“Just be yourself” or “Be who you are, not a stranger to yourself.”
What does it mean to be authentic?
This is one of those big questions that people eventually get around to asking about themselves. “Who am I, really?” Mostly, in therapy, it’s phrased in the negative. “I feel like I’m a fake.” “Dr., I feel like an imposter.” These words underscore the catch phrase, “Imposter Syndrome.” What is the imposter syndrome?
Imposter Syndrome, defined (in Google Search): ”…loosely defined as doubting your abilities. Feeling like a fraud. It disproportionately affects high-achieving people, who find it difficult to accept their accomplishments. Many question whether they're deserving of accolades.”
First, Imposter Syndrome is NOT a mental illness.
“Imposter Syndrome” has no psychiatric diagnosis that I can identify. However, it is a part of mental health diagnoses such as chronic depression. “Dr. I feel hopeless, helpless, and worthless. This depression is not the real me.” Somewhere in this chronically depressed statement there is the germ of imposter syndrome.
Second, Just saying you are aware of the tendency to feel like you are a fake, and that you are going to stop thinking that way, is probably a worthy start towards addressing the problem. Taken by itself; however, awareness that you feel like an imposter is not a cure for “imposter syndrome.” Just saying you feel like an imposter will not relieve you of experiencing yourself as a fraud.
Third, If “imposter syndrome” is NOT a mental illness, then What is it? “Imposter syndrome” is a developmental issue. It relates to your evolving understanding about yourself and your abilities, and your sense of maturity. Truism: “Whether you are 18 or 80 years old you are still evolving.”
Fourth, Imposter Syndrome - like other thoughts and behaviors - is a sign that you are in an Identity Crisis.
What is an Identity Crisis?
An identity crisis is: A developmental event that involves a person questioning sense of self or place in the world. The term - Identity Crisis - originated when societies developed specializations of people and work. “I am a lawyer.” “I am an accountant.” “I am a homemaker.” “I am a parent.” “I am a student.”
The developmental psychologist, Erik Erikson (1958, 1963) an early scholar who named. Erikson believed formulating a personal identity in any society is an essential life task, and it continues through the entire life course, a reason people experience personal values conflicts, and then try to resolve them.
Identity Crisis is a sign you are in conflict with yourself, more precisely with your values. Identity, in Erikson’s view, was the possession of a set of basic virtues (or values) required for a consolidated sense of one’s self as an adaptive person in a changing world. Identity is a term that describes an emotionally consolidated adult. A “crisis” in Erikson’s view is failure to acquire basic values (the building blocks of identity). A crisis is a personal awareness that an important life value is missing (unconsolidated) and then there is uncertainty around that value. If you lose your job at say 30 years, this could threaten or challenge, your sense of purpose (Stage 3 - Purpose; Initiative versus Guilt) and you feel, perhaps, guilty for not working, not pulling your weight, not helping others accomplish tasks, not fulfilling your role as head of a household (the Breadwinner), not contributing to society. An identity crisis around stage 3, Initiative Versus Guilt, likely has its origin point for consolidation when you were somewhere between 3 and 5 years old (according to Erikson’s Model), and since then, you have been either re-affirming this value or attempting to reconcile it. Some people never develop or master this value and; therefore, experience a void or a gap in their world especially when it comes to employment. If not reconciled, self-initiated may wane, and lethargy towards work sets in with the accompanying sense of purposelessness that follows as a consequence.
I’m focusing on the idea/skill/awareness/behavior/values of an authentic person. It is actually not that difficult to be authentic, depending, again, on how you define the word “authentic.”
I present the diagram above because, in a nutshell, it defines authenticity. What does this diagram mean? It means authenticity is the interaction between one’s values and beliefs and how one acts in the world, towards ones-self, others, family, loved-ones, in one’s profession or work, in the community, as a member of society.
Not to Vote is to Be “In-Authentic”
If I say, “I choose, this year not to vote in any election, this will impact how I feel about myself if, especially if I possess the value of “Caring, Stage 7, Generativity versus stagnation). I will feel like I have opted out of the task of acting in a generative way towards my fellow members of society. I will have not acted to voice my concerns or affirm my beliefs in my elected representative social and community leaders. I will feel like I am now on the sidelines as society and my community wrestles with hard questions about how to govern themselves. I will feel like an in-authentic person, a fake or a fraud. I might say, to soothe myself, (Oh well, no one cares about my one vote, not one cares who I want to have represent me and all of us in this social system.) This is the basis of feeling like a fake or a fraud. I have opted out of playing any active role in this life task regardless of how small or insignificant I think it is, and; therefore, I am not holding up my part of the larger social and democratic contract and this is a requirement of the value of “caring” - to vote my conscience and my beliefs. Not voting, disempowers me, separates me from this value, and feeling disempowered is what it is like to feel inauthentic, to feel like an imposter or a fake. Imposter Syndrome.
I use voting as just one example of how, in a small way, this model of values X behaviors works. I could create many, many situations like this across all of life’s activities from politics, to love, to work to recreation, schooling, and leisure pursuits. This, according to Erikson, is the basis of an authentic way of living. To behave consistent to your personal values and especially the universal values of: Hope, Will, Purpose, Competency, Fidelity, Love, Caring, and Wisdom.
Are We Born Authentic?
The answer is a strong YES. Every sentient human being is born authentic. Birth is an authentic act. A person emerges from a mother’s womb a 100% authentic being. Of course, the complexities of value authenticity have yet to fully emerge, but, according to Erikson, relatively quickly and over time, every individual encounters these core values. However, at the point of birth, every person ever born was born authentic. Babies act authentically. When they are hungry, they cry for food. When they are tired, they fall asleep. When they are happy, they smile (or at least learn to smile). When they feel uncomfortable, they cry because of the discomfort (not because of some ulterior motive). They expect, authentically, the mother to meet their needs, and to meet those needs immediately, and if this doesn’t happen, they cry louder, get more insistent. To the adult, this insistence can seem irritating, and if the adult reacts negatively to this insistence then the baby starts to come into conflict with it’s values for self-preservation. This crying, from the baby’s point of view, isn’t to bother the mother or put her down, this is to let the mother know that this baby (you) has a need that must be met now. If this authentic need is met the baby’s real discomfort will go away.
This is why individuals who were adopted frequently want to search out; first, the birth-mother and second, the birth-father. Why? Because they want to make contact, touch, feel, perhaps even learn to know, who the birth parents are. Did the birth parents love me? Why would someone ask this question? Because, they want to know if their needs were met as an infant. They want to be reassured that they were worth something, at least enough to meet their basic needs. This is because the birth parents, like it or not, are the source of this person’s first emergence of the authentic self. What was I like when I was born? Who was I when I was born and those first few weeks I was alive?
These are all questions that unpack a person’s essential features of authenticity. The point I am making here is that authenticity is a core feature of a fulfilled and happy life, so when a person says that he or she thinks believes that he or she is an imposter or a fraud, “Imposter Syndrome,” helping the person reframe, for him or herself the view of self as a person with real/authentic needs is no easy task. The conflicted person feels like there is a void or a gap in who they are that they can’t address or understand, and this kind of feeling is at the root of most social and psychological issues. Feeling like a fake is an intrapsychic symptom of a fundamental developmental feature that is missing in a person. Lack of authenticity affects the person’s confidence, self-assurance, ability to bounce-back from challenges, the capacity to be assertive with ones self or others, the sense that one is connected to others and that one believes that others care about him or her.
I Was Once Authentic and Then I Lost My Authenticity
Can a person lose their sense of authenticity? The answer to this question is a strong YES. I can attest to this fact because this is one of the biggest questions people bring to me in therapy. “Dr. Was I always an Imposter? or Did I Become an Imposter?” In fact, all people become an imposter, people weren’t born that way. But, many people don’t get that far in questioning themselves. When a person feels like an imposter, “Imposter Syndrome,” this usually means the person doesn’t care if the person had authenticity in the past because it is so painful to feel in-authentic in the present, looking back in the past get’s blocked by defense mechanisms like denial or rationalization. So, in therapy, the initial focus is just to help the person learn to be an authentic human being now.
But, the bigger question (How did I lose my authenticity?) is still a good one. Why? Because people have a tendency to recapitulate the past, and if they are unaware of how this issue developed in the first place, it will be much harder to identify the cues and triggers that were the original source of the lost authenticity. The person then keeps repeating the same behaviors that result in feeling in-authentic as a consequence. It is a very difficult feeling to negotiate with one’s own sense of inauthenticity, so the first thing people usually do is to try to distract themselves or block their thoughts to avoid this developmental struggle. Projecting inauthenticity onto an external source is a common behavior. My mother, my father, my siblings, my teachers, my friends are all the source of my inauthenticity. There might be some truth to this, but the only way to resolve these conflicted feelings is to own the feelings and wrestle with them one’s self.
When I see people in therapy one of the first things I do, right after I have a good grasp of the problem the person is bringing in, and perhaps have made attempt to address, is the long and tedious process of a generating an objective psychological history. This can take many sessions. From history, I can form a “psychological portrait” of the individual. Although, like a painted portrait, it is a static working image, the image contains usually contains precise features in the person’s past that will tell me about when and how their personal awareness of themselves changed over time and what were the causes (or antecedents) of those changes.
For example, if a person is a professional. Let’s say a Commercial Pilot. I know that becoming a professional of this caliber can initiate a comprehensive change in one’s identity. How the individual views him or herself, usually as a professional, acquires a set of skills, frames of mind, and ethical values. This shapes how a person thinks about the world, and how the person believes (or perceives) the world thinks about him or her. Professional identity usually shapes how the person approaches and solves problems, what the person feels that he or she can do or not do in a given set of situations. How has this professional pilot’s values changed over time? and What values have remained stable from childhood, even through the professional identity transformation? and How do those values interact with the professional identity of the individual now?
I use “professional training transformation” as just one example of how the external world can impact identity. The Commercial Pilot, for example, was one kind of person in childhood, but now another person post-professional training and engaging in the professional activity (flying commercial airlines).
I could do the same thing for a police officer, a lawyer, A brew-master, and on and on. Just like the old adage, “Money Changes People and A Lot of Money Changes People A Lot,” a profession can do the same, so does giving birth to one’s first child, so does a chronic illness, so does a marriage, so does graduating from college, and so forth. Think about the phrase, “To be Born Again.” From a religious standpoint, to be “born again” means what? It means that you are symbolically changing your values structure which caused you to act one way, to a whole new values structure embedded within the religion in which you have now adopted. Are you, of course, still the same person? I would would say Yes and No to this statement. No, because engaging and completing a life task, whatever that task, changes you. To complete the task means you are adopting a whole bunch of new values and now that you are practicing these values you feel and act differently. You are “born again.”
In the end, my “Psychological Portrait” becomes more and more nuanced and complex, then at some point in the development of this Portrait, I start to predict how a person will act in the future, and I get better and better at this prediction. Over a very long time, I can predict how a person not only will act, but will actually feel. Finally, I can start to feel how a person feels, and I begin to see the world as the person sees the world. Eventually, I can comprehensively, almost, be that person psychologically, and once I’m at that point in the process, real therapy can begin. But, it almost always develops incrementally. People who enter therapy are not “born again.” I believe, learning to adopt and practice new values takes time and patience. It is a slow process, but I have watched this transformation time and again. It is the core feature of therapy, at least as I construe it.
I provide this description about how I approach the therapeutic process because during this process, I start looking for things. First, I know all people have dispositions that are set at birth. For example: there are three traits I look for carefully and that I monitor and track: 1. Psychological Energy Level, 2. Temperament, and 3. Emotional Lability. I’ve discussed these features at length under the entry “Turbulence.”
It is within this triad of traits that learning occurs. I also know that each person has a learning trajectory, their capacity to learn and change is based on new stimuli and information from the world and how they learn or re-learn how to interpret and act on that stimuli. Along this line, I track the person’s historical development of values (or the lack of acquiring values). I’ve described a primary list of values above. One thing I look for is how behavior ultimately shapes values because this happens frequently. In most instances, this is how it works.
If, as a little boy, we will call him Johnny, likes cookies (as most people do), he sees the cookie jar, but his Mom tells him he is not to take any cookies. This is a rule. Johnny doesn’t know much about rules, so one day he reaches up and takes a cookie. Johnny’s mother tells Johnny there is a missing cookie and asks him if he took it. He says, Yes. Mom scolds Johnny and tells him not to do this again, and he must spend an hour in his room as a consequence. Johnny starts learning that if you break a rule (taking cookies) then you experience a negative consequence (Punishment). Johnny avoids cookies from here on out because he doesn’t want to be punished for breaking a rule. Johnny is learning the value of “Will” or managing one’s will. Will=The Management of Getting what you want. Johnny is learning to mediate or control his own Will because of a negative consequence. Soon Johnny learns that the cookies last longer if he doesn’t eat them all right away, so he internalizes the management of “Will” based on a positive consequence; that it is a good thing in that it preserves what he wants for a longer period of time. This, of course, is the ideal. But, the ideal can break down in all kinds of ways. For example, Johnny might simply follow the rule because he doesn’t want to get caught again. Or, Johnny can decide he simply doesn’t want to follow this rule, it is not for him. So, he considers a work-around. “The next time Mom asks me, I say No. I don’t know who took that cookie.” Mom, at first, believes him, and this is interpreted positively, Wow! If I lie, I get my cookie and no negative consequence. To Lie is good. But, is lying good? This is where values start to come into conflict with behavior. The alternate value, here is getting what one wants at all costs. The pro-social value is delaying gratification for a greater good. What to do? This is where parenting comes in.
If Johnny internalizes this Value, Will. Then, sooner or later he will be confronted with all kinds of instances where he is challenged by this value. The management of Will, for example. Or delaying the Will (delaying gratification) for a greater good. Or temporarily suspending his Will for the benefit of others. It is here that internalized regulating features develop within the person. One is Guilt.
Guilt Defined: The emotional consequence of committing a wrongdoing.
In other words, Johnny eventually learns (assuming this is an ideal case) that he experiences an internal aversive feeling (emotional consequence) when he breaks a core value or fails to manage his Will.
People who get along well in life, who experience a consistent state of authenticity, usually live by a code of rules or guidelines that are connected to a core system of values (as Erikson has highlighted in his work). Erikson is not the author or creator of these values, but he has done a fairly good job of naming many of them. But, these values don’t speak directly to behaviors. A code is a behavioral set of standards or rules that is linked to core values. Codes come from: 1. Parents (provided they are parents who care about their children), 2. Family, 3. Church, 4. School, 5. Community, 6. Society. They come from the outside, but the individual either adopts or rejects the values. This is where individual choice enters the picture.
Regardless of how you feel about the Boy Scouts, this organization grew and became world-wide because of some of the codes it initially created. The Boy Scout Law is a great operationalization of one type of Code.
Scout Law: "A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent."
This is not a creed or dogma, it is simply a guideline or a code that maps on to a set of core values. For example, the core values described by Erikson: Hope, Will, Purpose, Competency, Fidelity, Love, Caring, and Wisdom.
I’m Not saying that if you follow the Scout Law you will experience the benefits of these core values and feel authentic, rather, the closer the code matches core pro-social values, the easier and better the person can develop a lifestyle that emphasizes authenticity. “Be True to Yourself and Others.” This quote, I just created, but it was easy for me to create this statement if I reference the Boy Scout Code as operationalizing Erikson’s core values. This code emphasizes self and others in a relationship of sorts. It means that you won’t always get your way. You won’t always get all your needs met because there are instances that the “greater good” must be serviced by managing your personal Will.
As a therapist, I look for this kind of stuff. Because people who develop a code for themselves, by and large, do much better in life, they negotiate physical and emotional TURBULENCE better and are less inclined to experience such things as personal GUILT.
A code states behaviors and value in the positive. You can also describe behaviors that over time undercut values. These are also well-known. I will list some of them here. Once again you can talk about core negative character traits and then core behaviors that map onto those traits.
Core Negative Traits: Greed, Envy, Pride, Lust, Duplicity, Wrath and so on.
Core Negative Behaviors: Lying, Cheating, Stealing, Taunting, Cursing and so on.
I’m not saying that there is a one-to-one correspondence to these negative traits/behaviors and lack of authenticity. I’m not even saying that sometimes there is a good reason to engaged in these behaviors, but I am saying that you can reframe positive values in the negative and this can give you insight into behaviors to avoid because the consequence of repeating these behaviors over time is an erosion of a person’s sense of authenticity. I’m using authenticity here in a specific way because you could say that a person who engages in some these negative traits is actually stillauthentic, because they are predictable and this defines who they are, but for the most part, such negative character traits tend to separate people from others, and tend to create a culture of fear and dread among those who possess those traits.
I’m not a Bad Person but I Still Feel Like an Imposter?
Yes, you may not feel like a bad person. You may actually feel like you do the right think, follow a code, endorse prosocial and positive values, but you are still miserable and you still feel like an imposter, What do you do about that?
How Does an Authentic Person Live in a Bad World?
The world is not a fair place. There is evil in the world. How does a good person live in an evil world. I’ve been harmed by evil or bad people or organizations. How do I reconcile myself to this?