In This Article
Feel like a fraud despite your success? You're not alone. Learn the 8 types of imposter syndrome, what the research really says, and evidence-based ways to overcome it.
“I feel like an imposter.”
“I don’t deserve my success.”
“I’m not who they think I am.”
Have you ever said these things to yourself? If so, you might be experiencing imposter syndrome—and you’re in very good company. It’s common enough that you’ll often see the claim that “70% of people” feel this way. That specific number is more of a media meme than a hard statistic (more on that below), but the underlying point holds: imposter feelings are widespread.
In this article, I’ll break down what imposter syndrome is, the types it shows up as, what the research actually says, and the steps that genuinely help. I also got to interview Dr. Kevin Cokley, a Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and author of The Myth of Black Anti-Intellectualism. Watch our conversation on imposter syndrome below:
Quick summary: Imposter syndrome is the experience of feeling undeserving of your achievements and fearing you’ll be exposed as a fraud—and it’s a normal, common experience. People tend to fall into recognizable patterns (perfectionists, natural geniuses, experts and more), and there are practical methods—reframing your self-talk, embracing vulnerability, adopting a growth mindset—that help quiet the inner imposter.
What Is Imposter Syndrome?
Imposter syndrome (the original academic term is the imposter phenomenon) is the experience of feeling you don’t deserve your accomplishments. You might feel like you don’t belong, that your success is undeserved, or that you’re “out of place”—often paired with a nagging worry that others will expose you as a fraud.
The hallmark is an inability to internalize success. An actor can win every award going and still feel like a fraud—chalking the wins up to luck, timing or having “fooled everyone.” Where most people take praise as accurate feedback, someone with imposter syndrome treats it as an overestimation they’ll eventually be caught out on.
One important framing note: imposter syndrome is not a clinical diagnosis. You won’t find it in the DSM-5 or ICD-11. It’s a widely recognized descriptive experience—a pattern of thoughts and feelings—rather than a disorder you “have.” That matters, because it means the goal isn’t a cure so much as learning to recognize and quiet the pattern.
Do You Have Imposter Syndrome? Take This Quick Quiz
Answer yes or no to each:
- Do you ever feel you don’t deserve your achievements?
- Do you worry people will discover you’re secretly unworthy?
- After a success, do you dismiss it as luck or timing?
- Do you think you’ve tricked others into believing you’re more capable than you are?
- Do you apologize for yourself even when you’ve done nothing wrong?
- Do you think others overvalue your success?
If you answered yes to more than two, you may be experiencing imposter syndrome. This is just a quick gut-check, not a diagnosis—if it’s weighing on you, a therapist can give you a proper assessment and a plan.
The 8 Types of Imposters
People with imposter syndrome aren’t all the same. Imposter syndrome expert Dr. Valerie Young identified five competence “types,” and we’ve added a few more patterns we see often. One honest caveat before you read on: these types are a useful self-awareness heuristic, not a validated psychological test. Young developed them from workshop exercises, and most people recognize themselves in more than one. Use them to spot your patterns, not to label yourself.
As you read, notice which ones make your chest tighten a little—that flicker of recognition is the whole point. Most people have one dominant type that flares under pressure (a big presentation, a new title, a public mistake) plus a secondary pattern or two. The aim isn’t to box yourself in; it’s to catch your particular flavor of self-doubt in the act, so you can reach for the matching fix instead of spiraling. The descriptions below each come with an “imposter fix” tailored to that pattern.
The Perfectionist
The Perfectionist fixates on how something is done—they want 110% every time, and imposter feelings kick in the moment those impossible standards aren’t met.
If you’re a perfectionist, you might:
- hold yourself to an impossibly high standard,
- get accused of micromanaging,
- beat yourself up over one small flaw in an otherwise great presentation,
- treat anything less than perfect as failure.
The cruel twist for perfectionists is that the standard is unreachable by design, so there’s always “evidence” of falling short—which the imposter voice happily points to. A 90-minute talk that lands beautifully gets overshadowed by the one slide you fumbled. The fix isn’t lowering your standards to zero; it’s learning to call “done” before “flawless.”
Imposter Fix: Try the GEQ method—“Good Enough Quality.” Done well now beats perfect later. A few ways to practice:
- Imperfect affirmation: keep a phrase handy like “It’s OK to be 75% done, not 100%.” Repeat it daily, or pick from our list of positive affirmations.
- Incomplete drawing: set a 2-minute timer and draw something; when the timer ends, practice accepting the unfinished result.
- Realistic goals: review your goals—are they realistic or secretly overachieving? Our goal-setting guide can help.
The Natural Genius
Do you feel you should be smart, fast and excellent at everything immediately? You might be a Natural Genius. Ironically, it’s often hard workers and high achievers who feel like frauds here—they look at experts and wonder “why am I not there yet?”, forgetting that there’s a learning stage between beginner and pro.
Natural Geniuses tend to:
- believe people are simply born talented,
- get frustrated easily and hop between hobbies,
- see everyone else succeeding while they alone “fail.”
A telling sign: the Natural Genius often avoids things they can’t do well immediately, because struggle itself feels like proof they’re a fraud. So they quit the instrument after two frustrating weeks, or abandon the side project the moment it gets hard—reinforcing the belief that they’re “just not naturally good at things.”
Imposter Fix: Cultivate a growth mindset—the belief that you build ability through effort, not that it’s fixed at birth. Reframe struggle as the normal middle of the learning curve rather than a verdict on your potential, and setbacks become data instead of indictments.
The Over-Planner
The Over-Planner meticulously plans every detail to avoid being “exposed,” believing exhaustive control is the only way to prevent failure. It can tip into choice paralysis, where the fear of a misstep leads to delay or inaction.
Characteristics:
- finds comfort in endless lists, spreadsheets and detailed plans,
- feels anxious deviating from a plan or improvising,
- misses deadlines or opportunities due to over-preparation.
Imposter Fix: Embrace flexibility. Set strict limits on planning time and adopt a “good enough” approach for minor tasks.
Example: Emily, a project manager, capped herself at two hours of planning for tasks that used to eat a full day. It felt risky—but the project beat its deadline, her team appreciated the added trust, and her imposter symptoms eased once she saw her value wasn’t only in planning.
The Expert
Experts always want more—more knowledge, more credentials, more experience—and never feel they have enough. Fittingly, the original 1978 research on the imposter phenomenon studied accomplished women who felt they were constantly underachieving and fooling everyone.
If you’re an Expert imposter, you might:
- over-prepare with books, courses and training before any big project,
- avoid applying for jobs unless you meet every qualification,
- feel “not enough” even after years of experience.
The Expert’s tell is the endless credential chase: another certification, another course, another book—always one more thing to learn before they’ll feel “qualified.” But the finish line keeps moving, because the real issue isn’t a knowledge gap; it’s that no amount of knowledge ever feels like enough to silence the fear.
Imposter Fix: Recognize that knowledge has no finish line. Instead of stockpiling skills for their own sake, accumulate them just in time—focus on the one skill the next step actually requires (e.g., leadership training ahead of a management move) rather than trying to learn everything at once. And notice that you almost certainly already know enough to start; expertise is built in the doing, not only in the preparing.
The Soloist (Rugged Individualist)
The Soloist believes they should do everything themselves, and that asking for help is a sign of weakness—shouldn’t they already know this?
As a Soloist, you may:
- feel you need more prep time,
- prefer solo projects to group work,
- refuse to ask for help even when you need it.
Imposter Fix: Often the block isn’t pride—it’s that you haven’t found the right people. Ask who the five people you spend the most time with are; if they build you up rather than drain you, you’ll naturally want to learn from them. Joining a mastermind or support group can help you find people worth asking.
The Chameleon
The Chameleon constantly adjusts their behavior, opinions and work style to match what they think others expect, fearing their true self would be “found out.” This adaptability (common in ambiverts) is a strength in small doses, but it can erode your sense of identity.
Characteristics:
- frequently shifts viewpoints or interests based on others’ opinions,
- struggles to maintain a consistent style or area of expertise,
- attributes praise to “mimicking” someone else rather than their own skill.
The exhausting part is that the Chameleon never gets to test whether their real self would be accepted—so the fear of exposure never resolves, because they keep hiding the very thing that might earn genuine connection. Every bit of praise lands hollow, since it feels aimed at a performance rather than the person.
Imposter Fix: Reconnect with your own voice. Reflecting on your core values and genuine strengths helps ground your sense of self, so you can adapt to a room without disappearing into it. Start small—voice one real opinion in a low-stakes setting and notice that the sky doesn’t fall.
The Superwoman/Superman
The Superperson takes on more and more, struggles to say no, and often works harder than everyone around them—sometimes to the point of exhaustion.
Signs include:
- juggling many roles at once (work, chores, school, side hustle),
- regularly working past everyone else’s hours,
- neglecting friends, family or hobbies to work more.
Underneath the heroics is usually a quiet bargain: if I just do enough, no one will notice I don’t belong here. The problem is the bar resets every day, so the Superperson stays perpetually one all-nighter away from “proving” themselves—and the exhaustion that follows is exactly the kind of emotional depletion that research ties most tightly to burnout.
Imposter Fix: If you’re running in super mode, you’re probably also a people-pleaser, taking on extra not just to achieve but to be needed. Our guide on how to stop people-pleasing is a good next read—and a reminder that rest and boundaries are part of competence, not a betrayal of it.
The Solo Achiever
Close cousin to the Soloist, the Solo Achiever believes their wins only count if they did it entirely alone. Any help, however small, makes the achievement feel unearned—fuelling the imposter cycle.
You might recognize:
- struggling to accept help or collaboration,
- working in isolation to avoid “revealing” gaps,
- discounting a successful project because someone else contributed.
Imposter Fix: Reframe collaboration as an enhancement, not a dilution. Practice delegating small tasks and crediting others’ contributions, and the belief that worth comes only from solo wins starts to loosen.
How to Deal With Imposter Syndrome in 6 Steps
Before the tactics, one honest caveat: there’s no RCT-proven, manualized “cure” for imposter syndrome the way there is for, say, depression. As of the mid-2020s, the intervention studies that exist are mostly small or uncontrolled (Bravata et al., 2020, Journal of General Internal Medicine; 2024 scoping review). The good news is that the approaches that have been tested—and that draw on well-established CBT and self-compassion research—consistently help. Here are the ones I recommend.
The Coué Method
Want to change how you talk to yourself? The Coué Method, from psychologist Émile Coué, reshapes self-talk in three steps:
- Choose an anti-imposter phrase—a positive affirmation or personal line. Mine is “I got this” or “small wins.”
- Choose a safe space free from distraction. I like being outside; the fresh air and awe calm me.
- Choose a mental image to pair with the phrase—I picture a butterfly. Repeat the phrase while visualizing the image for a couple of minutes, twice a day.
Over time, your brain gets more hardwired to believe the thoughts you rehearse.
It sounds almost too simple, but it works through the same mechanism as cognitive-behavioral therapy: you’re interrupting an automatic negative thought and deliberately substituting a more accurate one, often enough that the new pattern starts to feel default. The image is the clever part—pairing your phrase with a vivid mental picture gives your brain a faster, stickier shortcut back to it when stress hits.
Pro Tip: When you catch yourself thinking “I don’t deserve this” or “it was just luck,” pause, note the imposter thought, then repeat your phrase and picture your image—before meetings, before speaking, whenever it strikes.
“Go Mad” for 30 Minutes
I promise you’re not as weird as you think—we all have parts we hide. A lot of imposter syndrome comes from those hidden parts, so facing them can defuse them.
Grab paper and write down everything you feel you’re hiding: your most ridiculous beliefs, the parts of your character you’re least proud of, everything that makes you feel like a fraud. You won’t erase these things, but externalizing them puts them in perspective—it genuinely feels like a weight off your chest.
If you’re brave, share a few with a trusted friend. Maybe you wrote that you feel boring or not very funny—and a good friend will remind you that you’re actually hilarious, or point out the kind things you do that you’ve quietly discounted. That kind of honest conversation tends to surface positive parts of your character you’d stopped seeing, and it reminds you that the story in your head isn’t the whole truth.
The Spotlight Effect
The Spotlight Effect is our tendency to believe we’re being noticed and scrutinized far more than we actually are. If you have imposter syndrome, this is almost certainly you.
Reality check: people don’t watch our failures nearly as closely as we imagine—they’re busy with their own.
Thomas Edison reportedly reframed his many failed lightbulb attempts as “10,000 ways that won’t work.” (That quote is famously attributed to him, though its exact origin is debated.) The point stands: history remembers his persistence, not his setbacks.
Action step: in moments of doubt or fear—right before a presentation or meeting where imposter syndrome usually strikes—pause and remind yourself, “Others are far less focused on my mistakes than I am; they’re busy worrying about their own.”
The Power of Small Wins
A student recently asked me whether they should take on more risks. My answer: yes—if they’re purposeful. Purposeful risks that pay off create a small “winner’s rush” that builds momentum.
But more success can feed more imposter syndrome if you don’t let wins sink in. Success needs absorbing time to become part of who you are. A Harvard Business Review analysis of nearly 12,000 journal entries from 238 employees found that capturing small wins boosts motivation and self-confidence. So keep a success journal or gratitude journal and log your wins as they happen.
Reverse Mentorship
Traditional mentorship has an experienced person guiding a less experienced one. Reverse mentorship flips it—letting younger or less experienced people lead—which challenges the idea that value comes only from seniority. How to do it:
- Pair up with someone who brings different skills or perspective.
- Set goals—name the areas where you feel insecure.
- Engage regularly, taking turns teaching each other something new.
Keep a Success File
Writing therapy is a reliable remedy for self-doubt. When the doubts hit, pull out a journal and list five things you’re grateful for, or screenshot and save proof of your wins in a folder labeled “Success File”—kind emails, awards, a comment from someone you helped. We forget, more often than we should, that we’re worth it.
Embrace Public Vulnerability
Feeling brave? Try openly sharing your doubts, fears and perceived failures. Start somewhere safe and appropriate—a blog post, a team meeting, a talk where you feel secure—and focus on the journey: the obstacles, the moments of doubt, and most importantly, what you learned or how you grew.
Real-life example: Before J.K. Rowling became one of the most famous authors alive, she faced a string of rejections and serious personal hardship—life on welfare, depression, and multiple publishers turning down the Harry Potter manuscript. In her 2008 Harvard commencement address, she spoke candidly about the upside of hitting rock bottom: “Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.” (That’s a genuinely verifiable quote from the speech.) Naming your struggles out loud, in the right setting, tends to drain a surprising amount of their power—and often, the people listening relate far more than you’d expect.
Default to Yes
If you’re not already overloaded with responsibility, try changing your default answer to yes:
- Apply for that job even though you don’t meet every single requirement.
- Take the project your boss offers, even if you’re not yet sure how you’ll pull it off.
- Give yourself permission to fail—even if it means risking rejection.
Saying yes to stretch opportunities is how you build the very evidence of competence that imposter syndrome refuses to count. Each time you take something on and survive it, you collect another data point your inner critic can’t easily dismiss. One important caveat: if you’re a people-pleaser who’s already buried in commitments, this tip is not for you—you may need to learn to say no instead, and protect your energy for what actually matters.
Digital Detox
Constant social media invites unfair comparison—influencers and highlight reels can quietly convince you that you don’t measure up, even though you’re seeing other people’s curated best moments against your own unedited reality. A periodic digital detox (unplugging from social media and email for, say, 10 days—you can do it from home or even while traveling as a remote worker) tends to leave people comparing less and feeling happier. Learn how in the video below:
One mechanism research keeps pointing to is self-compassion—treating yourself with the kindness you’d offer a friend. Self-compassion training reliably reduces the self-criticism and shame at the core of imposter syndrome (Javidi et al., 2021, Journal of Clinical Psychology). If you try one thing on this list, make it kinder self-talk.
What Actually Helps, According to the Research
The tactics above aren’t random—they map onto the small but growing body of intervention research. While there’s no single validated “imposter syndrome treatment,” the studies that exist (and the broader, much stronger literature on anxiety and perfectionism) point to a consistent, four-part shape. Think of it as a progression rather than a checklist:
- Psychoeducation—name it and normalize it. Simply learning what imposter syndrome is, how common it is, and that it isn’t a character flaw takes a surprising amount of charge out of it. Group settings help here, because hearing accomplished peers admit the same fears breaks the isolation that feeds the cycle. (This is exactly why Dr. Cokley’s interview and the famous-people examples below matter.)
- Cognitive reframing—challenge the “fraud” story. This is the CBT core: catch the automatic thought (“I only got this because of luck”), examine the evidence against it, and retrain how you explain your own successes. The “go mad” exercise, the success file and the Coué method are all doing versions of this work.
- Self-compassion—soften the self-criticism. Imposter syndrome runs on shame and harsh self-judgment, and self-compassion is the most consistently supported antidote in the research. The aim isn’t to inflate your ego; it’s to talk to yourself the way you’d talk to a capable friend who’s doubting themselves.
- Identity integration—let the wins stick. Finally, actively internalize evidence of your competence (the success file again) and, where you can, push back on the environment that amplifies the feeling. Recovery rarely “completes”—instead, episodes get shorter, milder and easier to recognize for what they are.
Notably, the very first study to describe imposter syndrome back in 1978 already recommended strikingly similar moves: examining how you explain your successes, dropping “magical” over-preparation rituals, and using group conversation to confront the implausibility of having fooled everyone. Nearly five decades later, that intuition has held up better than most of the pop-psychology that’s grown up around it.
Who Gets Imposter Syndrome?
Almost anyone—students, professionals, and wildly accomplished people alike. Michelle Obama, Maya Angelou and Neil Gaiman have all spoken about it. Here’s Tom Hanks admitting he sometimes feels like a fraud (timestamp 0it ):
A myth worth retiring: imposter syndrome is not a women-only experience. Early work framed it that way, but later research finds men and women report imposter thoughts at broadly similar rates, and that those thoughts are situational rather than a fixed trait (MIT Sloan, 2022). What does raise the odds is being underrepresented in a competitive setting—women in male-dominated fields, and racial or ethnic minorities and first-generation students in high-pressure academic environments, tend to report higher imposter feelings, driven by stereotyping, isolation and a lack of same-background role models (Bravata et al., 2020).
One striking thread in the research: the environment often matters more than the individual. Studies of first-generation college students found that in non-competitive classrooms, their imposter feelings match their peers’—but drop them into a competitive, “weed-out” climate and their day-to-day imposter feelings spike, predicting lower attendance, engagement and grades. In other words, a chunk of what gets experienced as personal inadequacy is actually a response to an opaque, high-pressure system. That reframes part of the solution away from “fix yourself” and toward changing the context: reducing needlessly competitive norms, demystifying the unwritten rules of a field, and providing mentors who share your background so the experience feels less isolating. If you’re a leader or teacher, that’s leverage you hold over other people’s imposter syndrome, not just your own.
And the effects are real. Imposter feelings are robustly linked to anxiety and burnout—especially emotional exhaustion. In some professional samples, high anxiety is associated with roughly six-fold higher odds of meeting the bar for imposter syndrome, and the link to burnout is even stronger: among the most emotionally exhausted workers in certain studies, the odds run several times higher still (global prevalence meta-analysis, 2024). Medical and nursing students with high imposter scores also report significantly more anxiety and depression. Left unaddressed, imposter syndrome can dent job performance and satisfaction, too. Above all it feeds a loop: the self-doubt drives overwork, the overwork drives exhaustion, and the exhaustion deepens the self-doubt—which is exactly why catching it early matters.
A Note on Prevalence (and That 70% Stat)
You’ll see “70% of people experience imposter syndrome” everywhere. Treat it skeptically: there’s no solid primary source for that exact figure, and a major review of 62 studies found reported prevalence ranging anywhere from 9% to 82%, depending entirely on the population studied and where researchers drew the cut-off on the measurement scale (Bravata et al., 2020). The honest takeaway isn’t a precise percentage—it’s that imposter feelings are common, particularly in high-achieving and professional groups, where some studies put it above 60%.
Perfectionism & Imposter Syndrome
Perfectionists often set themselves up for the very inadequacy they fear—it’s one of the most common and self-reinforcing routes into imposter syndrome.
Example: Picture a graphic designer named Alex. A project has already been client-approved, but Alex keeps tweaking it, hunting for any flaw that might “expose” them as less skilled than people think. The work ships late—not for any lack of talent, but because the quest for perfection paralyzed them. The irony is brutal: the behavior meant to prevent being seen as a fraud is the very thing that creates the missed deadline they’ll then beat themselves up over.
At the root is a deep fear of failure and exposure. Perfectionists dread mistakes, overcompensate to hide perceived flaws, and feel they must conceal any imperfection to keep their status. That constant pressure and fear of being “found out” is fertile ground for imposter syndrome.
The Origin of Imposter Syndrome
In 1978, psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes published the first paper on the imposter phenomenon, based on high-achieving women who felt they didn’t deserve their success. It was a clinical, descriptive study—no control group or standardized measure (the Clance Imposter Phenomenon Scale came later)—and its sample was narrow, so its original gender framing has since been widely revised. The core insight, though, has held up across decades, genders and fields.
What Is the Opposite of Imposter Syndrome?
The rough opposite is the Dunning-Kruger effect—when people with limited skill overestimate their ability. It’s a real and widely cited finding, though it’s often oversimplified in pop psychology (and has genuine statistical critiques), so hold the cartoon version loosely.
Can you have both? Yes—you can feel like a fraud in one domain and overconfident in another. Both cause problems if unaddressed; if overconfidence is your risk, read up on survivorship bias.
Bonus: Stop Feeling Like a Fraud
To recap, here’s my video on imposter syndrome and how to stop feeling like a fraud:
And if you need it framed as a strength, Atlassian co-CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes turned his own imposter syndrome into an asset in this TED Talk:
It’s OK to feel like an imposter sometimes—just don’t let it define you, and don’t go it alone. Alongside working on imposter syndrome directly, building your underlying confidence and self-esteem gives you a sturdier foundation.
What’s your imposter syndrome story? Let me know in the comments. Next, read How to Look and Feel Confident.
References
- Clance, P. R., & Imes, S. A. (1978). The impostor phenomenon in high achieving women. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. PDF
- Bravata, D. M., et al. (2020). Prevalence, predictors, and treatment of impostor syndrome: a systematic review. Journal of General Internal Medicine. PMC
- Global prevalence of impostor syndrome among health service providers (2024). PMC
- Impostor phenomenon interventions: a scoping review (2024). PMC
- New research debunks 4 myths about impostor syndrome (2022). MIT Sloan. MIT Sloan
- Javidi, H., et al. (2021). A randomized controlled trial of self-compassion. Journal of Clinical Psychology. PDF
- Young, V. (2011). The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women — five competence types. Impostor Syndrome Institute
- Amabile, T., & Kramer, S. (2011). The power of small wins. Harvard Business Review. HBR
