Photo by Josh Mills on Unsplash
It’s all too easy to doubt yourself when others underestimate you, but with a bit of awareness you can retain your confidence.
Mar 31, 2021
So many of us feel underestimated all day, every day. Either through subtle shade or overt obnoxiousness, it’s a sobering smack in the face when someone makes it clear they don’t expect much from you. It can play out in so many scenarios, both personally and professionally. You’re excellent at your work, but the gatekeepers refuse to crack open the door for you, pay you your worth, or acknowledge your potential. Your own parents can’t believe you got your act together and made the dean’s List. Some of your friends seem genuinely surprised when you meet someone great or when you get promoted.
This kind of microaggression could be triggered by racism, gender, age, socioeconomic circumstances, personality differences, competitive nonsense, or all of the above, but, regardless of one’s motivation, it is painful to receive such messages.
When people underestimate us, they saddle us with negative assumptions that can be destabilizing and can make us question our own abilities, says Michelle Golland, a clinical psychologist based in New York and Los Angeles. “It’s traumatic to be underestimated — it’s a trauma to self-identity. It’s like being told or shown you’re not legitimate.”
As a Black woman pursuing her postdoctorate degree at Harvard Medical School, Monica O’Neal, a clinical psychologist and relationship expert based in Boston, says she sometimes felt underestimated. “I performed very well, much to the chagrin of some of my classmates who couldn’t understand why I was performing so well. They were like, ‘Exactly how did you get that?’ It was terribly painful. But I was also aware of how racist it was. I think the thing that allowed me to get through, to still be successful and not take my foot off the gas, is because I had a sense of purpose, and I was passionate about what it was that I wanted to do.”
She mentions decades of studies that show how implicit bias, and the feeling of being underestimated due to race, negatively impacted the performance of children in school. For example, a recent study led by Harvard researcher Mark Chin revealed how teachers’ implicit bias led to unequal student outcomes.
A strong sense of purpose is also what drove Arlan Hamilton, founder and managing partner of Backstage Capital, a venture-capital company that invests solely in female-identifying, People of Color, and LGBTQ+ founders (she’s all three) to bust through the many obstacles she faced when launching Backstage while homeless. She knows what it means to be underestimated — she even wrote a book called It’s About Damn Time: How to Turn Being Underestimated Into Your Greatest Asset to inspire others who want to succeed in spite of what they’re being shown or told about themselves.
“The only difference between the people who have become millionaires and billionaires with their tech companies, who are mostly white men, and the rest of us is in marketing, basically,” Hamilton explains. “They were told that they were Superman at 3 years old. We were not.”
Whether we realize it or not, a perceived lack of faith from those who know us, teach us, or pay us can seep deeply into our state of mind and can be difficult to detach from. But there are some tools that can help.
Shake off what others put on you
O’Neal says, when being underestimated, it’s important to recognize that the reality of the situation has nothing to do with your internal capabilities. “Sometimes, it is about your race or your gender, and having that be a clear part of the narrative frees you up from internalizing because you’re not the one falling short. Everyone’s expectation of you is falling short. If you can be aware and say to yourself, ‘I feel some insecurity because I feel like other people might judge me based on my race (or age or gender),’ that can help you not be as impacted by it,” she says.
Connect with your sense of purpose
Hamilton says sometimes, even if she doesn’t close the deal, just getting into the room to vie for the deal reaffirms her sense of purpose. “The thing that helps me, especially if I know I may not get the yes on something, if I’m the only one in the room, is to think about who it could help — does my being in that room make it easier for the next person to be in that room who looks like me?” Hamilton says. “I call it loosening the pickle jar. I go into the room; I ask for a promotion. If I don’t get the promotion, maybe, just maybe, I made it a little bit easier for that next person who is going to come in, who is five years younger than I am, or who is five years older than I am, and looks like me.”
Consider what you can control
Karen Palmer, a leadership coach based in Brooklyn, says we can’t control how others think and behave, so when you’re feeling underestimated, it helps to focus on what you can control within yourself.
“Take that deep breath and acknowledge what you already know to be good about yourself, because we so often look for external validation,” Palmer says. “If we can start examining our own values, look at what’s important, and how we’re showing up in our own lives, we can realize how we show up for that also affects what gets attracted to us.”
Expand your social circle
Palmer says when you’re feeling underestimated professionally, breaking away from insular social circles and reaching beyond your job or industry to connect with others in new ways can help set you on a more positive path in a new (even if virtual) atmosphere.
“Even in our crazy Covid Zoom lives, it helps to join in some kind of intellectual group that is not connected to your job, so you can have a different way of relating to people that actually demonstrates you have something else to offer,” she says. “If you are only looking through the lens of the people who have already found you wanting, all that does is fight your own perception of yourself.”
Rally strategic support
O’Neal agrees it helps to align yourself with supportive people who are also working diligently toward similar goals. “Think about being around other women who are driven, who are wanting to do more, who are competitive in a way that propels one another forward — not competitive because they’re insecure about their own ability to achieve,” she explains. “You need to have friends who say, ‘You know what? You can do it. I know you can do it. I have faith in you. I’m sure it’ll be hard, but I’ll be here to give you a Gatorade break — keep running forward.’”
Play the long game
Devoted to her goal of starting Backstage, Hamilton pressed on toward her dream in spite of the naysayers. “I found myself sleeping at an airport and going to meetings during the day, and that same year I got my first investor to take me seriously,” she says. “I always said if I can get one person on my side, I can do this. I just needed that one ‘yes.’” That yes and a lot of drive led Hamilton to the cover of Fast Company.
Though the process felt like “pushing a hill up a hill,” Hamilton committed to a long view for her vision. “Because I think of things in decades — not months or weeks or years — I was ready for that, and I am ready for it. That’s not to say that I think that things can casually get better. I don’t like to stand by and watch things casually find their way,” she says.
Don’t underestimate your value
“Impostor syndrome is something that has been put on us to gaslight us,” Hamilton says. “They can send it to you, but don’t sign for it. We know so many people who are supposed to be where they are, and they’re doing just fine. For Black women specifically, whatever you’re being paid, it’s a discount. Whatever the amount. When you think about readjusting where you fit in, or where you’re placed, you have to be the first person to put yourself in the right place — to say, ‘I’m supposed to be up here. I just happen to be down here.’ I think that’s a good start.”
Be angry
“Anger, redemption, and revenge are very good motivators when you’re underestimated. They’re healthy parts of ourselves,” says Golland. “Once you realize that person is trying to shame, gaslight, or humiliate you (by underestimating you), once you know that, it’s very easy.” She adds turning the tables in the moment can check the underestimating offender right into place.
“Actually say, ‘Huh, that’s interesting.’ Or ‘We’re going to have to agree to disagree.’ It makes them uncomfortable because you’re not caretaking their assumption about you,” she says.
In the end, Hamilton says, success is the best naysayer payback. “Sometimes, I don’t even want to knock them out when they’re down because it’s the same people,” she says. “You may have been looking up to them, and they may have been looking down on you, and a couple of years go by, and they’re exactly the same place they were doing the same thing to people who are less fortunate.” Just think, once you’ve lapped your naysayers, you can watch their karma play out with some popcorn.
Vivian Manning-Schaffel is a multifaceted storyteller whose work has been featured in The Cut, NBC News Better, Time Out New York, Medium and The Week. Follow her on Twitter @soapboxdirty.
