Imposter syndrome: what it is and how to overcome it at work

You walk into the results meeting. The project closed in the green, OKRs were met, and the bonus is secured, but when they congratulate you, your stomach knots up. You smile and say thanks, not because you feel proud, but because you learned that adapting and over-preparing is safer than showing that, inside, you think it was all a stroke of luck.

Imposter syndrome is not humility, nor is it a simple trait of insecurity. In many cases, it is the survival solution your own mind found to deal with pressure.

It is almost never that you lack technical ability or that you are a real fraud. It is almost always that you are operating from a psychological structure that never lets you feel that you are enough.

What is imposter syndrome and what are its most common symptoms?

Imposter syndrome is not about working long hours. It is the exhaustion of someone who cannot let their guard down. Of someone who has spent years proving they deserve to be where they are — and can never find the moment when that is finally enough.

It is common for patients to arrive at the clinic — directors or managers — complaining of being chronically exhausted without knowing why. They attribute every triumph to sleepless nights or to their team saving them. The visible symptom is doubting everything, checking an email three times, having a chronic difficulty delegating, and always being connected on Slack.

The corporate HR diagnosis usually says that this person lacks "confidence." The true reading is that, in high-pressure cultures, chronically doubting and self-sabotaging is pure adaptive intelligence.

This is no longer an isolated perception. According to an article available on SciElo, 75% of professional women in Latin America experience imposter syndrome (2026), strongly associated with anxiety (70%), insomnia (50%), and depression (36%). Exploring this in an article does not substitute for a professional assessment, but naming the dynamic is the essential first step.

As a psychoanalyst graduated from UIC, and after more than 20 years leading teams in multinationals, I have seen how this exhaustion is born from maintaining a facade. To survive, the mind creates a mask that complies with what the environment demands, but that internally feels empty. Donald Winnicott called this deep disconnection the false self. It works perfectly for climbing the ladder, but it takes its toll by emptying you from the inside.

How is imposter syndrome experienced in the professional realm?

It doesn't go away by accumulating more achievements or by changing companies. Because the problem is not one of technical competence; it is of subjective position regarding success.

In the corporate world, there is an abysmal difference between purposefully deceiving to gain an advantage and being objectively capable but living in anguish awaiting the final judgment. In the first scenario, there is malice; in the second, there is a block that prevents internalizing one's own ability.

Manfred Kets de Vries documented this fracture in top management leaders, marking the exact clinical border between being a fraud and feeling fraudulent. The executive who feels fraudulent can deliver impeccable results, but lives convinced that they will soon be unmasked, turning their work into a play where they feel like the only actor who doesn't know the script.

What role do childhood experiences play in the development of imposter syndrome?

There are successes that are experienced as a forbidden victory. Achieving that managerial promotion puts you in a place of such visibility that, paradoxically, it frightens you.

When reaching a goal brings anguish instead of relief, the mind is reacting to an invisible danger. Sigmund Freud observed this phenomenon over a century ago and called it "those wrecked by success." It's not that they don't want the position. It's that achieving it places them in a role that, unconsciously, they feel they are not meant to occupy, as if by standing out they were betraying authority figures from their past.

It made sense to learn that at the time. Today, it is that exact same response that squeezes you. If you grew up in a system where being "the straight-A student" was the bare minimum expected, you learned that being safe meant never failing. That hyperactive alert made you good at your job. Today, in front of your team, it is that same automatic response that suffocates you.

Read more about anxiety and leadership dynamics in teams

Perhaps the question is no longer how you get rid of imposter syndrome so you can work more peacefully. Perhaps it is what needs to stop being experienced as a threat in your team so that this fear is no longer necessary.

Bibliographic Reference

Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries (2006) — The Leader on the Couch