CBT Therapy Case Study - Imposter Syndrome

Imposter Syndrome

Background

Joel* is 33 years old and lives in Manchester City Centre. He works as an Architect and has his own small business with 5 sub-contractors covering the Cheshire areas. Despite being well respected within his industry, and being reasonably busy at work, he doesn’t believe in himself.

Growing up he was often compared to his brothers that did better at boarding school and in sports than him. He feels like he’s spent his life trying to prove himself to everyone. The more his business succeeds and grows, the more of an imposter he feels and the stronger the fear of it all being taken away becomes.

Presenting problem

Joel came across me from a Social Media Post on Therapy for Business Owners and booked a telephone discovery call via my website.

From our short call, it was clear that he was being impacted by Imposter Syndrome, and after a brief chat to answer his questions, he proceeded with booking an Assessment appointment.

Assessment

Joel had no past experience of therapy but had previously used a Business Coach.

He described feeling fed up and overwhelmed, with a strong sense of fear always with him.

His sleep had started to be impacted, and he felt disconnected when he spent time with his partner, family or friends.

From discussion during the assessment we identified some tendencies and themes for Joel:

He has spent his life not feeling good enough.
He undervalues himself and his skills.
He is quick to criticise himself, and struggles to accept compliments.
He has a lack of work life boundaries.
He struggles with situations he perceives as confrontation or difficult.
He compares himself negatively to others.
He sees any mistakes, setbacks or problems as being a sign of his failure.
He doesn’t celebrate his achievements and constantly moves the goalposts.
He fears everything falling apart, so routinely overcompensates.
He has lots of business ideas that he doesn’t follow through with for fear of failing.

We discussed the impact of all this:

He often feels low and demoralised.
He struggles to charge his worth for jobs, pricing himself lower than his competitors.
He is constantly attached to his work phone dealing with emails outside work hours.
He won’t ask for customer reviews.
He is behind on collecting payment from customers.
He procrastinates decisions and next steps to move the business forwards.
He feels negatively about himself and his business.
He is often in an anxious state which impacts his sleep and ability to relax.
He is finding it increasingly difficult to enjoy life.

We jointly agreed the following target areas for treatment:

Treatment

CBT Therapy strategies were used across the course of 8 treatment sessions. Joel chose to do intensive sessions whilst it was quiet enough at work to make time and booked 2 sessions a week for 4 weeks at a cost of £840, significantly less than he had spent on his Business Coaching sessions.

Outcome

The most important result is that Joel no longer feels like an imposter.
He now has a much more balanced appraisal of himself based upon reality.
The way he views himself compared to others is now less black and white.
He has a few strategies for challenging his thoughts in his toolbox.
Joel recently implemented a fee review for his business. He feared that he would lose customers as a result of this but was pleased when this fear was disproven.
He is developing healthier work life boundaries and is no longer fearful of leaving a customer email without an immediate response. He’s still working on only checking emails during work hours but has already progressed to no emails after 8pm on a workday and 1 hour of emails on a Sunday evening.
He has begun sending out customer review requests for completed jobs.
He asked a member of the team to help him get on top of customer payments.
He has stopped scrolling on social media looking at what his competitors are doing.

Future areas of work:

Joel has made excellent progress from the 4 weeks of therapy. He is aware that changing how he thinks will take time, but he now has learning and strategies to assist him. He is planning to return for a future intensive block of sessions to look at how his Imposter Syndrome shows up in his relationships and how he can cross-apply learning.

* This is a fictionalised client that takes little elements from many clients I’ve worked with over many years to demonstrate an example of a client’s problems I work with and what therapy offers.

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