Disproportionate self-doubt cripples confidence
Solicitors should not confuse reasonable professional self-doubt with the kind of imposter thoughts that can drive unnecessary checking, overwork, and avoidance, a Law Society Skillnet webinar has heard.
Delivering the webinar, Decision-making Under Pressure: Imposter Syndrome & Hidden Cognitive Strain (29 September), Jason McDaid said his interest in the subject came from his own experience of appearing successful professionally while believing internally that he was not as capable as others thought.
A fire engineer and founder of the 78% Club, McDaid said that these thoughts could affect anyone, from recent graduates to senior executives; the club takes its name from a statistic showing that 78% of people experience imposter syndrome at some point.
McDaid began the webinar by distinguishing imposter thoughts from appropriate professional caution.
Inherent uncertainty
Legal practice inherently involved uncertainty, he said, and reasonable self-doubt was useful when considering a promotion, a pay rise, or a move into a new practice area.
“This is not about becoming less careful,” McDaid said.
“It is not about saying stop checking your work ... That would be terrible advice.”
Instead, the critical issue is not the thought itself, but the behaviour it triggers.
An imposter thought such as “I should know this” might be fleeting, but the coping mechanisms it creates – such as repeatedly checking work, working late, delaying decisions, or avoiding tough questions – can occupy hours or dominate a workflow for years.
To identify problematic behaviour, McDaid suggested solicitors evaluate whether an action was driven by what the matter legally required, or by a fear of what a mistake might say about them personally.
He illustrated the difference between thinking “I need to check this” and thinking “if I need to ask this, they’ll realise I should already know it”.
“The first one is about the work," McDaid said. "The second one is about me. That’s where I thought my weakness was going to be exposed.”
While these coping mechanisms can produce good work and positive short-term feedback, relying on them to manage anxiety creates what McDaid calls “hidden cognitive strain”.
He defined this as the invisible mental load carried by people who excel externally while internally feeling emotionally exhausted.
This creates a "hidden loop": the coping behaviour temporarily reduces anxiety, reinforcing the habit, but the accumulated effort eventually leads to slower decisions, declining confidence, and burnout.
The aim, he said, was to interrupt the automatic link between the anxiety and the behaviour.
His suggested tool, ‘Spacer’, is a reminder to create that gap.
Rather than treating a negative thought as an instruction, a person simply notices it.
Catastrophic thought
For example, a catastrophic thought such as “I’m going to be sacked” can be reframed as “the story I’m telling myself is that I’m going to be sacked”, creating enough distance to evaluate the actual evidence.
A similar approach can be applied to everyday scenarios, such as receiving a sudden meeting request from a partner.
To combat the immediate spiral of worry and file-rechecking, McDaid recommended an "A-B-C-D exercise": identify the Activating event, isolate the Belief or interpretation, observe the Consequence, and then actively Dispute the belief against the available evidence.
Ultimately, the test is whether a solicitor's actions are genuinely required by the work or are being used to chase an impossible level of certainty.
McDaid concluded that the key is recognising when self-doubt has morphed into a hidden strain, and asking: “What is the thought? What do I do because of it? And is that response proportionate to the actual professional risk?”