If you think you do not deserve the certificates of esteem for your work that come to you from colleagues and superior, or if you feel uncomfortable when you are addressed to you for your skills, considering not being worthy of it, you may suffer from the Responsible syndrome.
Coined by two psychologists in 1978, the term indicates the belief of enjoy an unused estimateto be precisely an impostor who will sooner or later unmasked and whose inability will come to light. Since it was described for the first time, this psychological phenomenon has been the subject of numerous studies: one of the last in order has been published on Nature Communications And he investigated the bond with anxiety and depression.
Sow virtual fruit. The researchers asked over 500 participants online to play on playing Fruitvillea computer game where the user’s task is to cultivate fruit. At the end of each mission, to complete which mnemonic and visual skills were needed, the volunteers reported how much they were sure of their answers; At the end of the entire game they had to evaluate how they thought it was gone.
The role of anxiety and depression. From the results it emerged that Those who suffered from anxiety and depression were unable to see their skills: “When the time came to judge their performance, the anxious and depressed people focused only on the answers they were not sure, totally ignoring those of which they were certain,” explains Sucharit Katyal, coordinator of the research. Scholars explain that those who are affected by anxiety and depression tend to be constantly insecureand this would lead him to be more inclined to suffer from the compliance syndrome.
What to do? To help those who suffer from the compliance syndrome to have more confidence in their abilities, the first step is to give positive feedback: according to Katyal it is important that these insecure people succeed in focus more on their successes than on their insecurities. And if nothing of this works, remember that Einstein even thought he was an “involuntary cheat”.
