When I got an email last week inviting me to speak at a local menopause support group about how perimenopause and menopause affects our mental health, I felt an immediate sense of happiness, pride and validation as someone had recognised my skills and felt they wanted me to share my knowledge with the wider group. It was a good feeling!

I immediately accepted the invitation and started thinking about what I wanted to say and how I wanted to present my thoughts to help and inform women around peri/menopause and the difficulties they may be facing in terms of their mental health at this time, including anxiety, depression, decreased self confidence and body confidence.

And then the fear crept in….. what if I didn’t meet the group’s expectations? What makes me qualified to do this? What if I make a complete fool of myself?

And there we have it! Classic imposter syndrome.

We all get it at some point or another. From Prime Ministers to Olympic athletes, academics to students…. Every single one of us will have a point in our lives when we think that we can’t do something that we are perfectly qualified and experienced enough to do.

And then there is a little (or not so little) voice in our head that says, ‘You can’t do this.’ ‘Who do you think you are, thinking that you can achieve the next bit?’ ‘You’ll never pass that exam; you didn’t learn or revise enough.’

Urgh! It’s infuriating!! But also it can be debilitating for those of us who hear that imposter’s voice louder than our own, reasonable and rational voice that reassures us that yes, we do have what it takes, we have learned enough, done enough, seen enough to do what we are perfectly able to achieve.

You hear stories of actors and rock stars being frozen with anxiety before walking out in front of an audience. The fear can be so bad that they are physically ill and yet we know as spectators that they are totally brilliant and gifted in their field.

So what is Imposter Syndrome and where does it come from? And importantly, how do we overcome it? I say ‘importantly’ because for some people, the fear is so severe that they do not ever dare to believe in themselves and so sadly, they do not take that massive risk that will lead to inevitable success.

Imposter Syndrome is ultimately about self confidence and self-esteem. If we believe that we have the tools to achieve, then we will be successful. But it is also about allowing that voice to be louder than the rational voice.

A bit of fear is good. It keeps us accountable and stops us becoming complacent in our daily lives. Becoming a mother was a great example of this. When I left the hospital with my first little bundle of joy I was aware that I was totally responsible for keeping this tiny living creature alive. I can still feel the sheer panic that rose in me when I was carrying her to the car ready to start our journey together. But something in me also knew that people had been successfully raising little people for millennia and although I was terrified, the chances of me messing this up completely were pretty small. I just needed to take my time, tackle one thing at a time and ask for help when I needed it. Turned out I needed a lot of help, but somehow we got through it and I have a great big human adult now who is proof of the fact that an element of fear is good, while being brave is better.

Trying to establish where that critical (imposter) voice comes from can be really helpful in our journey to quietening the loud babble. Was it a teacher telling us that we’ll never amount to anything? Or worse, a parent? Did we believe a partner who told us that we didn’t have what it takes to survive without them? What is the evidence that supports our feeling that we ‘can’t do it’?

I failed my first driving test, largely due to a disproportionate level of confidence that I had it in the bag. I was devastated and for a while, refused to rebook for a second test. No one around me told me that I was rubbish and people me to give it another go. After a few days I realised that I’d had a bad day, I knew how to drive, most people around me had been successful and I should probably give it another go. I did, and I passed second time. I had looked at the evidence to support the ‘fact’ that I was rubbish and pulled on my resilience to be confident to give it another go.

There are several important points here: no one told me I was rubbish. I was lucky. For some people, that inner critic comes from a historic voice that did tell them they can’t do it. That can be much harder to overcome as that becomes the critical voice in our head that speaks every time we dare to feel brave. It is essential that we learn to reason with that voice and present it with evidence to challenge the critical thought.

Another important point is that of resilience. Experience gives us resilience. If we can call upon a time that we were successful, even if it was at the second, third, fourth attempt, then we know that there’s a good chance that we will succeed this time.

Recognising and forgiving ourselves our mistakes. I knew that I’d gone into that driving test with way too much confidence and expectation that there was no way that I would fail. Second time round, I was more humble; I put more work and revision in and I learned that I would get out of the experience what I put in.

Lastly, I had a level of self-confidence that allowed me to have the thoughts that if other people could do it, then I could do it as well. It was not an unprecedented event and I had the tools so I just had to try again. I took a risk. I challenged the imposter’s voice and on that occasion it worked for me.

What did this give me? More resilience. Another successful experience to put in my library of evidence to draw upon when I was lacking confidence to try something new, or even continue to do something that I have been doing for a long time.

So here I am. Working out how I’m going to present to a group of women about something that I ‘supposedly’ know more about than they do. They’re looking to me for information and importantly, help to tackle a really challenging time in their lives. Ironically, many of the group may be feeling the exact imposter syndrome that I have described. Their inner critic may be speaking very loudly at the moment, as they experience a lack of confidence around what they have been doing for years.

I know I have the tools, the training and the experience; I just need to pull it out of the bag on the day and challenge the critical voice with solid evidence that I am, indeed, good enough.