why do i feel like a fake?...the impostor syndrome

Q.  Have been doing a bit of self-inquiry lately, it has really caught and seems quite useful.  I've noticed it's more of a "chipping away" at an internal sense of "me", which is different than I had been expecting.  Guess I had been expecting it to be more of a way to hit at the bottom, or essence, of the sense of "me" in order to extinguish it entirely in one fell swoop, when done correctly and thoroughly...Seems to be more of a step-by-step process at this stage, though.

Interesting what comes up - a thin layer of "I am great! I have so much figured out!" covering up a deeper, more profound sense of "I am worthless, less than worthless- inherently rotten, awful, beyond hope."  Have learned to look closely at both of these, and to almost be grateful when intense feelings come up because it gives one more to work with.  Maybe just surprising, though, how much the sense of being a terrible person dominates the sense of "me".

G.  yes, it is a step-by-step process, "chipping away" at an internal sense of "me", for virtually all folk.  The good news is that, as you have found, inquiry is very useful to stop difficult, emotionally-charged streams of thoughts as they arise.  

A useful perspective is that we have something like 50 trillion synaptic interconnections.  As the "I"/ego is such an embedded, complex, wide-spread function, let's assume that 10% of those are required for the "I"'s operation.  So  something like 5,000,000,000,000 connections need to be refunctionalized and "repurposed"; it is good it doesn't all happen at once.

Each time you go back to inquiry and get a glimpse of emptiness/stillness, that is a "data point" that the "cut and try" brain can use to work out a new functional pattern that will support persistent stillness.  As this is all done "off line" and as we have no way to monitor it, it can seem like "NOTHING IS HAPPENING!", but it is.   As Ramana said "The successful few owe their success to their persistence."  It is not rocket science, it just takes persistence.

Yes, "terrible, unworthy, worthless person" comes up w/many folk as the work goes deeper, even w/obviously successful folk.  i can recall, when i was very successful professionally, and getting deeper into self-inquiry, searching out and reading the book "If I'm So Successful, Why do I Feel Like A Fake: The Impostor Phenomena" by Joan Harvey and Cynthia Katz.  So many good "things" had happened, and it was increasingly obvious that "I" hadn't made it happen.  As folk thought "I" made it happen, it felt like the "I" was an "impostor", and it was and it knew it.  

The "impostor syndrome" sometimes called impostor phenomenon or fraud syndrome, is a described as a psychological phenomenon in which folk "can't internalize their accomplishments".  Despite external evidence of their competence, they remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve the success they have achieved.  Proof of success is dismissed as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be.

Pauline Clance
Psychologist 

Impostor syndrome is not an officially recognized psychological disorder, and so is not included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the psychologists' bible.  However, it has been the subject of numerous books and articles by psychologists and self-help gurus.  The term was coined by Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes of Georgia State University in "The Impostor Phenomenon Among High-Achieving Women:  Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention" in Psychotherapy Theory, Research and Practice", in Research and Practice in 1978. 

Because of Clance's and Imes' initial work, the impostor syndrome was thought to be primarily experienced by successful "career" women.  It has since been shown to occur for an equal number of men in research by Joe Langford and the aforementioned Pauline Clance in "The Impostor Phenomenon: Recent Research Findings Regarding Dynamics, Personality and Family Patterns and Their Implications for Treatment" which was published in Psychotherapy in 1993.  Many workshops, books, DVDs, etc. have manifested to dissolve the sense of inadequacy.  

The impostor phenomenon, is also experienced by academics and is widely found among graduate students.  This is detailed in an article "No, You're Not an Impostor.  

Richard Felder
Chem Eng Prof
NC State

Some guidance on dealing with this comes from a chemical engineering professor @ NC State, Richard Felder.   When he was in grade school, Felder was placed in remedial classes due to disciplinary problems.  When he reached high school and was performing much better than his peers, he was constantly afraid that "his earlier self would re-emerge" and he would be "discovered" to be a fraud.  He continued to have this fear until many years later when as a successful professor, he happened upon an article on the impostor phenomenon and described it as "a feeling of liberation that was powerful".  

Felder wrote a short article entitled "Impostors Everywhere", which appeared in Chemical Engineering Education (1988).  He has handed it out to many students, some of whom burst into tears upon reading it.  One student jokingly accused him of reading her diary.  

IME, this feeling comes from the deep recognition in our very core, that "the I" is an impostor that realizes it can't deliver on its promises, continues to fail, and recognizes that everything that is happening is beyond its control.  Nonetheless, the "I" keeps blaming others, promising "better results next time", and claiming credit for anything good that does happen.  It's a sham, and the "I" knows it.  The solution is to realize that the "I", which developed 75,000 years ago (see blogpost "How old is the "I"? How/why did it come into existence?...new science"), is no longer up to today's requirements; a new/upgraded Operating System (OS) is needed.     

There's nothing "wrong" w/the real "you", the Self interpenetrating all of this; it's the "I/self" that is the problem.  Continued self-inquiry as described in Happiness Beyond Thought (downloadable free) will accomplish the OS upgrade.  Also remember the Byron Katie or Sedona methods, which work well w/inquiry, detailed in blogs like "Surrendering the "I", letting go of suffering".

Q.  Yes, this is helpful. After a few more days of perspective, it rings true that these negative feelings may be a result of the ego sensing it's own deficiency, and they aren't *really* anything specific despite how they appear. They seem to come up quite a bit throughout the day, and always in some new form, but the underlying flavor is the same. Not surprising that many people experience this, actually, but comforting in a sense.