Personal-development coach Dr Bex Bell is in recovery from things that many of us experience: Impostor Syndrome, perfectionism, burnout, and the superhuman belief that we should juggle all the things flawlessly. From working with hundreds of coaching clients, she knows how much havoc feeling like an impostor can wreak on wellbeing, confidence, career progression and life satisfaction.
Now she’s written the book, Inner Critic to Inner Coach: How to Heal the Impostor Syndrome, End Self-Sabotage and Own Your Greatness, outlining ‘The Critic To Coach Journey’. Bex, who has a PhD in criminal psychology, also delivers and advocates for ‘impostor-related education’ in the workplace.
In part one, Bex talks about why she doesn’t think the term ‘syndrome’ does imposter syndrome justice, how we can learn to quiet our inner critic and the five ‘competency beliefs’ that can influence our particular type of imposter syndrome.
Congrats on the book! As a personal-development coach, you’re helping people deal with Impostor Syndrome, but – spoiler alert! – you write that it actually isn’t a syndrome?
Yep! I think it’s important that people don’t feel like it’s some kind of disorder or clinical diagnosis – because that implies there’s something abnormal or deficient about you, when actually this is such a common, understandable part of the human experience. We can all fall prey to the voice that tells us we’re a not-good-enough impostor.
It’s almost an ‘invisible illness’, but I’m not trying to pathologise it!
I know. I use the term Impostor Syndrome because that’s how people recognise it. But we need to deshame, destigmatise, depathologise, and demedicalise it. That’s why I call it the Impostor-Flavoured Inner Critic.
There’s a statistic that 70% of us will feel Impostor Syndrome at some point. That’s a lot!
Yes, but it doesn’t surprise me. So much about our conditioning means these beliefs are implanted from a young age, beginning with our family and school. I think perfectionist messaging in society has lots to do with shaping our beliefs about competence.
Especially as women, we’re expected to be able to flawlessly juggle everything: be a parent, have an awesome career, look good – and if you ‘drop the ball’ on any of those, you might feel you’re failing or not doing a good-enough job. Also, you might work in a job that’s quite achievement-oriented and quite competitive.
You say how stressful, distressing, and anxiety-inducing Impostor Syndrome can be, and that it can make people susceptible to burnout. You experienced burnout yourself?
Yeah. The standards I was holding myself accountable to were so unrealistically high that I’d be overworking and over-preparing. I felt like that, if there were heaps more things to do, it wasn’t OK to switch off and relax. I believed it was part of being a busy adult and thought it was normal to be that tired all the time. When I took a step back from those beliefs, and looked at my expectations of myself, I realised that it was this impostor stuff.
How did you deal with the burnout?
Taking time out, and reflection. A forced pause, as I moved from Wellington back to Blenheim to be with my whānau and have my son, now four. I moved from focusing on my career to being a very proud single mum. I chose to separate from my marriage at seven months pregnant. My son and I still live with my mum and dad which is cool because he gets to grow up with his grandparents there.
What’s a typical day?
I’m one of those weirdos who loves waking up before the rest of the world – it’s so peaceful at 4am. In the morning I journal, go to the gym, get some work done before Hunter gets up, then I’ll work until 2-3pm-ish to finish in time for preschool pick-up. Then I have the arvo to do the mumming stuff: playing, hangout, dinner prep, bath etc.
Being self-employed gives you important flexibility?
Yeah, you don’t have to squish your life around 9-5 workdays. I do coaching sessions with clients, do admin, design talks, write proposals. I might present something online. Or I might travel, usually to Auckland or Wellington, to speak somewhere in person.
You write that ‘I break my own heart most days as a result of feeling like an impostor. I am the entrepreneur who sabotages their business success by undercharging. I struggle with self-advocacy and recognising my worth too.’ I think readers might find it powerful to look at your achievements and think ‘hey, she feels like this too!’
I don’t want others to have to learn the hard way like I did, which is why I committed to putting all my learning and insights into this book. But I’ve never claimed to be a guru who has everything figured out because you can know the psychology behind it, and all the tips, but it can still happen to you.
I imagine some people might think ‘can’t Bex just tell us how to banish Impostor Syndrome and the Inner Critic?’
They definitely want that! In today’s society, we want a delete button or a magic pill to get rid of things – which makes sense, because these feelings are uncomfortable and unpleasant. But you’re not just going to learn some strategies then, hey presto, this is gone and will never be back. The language around your Inner Critic and feeling like an impostor is combative language – like ‘banish’, ‘conquer’.
Unfortunately if we expect to banish it but can’t, we might feel like a failure and more of an impostor. But what if we just acknowledged that our Inner Critic always tries to protect us from rejection and embarrassment? Just acknowledging that better equips us to deal with it in those moments. You can also feel more warmth towards your Inner Critic, because you know it’s trying to help rather than being an enemy trying to ruin things.
So you might tell your Inner Critic ‘hey thanks for trying to protect me, but I’m going to listen to my Inner Coach today’?
Yes, it’s important that you externalise your Inner Critic because otherwise you might feel that it’s ‘you’. If we don’t feel that distance from it, we can’t look at it objectively and consider how to respond to it.
You write about the five ‘competence beliefs’ at the heart of the ‘Big Impostor Cycle’. There’s ‘perfectionist’ (one flaw means you’re an impostor), ‘superhuman’ (you overwork and exhaust yourself), ‘natural genius’ (believing competence comes from natural talent not other attributes), ‘expert’ (you must know absolutely everything), and ‘soloist’ (believing that needing help is a sign of incompetence). Which resonates for you?
I’m a mixture to a degree, but the perfectionist one resonates most for me and for many people I talk to. And the perfectionist competence belief infiltrates all the other kinds of competence beliefs. Also, Impostor Syndrome and perfectionism are highly correlated. But there are two kinds of perfectionism. The unhealthy, dysfunctional kind of perfectionism feeds into Impostor Syndrome, which I’m in recovery from. And the ‘excellence-related’, healthier, functional kind is inversely related to Impostor Syndrome.
I once wrote about getting over perfectionism because I realised perfectionism is not a search for perfection – it’s a search for fault. Now I aim for ‘excellencism’: doing my best within the parameters I have.
That’s important for people to think about, because many people tell me ‘but Bex, it’s thanks to my Impostor Syndrome that I achieve as much as I do, because it drives me and cracks the whip’. I say there are different ways to achieve success and achievement that don’t mess with our well-being so much, like aiming for excellence but just trying your best.
You say most of us go to great lengths to feel worthy, even if that involves self-sabotage. How so?
I mention the four Ps: certain behaviours that try to alleviate the anxiety we have about being ‘found out’ as an impostor. Procrastination is one, because when we’re trying to be perfect, the thought of starting is too overwhelming. You’re thinking ‘if I get everything right, maybe no one will find out I don’t know what I’m doing!’. Another of the Ps is ‘pulling back’. We don’t put our hand up for stretch opportunities because then there’s no possibility of being found out.
Another of the Ps is ‘proving’. Like, I thought ‘if I get a coaching qualification, maybe I’ll be good enough to be a coach’. That was self-sabotage. Because although ‘proving’ can help us feel short-term, it can cause issues long-term. Like someone might spend their week overworking or studying when what really matters to them most is, for example, time with their family. My friend said, ‘Bex, you can become a coach just as you are, and I did. I got hooked on learning whatever I could about why people can appear confident, competent and high-performing on the outside, while feeling deficient, inadequate and like they’re fluking success on the inside.
Check in tomorrow for Part 2 of our chat, including about what Bex’s research in prisons taught her. Check out Bex’s book and website.
