[00:00:00] Most of the time imposter syndrome, it's not about competence or incompetence at all, and it's not really about confidence.
[00:00:07] I think a lot of the time it's about loneliness and isolation and comparison.
[00:00:12] When we think about confidence, when we think about imposter syndrome, we've been solving the wrong problem.
[00:00:17] , guilt is about there might have been something off with my behavior. Shame is about there's something wrong with me. It's about my identity.
[00:00:25] And imposter syndrome at its core, it's about shame.
[00:00:57] I want to tell you about some feedback that I received a [00:01:00] few years ago, and it still really stings when I think about it even now. I had just delivered a session for a group of very senior leaders and consultants at one of the local hospitals.
[00:01:11] It was one of my first proper teaching sessions about resilience, wellbeing, leadership, communication, and honestly, I thought it went really well. The people in the room were engaged. I got some really good feedback from them afterwards. But when I looked at the written feedback forms, there was one piece of feedback that absolutely floored me
[00:01:32] and wiped all the good feedback out completely, because there was this one person, somebody that I knew personally, and I'd always found them pretty competitive, not particularly warm, and they had pretty spiky elbows. They had written something really scathing, and it wasn't about the content, it wasn't about how the session was delivered, it was about me.
[00:01:51] Essentially, this person said, "Why was somebody so inexperienced teaching a group that was this senior? And shouldn't they really have got somebody more [00:02:00] qualified?"
[00:02:00] Now, even though I had over 20 other people saying it was really good, it was really valuable, I still completely believed this one person, and it made the positive feedback just disappear. All the good stuff in the session disappeared, and what replaced it wasn't disappointment. It wasn't even reasonable thoughts like, "Well, you know, I'm still early in this career.
[00:02:23] I've got things to learn." It was something that really gutted me. I felt embarrassed. I felt stupid for ever thinking that I could do it. Yeah, who did I think I was, standing up in front a group of senior people believing that I had something worth saying?
[00:02:39] Now, we often call that feeling imposter syndrome, and today I want to challenge something about that label, because I think the way that we talk about imposter syndrome is actually making it worse and not better.
[00:02:51] Standard advice when you're hit by a wave of imposter syndrome or imposter thinking goes something like this: just work on your [00:03:00] confidence, reframe stuff, remember your achievement, build your resilience, and basically fix yourself probably in private, and then, then come back when you're feeling better.
[00:03:08] Now, I did all of that stuff. I went away. I told myself that one person who I didn't really respect, that one person's opinion should not define me. I tried to remind myself of the positive feedback, and I did that sort of cognitive self-coaching work, and it helped a bit and for a while.
[00:03:27] But here's what I've come to realize after years and years of working with doctors and other health care professionals who tell me different versions of this same story constantly. When we think about confidence, when we think about imposter syndrome, we've been solving the wrong problem. Now, I want to just get something clear up front 'cause this really, really matters.
[00:03:47] Sometimes when you feel like an imposter, when you say you've got imposter syndrome, that alarm bell in your head, that warning is really worth listening to because if you're [00:04:00] genuinely about to do something that's outside your current competence and you're not sure if you can do it, you need to get help and you need to listen to that.
[00:04:07] I remember once when I was working in A&E, I was about to do a procedure, and something just went off in my mind. I thought, "I don't really know exactly what I'm doing here. I'm not confident." And I went and I sought help, and thank goodness I did because I was about to make a really big mistake. So sometimes that warning bell is absolutely the right thing, and listen to it because sometimes in medicine we are asked to do stuff that we are not qualified for, we've not been trained for, and we do not know how to do, and that is a safety issue.
[00:04:36] So if you feel that you are genuinely, uh, being asked to do something outside your current competence, you might need more training or supervision or experience. That is useful data. The imposter syndrome is useful data. Don't dismiss it. Go and get what you need. So that is these warning bells doing their job.
[00:04:52] But for the vast majority of us, when I talk about imposter syndrome and we, when we get this imposter thinking, it's not because you're not [00:05:00] competent. It's not because you haven't been trained right. There are lots of different things going on when that alarm goes off. And only one of them is about you needing to be better.
[00:05:10] So let me name them. First of all, it can be the system. So when you get that warning, the imposter syndrome thinking, it's a bit like a faulty warning light on a car dashboard. It's flagging up that something might be wrong, but actually sometimes it's just not. Sometimes it's the system, and you are being asked to do something that is genuinely impossible with an unrealistic workload, impossible targets, and, and jobs that are actually impossible for anybody.
[00:05:36] And instead of the system admitting, "Yeah, this is impossible. This is too much," it says, "Well, what, why are you struggling? Is it a problem with your confidence? Do you have imposter syndrome?" Like, that is massive gaslighting. That is the system blaming you for the system's issues when nobody would be able to actually cope with a workload like that.
[00:05:55] So do not let the system gaslight you into thinking that you're the one with imposter [00:06:00] syndrome.
[00:06:00] And we know this is going on a lot at the moment. The GMC report, The State of Medical Education and Practice in the UK: Workplace Experiences 2025, well, that showed that 44% of GPs are struggling with their workload, 29% of all doctors are struggling with their workload. So if you are feeling that the workload is unmanageable, yes, a huge amount of other doctors in your position are also finding it unmanageable.
[00:06:25] That is a system issue. It's not a personal issue.
[00:06:28] It's not a description of people who aren't good enough. It's a description of a system that's asking the impossible of an entire profession.
[00:06:35] So let's just name that for what it is. But sometimes the warning light is the standards that you are holding yourself up to, and often these standards are totally impossible. You're holding yourself to this level of perfection that you would never in a million years apply to a colleague. Like, you'd never ask them to do what you're expecting yourself to do in terms of volume of work, in terms of never getting anything [00:07:00] wrong, in terms of the sheer keeping your cool and coping with everything.
[00:07:04] That is called perfectionism, and very often perfectionism shows up as imposter syndrome, where we beat ourselves up for not being as perfect as we think we should be, and then we call it imposter syndrome.
[00:07:16] Because you have decided that this is the minimum standard that is required before you are allowed to feel adequate and not like an imposter Now there's another warning light that goes off. Sometimes it's the warning light saying, "Ooh, you don't know what you're doing here." And it's not because you're not competent, it's because it's uncertain.
[00:07:35] The situation is uncertain, and there's no script, there's no right answer, there's no specific way of knowing if anyone's got it right until later when you get out the retrospective scope and have a look. Because we have been trained to think, well, I need a certificate in this, a diploma in this, a degree in this to be signed off to be able to do this, and for many aspects of the job, yes, we do.
[00:07:56] But there are some things in our job, managing teams, creating [00:08:00] strategy, working out patient pathways, leading through conflict and change, well, nobody has got the certificates in that. Nobody can say, "Yes, you're qualified to be able to do it," or, "No, you're not." And we only learn through experience, we only learn by trial and error, and so failure is just one way of finding out, well, that's not the right way to do it.
[00:08:19] So managing uncertainty, managing doubt, that's part of the job. But often imposter syndrome shows up when we feel that uncertainty or doubt is evidence that we are imposters, that we are inadequate, and we're gonna be found out at any point.
[00:08:34] So we've got these warning lights. Number one, when actually there is a, a competence issue, in which case you, you need to go and get some supervision, support, and training warning light number two is when the system is just gaslighting you into thinking it's your problem when it's actually the system's problem.
[00:08:48] Number three is when you're working in uncertainty, when nobody knows what the right plan of action is, and so you feel like that's a personal deficit. And the other warning light is when you're [00:09:00] holding yourself up to this impossible standard where you can't possibly reach the standard, and you tell yourself you're not good enough because of it. There's also another way that imposter syndrome really lands, and often it's none of those warning lights.
[00:09:13] And actually, it's for none of those reasons that I've just talked about. You're competent, you've earned your place, and the lack of confidence isn't pointing to a gap in anything, but it's just there. And you know what? You're in the majority of people. A 2025 meta-analysis of over 11,000 healthcare professionals found that 62% of them experience imposter syndrome.
[00:09:33] That's a huge amount
[00:09:35] And that is not a minority with a skills gap, that's the majority of an entire profession. So people who by any objective measure, they're qualified, capable, and they're good at what they do.
[00:09:45] If imposter syndrome was really about competence, then the numbers just would not look like that. But what they're telling us is something really interesting, and it's quite uncomfortable because it's this: Most of the time imposter syndrome, it's not about competence or [00:10:00] incompetence at all, and it's not really about confidence.
[00:10:03] I think a lot of the time it's about loneliness and isolation and comparison.
[00:10:09] And I think it goes a lot deeper. So to explain what I mean, let's go back to that afternoon when I got that really difficult feedback. And when I really thought about what's happened, I realized the thing that made me feel so bad wasn't simply that I got bad feedback or got some challenging feedback, it was much more specific.
[00:10:27] It was what I was telling myself about the fact that everybody else who teaches this sort of thing would've known what they were doing. They would've been much better than me, much more credible, much better.
[00:10:39] It was because I just wasn't good enough, and I lacked insight, I lacked wisdom. I was just too lightweight. I probably just wasn't cut out for this. And here's the thing I couldn't see at the time, but I was comparing myself to people who didn't exist, or to people that had years and years and years of experience doing this sort of thing.
[00:10:57] And how was I supposed to have years and years of [00:11:00] experience when I'd only just started?
[00:11:01] And there's no version of running your first session with a senior group of leaders in which you arrived fully formed, completely seasoned, absolutely brilliant at it. So experience is what you get by actually doing it. You've gotta start somewhere. You can't accumulate it in advance, and you can't be credible at something before you've actually done it enough times to be credible.
[00:11:21] So these imaginary people I was, um, comparing myself and measuring myself against, these ones who would've done it so much better, who wouldn't have ever attracted that kind of criticism, had probably got there in my mind without ever having had a first session. They just arrived fully formed. Which of course isn't how any of this does
[00:11:39] But that's what this kind of doubt does to you. you don't end up asking if the comparison is fair, but you just get this standard, this impossible standard, and you've borrowed it probably from the most polished people around you who seem to be really, really confident. And this standard, it holds you up against them.
[00:11:55] When you don't reach it, it doesn't say, "Well, that was actually unreasonable in the first place." It says, [00:12:00] "Well, everybody else manages it, so the problem must be you." And I had just sort of kept that to myself and, and sat alone with that, because it's very difficult to say out loud, " I, I, I think I might be a bit too lightweight for this work," or, "I'm probably don't know enough," or, "I'm just not good enough."
[00:12:20] And how do you admit that to the people that you're working with?
[00:12:23] And how do you really admit that the doubt you're feeling isn't really about the small piece of negative feedback you've got, it's actually about whether you were ever the right person in the first place. And so you just keep it to yourself, and you perform as if you're confident.
[00:12:39] You know, you fake it till you make it. And then to everyone else in the room, exactly like those imaginary amazing peers that I'd been measuring myself against, you seem fully formed, unrattled, and really, really certain, which means that everyone else then measures themselves against you in exactly the same way.
[00:12:56] And if I'm honest, this still happens to me today. When [00:13:00] I'm interviewing someone who knows a lot more about burnout and performance than I do, I feel inadequate. I'm measuring myself up against a researcher that might have been researching that one tiny thing for years and years. Or if I do a keynote talk and I see someone else who's an absolute expert in their field, I'll compare myself against them and think, "Oh my goodness, someone will find me out sometime soon.
[00:13:22] They'll realize that I don't really know what I'm talking about and I'm just not good enough."
[00:13:26] Even though it may appear to other people that I'm really confident.
[00:13:30] And then other people see you being really confident, and they measure themselves against you in exactly the same way. So we're all secretly and really quietly measuring ourselves against everybody else, and that feels really lonely, and that feels quite isolating.
[00:13:45] These thoughts, this suffering, this is invisible
[00:13:49] And other people don't see it, and it just stays in our heads. And if you'd asked me at the time when I got that feedback what, what I would have said I needed, I'd have said, "Oh, I need some confidence. I need to work on my self-belief, [00:14:00] my self-image, and my internal narrative."
[00:14:02] And yeah, that's partly true, and that's really what I went on and did because that's what it felt like I needed. But here's what I've really come to understand. Just working on my confidence wouldn't have worked, 'cause you can get all the evidence of your competence. I can look at the download rate on the podcast, I can look at the feedback we get from our training sessions, and I can tell myself all the reasons why I should be in the room and give myself a real pep talk.
[00:14:30] But still, the next time something goes wrong, you get criticized or you get some negative feedback, the floor just falls away from you again because that confidence, that's all on the surface.
[00:14:39] in that feedback I got that afternoon, it went much deeper. It went to something that I really didn't have a name for until recently, and you've probably already guessed what it is 'cause I talk about this all the time.
[00:14:50] The name for how it made me feel was shame.
[00:14:54] It's not guilt, because guilt says, "I did something wrong which possibly needs to be fixed," or, "I might have done something wrong." [00:15:00] Shame says, "I am something wrong." Like, guilt is about there might have been something off with my behavior. Shame is about there's something wrong with me. It's about my identity.
[00:15:11] And imposter syndrome at its core, it's about shame. It's not saying, "Oh, I made a mistake. I could change this thing." It's about thinking, "Well, I was stupid to think I ever was the right person to do this, or I ever belonged here."
[00:15:25] So that afternoon when I got that feedback, I wasn't thinking, "Oh, I need more experience. I need to upskill myself." I was thinking, " Who did I think I was? Who am I to have thought I could have run that session?" And those are very, very different things. See, one I can do something about. The other one, well, it's a verdict on myself.
[00:15:43] I hear this constantly. I hear this in one-to-one coaching, in the talks I do, in the workshops we run, and in all the communities that we run. Doctors who may have received one critical bit of feedback, maybe a comment in the corridor or something from their consultant, and it's really stayed with them [00:16:00] ever since.
[00:16:01] And Despite all the evidence to the contrary, they're still thinking they're not good enough.
[00:16:06] Or the, or the nurse who in the 360 degree appraisal, one person said they needed to reflect on their communication style when, when they're busy, and they've taken that to heart saying that they aren't good enough.
[00:16:18] And it produced months of just wondering, "Well, maybe I'm not cut out for this, Or a trainee doctor who gets pulled aside after a case and given some very specific feedback that was framed as constructive and developmental, but at the time just felt like a, an attack on them, like they'd been found out.
[00:16:36] And so they spent the next few months just second guessing themselves, rereading their notes, making sure they don't make any mistakes so they wouldn't get found out.
[00:16:45] So this isn't confidence gaps, and these stories, they're... that's not imposter syndrome in the way nor- we normally mean it. These are examples about people who've taken a piece of information that should have been about just their performance, and they turned it [00:17:00] into something about their worth, who they are, are they good enough?
[00:17:03] And that's what shame does. It takes the really specific stuff and makes it about you. Now, yes, that feedback I got, it was about me and it was personal.
[00:17:12] but as one of my previous podcast guests, Karina Gordon-Barnes, said, "It's very difficult to feel shame about something unless you thought it first." If she'd have said something completely off the wall about something I hadn't even thought about, I probably would have dismissed it as just this person just being a bit nasty and being a bit resentful.
[00:17:29] But because it hit a nerve, it struck a nerve, something I was already thinking, it cut really deep.
[00:17:35] And the problem is the way that we've been groomed throughout our lives, being taught that we're only any good if we are reaching the highest grades, being perfect, beating everybody else, being better than everybody else, and our medical training within a very shame-based system, needing to be perfect, getting everything right, and having to go over every single mistake that we made
[00:17:57] This makes it very hard because we were expected [00:18:00] to arrive fully formed, being totally competent without visibly making any effort, and to absorb any sort of criticism without wobbling. And so the message we've absorbed through the years is that if you're struggling, well, that's a problem with you. Just fix it in private.
[00:18:15] Come back when it's sorted.
[00:18:16] And so we end up not really speaking about the real feelings that we're having. We just say, "Oh, I've got imposter syndrome." we talk about confidence, we talk about doubt, but we don't actually talk about actually I think it's because I don't think I'm good enough, that I'm measuring myself to these other people that just appear to be brilliant.
[00:18:35] Um, we don't say that because if we say, "I don't think I'm good enough," out loud, it somehow becomes real to us. So we tend to just push it down, and we don't actually say it, but we just perform as if we are really confident, and the shame gets pushed down and goes underground. But that doesn't get rid of it, unfortunately.
[00:18:53] It tends to spread and grow.
[00:18:54] Now, Brené Brown, who I mention a lot, whose research on shame and vulnerability has really shaped how we [00:19:00] understand this, she puts it very simply. She says, " Shame cannot survive being spoken. Shame grows in secrecy and silence and judgment, and it survives like that." But when we actually speak it out in the presence of somebody who listens, it just loses its power.
[00:19:16] Not totally and not straight away, but the hold on us really begins to loosen.
[00:19:21] And so the cure, I think, for imposter syndrome is not just building more confidence, and it's not about trying to be perfect and get better feedback and then collecting more and more evidence of your competence.
[00:19:34] Now, these can help on the surface, but they don't touch the shame. The thing that really touches it is saying it out loud and then having somebody else who says, "Me too."
[00:19:45] ' Cause I've seen this over and over again in the communities, in the workshops, in the talks that I do. The thing that actually really shifts for people and, and surprises people, the feedback like, "Oh, my goodness, it was so useful just knowing that there were other people that [00:20:00] felt the same," it's that time where you say something out loud and someone says, "Me too Not, "Oh, I'm sure you're fine, really.
[00:20:06] I'm sure you're really good," or, "Oh, yeah, everyone feels like that a bit sometimes," But a really grounded, genuine, "Me too. I felt exactly that. I have sat with that thought and I've believed it. And you know what? I'm still here. I'm doing okay." and those people that look like they're really confident, that never seem to wobble, I bet they have also felt, "Goodness me, what if I'm not cut out for this? What if I'm not good enough?" And they will be able to say, "Me too," to you.
[00:20:33] Because it's not fake confidence and you're not pretending that doubt just isn't there. Just finding out that you're not the only one, the person sitting across from you who looks completely fine and seems to have it all together, just finding out that they also are carrying some sort of version of this is so helpful.
[00:20:51] And so you've been saying that the shame that you're feeling is evidence of your inadequacy, that you're not good enough. It's actually just evidence of the fact that you are [00:21:00] human. Now, some of you listening to this podcast, you might have been listening for a long time, this might be your first episode, but, uh, if it helps at all, I just want to say as well that me too.
[00:21:09] I often, often feel that I am just not good enough, that someone's gonna find out that I just don't know much, ' cause there's always something else to learn. There's always people that have done more research, that are better speakers, are better at social media, that are better at processing all this podcast stuff.
[00:21:26] Me too.
[00:21:27] And I say that because if it helps just one of you
[00:21:30] get unstuck and progress and really be able to do what you want to do despite thinking, "Oh, who am I to think about doing this or to do this?" Then this podcast episode will be worth it.
[00:21:43] Because I'm getting older, I have got several friends who are also getting older, and they are in the most amazing jobs.
[00:21:49] They are really senior leaders, running services, doing all sorts of things. And you know what? I think if I ask them, "Do you feel that you've got all the skills and all the competence to do this?" They'd just laugh and [00:22:00] go, "No. Half the time we're winging it too." trick is not to let that shame that I'm not good enough get in your way and stop you.
[00:22:08] So if you need to hear me too today, then hear it from me, me too.
[00:22:14] Not many people get to the point where they think they are totally competent and they've got it all together.
[00:22:18] And in that GMC study, they talked about a virtuous circle where doctors who felt really supported, who had colleagues they could be honest with, they actually delivered better patient care, and they were able to stay in the profession for longer.
[00:22:32] And it's not because the workload's been fixed or they're more competent than anybody else, it's just because they don't feel alone in it all, and they don't take that extra arrow that there's something wrong with me because I've got imposter syndrome. So after that session that I did with those senior leaders, I needed, phew, not a better pep talk, I didn't need a confidence workshop, I just needed to speak to one colleague
[00:22:53] who said, "Yeah, I remember the first time I did a workshop like that. I felt awful. I got mixed feedback, and [00:23:00] I asked myself if I was in the right job." Me too. Just one conversation, that would've been really, really helpful. But everybody's so defended, aren't they?
[00:23:08] They, they don't like to show their worries, their lack of confidence in case it looks like it's a problem with them. And so we all look at everybody's externals, think they've all got together and go, "What is wrong with me?"
[00:23:21] So as we finish up, just, just sit with this question. Think about the last time that you got imposter syndrome, or you felt that you weren't good enough or you were gonna be found out, or that you were really stupid to think you ever belonged in the role that you were in.
[00:23:35] And ask yourself, who could you talk to? Who could you say that thing to? Who could you say how you really feel to? Not to fix it, not to get advice, but just to see if they say, "Yeah, me too." And if someone comes to you and says that, then admit how you feel about stuff so that they can hear you say, "Yeah, me too."
[00:23:57] Because shame, it really can't [00:24:00] survive being spoken. It makes you feel so much better when you've got it out in the open, and it just loses all of its power And I think if you do find the right person and you say it out loud, something will shift for you. I really do. So if you wanna go much deeper on this, join us at FrogFest Virtual
[00:24:15] You can join live, or if you're listening after the 3rd of June, you can get it on replay. Check out the link in the show notes. But please remember this, when you feel that you have imposter syndrome, yes, there may be some extra training or competence that you could gain, but just stop yourself and think for a minute, is it a faulty warning light
[00:24:34] That the system is gaslighting you or you're holding yourself up to a really impossible standard, or nothing is certain and you're beating yourself up about that, or it's just one of those things, and actually what it is, is shame speaking up. It's shame saying, "You're not good enough,"
[00:24:49] for whatever reason. And find someone, speak it out loud, don't keep it in the dark, and you might find that is enough. That is enough
[00:24:58] to start to [00:25:00] shake some of that off.
[00:25:01] Because once we can put shame in its rightful place... Because shame stops us doing so many things. It stops us putting boundaries around our work. It stops us from being honest with other people and ourselves. It stops us from being able to manage our energy and embrace our capacity. And ultimately, it stops us showing up the way that we want to for our colleagues, for our patients, and for our families.
[00:25:25] Then we have more things about shame. Check out some of the extra podcasts in the list below. And I'd love to hear your thoughts. Let us know at hello@youarenotafrog.com. Has any of this rung true with you? Are there any other faulty warning lights? What does imposter syndrome really mean for you? I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments. If you've enjoyed this show, please rate it wherever you're listening to the podcast or subscribe if you're watching this on YouTube.
[00:25:49] It really makes a difference. And share this with your colleagues, please. This podcast mainly spreads by word of mouth, and it's really, really helpful to us if you would recommend it to people if you've enjoyed it. So thank you for [00:26:00] listening, and I'll see you for the next quick dip