{"id":117212,"date":"2026-09-29T01:05:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T05:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/?p=117212"},"modified":"2026-09-29T01:05:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T05:05:16","slug":"what-is-imposter-syndrome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/health-and-wellness\/what-is-imposter-syndrome\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is Imposter Syndrome? It Was Never Called a Syndrome"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='booster-block booster-read-block'>\n                <div class=\"twp-read-time\">\n                \t<i class=\"booster-icon twp-clock\"><\/i> <span>Read Time:<\/span>10 Minute, 55 Second                <\/div>\n\n            <\/div><p>You got the job. Or the place on the course. Or the promotion, the award, the good review. People clapped.<\/p>\n\n<p>And somewhere under the clapping, a small cold voice said: <em>they have made a mistake, and sooner or later they are going to notice.<\/em><\/p>\n\n<p>If you have ever heard that voice, you have probably typed the question too: <strong>what is imposter syndrome?<\/strong> It is one of the most searched psychology terms on the internet. Hundreds of thousands of people look it up every month, most of them quietly, most of them sure they are the only one who really is a fraud.<\/p>\n\n<p>Here is the first surprise. The two psychologists who named this feeling in 1978 never called it a syndrome. They were careful not to. And what they actually found is more useful than almost anything you will read about it today.<\/p>\n\n<h2>What is imposter syndrome?<\/h2>\n\n<p>Imposter syndrome is the steady belief that you are not as capable as other people think you are, and that your success came from luck, timing or fooling people rather than from your own ability. The fear underneath it is being found out.<\/p>\n\n<p>It is not the same as normal nerves before something new. Nerves say, &#8220;I hope I can do this.&#8221; The imposter feeling says, &#8220;I already did this, and it still does not count.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<p>That second part is the strange one. The feeling does not shrink when you do well. Sometimes it gets louder.<\/p>\n\n<p>If you want a quick read on how strongly this shows up for you, we built a free <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/do-i-have-imposter-syndrome\/\">Do I Have Imposter Syndrome? check<\/a>. It takes a few minutes and it is private.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"convertkit-form wp-block-convertkit-form\" style=\"\"><script async data-uid=\"6491fb8269\" src=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.kit.com\/6491fb8269\/index.js\" data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" data-no-defer=\"1\" data-no-optimize=\"1\" nowprocket><\/script><\/div>\n\n\n<h2>The 1978 paper that named it<\/h2>\n\n<p>In 1978, two psychologists at Georgia State University, Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes, published a paper in the journal <em>Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice<\/em>. Its title was &#8220;The Imposter Phenomenon in High Achieving Women: Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<p>Notice the word. <strong>Phenomenon.<\/strong> Not syndrome. Not disorder.<\/p>\n\n<p>Over about five years, they had worked with more than 150 highly successful women: students with top marks, people with doctorates, respected professionals. By every outside measure, these women were doing well. Inside, <a href=\"https:\/\/paulineroseclance.com\/pdf\/ip_high_achieving_women.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the paper reports<\/a>, they were convinced they had fooled everyone who thought they were capable.<\/p>\n\n<p>Students imagined they had been admitted by an error in the admissions office. One professor said some mistake must have been made when she was hired. A department head said her abilities had obviously been overestimated.<\/p>\n\n<p>Clance and Imes also wrote that the women did not fit any one diagnostic category. Years later, Clance was even more direct. In <a href=\"https:\/\/slate.com\/business\/2016\/04\/is-impostor-syndrome-real-and-does-it-affect-women-more-than-men.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">an interview with Slate<\/a>, she said: &#8220;If I could do it all over again, I would call it the impostor experience, because it&#8217;s not a syndrome or a complex or a mental illness, it&#8217;s something almost everyone experiences.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<p>So if you have been waiting for a diagnosis, there is not one. Imposter syndrome is not listed in the DSM, the manual clinicians use to classify mental health conditions. That is good news. It means this is not something wrong with you. It is something that happens to people.<\/p>\n\n<h2>Is it only women? The researchers changed their minds<\/h2>\n\n<p>The original paper studied women only, and its authors believed the feeling was much less common and less intense in men. They added a note saying this needed to be researched.<\/p>\n\n<p>It was, and the picture changed. Clance herself later accepted that men in the same settings were just as likely to doubt their own success. A large 2020 review in the <em>Journal of General Internal Medicine<\/em>, led by Dena Bravata, <a href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1007\/s11606-019-05364-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">looked across dozens of studies<\/a>. It found the feeling was common in both men and women and at every stage of working life, from teenagers to senior professionals. Of the studies that compared men and women, roughly half found women reported more of it, and roughly half found no difference at all.<\/p>\n\n<p>The same review found reported rates swinging wildly, from under one in ten people to more than eight in ten. That is mostly because different studies used different questionnaires and cut-off points. The honest summary: nobody has a single reliable number, but it is clearly not rare.<\/p>\n\n<p>One more thing Clance noticed. Men may feel it just as much, but they may be less likely to say so out loud.<\/p>\n\n<h2>Why doing well does not make it go away<\/h2>\n\n<p>This is the finding in the 1978 paper that almost nobody repeats. It is also the most important.<\/p>\n\n<p>The researchers expected that more success would slowly wear the feeling down. It did not. In their words: &#8220;We have not found repeated successes alone sufficient to break the cycle.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<p>They described the cycle like this:<\/p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>You worry you are not really good enough.<\/li>\n<li>So you over-prepare. You work twice as hard, and hide how hard you are working.<\/li>\n<li>It goes well.<\/li>\n<li>You feel relief, for a day or two.<\/li>\n<li>Then the voice comes back: <em>that only worked because you worked so hard. Next time you will be found out.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n<p>See the trap? Every success gets filed under &#8220;effort&#8221; or &#8220;luck,&#8221; never under &#8220;ability.&#8221; So the evidence never lands. The researchers even described it as a kind of superstition. Part of you believes that if you ever expected to do well, you would fail. The worry starts to feel like the thing that keeps you safe.<\/p>\n\n<p>That is why &#8220;just look at everything you have achieved&#8221; rarely helps. The list is not the problem. The filing system is.<\/p>\n\n<h2>Where the feeling often starts<\/h2>\n\n<p>Clance and Imes saw two common family stories among the women they worked with. These are observations from therapy, not proven causes, but many people recognise themselves in them.<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>The &#8220;sensitive one.&#8221;<\/strong> A brother, sister or cousin was labelled &#8220;the clever one&#8221; in the family. You were &#8220;the kind one&#8221; or &#8220;the social one.&#8221; No matter what grades you brought home, the label never moved. So a quiet doubt set in: maybe they are right, and I only get by on charm.<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>The &#8220;perfect one.&#8221;<\/strong> You were told you were brilliant at everything, and that bright people find things easy. Then you hit something that took real work. And you drew the only conclusion that story allowed: if it takes effort, I must not really be bright.<\/p>\n\n<p>Different starts. Same ending. Success that does not feel like yours.<\/p>\n\n<h2>What actually helps (none of it costs money)<\/h2>\n\n<p>The 1978 paper was not only a description. It was about what helped. Some of it still works well today, and you do not need a therapist to try it.<\/p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Say it to one other person.<\/strong> The researchers found that this feeling is usually a well-guarded secret. In their groups, when one woman admitted it, others quickly admitted it too. They were relieved to find they were not alone. Naming it out loud to one trusted friend takes away much of its power.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Keep a record, and watch your own excuses.<\/strong> Write down the good feedback you get about your work. Next to it, write what you told yourself to explain it away: &#8220;they were just being nice,&#8221; &#8220;I got lucky.&#8221; After a week, the pattern is hard to ignore. Then try doing the opposite: just take the compliment in.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Change one small ritual.<\/strong> Before your next test, meeting or deadline, prepare with the thought &#8220;I will do well at this&#8221; instead of &#8220;I might fail.&#8221; Small steps, the researchers said. Dropping the old habit too fast can spike anxiety.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Notice when you are performing.<\/strong> Watch for moments when you say what people want to hear instead of what you really think. Each time you hide your real view, you lose the chance to find out it was good.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p>If the voice in your head has grown harsh as well as doubtful, that is its own thing worth looking at. We wrote about <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/health-and-wellness\/why-am-i-so-hard-on-myself-psychology\/\">why some people are so hard on themselves<\/a>. And if you notice you only believe you did well once someone else says so, this piece on <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/real-life\/how-to-stop-seeking-validation\/\">how to stop seeking validation<\/a> may help too.<\/p>\n\n<h2>The oldest version of the question<\/h2>\n\n<p>Underneath every version of this feeling is one short question: <em>who am I to be here?<\/em><\/p>\n\n<p>It is a very old question. One of the oldest stories people still tell is about a man who was handed a job far too big for him. He had failed before. He did not speak well. When he was told what he was meant to do, his first words were almost exactly the imposter&#8217;s question: who am I to do this?<\/p>\n\n<p>What is striking is the answer he got. God did not argue with him. There was no list of his strengths and no pep talk about believing in himself. The answer, more or less, was: you will not be doing this alone.<\/p>\n\n<p>That is a different kind of answer from the one we usually reach for. The imposter feeling keeps asking whether you are enough. That old story quietly moves the question somewhere else, away from whether you have earned your place and toward the fact that you were given it.<\/p>\n\n<h2>You are allowed to be here<\/h2>\n\n<p>The women in that 1978 study had done the work. The degrees were real. The grades were real. What they lacked was not ability. It was permission to believe the evidence.<\/p>\n\n<p>At the end of the paper, the researchers described what change looked like. A woman who had felt like a fraud for years could finally say something simple: I have learned a lot. It is all right for me to believe in what I can do.<\/p>\n\n<p>You may never fully silence the voice. Many successful people say they still hear it. But you can stop treating it like a reliable witness.<\/p>\n\n<p>The next time it tells you they made a mistake, try answering it the way those researchers taught: maybe nobody made a mistake. Maybe you are simply where you were meant to be.<\/p>\n\n<h2>Let&#8217;s talk about it<\/h2>\n\n<p>Here is a question worth arguing about: is imposter syndrome mostly a problem inside a person&#8217;s head, or mostly a sign of workplaces and schools that make people feel they do not belong? The original researchers thought both played a part. Which do you think matters more? Tell us in the comments.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"convertkit-form wp-block-convertkit-form\" style=\"\"><script async data-uid=\"6491fb8269\" src=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.kit.com\/6491fb8269\/index.js\" data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" data-no-defer=\"1\" data-no-optimize=\"1\" nowprocket><\/script><\/div>\n\n\n<h2>Share this<\/h2>\n\n<ul>\n<li>The psychologists who named imposter syndrome in 1978 never called it a syndrome. One of them later said it&#8217;s &#8220;something almost everyone experiences.&#8221; That helped more than any pep talk. https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/?p=117212<\/li>\n<li>Found out why doing well never makes imposter syndrome go away: you file every success under &#8220;luck&#8221; or &#8220;effort,&#8221; never &#8220;ability.&#8221; The list isn&#8217;t the problem. The filing system is. https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/?p=117212<\/li>\n<li>Tip from the 1978 imposter syndrome paper: write down every compliment AND the excuse you used to wave it off. Try it for a week. https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/?p=117212<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<h2>Common questions<\/h2>\n\n<p><strong>What is imposter syndrome?<\/strong><br>\nImposter syndrome is the persistent belief that you are less capable than other people think, and that your success is due to luck, timing or fooling others rather than real ability. People who experience it often fear being exposed as a fraud, even when they have strong evidence of their competence. The idea was first described by psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes in 1978 under the name &#8220;impostor phenomenon.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>Is imposter syndrome a real mental health diagnosis?<\/strong><br>\nNo. Imposter syndrome is not a diagnosis and does not appear in the DSM, the manual clinicians use to classify mental health conditions. The psychologists who first described it in 1978 called it a phenomenon, not a syndrome, and co-author Pauline Rose Clance later said she would rather have called it &#8220;the impostor experience&#8221; because almost everyone experiences it. It can, however, appear alongside anxiety or low mood.<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>Do men get imposter syndrome?<\/strong><br>\nYes. The original 1978 study focused only on high-achieving women, and its authors believed men experienced it less. Later research changed that view. A 2020 systematic review in the Journal of General Internal Medicine found imposter feelings were common in both men and women across all career stages, with about half of the studies comparing the sexes finding no difference.<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>Why doesn&#8217;t success cure imposter syndrome?<\/strong><br>\nSuccess often fails to help because people with imposter feelings credit each achievement to luck or extra effort rather than ability, so the evidence never changes their self-belief. The 1978 paper by Clance and Imes reported that repeated successes alone were not enough to break the cycle of worry, over-preparation, relief and renewed fear of being found out.<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>How can I deal with imposter syndrome without therapy?<\/strong><br>\nSeveral free steps can help. Tell one trusted person about the feeling, since it tends to lose power once shared. Keep a written record of positive feedback alongside the excuses used to dismiss it, then practise accepting praise instead. Prepare for challenges expecting to do well rather than expecting to fail, and make these changes in small steps.<\/p>        <div class=\"booster-block booster-reactions-block\">\n            <div class=\"twp-reactions-icons\">\n                \n                <div class=\"twp-reacts-wrap\">\n                    <a react-data=\"be-react-1\" post-id=\"117212\" class=\"be-face-icons un-reacted\" href=\"javascript:void(0)\">\n                        <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/booster-extension\/\/assets\/icon\/happy.svg\" alt=\"Happy\" title=\"\">\n                    <\/a>\n                    <div class=\"twp-reaction-title\">\n                        Happy                    <\/div>\n                    <div class=\"twp-count-percent\">\n                                                    <span style=\"display: none;\" class=\"twp-react-count\">0<\/span>\n                        \n                                                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The psychologists who named it in 1978 never called it a syndrome. What they found, why success won&#8217;t fix it, and what helps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":117211,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_wp_convertkit_post_meta":{"form":"-1","landing_page":"0","tag":"0","restrict_content":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[3711,3715],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-and-wellness","category-personal-growth-and-life-skills"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117212"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117213,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117212\/revisions\/117213"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}