Impostor syndrome

Based on Wikipedia: Impostor syndrome

The Secret Almost Everyone Shares

Here's a strange fact: somewhere between nine and eighty-two percent of people feel like frauds. That's not a typo. The range is enormous because researchers can't agree on how to measure it, but the takeaway is clear—feeling like you don't belong, like you've somehow fooled everyone into thinking you're competent, is so common it's almost universal.

Michelle Obama has admitted to it. So has Sheryl Sandberg. So, quite possibly, has the person sitting next to you at work, your doctor, your professor, and the brilliant friend you've always admired.

They call it impostor syndrome.

What It Actually Means to Feel Like a Fraud

The experience goes something like this: You achieve something. Maybe you got the job, passed the exam, received the promotion, or had your work praised. Instead of feeling proud, a quiet voice whispers that you didn't really earn it. You got lucky. You fooled them. And sooner or later, everyone will figure out that you're not actually as smart or capable as they think.

This isn't garden-variety modesty or healthy humility. People experiencing impostor syndrome genuinely believe there's a disconnect between how they appear and who they really are. External evidence—degrees, awards, successful projects, glowing reviews—doesn't penetrate the belief. In fact, success often makes it worse. Each new accomplishment becomes another thing to potentially be unmasked for.

The feelings can be intense. Persistent. Exhausting.

Not a Disorder, But Not Nothing Either

Here's something important to understand: impostor syndrome is not a mental illness. You won't find it in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the DSM-5, which psychiatrists use to diagnose conditions. It's also absent from the International Classification of Diseases. Clinically speaking, it doesn't exist as a formal diagnosis.

This creates a curious problem. Because it's not officially recognized, there's no agreed-upon way to assess it, no standard treatment protocols, no established guidelines for therapists. It lives in a strange in-between space—clearly real, clearly affecting millions of people, but without the medical framework that would help professionals address it systematically.

What researchers do know is that impostor feelings correlate strongly with things that are diagnosed. People who experience impostor syndrome are more likely to struggle with depression and anxiety. They tend to have lower self-esteem and report more physical symptoms of stress. They're more prone to burnout.

So while it's not a disorder in itself, it often travels with genuine psychological distress.

The Personality Connection

Psychologists have mapped impostor syndrome against the "Big Five" personality traits—the standard framework for understanding human personality. The patterns are revealing.

People high in neuroticism, which means they're more prone to negative emotions and anxiety in general, are more likely to experience impostor feelings. That makes intuitive sense. If you tend toward worry, you're probably more likely to worry about being exposed as inadequate.

Perfectionism also shows up as a major factor. If your internal standard is flawlessness, then anything less than perfect performance feels like evidence of fraud. You didn't just make a mistake; you revealed your true inadequacy.

Interestingly, impostor syndrome correlates negatively with extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. People who are outgoing, warm, and organized seem less susceptible. Though it's worth noting that correlation isn't causation—we can't say whether certain personality traits protect against impostor feelings or whether persistent impostor feelings gradually shape personality over time.

The Chicken and the Egg

This brings up a fundamental challenge in understanding impostor syndrome: almost everything we know about it comes from correlational studies. We see that two things happen together, but we can't prove which caused which.

Does impostor syndrome cause people to perform worse at work, or do people who struggle at work develop impostor feelings as a result? Does it strain relationships because the sufferer withdraws and self-sabotages, or do difficult relationships create the insecurity that feeds impostor thoughts?

Probably both. These things tend to form feedback loops, where cause and effect blur together into self-reinforcing cycles.

Who Gets It? Everyone, Apparently

When psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes first described impostor phenomenon in 1978, they thought it was primarily a women's issue. Their paper was titled "The Impostor Phenomenon in High Achieving Women." They based this on their clinical observations—the high-achieving women they worked with seemed particularly prone to these feelings.

Decades of subsequent research has complicated this picture considerably.

Men experience impostor syndrome too, in roughly equal proportions. The original female-skewed findings may have reflected sampling bias, or perhaps men were less likely to admit to these feelings in clinical settings. There's still some evidence that men are less willing to disclose feelings of inadequacy, which could mask the true prevalence among male populations.

But here's where it gets nuanced. While men and women may experience impostor syndrome at similar rates, the contexts and triggers often differ. Women in male-dominated fields may face additional pressures to prove competence, amplifying impostor feelings. They're also more likely to encounter gender-based discrimination or harassment, which correlates with increased depression and anxiety—which in turn feeds impostor syndrome.

Girls, research shows, tend to have lower expectations of success than boys even when they actually perform better. This disconnect between achievement and confidence starts early.

Age doesn't seem to provide much protection either. Teenagers experience it. So do late-career professionals. The syndrome appears across the lifespan.

The Particular Burden on Minorities

Ethnic minority students often carry an additional weight. Research by Cokley and colleagues found that minority students frequently questioned whether they deserved their admission to academic programs. They suspected they'd only been accepted because of affirmative action policies rather than their actual qualifications and achievements.

This represents a cruel irony. Students who worked hard enough to earn admission to competitive programs convinced themselves that their presence was somehow unearned, a matter of quota-filling rather than merit. The psychological distress this caused was measurable and significant.

Researchers have coined a useful term for this: "impostorization." Instead of locating the problem entirely within the individual who feels like an impostor, this concept points the finger at institutions. Certain policies, practices, or workplace cultures make people question their intelligence, competence, and right to belong. The feeling of being an impostor isn't always an internal malfunction—sometimes it's an entirely reasonable response to environments that signal you don't belong.

New Environments, Old Fears

Starting something new is a reliable trigger. Students entering unfamiliar academic environments commonly experience impostor feelings. The unknown creates insecurity, which erodes confidence, which makes people doubt their abilities even when those abilities got them there in the first place.

Medical students and doctors are particularly affected. Studies have found that between twenty-two and sixty percent of physicians experience impostor phenomenon. Think about that the next time you're in a hospital. Somewhere between a quarter and more than half of the doctors there have at some point wondered whether they really belong.

Psychology doctoral students show remarkably high rates too. One study found that eighty-eight percent reported at least moderate impostor feelings. These are people training to understand the human mind, and nearly nine out of ten struggle with believing in their own competence.

Measuring an Invisible Experience

Since you can't draw blood to test for impostor syndrome, psychologists have developed questionnaires. The first was Harvey's Impostor Scale in 1981, a fourteen-item assessment. Then came the Clance Impostor Phenomenon Scale, or CIPS, in 1985, which is still the most widely used today. It includes twenty questions and tries to capture both the anxiety about being judged and the feeling of inferiority compared to peers.

In 2023, researchers developed a newer assessment based on three core factors. The first is doubts about achievement—the fear of failure combined with a tendency to overprepare. Someone might agree with statements like "I often feel that I have to work harder than others to achieve all that I do."

The second factor is perceived discrepancy—discounting accomplishments and attributing success to luck or connections rather than ability. "I feel that I have attained my present position through pulling strings or having connections."

The third factor is self-handicapping behaviors—procrastination and perfectionism that actually undermine performance. "I find myself often leaving tasks to the last minute."

These three threads—doubt, discounting, and self-sabotage—weave together into the fabric of impostor experience.

What Actually Helps?

Here's a frustrating fact: as of 2019, when researchers conducted a systematic review of sixty-two studies on impostor syndrome, not a single one had actually tested whether treatments work. We have a phenomenon affecting huge numbers of people, but remarkably little evidence about how to treat it effectively.

What we do have are clinical observations and theoretical approaches. The original researchers, Clance and Imes, developed a group therapy approach that seemed helpful for their clients. The simple act of meeting others who shared the experience made a significant impact. People realized they weren't alone—that others who seemed confident and competent secretly harbored the same doubts.

They also used homework assignments. Clients would list everyone they believed they had fooled or tricked. They'd write down positive feedback they'd received and then explore why they'd dismissed or minimized it. In group sessions, they practiced reframing thoughts—changing "I might fail this exam" to "I will do well on this exam."

The researchers concluded that simply extracting the self-doubt before a challenging event helps. Bringing the fear into the open, naming it, examining it with others—these actions seem to drain some of its power.

Practical Strategies from Those Who Know

Psychology professors who've dealt with impostor syndrome themselves have offered several suggestions. None of these are clinically validated treatments, but they represent accumulated wisdom from people who understand the experience from the inside.

First: don't let feelings of worthlessness dictate your actions. Fear and self-doubt are experiences, not instructions. You can feel terrified and move forward anyway. The feelings don't have to be resolved before you act.

Second: use your past as evidence. You've succeeded before. You've faced challenges and overcome them. When doubt creeps in, deliberately recall those moments. They're data points that contradict the impostor narrative.

Third: find a counselor who can help you identify the distorted beliefs feeding your impostor feelings. Cognitive distortions—the technical term for systematic errors in thinking—respond well to being challenged and examined.

Fourth: create spaces where your identity is honored and expressed. Belonging helps. When you're surrounded by people who see and value you, the impostor voice has less room to speak.

Fifth: help others reject their own impostor beliefs. Reflect back to them their talents, abilities, and value. Curiously, helping others often serves as a reminder to ourselves.

The Opposite of Impostor Syndrome

It's worth considering what sits on the other end of this spectrum. If impostor syndrome involves capable people who underestimate themselves, what do we call it when less capable people overestimate their abilities?

Psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger documented exactly this phenomenon, now known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. People who lack competence in a domain often lack the very skills needed to recognize their incompetence. They rate themselves highly precisely because they don't know enough to know what they don't know.

There's something both tragic and ironic here. The people most consumed by doubt about their abilities are often the most able. Meanwhile, those with inflated confidence may have the least justification for it. Self-assessment is remarkably difficult for humans.

A related concept is illusory superiority—the tendency for people to overestimate their qualities relative to others. Most people think they're better-than-average drivers, for instance, which is statistically impossible.

Impostor syndrome, in a way, is illusory inferiority. Your actual performance exceeds your self-assessment. The mirror shows a distorted reflection.

The Fear of Success

Another related phenomenon is the Jonah complex, named after the biblical prophet who tried to flee from his divine calling. It refers to the fear of one's own greatness—the avoidance of success and the self-actualization it represents.

This fear might seem paradoxical. Why would anyone be afraid of achieving their potential? But success brings visibility, responsibility, and raised expectations. It means being seen. For someone already anxious about being exposed as inadequate, success can feel dangerous. Better to stay small and safe.

Setting oneself up to fail is the behavioral expression of this fear. People unconsciously sabotage their own chances, ensuring they won't have to face the anxiety of success or the possibility of being revealed as frauds at a higher level.

The Inner Critic

Everyone has an inner voice. For some people, that voice is a harsh critic, constantly pointing out flaws and inadequacies, predicting failure, dismissing achievements. This inner critic can become so familiar that people don't even recognize it as a distinct voice—they mistake it for objective reality.

Impostor syndrome could be understood as a particular type of inner critic narrative, one focused specifically on the theme of fraudulence and undeserved success. The critic whispers that you're fooling everyone, that you're not really as good as they think, that exposure is inevitable.

Learning to recognize this voice as a voice—as something separate from reality or from your core self—is part of loosening its grip.

A Cultural Dimension

Different cultures handle standout success differently. In some societies, there's pressure to cut down people who rise above the crowd—what Australians call "tall poppy syndrome." If you stand too tall, you'll get chopped back down to size.

Growing up in cultures with this tendency might predispose people toward impostor feelings. If success makes you a target, then feeling like a fraud might be a protective adaptation. You preemptively cut yourself down before others do.

Environmental and cultural factors clearly influence how people experience these feelings, even if the underlying phenomenon is universal.

Living with the Voice

Perhaps the most important thing to understand about impostor syndrome is that it's widespread, it's not your fault, and it doesn't have to control your life.

The feelings are real, but they're not reliable guides to reality. You can doubt yourself profoundly while still being genuinely competent. You can feel like you don't belong while having every right to be there. You can attribute your success to luck while actually having earned it through ability and effort.

Millions of people navigate this same inner landscape. The professor who seems so confident, the doctor with the impressive credentials, the colleague who always seems to have everything together—many of them harbor the same secret fear that they're about to be found out.

Knowing this doesn't make the feelings disappear. But it might make them a little more bearable. You're not uniquely flawed. You're not the only one who feels this way. You're experiencing something so common it's almost a universal human experience.

The impostor voice lies. It's convincing, but it's lying. And sometimes, just naming that lie is the first step toward freedom.