primal need to be part of the tribe. One of the things that can exacerbate imposter syndrome is the fear of being rejected by our tribe and the fear that we don't belong. We somehow don't fit in.

So if you're in an organisation and you don't see people like you around you, or in the leadership team, it's going to crank up your experience of imposter syndrome, because it's an identity level issue, not a thought based or cognitive issue. And this means that belonging is even more important to you. So people pleasing is a huge issue as a coping strategy for people experiencing imposter syndrome. What can you do instead? You can ask yourself the question, what is really driving me to say yes to this?

And how could I meet that need in a healthier way? If you've got the imposter syndrome hacks app, then at the time of recording this episode, very soon we've got a monthly hack training called Win win, how to say no straight strategy, which I think you might love if you're running people pleasing. And then later in the year, we've got a monthly hack training on how to set yourself free from should itis, the should, the have to, the must, the ought to, the whole obligation that leads to us people pleasing and saying yes to things that we don't really want to be doing. So those are inside the monthly hacks trainings for courage club members in the imposter syndrome hacks app. And I'll put a direct link to the app below this podcast in the show notes.

So we've got the four P's of imposter syndrome pushing on through the fears, saying yes. Coping strategy number four that I'd love you to let go of today is saying no. Okay, what do I mean by this? It's self sabotage. Yeah.

Those golden opportunities, chances to shine, sharing our opinions, we turn them down. We wait slightly too long to return that call. We might even volunteer somebody else for them. Even though our heart is whispering please do this, we say no when our heart is whispering yes. And my research studies show it's an incredibly common coping strategy for impostor syndrome.

What's the alternative? Well, it's not pushing on through the fear, because we've already covered that one. Instead, it's about micro courage. So it's going back to that course I just mentioned that's waiting for you in the imposter syndrome hacks app, the 60 second courage creator, and something I call micro courageous. So, breaking whatever it is that you're scared of, that you want to say no to down into such tiny chunks that it no longer feels so scary.

And you can take that deep breath and take the inspired action using the power of micro courage rather than massive courage. And if you've got a self talk running around, whatever it is that you're about to say no to, and you're what-if-ing? How about what-if-ing? What if I actually enjoy it? What if it goes well?

What support do I need to make this a success? Number five is overthinking and second guessing. What do I mean by this? Well, you might have had the experience of a two hour report that takes you two days and costs two nights of lost sleep as you spend your time going through it 3000 times trying to second guess how people might respond. How to make sure you don't upset people.

That you don't put your head above the parapet, that you don't get criticised, told off, rejected from that tribe. Again. This overthinking is one of the most painful things about imposter syndrome and it's another one of those factors that drives us towards burnout. It's something we really need to stop. What can you do instead?

Well, inside the imposter syndrome hacks app, you've got under the monthly hacks trainings, a course that's waiting for you right now called the inner critic to cheerleader formula. And there's another course inside the imposter syndrome hacks app, Kickstart, that is about pressing pause on negative self talk. That can really help. And if you want to deep dive on this, then make sure you've taken my inner critic timeout course. It's about how to press pause on negative self talk in under a minute.

And I'm going to put a link to that in the show notes. If you're a courage club member, it's already yours as my gift. Number six, another coping strategy to let go of is comparisonitis. Now, what's going on with this? 82% of people, according to my research study, compare themselves to others and judge themselves as lacking or not good enough every single day.

And a huge portion of those are doing it multiple times a day. This is an imposter syndrome coping strategy because we're trying to take our attention away from insiders to outside of us. It's a distraction. We end up doom scrolling, which then triggers comparisonitis. So the issue is kind of the doom scrolling, whether it's on social media, whether it's on the company awards page, what can you do instead?

You need to stay in your lane. If you're doom scrolling. Go and distract yourself. Do something else. Put your phone down, walk away from the computer, pick up the imposter syndrome hacks app and do a daily do one thing, practise and you can use this comparisonitis as a motivation to help you to become more you.

Ultimately you're going to want to do the deeper work. One of the ways I define imposter syndrome is as the secret fear of others judging us, the way we judge ourselves. When you do the deeper work, for example, on my imposter syndrome boot camp programme or my imposter syndrome first aid or master coach trainings, you're clearing out that self judgement and so you lose the fear of others judging you. But until you hit that point in your journey, it's incredibly important to keep your perspective, to do whatever you need to stop the doom scrolling, use the techniques that I've already talked about that are in the courses in the app for you to be able to press pause on that negative self talk and then do a physical change of state. Remove yourself from the stimulus, walk away from the phone, from the computer, go and do something else.

Go and do something for two minutes that brings you joy, reset your body's biology, that changes the thoughts you're thinking, the emotions that you're feeling, and then come back to doing what you need to do. And the comparisonitis is parked until you've got the time to do the deeper work to clear out the root causes that were really triggering it in 2025, one of the hacks we're going to be doing in the monthly training in the imposter syndrome hacks app is actually on jealousy and comparisonitis and how to set yourself free from it. But in the meantime, those are my top suggestions and there's plenty for this as well in the book if you've already got ditching imposter syndrome. So we have had the four P's of imposter syndrome. Drum roll.

Push on through the fear, saying yes, saying no, overthinking a second guessing comparisonitis. The absolute biggest coping strategy that I would love for you to let go of today is fake it till you make it. I get so soapboxy when I see this on social media. It's one of the most common bits of advice. Just pretend you're a Beyonce, channel your favourite inner marvel character.

I don't care who it is, you're faking it till you're making it as okay. Here's the problem with fake it till you make it. You take somebody who is terrified that they are going to be found out as a fraud and then you ask them to be a fraud by faking it, and that is somehow meant to make it feel better? What, fake it so you make it actually does, is it tells your unconscious mind, yeah, I agree with you. You're not good enough.

You're so not good enough. You've got to pretend to be somebody else or something else in order to be successful. So it actually ingrains imposter syndrome more deeply and it risks cranking up the stress, the worry, the anxiety and the beating yourself up that comes with it. What can you do instead? While we're back to that impostor syndrome gap, that gap between who you see yourself as being and who you think you need to be to do or achieve something.

When you find yourself wanting to play with the fake it till you make it, it means the gap has become too wide. Instead of using somebody else's energy and behaviour and personality, like an alter ego, to get across that gap, how about asking yourself, what do I need to let go of? Or what do I need to believe about myself, to allow myself to become the version of me that can do or achieve this, and then get the support you need to clear that? Because then you're closing the impostor syndrome gap. You no longer need the bridge of coping strategies.

You get to show up as all of who you really are, giving others permission to do the same. And then your ideas and dreams get to have the impact you deserve. Those are seven imposter syndrome coping strategies that are no longer serving you. And I'd love to hear from you. Which of them are you going to ditch first?