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You go to work, get through the day, come home completely drained. And it was not even a hard day. Just a regular one, full of the quiet fear that today might be the day someone finally notices. That you have been playing the part of a professional while inside feeling anything but. Holding on by a thread instead of feeling competent and in control.
If that sounds familiar, I want you to know something: you are not alone, and there is a name for what you are feeling.
It is called imposter syndrome. And in my 11 years of working with high-achieving professionals, it is one of the most common things I see. Most people have never said it out loud before they sit across from me. Many do not even know it has a name.
What Imposter Syndrome Actually Is
Imposter syndrome is the persistent feeling of faking it, of not really knowing your stuff, even when you clearly do. It was first described by psychologists Clance and Imes in 1978, who noticed that highly competent people, particularly high achievers, often attributed their success to luck or effort rather than ability. Research since then has found that around 62% of professionals experience it at some point (Bravata et al., 2020, Journal of General Internal Medicine).
That number matters. 62% means this is not a personal failing or a sign that something is wrong with you. It is more common than most people let on, because nobody talks about it. Once it has a name, it becomes less frightening. And once it is less frightening, it becomes something you can actually do something about.
What strikes me most in my work is who it tends to affect. It is not the people who are genuinely struggling. It is the ones who hold themselves to the highest standards, the ones who care deeply about doing good work.
If you are not sure whether this applies to you, these are the signs I see most often in my clients:
- You leave every meeting or work call strongly doubting your own performance
- You replay interactions in your head afterwards, searching for moments where someone might have noticed you were unsure
- Even after work, you seek reassurance from friends that nobody could see you were uncertain
- You attribute your successes to luck or timing rather than your own ability
- You struggle to accept compliments, deflecting praise or immediately explaining why the result was not that impressive
- After each success, instead of feeling satisfied, you raise the bar higher
One or two of these occasionally is normal. If several of them are a regular pattern, that is worth paying attention to.
The Perfectionism Loop
People who experience imposter syndrome almost always have a strong perfectionist streak. They want to do their best, and when they fall short of their own very high standards (which is inevitable, because the standards are impossibly high), and they are completely unforgiving with themselves.
That harsh self-criticism then feeds the feeling of not knowing enough. And the feeling of not knowing enough drives them to work harder, prepare more, and set the bar even higher. It is a loop, and it tends to tighten over time.
The research supports this. A 2025 study found that imposter syndrome is strongly linked to self-critical and rigid perfectionism, not to arrogance or overconfidence, but to the kind of perfectionism that punishes you for being human (Postmes et al., 2025, PLOS ONE).
Why It Hits Harder for Expats
For high-achieving expats, the environment amplifies everything.
At home, you had a reputation. People knew your work. You understood the unwritten rules: how meetings run, what directness looks like, when to push back and when to hold back. You had a support system that helped you self-regulate when things got hard.
Abroad, all of that is gone. You are performing to your own high standards in a new language, inside a culture you are still learning to read, without the people and routines that used to help you cope. The coping mechanisms that worked before simply do not transfer.
For many expats, there is an additional layer of pressure that rarely gets talked about: visa status. When your right to stay in a country is tied to your employment, keeping your employer happy is not just a professional concern. It is a survival one. That raises the stakes of every performance review, every difficult conversation, every moment of uncertainty about whether you are doing well enough. It is very hard to dial down perfectionism when the consequences of falling short feel that high.
That creates the perfect conditions for imposter syndrome to thrive. Every small cultural misstep, every meeting where you were not quite sure of the tone, every moment of searching for a word, it all becomes “evidence” that you do not belong here.
What It Looks Like Day to Day
The pattern I see most often is over-preparation. A client spends two hours preparing for a meeting, making sure they have an answer to every possible question. The meeting lasts five minutes. Nobody asks them anything.
That happens three times in a day and the exhaustion is real, not just the time spent but the mental cost of being permanently on guard.
The other pattern is people-pleasing. Not wanting to ruffle feathers, staying quiet in moments where they should speak up, letting an opportunity pass because saying yes felt too risky. And then watching a less cautious colleague, someone less qualified who simply hesitated less, take that opportunity instead.
That moment does not just sting. It feeds directly back into the belief: I am not good enough. I am faking it. The circle closes.
What Actually Helps
The only thing that genuinely breaks the pattern is doing the thing the imposter feeling is telling you not to do: taking opportunities without being perfectly prepared.
That sounds simple. It is not. Turning down the perfectionism creates a real fear of failure, and that fear needs to be worked through, not bypassed. But the lived experience of getting into a meeting under-prepared, handling it adequately, and surviving. That is what starts to loosen the grip.
For that to work, you need tools to manage the anxiety that comes up in those moments. I usually start clients with something simple: breathe first. It sounds basic, but it is the entry point to everything else. From there, the next step is slowing down the thoughts that are racing, and then naming what you are actually feeling. Saying to yourself “I am anxious right now” takes some of the power away from the feeling. It becomes something you are experiencing rather than something that is running you. There is more on managing that anxiety here.
The second thing I ask clients to do is keep an accomplishment record. Write down your wins, your successes, the moments where things went well, and keep the list somewhere close at work. Before a meeting where the imposter feeling is loud, read it. The brain under stress selectively forgets evidence of competence. The list is there to counter that. It is not about arrogance. It is about giving yourself an accurate picture, not just the anxious one.
Once you have read the list, take it one step further: ask yourself whether the fear you are feeling right now is based on actual evidence, real negative feedback or a concrete mistake, or whether it is the anxiety talking. Most of the time, my clients find there is no real evidence. The fear feels like a fact, but when they look for proof, it is not there. That distinction, made in the moment, is one of the most useful things I know.
A question I often hear is: “but what if I actually am not good enough? How do I know the difference?” My answer is always the same: look at the evidence. Have you received negative feedback recently? Was it related to this specific situation? Have you received positive feedback? Is there anything concrete, beyond the feeling itself, that tells you that you are doing a bad job? Feelings are not evidence. If the only proof you have is the fear, that is imposter syndrome talking, not reality.
What does not work is external validation. Being told you are great provides temporary relief but does not touch the underlying pattern. The imposter brain hears “you’re doing really well” and thinks: they just don’t know yet.
Finally, it helps to get curious about where the pattern came from. Perfectionism and imposter syndrome are not random. They are usually there for a reason; they served a function at some point. Understanding that function, rather than just trying to switch it off, is often what makes the difference between short-term relief and lasting change.
When to Get Support
Imposter syndrome exists on a spectrum. For some people it is background noise, uncomfortable but manageable. For others it is quietly running their decisions: which opportunities they take, how they show up in relationships, how much energy they have left at the end of the day.
When it starts affecting your work performance, your emotions, and your relationships, it is no longer something to push through alone. Left unaddressed, it can be a significant driver of burnout and depression.
If free resources and external reassurance are not shifting it, that is useful information. It usually means the pattern runs deeper, and that counselling or, in more severe cases, therapy can help get to the root of it in a way that self-help cannot.
You now have a name for it. And as I said at the start, that is the first thing that changes. If you are ready to do something about it, I work with high-achieving professionals and expats on exactly this. Book a free 25-minute consultation.
The studies referenced below informed the clinical picture in this post. If you would like to read further, the links are included.
References
Bravata, D. M., Watts, S. A., Keefer, A. L., Madhusudhan, D. K., Taylor, K. T., Clark, D. M., Nelson, R. S., Cokley, K. O., & Hagg, H. K. (2020). Prevalence, predictors, and treatment of impostor syndrome: A systematic review. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 35(4), 1252-1275. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-019-05364-1
Clance, P. R., & Imes, S. A. (1978). The imposter phenomenon in high achieving women: Dynamics and therapeutic intervention. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice, 15(3), 241-247. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0086006
Limburg, K., Watson, H. J., Hagger, M. S., & Egan, S. J. (2017). The relationship between perfectionism and psychopathology: A meta-analysis. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 73(10), 1301-1326. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.22435
Postmes, L., Termorshuizen, F., & de Haan, L. (2025). The prevalence of imposter syndrome and its association with psychological distress: A cross-sectional study. PLOS ONE, 20(1), e0316494. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0316494