From Impostor Syndrome to Powerful Self-Belief - a case study

In my practice I get to work with so many interesting and wonderfully bright people.  High achieving individuals in leadership roles with a whole host of creative ideas and skills. All of them have a vision for the future far beyond where they are at presently. They are totally engaged and really care about stuff that matters, both within their organisations and out in the wider world.

 So, what’s up?  Why do they reach out to me for help?

 They all have one thing in common - a fear of not being good enough.

 Despite having all the appropriate qualifications and the relevant experience they still feel like fakes.  Many of them lie awake at night dreading the arrival of next day because they must, yet again, run the gauntlet of needing to appear in control when all they can do is internally question themselves.  They all suffer with stress because they don’t feel they deserve to be where they have got to in their careers’.  They are also commonly pursued by a fear of being rumbled by the people they lead.

The list goes on, and these issues blight so many careers.

Let me introduce Valentina. She used to be one of these people, but not any longer – (not her real name)

Valentina had worked hard all her life and through sheer determination managed to bag a much longed for senior position in her organisation, despite plenty of stiff competition. Her bosses believed she was the right candidate to take her department to the next level and so she got the promotion.

 The only problem was Valentina wasn’t quite as confident in her abilities as her employers were.  She began the role telling herself that she had only got to where she was because she had worked day and night and it wasn’t necessarily because she had all the right qualities for the position. She figured that one day someone would find out the truth about her.

 Outwardly no one would have guessed she had self-confidence issues. She managed to present a sunny, capable, and organised front to all she met and at times, she felt she was managing to pull her position off without too much emotional cost.

 At least that was until a hiking weekend was announced for all senior staff! Valentina, as the new leader, was tasked with organising and leading this event.  When we connected, she was consumed with a visceral fear that the whole organisation would see through her and unearth the real fake she felt herself to be and that possibly her career, and her reputation would be shredded.

 In our first consultation, I shared with Valentina that she had acquired these fears or Impostor Syndrome, as she like to call it, due to some adverse experiences in her earlier life.  I explained that we form beliefs about ourselves and the world from our childhood environment and other experiences.  

 

That we learn what to think about ourselves from our family of origin, from the school environment and the social and religious mores of the time.

I also shared that we could shift and heal these sabotaging beliefs and replace them with strong and empowering ones through the process of first understanding the origins of them and then, reframing them to view ourselves and life through a new lens, from the mind of an adult.  I explained that mostly we are responding to life from the emotional position we held as a child and not the fully fledged adult we are now. I explained my work as a bit like upgrading the hard drive in a computer. We must do this to make sure all the programs run properly, same with us humans!  We need to have a thinking upgrade!

 This made sense to her, and she was able to immediately recount that she always hated being asked to read aloud in school because she had sounded different to everyone else, having arrived from Far East when she was only 10 years old, and this had left a deep-seated fear that she never really belonged anywhere and that she was different to everyone else

Over the next few weeks, we worked with a combination of coaching and hypnosis to carefully guide Valentina back to some of these hurtful memories and then we began rebuilding her beliefs in a different way.  We had her view some past events differently.  We made sure that her mind understood that the negative beliefs she had held were no longer valid because she is no longer that child being called out in class, but that she is now choosing to stand out.  

We gave her mind a new perspective!

Valentina was beginning to feel empowered through the process.

 I worked closely with her, sharing all the tools necessary to begin reframing how she viewed herself from a very deep and unconscious perspective.  She readily completed all the work I set. She loved to listen to her bespoke transforming audio because it made her feel so great, and she could quite literally feel the difference in herself from day one.

It was so gratifying and exciting as her coach to bear witness to as Valentina began transforming how she viewed herself internally, and so swiftly too. She reported feeling changed both internally and outwardly.

 

 The alpine event came and went and yes, she pulled it off, but that was no longer important because Valentina had in her sights set on a different horizon now.  

 

 It was how she beginning to feel inside that now mattered the most.

 Valentina had now altered and reframed her unconscious negatively held beliefs and what began to emerge was nothing short of magnificent.  She began to hold herself differently, she began to develop an inner knowing about herself and she began to lead her team from a place of grounded calmness that her team learned to rely upon and trust.  She was becoming a charismatic leader, and all because she had transformed a deeply held negative belief system into believing in herself and her abilities.

 

 When she last checked in at the end of 2021 Valentina said this:

 “Everything seems to come so easy to me now, Rachel.  I could never have imagined feeling so at home in my own skin.  Thank you so much for all you’ve done for me”.

 You are welcome, Valentina, it’s been an absolute pleasure to be part of your transformation journey!