A couple of months ago at a women-in-business networking meeting, one participant started talking about feelings of intense self-doubt that develop in certain work situations. The rest of the women in the group nodded and confirmed they’d had similar experiences. Some shared their own stories of this phenomenon, popularly known as imposter syndrome, and the belief they’d be exposed as “less than” or even a fraud in the professional realm.

At a meeting of a smaller group of female entrepreneurs a few days later, the topic came up again. Again the other women in the group related similar experiences. Thinking it couldn’t just be a coincidence that the topic came up twice in the same week, and in groups of women, I decided to start exploring the subject. I asked the participants if I could follow up with them by e-mail, and all agreed.

Cut to the following week. I had e-mailed all the women who had previously shared a personal experience or said they’d been affected by imposter syndrome, and the responses started coming back:

“I don’t have this problem.”

“I haven’t experienced imposter syndrome. I just have a little self-doubt sometimes.”

But the most popular response by far was silence. Of the original nine women who’d related their common experience with imposter syndrome and agreed to answer questions just a few days before, only two responded with a desire to share. So what gives?

Coming to Terms with Imposter Syndrome

For starters, a lot of people bristle at the term imposter syndrome. Lauree Ostrofksy, coach at Simply Leap and author of Simply Leap: Seven Lessons on Facing Fear and Enjoying the Crap out of Your Life, says, “Once we own it—‘I have imposter syndrome’—it feels like a label, a heaviness, almost like a disease. In a group setting, people will often feel safe to say something vulnerable, and people will nod their heads—‘You’re not alone.’ When you go back to them directly, it’s hard for them to admit openly.”

I had better luck approaching people by following Ostrofsky’s suggestion to avoid using the term, and instead lead with my own experience.

I’ve struggled with imposter syndrome at many points over my career. I believe this is partly because it tends to affect high-achieving people more often, and partly because, like many creatives, I have what teacher and self-help author Julia Cameron calls the Inner Critic. Mine, while an effective tool for preventing me from putting half-baked ideas into the world, is also loudmouthed and pushy and regularly bursts into my mental apartment, dead bunny in hand, to insist that it won’t be ignored. It manages to convince me, sometimes at key moments, that I don’t have it together nearly as well as I think.

At least until I manage to bury it, good and deep, under the detritus of feigned ignorance, excessive productivity, and self-deprecating humor. But to borrow another movie metaphor, like the little girl from The Ring, it occasionally crawls back up from the depths to wrap its slimy, rotting fingers around the back of my neck.

This exact experience had happened right around the time of these networking meetings, which is probably what made me extra-sensitive to it. I had booked a brand-messaging job with a hip, cool company out of New York City whose work I admired. Brand messaging and voice development happens to be some of my favorite marketing work, and I’ve done it successfully dozens of times. But suddenly—irrationally—I worried I’d do a terrible job, the owners would hate it, and everyone around the world would know just how full of it I really am.

Did I worry that talking about this in public—say, on a blog that literally anyone with an internet connection could find with the right combination of search words, and the patience for reading the opinions of staunch non-influencers—might make people think less of me?

The sting of potential embarrassment loomed large. We’ve come a long way, baby, but women still feel the pressure to outperform men—or outperform our own ideal of ourselves—and worry that we’ll be judged for admitting we have moments when we’re not entirely confident. I call it the Instagram Effect: we’re so used to seeing these beautiful images of manicured home offices, complete with artfully composed desktops, perfectly styled metallic bookshelves, fluffy flokati rugs, and millennial pink accent chairs. But we never see the overflowing plastic bins or the hot-mess closet around the corner that’s crammed full of stuff, just so a gauzy, idealized image could be created.

The Roots of Imposter Syndrome

Cynthia Pinksy, a clinical social worker and therapist in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, believes imposter syndrome has its roots in childhood, when patterns of behavior and the formation of self-concept begins. “The child is influenced by parents, environment, biology, and experiences. School plays an important role, as well,” she says. “Much of a person’s self-worth and regard is often from external sources and pressures to achieve. Emphasis is placed on high grades, getting into prestigious colleges, and then landing a job that pays well and is esteemed by our culture.”

Ostrofksy agrees. She explains, “Those of us who live in this third-grade, gold-star mind-set keep looking for it throughout life. We want to know, What is the syllabus here that will give us that pat on the back? We are looking for A’s in our lives, but because adult life is not like third grade, it’s not really clear who’s going to give you the A, when you’re going to get it, or who’s going to know.”

This creates a self-perpetuating cycle. Craving positive reinforcement or fearing that we’ll be perceived as unsuccessful if we’re not always in pursuit of a new milestone, we raise the bar for ourselves. We get a temporary ego boost when we reach it . . . followed by the let-down of returning to normal or comparing ourselves to people who seem, at least on the outside, to be doing it better, to be getting more recognition, to “have it all”—the Instagram Effect times 1,000.

Why Imposter Syndrome Hits Hard at Women in Business

This feedback cycle may be why imposter syndrome is most prevalent for women when they land a big job or project. For Christine Gritmon, a social media strategist, achieving a big goal or booking a client she didn’t think she could get—anything that could be a “really big deal” for her business—are the most common catalysts. “Part of this is an irrational fear of soaring too high and getting cut down for it, so I just decide not to try,” she says.

For other women, it’s about fear of judgment rooted in comparisons. Amy Serrago, a musician with two decades’ experience, shares, “When I’m in a full-band situation with a guitar in my hands I often feel that twinge of imposter syndrome. I can hear that it sounds good, but I think the guys in the band, the ‘real players,’ are thinking Oh, jeez, she’s got that guitar again. Now we have to deal with that. . . . I find myself wondering if they really like my playing and if they think it adds or gets in the way. I feel this more when I have sub musicians that I don’t know as well as my usual band.”

Often the fear of judgment comes back to those past experiences. Rachel Schenk, a creative consultant and designer, recalls, “I grew up in a rural area. There wasn’t a ton of design or fashion influence. When I went to college, I realized very quickly I was a little behind everyone in terms of being on-trend with aesthetics. There was a girl from New York City who went to an arts high school, and she was in my college dorm and some of my classes. I was doing a painting in class and asked for her opinion, and she made some kind of comment like ‘That’s good for someone from your background.’ It made me feel like some farm girl, like I couldn’t possibly know about high-end design.”

Internalizing of past experiences isn’t exclusive to imposter syndrome, but it’s especially pervasive and hard to eliminate here. American culture promotes an always-smiling, suck-it-up attitude where we tamp down hurt, anger, or other negative emotions in order to avoid confrontation or being labeled as a negative person. For example, just Googling internalizing things that are said to us brings up a slew of search results with titles like “Don’t Internalize Insults, Smile and Move Forward” and “8 Things Emotionally Stable People Don’t Do.”

It’s not hard to read the subtext, and it’s not enough to paint on a smiley face and hope our emotions follow suit. In her 2009 book Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America, investigative journalist Barbara Ehrenreich documents that this largely American, grin-and-force-it phenomenon has possibly done more harm than good. She writes:

“Surprisingly, when psychologists undertake to measure the relative happiness of nations, they routinely find that Americans are not, even in prosperous times and despite our vaunted positivity, very happy at all. A recent meta-analysis of over a hundred studies of self-reported happiness worldwide found Americans ranking only twenty-third, surpassed by the Dutch, the Danes, the Malaysians, the Bahamians, the Austrians, and even the supposedly dour Finns. In another potential sign of relative distress, Americans account for two-thirds of the global market for antidepressants, which happen also to be the most commonly prescribed drugs in the United States.”

How to Keep Imposter Syndrome from Derailing You

Instead of smiling through clenched teeth, a more effective approach is to understand that the feelings are normal and to let them have their moment or voice. Once you’ve allowed yourself a little time to feel the fear, it’s time to put it in its place. Writer Elizabeth Gilbert likens the fear to a passenger on a road trip. In her 2015 best-seller Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, Gilbert tells her not-so-welcome passenger, “You’re allowed to have a seat, and you’re allowed to have a voice, but you are not allowed to have a vote. You’re not allowed to touch the road maps; you’re not allowed to suggest detours; you’re not allowed to fiddle with the temperature. Dude, you’re not even allowed to touch the radio. But above all else, my dear old familiar friend, you are absolutely forbidden to drive.”

Once the internal conversation is complete, focus on practical, concrete tasks you can accomplish. “Go to the easiest thing on your to-do list, and do it,” Ostrofky says. “The more you’re able to observe yourself accomplishing, even if it’s small, the faster that track in your mind switches off.” She cautions that some days will be easier than others, but the process does get smoother with time.

And remember that much of imposter syndrome is a narrative, created by someone else, that we heard and internalized somewhere along the way. But it’s a narrative that can be rewritten.

Poet and writing coach Holly Wren Spaulding believes that she’s broken through, by “getting really clear-eyed about the fact that I’ve been surrounded by subtle and not-so-subtle sexism and masculine models of success my whole life.”

Spaulding made a conscious decision to deconstruct those models. She continues, “In that process of self-re-education, I realized that I needed to break up with that paradigm because it doesn’t serve me, or value what I have to offer. I have a new definition of what it means to be prepared or do good work, and it has made everything lighter, easier. I’m done second-guessing myself so much.”