Deconstructing Imposter Syndrome with Tara Halliday

Tara Halliday: 0:00

The amygdala no longer recognizes conditional worth as a threat, which means that everything then just relaxes. Because we're not being triggered all the time. We're not fearful of things being triggered on an unconscious level. And it means you stop taking things personally people's behaviors or their words, you're calmer a lot more of the time, you have more energy because you're not stressed. You don't have that chronic tension. You sleep better at night, and the behaviors like the procrastination, which are coping behaviors to the stress, those just fall away.

Catherine Stagg-Macey: 0:38

Hello, and welcome to unset at work, I'm your host, Katherine Stagg Macy. I'm an executive coach and a team coach. And I'm interested in those conversations that we don't have at work. And today we're diving into the topic of imposter syndrome. That feeling that at any moment, you can get tapped on the shoulder and told you in the wrong job that you aren't really that bright, you know that your promotion was on a mistake. We've all had that sense that feeling at some point, and you probably just kind of worked your way through it. But today, I'm going to help I'm going to give you some different different strategies because I have the perfect guest for this topic, Tara Hatton. And she's actually written two books on the topic of imposter syndrome and backed up by practical re scientific approach that she shares with us my show today. So we're going to look at how the imposter syndrome erodes our self confidence and just kind of the downstream impact of it leads to stress and burnout and a bunch of other issues. We're gonna get the root causes, and dispel several myths that are out there even by two big names of people that you might actually know well, and leave you with some practical strategies that will help you outsmart your imposter. So you know, understanding and awareness, as you know, is always the first step to making positive change. And that's what this episode is all about. And Tara is my perfect guest for the show. She is a specialist impostor syndrome coach. Her work is all about eliminating impostor syndrome and replacing it with energy and focus and calm and confidence. She's the author of Amazon bestseller book called unmasking and the coach's guide to imposter syndrome and another book called outsmart the imposter syndrome, I promise you that you aren't alone in hearing that she had a voice inside your head, telling that you should be playing small. And I also share a recent experience that I had with Tara about this feeling so you know, know that you want to learn but before we listen in, if you want to feel a little less low in your leadership, then you can have weekly tips and insights into highly yourself and your teams. How about signing up for my newsletter, you can sign up for in the shownotes people telling me it's one, it's the one email they really tweak, or they save to read at the end of the week. Right kind. And you can get on the list with 4000 other leaders who are reading this weekly with that link in the show notes. But for now, let's go listen to my conversation with Tara. Tara, welcome to Anson at work. Great to have you here.

Tara Halliday: 2:58

Lovely to be here. Thank you, Catherine. And we're gonna get into

Catherine Stagg-Macey: 3:02

the details of impostor syndrome because you've written not one book, but two books on the topic. And I noticed that you created a course for what are the coaching Federation, people won't be familiar in there. But one of the courses for impostor syndrome, which is a, it's a piece of work, we have to deal with a lot of coaches. So you are the go to resource are really delighted to have you on here. But I'm curious, let's start with how did you find your way into this work and what matters to you by this work?

Tara Halliday: 3:29

It was more of a winding I trained as a Holistic Therapist over 20 years ago. And as I worked with all sorts of clients dealing with all sorts of issues in life, there are a few clients that kept coming back. And they weren't supposed to. They were supposed to work for a while be empowered, and take off and have fun. And so I started digging into why I've got a science and engineering background. And I just wanted to know why. So it turned out after looking into it, that it was about beliefs, deep identity level beliefs about the self about the worth. So I trained as an unconditional worth coach, and started helping people. Someone came to me and said, What about impostor syndrome? And I hadn't heard it at the time. And so I started looking into it and I had this big lightbulb moment. Oh my goodness. Imposter Syndrome has the same symptoms as this belief that your worth is conditional and has okay and I and then dived into the research and checked it out. And yes, that's the root cause of imposter syndrome. So I narrowed my work down to imposter syndrome, because it has symptoms that are very tangible. Whereas with a worth, it's a bit vague, that was really led by this progression of getting narrower and focusing on what really makes a difference in people's lives.

Catherine Stagg-Macey: 4:52

And getting to language I think that people are increasingly able to understand like if you said to a client I'm gonna work on your worth being under Additional that people

Tara Halliday: 5:01

don't recognize. And that's the point. And but the reason people don't recognize it is it's an unconscious belief. We don't see we're swimming in this world of the belief that our worth is conditional, which is that our worth depends on what we do. And our worth can vary. So if you do something good, you are good. If you do something bad, you are bad. And that's putting the actions on our worst together. Yeah. And that's something a whole society does. So we wouldn't see it. And impostor syndrome is a way that we can at least get into that and have a very tangible results.

Catherine Stagg-Macey: 5:38

And as of self identifying a lot of the work here is How did someone say I need help. And if you're swimming in the water of conditional self worth, conditional worth, rather, it's, you don't know that there are other waters to swim in. Because

Tara Halliday: 5:52

people think it's them. They think it's part of their personality, or it's the hand they've been dealt that there's nothing they can do about it. And that just life is a struggle. And the point is that, yes, the list challenges in life, but it doesn't have to be that hard. And there's definitely things we can do about it.

Catherine Stagg-Macey: 6:11

What do you see some of the costs of what's the phrasing, having impostor syndrome? isn't how you phrase it? Yeah, so

Tara Halliday: 6:18

having experiencing impostor syndrome is there in your life, the costs of it are high. There are three types of symptoms, if I start there, so there's the thoughts about imposter syndrome, which is, I feel like I'm a fraud, I feel like I don't belong, I feel like I'm not quite good enough, I feel that people are gonna find me out and judge me. And that creates stress in the body physiological stress. So people feel anxious, overwhelmed, their sleeps affected, they go into fight, flight, and freeze, which changes the way their brain operates. And so then operating at their best, that leads to a whole bunch of coping behaviors, like procrastination, perfectionism, comparing keeping it a secret, and a whole bunch more of those these symptoms are playing. So the cost of it is that you might not speak up enough, although you're doing well, you might not speak up quite enough, you might not take on new roles and new opportunities. Well, that's going to have a financial cost that's going to have a career cost. And then you question doubt yourself, you hold yourself back, and you don't perform as well as you're capable of. So it has that immediate impact in terms of your finances and your career that has a knock on effect of stress and anxiety that ripples out to all the rest of your life. It affects your relationships. So the cost of imposter syndrome is high

Catherine Stagg-Macey: 7:45

and somewhat invisible back to, like you said earlier, people think that's my lot, or this is how life is there's a sort of helplessness of it. I can't do anything about that.

Tara Halliday: 7:55

Yes. And that is a lot of frustration that comes with that. Because there is self awareness that people they know logically, that they can do this. They know that they're capable, they know they're competent, and yet, at the same time, they're feeling this self doubt. They're feeling like they're not quite good enough. And it's really confusing. And it's really frustrating because people think, either they don't know what to do. And that's frustrating. They feel powerless, or they think it's them, and then they feel hopeless. So it goes into very painful directions.

Catherine Stagg-Macey: 8:30

And I imagine over a period of time, then you start with this degree of stress, you're leading to burnout. Yes, as well. And for a longer period of time, right. Yes. So

Tara Halliday: 8:40

people burn out and burn out. There's a lot of talk about that. But burnouts a very serious issue. I mean, it affects you. It's not just being mentally stressed. It has chronic health costs. People can spend three months in bed with it. IQ. I've seen people quit their entire career because of it. And it's a very serious issue. I've

Catherine Stagg-Macey: 9:01

seen clients really struggled to come back. Yes. I mean, I don't want putting timing on it. I wouldn't be cautious about that. But it's people think once they've recognized burnout, that they take a break. Go away overseas for a few weeks and come back. You're looking at a year. Yes,

Tara Halliday: 9:20

yes. It's not that you just need a holiday. Not that you've just been busy. No,

Catherine Stagg-Macey: 9:25

no, your whole nervous system. And it's completely shocked at that point. And you've got to build your resources and capacity back. Yes. So yeah, I agree with you. I burn out as having been close to it myself. It's something you just desperately really want to avoid. Because the recovery period is long, and then you aren't able to take on the new promotion. And you can't go looking for a new job because you don't have the capacity for it. So back to impacting career and finances again,

Tara Halliday: 9:51

and that knocks your confidence as well. Because if you think there's maybe you're not cut out for this kind of role, maybe that's the problem our brain tries to find The solution. And that's the problem when we've got an unconscious driver to this is that we cannot just see an instant solution. And that's why it's so confusing and

Catherine Stagg-Macey: 10:10

made worse by accident in my experience of being in this, that the information that's coming at you is no, but you're great, you're doing well. And inside, you're like, No, you don't really know the truth. That's like you really don't know, you pointed out the dissonance earlier between your internet your own rational view and your physical mental view, that are out of sync. And then there's the data from the outside world versus your internal data also out of sync, more dissonance being right in the world, actually, because it is That's

Tara Halliday: 10:39

exactly it. And it adds to that feeling of isolation, it adds to that feeling of it's just me, I don't belong. That's it. Yeah, it

Catherine Stagg-Macey: 10:47

breaks your heart do that isn't an item belongs to me. And so we've talked to talk about about that, I know you have a useful way of explaining this from a neuroscience angle. Say more about that, though,

Tara Halliday: 10:59

the way the brain works, very brains very expensive operation, it uses up 20% of your body's calories, it's very expensive to run. So your brain creates shortcuts to your thinking beliefs. So that you don't have to mentally assess absolutely all the information that you get at every moment. And we operate most of the time from those beliefs. And some of those beliefs are very rooted in the physical, like the pavement is going to hold your weight, so you don't have to test it at every turn. And then we have lighter, more transient beliefs like that particular company's doing well, I should invest in their stocks, that kind of lead. But the belief I'm talking about is deep, it's an identity level belief. It's really who I am coming back to my worth, and my action type, this is who I am. And this is monitored by a part of the brain called the amygdala, which lies just behind the eyes in the middle of the head, both sides, and the amygdala is assessing threats. So it's looking at the environment, the information that's coming in from the environment and saying what is a threat, what might be dangerous, and unfortunately, it flags a threat to your worth as being dangerous. So it's very primal, primitive thing, like in a caveman community. If you were rejected by the tribe, you'd be thrown out, you could not survive on your own. So it really is a life and death issue that the brain responds to. And then then physiology the body responds to as well. In order to address impostor syndrome, we don't need to address the symptoms like we don't have to drill into our perfectionism, right? We don't have to tell ourselves in the morning, I'm good enough, right? That because those kinds of things don't work. Because that's not the issue, what we have to do is we have to change the way that the amygdala perceives the information around us. And to do that, there is a very specific way to do it. And neuroscience, modern neuroscience has shown us ways to do that, which is pathways to change the chemicals in the brain to allow these beliefs to change. I

Catherine Stagg-Macey: 13:09

like the underlying what you're saying that we don't chase that you don't look at looking down and look at the symptoms and fix the symptoms. Because that's an outcome of something deeper, and you aren't actually addressing the root causes. We've actually cause analysis here, right? Yeah,

Tara Halliday: 13:23

exactly. And also coming back to why it's so frustrating, because what it looks like is, I have a problem with procrastination. So I'll have to read three books on procrastination, and start allocating my time. And then you try that and it doesn't help. And then you try something else that doesn't help. And that just feeds the idea, well, then it must be me. I've tried all these things. And none of them seems to help. So we're going in this spiral down and down. It's very distressing. And

Catherine Stagg-Macey: 13:52

it doesn't help. There's lots of solutions out there for those symptoms.

Tara Halliday: 13:57

Yes, exactly. Yes, exactly. Because you can have procrastination as a habit. And you can have procrastination because your values aren't aligned with what you're doing. So you've got this internal resistance. So there's lots of different reasons why you might procrastinate, imposter syndrome is one of those

Catherine Stagg-Macey: 14:17

powerful stuff, all the procrastinators listening in or struggling with it. So you talked a bit about the method do want to say a bit more about the method of addressing this without giving away your secret sauce. So just to give us a flavor of the method of addressing that. Yeah,

Tara Halliday: 14:32

so if we think of the belief of conditional worth, now, my worth depends on what I do. It is a belief that gets established. By the time we are two and three years old. It's not down to poor parenting. It's actually we're missing the stage in our development where we separate who we are from what we do. So that's missed. So we've got that kernel and then we have a lot of confirming experiences layering on top to So what we have is this series of Shell wills, of confirming experiences. So what we have to do to unwind this is to change let go of the emotional charge around these confirming experiences. So we take a few away. And as we take a few away, we start to get closer and closer to this conditional worth. So this has got these layers, but it doesn't take as long as you might think, my programs an eight, eight module process. And it's very straightforward step by step. When you do that, it may be take 15 or 20 of these to let go off, and then you start getting this change, you start not seeing what you do as meaning anything about you.

Catherine Stagg-Macey: 15:51

So you're taking that charge out of the amygdala steps back. That's right. That's what you're when you start taking the emotional charge of it. That's where that terror in the brain, right? Yes. So what

Tara Halliday: 16:02

we're doing this on a neurological level is that the amygdala no longer recognizes conditional worth as a threat. Which means that everything then just relaxes, because it we're not being triggered all the time. We're not fearful of things being triggered on an unconscious level. And it means you stop taking things personally, people's behaviors or their words, if you're calm, or a lot more of the time, you have more energy, because you're not stressed, you don't have that chronic tension, you sleep better at night. And the behaviors like the procrastination, which are coping behaviors to the stress, those just fall away. So I've recently done an analysis where with my clients, I score on a scale of one to 10. At the start of the program, how significant how much of an impact is this? We score the different symptoms, and the average of that isn't 8.3 out of 10. So it's significant having a big impact. After the program, the average is 2.9. So there's a huge, very effective, yeah, yes, that means that you might have traces of a habit of procrastination, which now your habit techniques will do. But the imposter syndrome driven procrastination has gone, the drive the urge to do it has gone. It's just not affecting anymore. And the transformation is huge. It's

Catherine Stagg-Macey: 17:24

interesting I there's a current example that it's so relevant of my own imposter syndrome showing up pre COVID I was a dance DJ headache fighter night class, ran for five years with a friend of mine, it all fell apart and locked down started again last Friday. For the first time in three years. I went back in with this idea of like, I know how to do this, it'll be fine. But everything had changed a different venue, different sound setup. I was on my own. My friend wasn't working with me. A lot of the old answers came back, but two people left halfway through. I got completely triggered by the whole thing. And at the end of closing circle, the remaining dancers had said loads of nice things, but I could almost not hear. Yeah, because my amygdala was like, my what my self worth was dependent on. Everyone staying and everyone loving me. I know, it's a pattern that I know. And I had to spend the most of the weekend talking myself down from being that hooked vital. You're like, oh my god, there's this patent again, of my self worth being conditional on some. Essentially, for me, it's getting an A star. Like I have to get an A star everything. Yeah, otherwise I am not value. I'm not a valuable human being. Yes. And it doesn't show up in other areas, as a coder doesn't show up anymore. did when I was a young, very young code it did when I was a young consultant. But yeah, but it was just so interesting to go back. And that's a new place and feel that again, it's a shitty place to be.

Tara Halliday: 18:49

I think what is really helpful in that kind of situation is to realize that it's not to you. Right? Because it feels like it's you right? It feels Yeah, yeah,

Catherine Stagg-Macey: 19:00

it's very personal. Yes,

Tara Halliday: 19:02

yes. And that belief is not you. It's not who you are. And when you can see you've got that separation of okay, I am doing something my brain is doing something, rather than this is my personality, then that, in itself allows you to take a little bit of a step back and say, okay, all right. Now it's a problem to be solved rather than inherent flaw in yourself. Yes. And just that just feels so different. That's

Catherine Stagg-Macey: 19:30

where I got to by the end of the weekend, I guess, like, okay, I can see there's some distance I can see what's going on. And the invitation to do some more work on that. The term impostor syndrome is a very popular one. There's probably a hashtag on social platforms. I'm sure there is. Yes. And there's also I know you feel there's a lot of myths and bad advice out there about that. Let's start with your views on affirmations,

Tara Halliday: 19:58

affirmations. So if Actually, we've keyed this up nicely, because the beliefs that I mentioned, right, if you if you have a kind of like a less deep or more shallow belief, like a belief, not necessarily about yourself, but your environment, for example, and you stand in the mirror and you affirm that, I don't know, good things are coming to us at whatever your it might be. If you believe it internally, then those affirmations are really helpful. However, if you don't believe it internally, then affirmations won't help. Because your brain is has a model of the world, right? And it spent your entire life carefully constructing how the world works. And your brain is a prediction machine, it needs to be able to predict what's going to happen in the next few minutes. So your model of the world is precious to your brain. So if you have a belief in your brain, that something is a particular way, particularly your worth depends on what you do. And you try and talk yourself out of it. Your brains simply kind of go, I don't believe you. It's like telling yourself, I can fly your brains. No. gravity works. We have no wings, that is that it's those kinds of things. So affirmations have their place. But when we're talking about conditional worth, when we're talking about imposter syndrome, saying I am enough, just doesn't

Catherine Stagg-Macey: 21:23

work. Yes. Like you can't you need new programming, you can just override the previous programming by saying it louder or writing it harder or Exactly,

Tara Halliday: 21:33

yes. So the way that you change the belief is this process of taking these layers off very particular way of working with the brain stimulating neuro chemicals that allow the brain to change all of that. And that isn't achieved by just telling yourself in the mirror.

Catherine Stagg-Macey: 21:49

That's a very cognitive approach, isn't it? Like it's a top down, I will tell myself that I am worthy of love. And then so it shall be true. It's like if the amygdala says, Well, no, you're not, in fact, a dangerous to believe that, actually, because there's an emotional charge at the amygdala level, then complete waste of time. Okay, interesting. What other sort of bad advice? Have you heard all this sort of bad advice? What bad advice have you heard or seen around

Tara Halliday: 22:16

there, there is some bad advice as well out there. So. But some myths, for example, are that it's a women's issue that affects women more than men. And to be fair, there was a lot of early research done that type tended to show that. But actually, when the survey was done in an IDS, or it's completely confidential, very anonymous than numbers of men and women came out equal. So it's not a women's issue that

Catherine Stagg-Macey: 22:41

would match my experience of majority male clients. And when they feel comfortable to tell you, they will tell you the same thing.

Tara Halliday: 22:48

That's it. That's exactly it. And I look at my clients to numbers of men and women at the executive level are two thirds men, one said women, which is about the demographic over the executive level, you can say it's affecting them equally. Some people say it's not real, which is interesting. And I think there's because it's called impostor syndrome. Now syndrome is a very particular term in the medical world. It's a disease of some form. And imposter syndrome is not that it was originally called imposter phenomenon. But I think that was probably the word, syllable, something like that. And so it got coined as imposter syndrome. And it's stuck so with with it, but the experience of imposter syndrome is real. Yes, it's not a medical syndrome. It doesn't need psychotherapy, it doesn't need medication, but it is very real and very, very disruptive in people's lives. Yeah. And other things people say as well, we all have it. So you just got to get past it. That's like saying, you know, we all get sunburned. So let's not use sunblock.

Unknown: 24:00

We can do better.

Tara Halliday: 24:01

Imposter syndrome is really unnecessary suffering, there's no reason that people have to suffer it, because there's a solution to get rid of it completely.

Catherine Stagg-Macey: 24:11

So encouraging to hear that. And what about study that it's new. It's only 7% interest only related. If you're doing something for the first time while you're new to the job, you know, the role?

Tara Halliday: 24:21

Well, when you're doing something new, it can trigger impostor syndrome. So you know, the imposter syndrome is there and it might ramp it up a bit. But the idea that it only affects people who are new is completely incorrect. You take for example, Meryl Streep, she has won more acting awards than anyone else on the planet. And yet before each movie, the filming of it, she asked herself, why would anyone come and watch me that is imposter syndrome and doing more films will not make it go away. And I meet people at the executive level in their 20s and their 30s. They have this idea or if it's Just me if I only get this role, if I only get this salary level, if I only get this award, then I will start to feel better about myself. And they get all the things happen, they still don't. And that's the reality of imposter syndrome. It doesn't go away with experience, no matter how much we hope it worked,

Catherine Stagg-Macey: 25:19

or back to the point earlier about external recognition that it's not because it's an internal belief about identity, there isn't anything external that I'm gonna say to you, or give you awards or promote you or give you bonuses that will address the end of the line in self belief.

Tara Halliday: 25:36

That's it. Exactly.

Catherine Stagg-Macey: 25:38

Yeah. Anything else that we you'd like your listeners to know about this topic that we haven't covered?

Tara Halliday: 25:44

Just a few things. We've touched on each of them, but it's worth reinforcing. It's not you. It's not your personality. It's not a character flaw. It's not a weakness. You're not alone. Right, although most people don't talk about it. So you think that it's just you? It affects over 70% of high achievers. And the other thing is, there is something you can do about it. You don't have to suffer it, you don't have to push through it or think that's just the way life is.

Catherine Stagg-Macey: 26:16

I think people hearing those statistics know how not alone they are and what a big community, there is of people with this idea that you can do something about it. Other than some of the bad advice that we've heard. That's doing the rounds.

Tara Halliday: 26:32

I mean, some of the advice even is is useful, right? It's like get some support, get a mentor, those kinds of things. I mean, that they're just good ideas anyway, they don't get rid of imposter syndrome. But they're a good thing to do. They're just not going to sort out impulses and change the

Catherine Stagg-Macey: 26:50

dial. Yeah. Yeah. If listeners want more of your work, where do they find you this? Point them to some of your many resources that you have?

Tara Halliday: 27:00

Yes, my website is outsmart impostor. syndrome.com. My latest book is also called outsmart imposter syndrome. And you can find that pretty much everywhere.

Catherine Stagg-Macey: 27:12

In the shownotes. Yep. Yes. And

Tara Halliday: 27:14

I'm mostly posting on social media on LinkedIn, find me on LinkedIn connect, and people can send a private message that way, and that's Hora dash holiday dash PhD. Alright,

Catherine Stagg-Macey: 27:24

thank you for your time and giving us all hope that we can do something about that. In the end. I like to call it the inner city buddy committee. Yes, sometimes feels like it runs the show. But you've given us hope that we could do something about it. So appreciate your time. My absolute

Tara Halliday: 27:42

pleasure, lovely to be here.

Catherine Stagg-Macey: 27:46

Appreciating Tara for spending time with us today, sharing her wealth of experience and research on this topic. truly fascinating. The dispelling the myths was probably my favorite part. I found doing work on your imposter syndrome or so called the ACDB committee is actually very rewarding. It's very rewarding way of reclaiming yourself. So there's no two things you aren't alone and it's not something that you have to live with. If you take that away from this episode, that you can find a way to peace and conference. And for now until next week. This is your wingwoman signing off.