What Is Imposter Syndrome and How Can Therapy Help?

You just got a promotion at work. You aced a big exam. You received a major award. Everyone around you is congratulating you on your success, but inside, you have a sinking feeling. You think, “I just got lucky.” “They’re all going to find out that I have no idea what I’m doing.” “I’m a fraud.” This persistent, internal feeling of being a phony, despite all evidence to the contrary, is known as imposter syndrome.

At Televero Health, we see many high-achieving, capable individuals who are secretly plagued by these feelings. Imposter syndrome is not a clinical diagnosis, but it is a very real and distressing psychological pattern that can cause significant anxiety and hold you back from reaching your full potential. The good news is that therapy can be incredibly effective at helping you to challenge these beliefs and to internalize your own success.

What Does Imposter Syndrome Feel Like?

Imposter syndrome is more than just a little bit of humility or self-doubt. It is a pervasive feeling of intellectual phoniness. People who struggle with it have a hard time internalizing their accomplishments. They believe that their success is not due to their own skill or hard work, but to external factors like luck, timing, or tricking people into thinking they are more competent than they actually are.

This often leads to a cycle of anxiety and over-preparation. You might work much harder than your peers to make sure you are “perfect” and to prevent anyone from discovering that you are an “imposter.” This can lead to burnout. And when you do succeed, you don’t feel relief; you just feel like you’ve dodged another bullet. The success doesn’t build your confidence; it just raises the stakes for the next time.

Where Does Imposter Syndrome Come From?

The roots of imposter syndrome are often found in our early experiences and the messages we received about achievement and worth.

• • Family Dynamics: It can sometimes develop in families that place a very high value on achievement. You might have felt that you were only loved for what you did, not for who you were. It can also happen if you were labeled as the “smart one” in your family, and you now feel an immense pressure to live up to that label.

– Being a Minority or “First”: Imposter syndrome is very common among people who are part of an underrepresented group in their field. If you are the only woman in an engineering department, or the first person in your family to go to college, you might feel like you don’t belong, which can fuel the feeling of being an imposter.
– Perfectionism: If you have perfectionistic tendencies and set impossibly high standards for yourself, any small mistake can feel like proof that you are not good enough.

How Therapy Can Help You Overcome It

Therapy, particularly a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) approach, is a powerful tool for dismantling imposter syndrome. It helps you to change the underlying thought patterns that keep the feeling alive.

1. Identifying and Challenging Your Thoughts

The first step is to learn to recognize your “imposter thoughts” when they show up. A therapist can help you to see these not as facts, but as cognitive distortions. You will learn to put these thoughts on trial. When you think, “I only got this job because I got lucky,” your therapist will help you to look for the evidence. What were your qualifications? What did you do in the interview that was skillful? You learn to systematically challenge the distorted thought and to replace it with a more realistic and balanced one, like, “Luck may have played a small part, but I also got this job because I am qualified and I worked hard.”

2. Learning to Internalize Success

A key part of the work is learning to own your accomplishments. Your therapist might have you start an “accomplishment log” where you write down your successes, both big and small, and, crucially, the specific things you did to achieve them. This practice helps to retrain your brain to attribute your successes to your own efforts, not to external factors.

3. Embracing “Good Enough”

Therapy can help you to challenge your perfectionism. You can learn that it is okay to make mistakes and that your worth is not dependent on a flawless performance. You can practice being a “human being” instead of a “human doing.”

You are not a fraud. Your accomplishments are real, and they belong to you. Therapy can help you to silence the voice of the imposter and to step into the quiet confidence of knowing your own worth.

Key Takeaways

• Imposter syndrome is the persistent feeling of being a fraud, despite evidence of your success.
• It is often driven by a tendency to attribute your accomplishments to external factors like luck, rather than to your own skill and effort.
• Therapy, especially CBT, can help you to overcome imposter syndrome by teaching you to identify and challenge your “imposter thoughts.”
• The work involves learning to internalize your successes and to let go of the need for perfection.

Ready to take the first step? We can help. Get started with Televero Health today.