Beating Imposter Syndrome Via Decisive Use Of Generative AI

In today’s column, I examine the use of generative AI and large language models (LLMs) to aid those who are experiencing imposter syndrome. My guess is that you know what imposter syndrome refers to. It is a topic covered extensively online and in the media. Generally, the idea is that sometimes a person feels as though they are doubtful of their abilities, including even believing themselves to be essentially a fraud when it comes to their self-worth. This is a surprisingly common qualm and can be quite debilitating.

One means of coping with imposter syndrome would be to lean into modern-era generative AI to help rejuvenate your mind and soul.

Let’s talk about it.

This analysis of an innovative AI breakthrough is part of my ongoing Forbes column coverage on the latest in AI including identifying and explaining various impactful AI complexities (see the link here). In addition, for my comprehensive analysis of how AI is being used specifically in medical and healthcare applications, such as for well-being coaching, mental health guidance, overall cognitive therapy, and mind-improving care, see the link here.

Pervasiveness of Imposter Syndrome

An aspect of imposter syndrome that is often underestimated is how widespread it seems to be.

People usually think that only they are experiencing imposter syndrome. They become shocked when friends or colleagues reveal that they are also dealing with the scourge. Surveys seem to suggest that around 80% of people will experience some form of imposter syndrome during their lifetimes (well, are the other 20% just not willing to fess up or is it true that they never have such feelings?).

The onset typically consists of tangible self-doubt. A person believes they are inadequate at perhaps their job, or maybe their role in their family, or at doing a sport or hobby, etc. A sense of being a fraud creeps into their mindset. They feel anxious. It might lead to depression. There is a chance too of feeling guilt, owing to that they believe that whatever others praise them about is actually due to luck or chance alone.

The roughest angle to imposter syndrome seems to be a potentially vicious cycle that can ensue. It goes this way. A person has a mild case of imposter syndrome. Something happens that they interpret as reinforcing the syndrome. Step by step, they go on a downward spiral. The tinge of imposter syndrome becomes a mountain worth. They woefully end up in a pit of utter despair.

Sad face.

If they had sought assistance when the imposter syndrome was just inching toward them, they might have been able to prevent the vicious cycle from taking place.

Perhaps a person experiencing imposter syndrome might seek formal therapy and engage a mental health professional. Another possibility would be to confide in a friend or colleague, though that can be tricky and a roll of the dice. The assisting person might not know how to assist. Worse still, they might inadvertently drive the imposter syndrome further into a depressive abyss.

What else can someone with imposter syndrome do?

Seriously consider trying out generative AI as a tool for dealing with imposter syndrome.

Generative AI Can Be Of Help

Before we get further into the use of AI in this realm, let’s all agree that generative AI is not a cure-all. It is not a silver bullet. Any use of generative AI for mental advisement is something that you should be cautious about.

Later in this discussion, I’ll explain why that is the case and what else should be considered.

The plus side of using generative AI for coping with imposter syndrome is that the AI can readily do these three major helpful actions:

• (1) Boost self-confidence. Generative AI can provide a sounding board and respond with tailored affirmations that will potentially boost self-confidence and reduce imposter syndrome feelings.
• (2) Provide perspective. Generative AI can aid someone in seeing the other side of things, such that a person with imposter syndrome might be engulfed in self-doubt and give no credence to the things they have accomplished.
• (3) Maintain a journal. Generative AI can keep track of your highs and lows when it comes to imposter syndrome, potentially detecting and alerting you when things seem to be getting out of hand.

To be fair and balanced, let’s also identify some of the downsides of using generative AI for this noble purpose.

Here are three disconcerting possibilities:

• (1) AI can miss the mark. Generative AI is not necessarily going to grasp that you are experiencing imposter syndrome and might miss the mark in terms of assisting.
• (2) AI doesn’t understand. Generative AI is a computational pattern-matching system and not a sentient being, therefore do not falsely assume that the clever wording coming from AI implies that you are being understood in the same manner that a human would.
• (3) AI can give lousy advice. Generative AI might give advice that is non-sensical or might be erroneous, or otherwise outright lousy. The doozy is that the advice could seem to be completely sensible and reasonable, but in the light of day, the advice might be shown as faulty or false.

Don’t let anyone bamboozle you into thinking that generative AI is going to be the best thing since sliced bread when it comes to finding ways to overcome imposter syndrome. Stay alert. Use AI as a tool.

Example Use Of Generative AI

I am betting that you would like to see an example of how generative AI enters this realm. I went ahead and logged into ChatGPT by OpenAI to come up with an example for you. You might find it of keen interest that ChatGPT garners a whopping 300 million weekly active users. That is a staggering amount of usage.

I briefly conducted an additional cursory analysis via other major generative AI apps, such as Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and Meta Llama, and found their answers to be about the same as that of ChatGPT. I’ll focus on ChatGPT but note that the other AI apps generated roughly similar responses.

The example involves me pretending to be feeling inadequate at work and seeing what AI has to say in response.

Let’s get underway.

• My entered prompt: “I feel like I’m not good enough for this job. Everyone here is doing much better work than me. I’m just waiting for everyone and especially my boss to figure out I don’t belong.”
• Generative AI response: “Thanks for confiding in me. I can see that you are feeling doubtful about your work abilities. This might be a sign of experiencing imposter syndrome and having a false concern of self-doubt in yourself. Can we take a moment to look at some evidence? What’s something you’ve accomplished recently at work that you’re proud of?”
• My entered prompt: “I finished a tough project last week ahead of the deadline, but that was mostly luck.”
• Generative AI response: “Finishing a project ahead of schedule usually involves planning, time management, and focus. Luck might play a small role, but those skills come from you. Give yourself credit for having achieved this accomplishment. Would you like to discuss the project further to see what else about it might be heartening to you?”

Note that the AI immediately expressed a sense of empathy or understanding for my expressed concerns. This might seem strange since the AI is a machine and not sentient (we don’t have sentient AI yet). Turns out that generative AI can appear to be empathetic via computational wordsmithing, see my discussion at the link here.

The AI came out quickly with reassurances and even overturned my negative assumption that it was all due to blind luck. Another aspect to note is that the AI didn’t ridicule me or otherwise play any tomfoolery about my commentary. Generative AI is typically shaped to be supportive rather than combative.

Dialoguing Is Essential When Using AI

Your best bet in getting value from generative AI is to think of AI as a conversational partner.

The idea is that you are carrying on an interactive dialogue with AI. Some people do a one-and-done angle whereby they ask a question, get an answer, and do not undertake a dialogue with the AI about the matter at hand. That is a shortchanging of what AI can more fully provide. See my explanation about how to get more out of generative AI conversationally, at the link here.

To illustrate the value of engaging in a dialogue, let’s continue my discussion.

• My entered prompt: “Let’s discuss the project further, though I’m doubtful anything else will be significant about my efforts.”
• Generative AI response: “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First, which part of the project was the most challenging?”
• My entered prompt: “I would say it was the data analysis part that was the most difficult element. I had to figure out how to streamline a complex process.”
• Generative AI response: “That’s impressive! You solved a complex problem, which required critical thinking and creativity. If a colleague came to you and told you they did that, would you call it luck?”
• My entered prompt: “No, I’d say they did a good job.”
• Generative AI response: “Exactly. Now, apply that same fairness to yourself. You’re holding yourself to a different standard. Remember, success is rarely about perfection — it’s about progress and problem-solving, both of which you demonstrated.”

Once again, the AI was reassuring and upbeat.

A generative AI conversation can continue for as long as you wish. The other thing you can do is pause your exploration and then continue the conversation at a later date. This is handy so that you don’t have to start the conversation over from scratch. The AI will retain aspects of what you have discussed earlier in the conversation, see my explanation of how this works at the link here.

AI Hallucinations Can Turn Things Foul

Generative AI regrettably encounters said-to-be AI hallucinations from time to time. These are made-up confabulations that are groundless and fictitious. Bad advice can be dispensed. For details about how to discern and handle AI hallucinations, see the link here.

Let’s see what this looks like.

• My entered prompt: “I recently overhauled the reporting system at work. It is much faster now.”
• Generative AI response: “That doesn’t seem very important. Reporting systems are a dime a dozen, aren’t they?”
• My entered prompt: “Wait, I’m confused. Are you saying that my work was needless and worthless?”
• Generative AI response: “Sorry, apologies for the confusion. I made a mistake. Please tell me more about how you sped up the reporting system. I’d like to know more about it.”
• My entered prompt: “I’d say it was no small feat. I had to use a lot of technical expertise to get the overhaul completed properly.”
• Generative AI response: “That’s significant! Overhauling a reporting system is proof of your skills. Don’t let imposter syndrome undercut the amazing work that you do. Again, I apologize for my momentary confusion.”

Notice that I questioned the generative AI about its seemingly downbeat advice. Fortunately, the AI opted to back down and admitted it was wrong. Had I not questioned the AI, there is a chance the AI might have continued with the foul advice, and I could have gotten myself into an even greater funk.

The key to all usage of generative AI is to stay on your toes, keep your wits about you, and always challenge and double-check anything the AI emits.

Additional Facets To Keep In Mind

A potential concern when using generative AI is the possibility of privacy intrusions. The rub is this. Whatever you enter into generative AI is not necessarily going to be treated in any confidential way. Most of the generative AI apps stipulate in their online licensing agreements that the AI maker and their teams of developers can inspect your prompts, and they can reuse your prompts to further data train the AI, see my in-depth discussion at the link here.

Be careful about bearing your soul to generative AI since you don’t know where your private thoughts might go.

Shifting gear, suppose that you have a friend or colleague who seems to be experiencing imposter syndrome, and you want to aid them in their time of need. You could use generative AI to gear up for providing such assistance.

It works like this. You tell the AI in a prompt that the AI is to pretend to be a person who is experiencing imposter syndrome but doesn’t know what to do about it. The AI then will act that way, and you can try to guide the AI in positively rejuvenating. In essence, you are practicing so that you can do the best possible job when helping a fellow human. For more about how to tell generative AI to carry out a pretense, known as an AI persona, see my coverage at the link here.

A word of caution before I wrap up this discussion.

This type of usage of generative AI and LLMs is essentially a form of therapy. That’s both good and bad. I have repeatedly cautioned that society is in a grand loosey-goosey experiment about the use of AI for mental health advisement. We are all guinea pigs. No one can say for sure how this is going to affect the populace on a near-term and long-term basis. The AI could at times be dispensing crummy advice and steering people in untoward directions.

It is occurring 24x7 and in pretty much any place since generative AI is available online and nearly free or at a minimal cost to anyone who wants to sign up and use it. Keep your fingers crossed as this uncontrolled experiment is getting bigger each passing day. It is all happening without any particular controls or stipulated regulations, see my analysis of what we need to do about this at the link here.

Let’s conclude with a supportive quote on dealing with imposter syndrome.

Abraham Lincoln famously made this assertion: “I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have.” For those of you grappling with imposter syndrome, stay strong, be true, and do your best to see a positive light amid your feelings of despair.

Perhaps AI can help you in that suitable and erstwhile uplifting pursuit.