Confidence and Self-Esteem | “Imposter Syndrome”

How one feels about oneself is ultimately a construction of self-regard which contains both realistic and distorted beliefs and assumptions. Successful therapeutic intervention targets the most relevant of these components to promote a more realistic appraisal of self-worth.

Self-esteem consists of a complex set of experiential, emotional and cognitive components that, for some people, may have been negatively impacted or even arrested, i.e., not fully developed to an optimal potential. Issues of self-esteem are addressed in psychotherapy by unpacking and examining these three areas to determine which are responsible for “sinking” the self-esteem.

The experientialcomponent of self-esteem involves both the historical and contemporary ways in which an individual has engaged, and been engaged by, the world. Significant interpersonal events and relationships extending as far back as one’s family of origin, academic and professional activities, community and cultural involvements, all contribute to an accumulated sense of the inherent “goodness” one feels about oneself.

This inner notion of goodness has the added effect of creating expectations for how, in general, the world will respond to a person and to what extent the person will be able to attain what he or she desires. Scientific evidence suggests that these expectations are nonverbally communicated and often “picked up” by others, who tend to respond in a way that affirms the expectations, thus plummeting a person’s self-esteem even lower if his or her self-expectations are negative.

How experience is registered and organized in the mind is directly related to its emotional valence, the second main area comprising one’s self-esteem. That is to say, whatever happens in our lives is converted into memory through a complex process dictated by the nature and quality of the emotions attached to these experiences. This is why psychotherapists are so often interested in not only what happened in a patient’s life, but how the patient feels about what happened. One by one, experiences are tethered together and organized by their emotional valence, gradually constructing a framework of sentiment, the mood of one’s life.

And, thirdly, cognitive dynamicsbind experience and emotion together, structuring a self-narrative, a set of ideas and assumptions about who one is and what one deserves. Researchers have found that self-narratives can be quite fixed and resistant to change. A positive course of psychotherapy finds a way to lower this resistance and enable the patient to assimilate more benign narratives.

Related to self-esteem, the “imposter syndrome” has gained attention in recent years because it captures the fairly common internal experience of “faking it” in the world, i.e., acting as if one is more capable than they really feel they are or receiving accolades which are experienced as undeserved.

In many cases, the “imposter” is not so much an imposter as they are a person who lacks narcissism, i.e., an appropriate level of narcissistic elements in the personality which fuel security, confidence, ambition, and the capacity for joy. In other cases, the imposter is really an imposter who must shed his or her mask. This patient has constructed a persona which is split off and disintegrated from a core authentic identity which, for one reason or another, the patient has not been able to embody. In each of these self-esteem configurations, psychotherapy holds the potential to realign memories, emotions and cognitions in order to establish a more refined and balanced self-concept. As the self-concept stabilizes, a person’s internal and external sense of self more closely match.

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