Impostor Syndrome

Impostor Syndrome Therapy | Psychologist in Maastricht | English & Greek

When your achievements don't feel like they belong to you

You may have achieved things that objectively demonstrate your abilities, yet still feel that you are somehow not as capable as other people think you are. You may receive praise, qualifications, promotions, or recognition and find yourself wondering whether you really deserve them, whether you were simply lucky, or whether people will eventually realise that you are not as competent as they believe.

This experience is often described as impostor syndrome or the impostor phenomenon. It can involve persistent self-doubt despite evidence of competence and a fear that your perceived shortcomings will eventually be discovered.

You may feel that you have somehow managed to convince everyone that you are capable, while privately worrying that you are not. Success may not reassure you for very long because instead of becoming evidence that you are competent, you may explain it away as luck, timing, help from others, or circumstances that happened to work in your favour.

This can be particularly exhausting because there may be a constant gap between how other people see you and how you experience yourself internally.

Therapy can provide a space to understand this gap, explore the standards and beliefs that contribute to it, and develop a more grounded way of evaluating your abilities without needing to constantly prove that you deserve your achievements.

Does this sound familiar?

You may find it difficult to accept compliments or positive feedback because part of you doubts whether people really mean it. When someone tells you that you did a good job, you may immediately think about everything that could have gone better or explain the outcome by pointing to luck, help, or circumstances rather than your own ability.

Perhaps you feel anxious before starting something new because you are worried that this will be the situation where you are finally exposed as not being good enough. You may prepare excessively, check your work repeatedly, or spend far more time on tasks than seems necessary because you feel that you cannot afford to make a mistake.

You might also compare yourself with other people and assume that they are more competent, confident, or knowledgeable than you. You see what they appear to know and what they accomplish, while being much more aware of your own uncertainty and mistakes.

Sometimes you may feel like you are constantly trying to catch up. Even after reaching a goal, you may quickly move on to the next thing rather than allowing yourself to recognise what you have achieved. A promotion, qualification, successful project, or other accomplishment can become something you feel you have to live up to rather than evidence that you are capable.

You may also experience a fear that eventually someone will discover that you are not as competent as they thought. This can make ordinary mistakes feel particularly threatening, because they seem to provide the evidence you have been worried about.

Understanding impostor syndrome

Impostor syndrome is not a formal mental health diagnosis. It describes a pattern of thoughts and feelings in which people who have evidence of competence nevertheless experience significant self-doubt and fear of being exposed as a fraud.

One of the most difficult aspects is that achievement itself does not necessarily resolve the feeling.

You may think that once you get the qualification, the job, the promotion, or the recognition, you will finally feel confident. But when the achievement arrives, your mind may find another explanation for why it does not count.

Perhaps you were lucky.

Perhaps the task was easier than it looked.

Perhaps someone helped you.

Perhaps they haven't realised what you're really like yet.

This can create a situation in which there is no amount of achievement that feels sufficient to settle the underlying doubt.

The problem is therefore not necessarily a lack of evidence that you are capable. You may have plenty of evidence. The difficulty can be in allowing that evidence to influence the way you see yourself.

When success creates more pressure

For some people, achievement can actually intensify impostor feelings.

Once you have succeeded, there may be an expectation that you need to continue performing at the same level. Instead of allowing success to reassure you, you may become more concerned about maintaining it.

A new position can bring thoughts about whether you are qualified enough for it. A promotion can create pressure to prove that the decision was correct. A successful project can make the next project feel more threatening because now you have something to live up to.

This can lead to over-preparation, perfectionism, difficulty delegating, and working much harder than necessary.

You may feel that other people are naturally competent while you have to work extremely hard to achieve the same results. What they experience as ability, you may experience as effort.

The irony is that your hard work may itself become evidence against you: because you had to work so hard, you conclude that you must not actually be capable.

This can make it very difficult to recognise the role of your own skills, persistence, judgement, and effort in what you accomplish.

How impostor syndrome can affect your life

Impostor feelings can affect your professional and academic life particularly strongly. You may avoid applying for opportunities because you assume that other candidates are more qualified, or hesitate to put yourself forward because you are afraid that your limitations will become obvious.

You may also over-prepare for tasks, spend excessive time checking your work, or struggle to stop working because you feel that anything less than your maximum effort could expose you.

This can contribute to exhaustion and burnout, particularly when success depends on continually proving your competence to yourself.

Impostor feelings can also affect how you respond to mistakes. A normal error may become much more emotionally significant because it appears to confirm something you have already feared about yourself. Instead of thinking that you made a mistake, you may think that the mistake has revealed who you really are.

Relationships can be affected as well. You may find it difficult to accept compliments, feel uncomfortable when someone admires you, or worry that a partner or friend will eventually realise that you are not as interesting, capable, or worthy as they believe.

Over time, you may become highly dependent on achievement for reassurance while simultaneously feeling unable to fully take ownership of your achievements.

This can create a frustrating experience in which you are objectively moving forward while internally continuing to feel as though you are trying to catch up.

How we can work with impostor syndrome in therapy

Our work would begin by understanding how impostor feelings show up for you and when they become strongest. We might explore situations in which you feel most uncertain about your competence, what you predict other people will discover, and how you respond when you receive praise, make mistakes, or achieve something important.

We can also examine the standards you hold yourself to and the way you interpret evidence about your abilities. If you consistently dismiss positive evidence while treating mistakes as highly significant, your self-evaluation may become systematically harsher than the way you would evaluate someone else.

Depending on your needs, we may draw from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Schema Therapy.

CBT can help us identify patterns such as discounting positive experiences, comparing yourself with others, catastrophising mistakes, or setting standards that make it almost impossible to feel competent enough. We can work towards developing a more balanced way of interpreting both your successes and your limitations.
ACT can help you step back from thoughts such as “I'm not good enough” or “They will find me out” without needing to prove those thoughts wrong every time they appear. The focus can shift towards acting according to your values and recognising that uncertainty about your abilities does not have to prevent you from participating fully in your life.
Schema Therapy can be particularly relevant when impostor feelings are connected with deeper patterns around defectiveness, failure, unrelenting standards, approval-seeking, or the belief that you have to achieve in order to be worthy.

We can explore how these beliefs may have developed and why success has not necessarily been enough to change them.

We can also work on developing a more realistic relationship with competence. Being capable does not mean knowing everything, never needing help, or never making mistakes. You can be genuinely competent while still learning, struggling, asking questions, and sometimes getting things wrong.

The aim is not to convince you that you are exceptional at everything. It is to help you develop a more accurate and stable understanding of what you can do, what you are still learning, and what your achievements actually say about you.

Taking the First Step

You may have become very successful at hiding your self-doubt. Other people may see someone competent, accomplished, and confident while you privately feel that you are constantly trying to keep up with the expectations attached to your achievements.

Perhaps you are tired of waiting for the moment when you will finally feel like you belong where you are. You may have reached goals that once seemed far away and still feel as though you somehow slipped through the selection process by mistake.

You may also worry that working on impostor feelings will make you less ambitious or less driven. It does not have to. The goal is not to care less about your work or stop striving towards things that matter to you.

Therapy can instead help you separate healthy ambition from the need to constantly prove your worth. We can explore why your achievements have not translated into a stronger sense of competence and what might allow you to recognise your abilities without immediately dismissing them.

You do not have to wait until you feel completely confident before allowing yourself to believe that you belong where you are.

If you'd like to explore whether working together could be a good fit, you can arrange a short introductory call.

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