Explaining my own thought patterns to others can be difficult for me, especially since most of the time, my thoughts can be extremely inconsistent. Whenever something good happens to me, I would often not feel like I am too deserving of that good thing. However, at the same time, whenever I would try to make something good happen to me and it doesn't, I tend to think about how amazing I am and how I would have knocked everyone's socks off if I was given the opportunity.

Like I said, both of these thoughts are not only inconsistent, but also on completely opposite sides of the spectrum, and for a while, I did not think it was possible for someone to have these thoughts at the same time. Both of these thoughts are known as Imposter Syndrome and the Dunning Kruger Effect.

As Liz Karungi writes on Medium, "Impostor syndrome is a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their accomplishments and has a persistent fear of being exposed as a 'fraud.'" Additionally, the Dunning Kruger Effect is, according to Wikipedia, "is a cognitive bias in which people of low ability have illusory superiority and mistakenly assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is."

Both Imposter Syndrome and the Dunning Kruger Effect technically are on opposite sides of the spectrum, and hence it seems like no person can have both at the same time. But I'm here to say that that's not entirely true.

While on the surface, it does seem like they are complete opposites from each other when in reality, they are actually a lot similar than most people think. The two are really just a combination of feelings of self-doubt and a lack of competence, and both lack awareness in estimating one's own performances. Neither one of them is a real-life mental illness. Imposter Syndrome is just a category that labels someone who is identified as a high achiever, and the Dunning Kruger Effect is a term that describes a pattern of thought that is created from the perceiver.

It may seem hard to believe since one involves one with above average abilities not knowing how above average their abilities really are, and the other involves one with below average abilities not knowing how below average their abilities really are. After all, those who become successful imposters must have some clever traits and an idiot lacks the capacity while thinking that they're very smart.

It actually becomes not as hard to believe as people may think in the long run when you think about how many people's minds work. I have a firm belief that everyone's good at something, but no one's good at everything, so many people can think they're terrible at something they're actually amazing at, and think they're amazing at something they're terrible at the same time, since they can be talking about two completely separate things. A lack of awareness on some things about yourself is not limited to one or the other, and looking more into it has helped me understand parts of my thought patterns (and in some cases lack of awareness as well).