Why You Feel Like an Imposter — Even When You’re Not

By Keeley Matthews, The RelationSHIFT Counsellor - 4 minute read

Relational psychodynamic counselling for high-achieving women in Epping, Essex, with in-person sessions in Loughton and online across the UK.

This is the final article in a series exploring the internal experience of high-achieving women.

You may find it helpful to read the earlier pieces first:

→ Why High-Achieving Women Struggle to Ask for Help‍ ‍

→ The Hidden Cost of Being the ‘Capable One’

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From the outside, there may be very little sign that anything is wrong.

You manage things well. You're capable. You're trusted.

And yet something doesn't quite settle. A nagging sense that you're getting away with something — that sooner or later, something will be noticed, questioned, found out.

Not dramatically. Just enough to make it hard to fully relax into what you're doing.

What it looks like

It shows up in ways that are easy to dismiss, because they seem small.

You brush past positive feedback. You find it easier to catalogue what went wrong than to sit with what went right. When something goes well, there's a brief moment — and then your attention is already moving to the next thing, the next responsibility, the next thing to get right.

The achievement lands, but the feeling doesn't. And you're not quite sure why.

The contradiction that doesn't add up

The strange thing about imposter feelings is that they tend not to respond to evidence.

The more capable you become, the more the doubt seems to keep pace. Externally, the evidence accumulates. Internally, the reference point keeps moving. What felt like enough before no longer quite does — so you keep going, keep proving, keep managing. And the gap between what you've done and what you feel never quite closes.

Where it comes from

This rarely appears out of nowhere. It tends to develop alongside other ways of coping — ways of being that formed early and made sense at the time.

For many of the women I work with, it sits alongside having become the person who holds things together. The one who anticipates, adapts, stays steady, doesn't ask for much. When that's been your role for long enough, your sense of worth can quietly become tied to how well you continue to perform it. Not consciously. But in something older and more ingrained than conscious thought. (I explore this more in the hidden cost of being the capable one.)

The imposter feeling is often what happens when someone has learned to measure their worth by what they do rather than who they are. Success keeps the feeling at bay — but only just, and only briefly.

Why it persists

Trying to think your way out of it rarely works. You can know, rationally, that you're not an imposter. You can list the evidence. You can tell yourself it's just a feeling.

And the feeling remains.

That's because it isn't really about evidence. It's a pattern — one that was laid down before logic had much say in the matter, and one that tends to resist being argued out of existence. This is why the standard self-help advice — keep a wins list, challenge your negative thoughts — often doesn't touch it. You're addressing the symptom, not the source.

The link to asking for help

If part of you already feels like you're barely keeping up the appearance of coping, asking for help becomes almost impossible. It feels like it would confirm the very thing you're most afraid of — that you're not as capable as everyone thinks.

So instead you keep going. You work it out internally. You carry it. (I write more about this in why high-achieving women struggle to ask for help.)

And the effort of that — of managing not just the work but the internal experience of it — is considerable. Even when it doesn't look that way from the outside.

What it costs

Over time it becomes tiring in a way that's hard to explain to someone who hasn't felt it. It's not just the work — it's the vigilance. The constant low-level preparation. The sense of always needing to stay on top of things so nothing slips.

Rest is difficult not because you don't want it, but because something in you doesn't fully believe you've earned it. And even in the moments when things are going well, there's often a quiet tension running underneath — a waiting for something to go wrong.

Where change begins

It doesn't begin with convincing yourself you're good enough. In my experience, that approach tends to just add another layer of pressure — now you have to feel differently too.

It begins with curiosity rather than correction. Noticing how quickly you move past what you've done well. Noticing the standards you hold yourself to and where they came from. Noticing what happens in the moment something goes right — and how long that feeling actually stays before something else moves in to replace it.

Not to force a different response. But to start understanding the pattern well enough to see it — which is usually the first thing that loosens it.

A different way of relating to yourself

Feeling like an imposter doesn't mean you are one. It usually means something earlier hasn't quite been integrated — a sense of worth that was always conditional, always dependent on performance, always one mistake away from being withdrawn.

That's not a thinking problem. It's a relational one. And it responds to a relational approach.

Therapy can offer a space to understand this in context — not to be told you're good enough, but to actually come to feel it. Slowly, and in a way that holds. (You can read more about how I work here.)

If any of this resonates, you're welcome to find out more about how I work — or to book a free 15-minute consultation. It's just a conversation, with no pressure to commit to anything.

I offer both in-person sessions in Loughton and online-therapy across the UK.

If this feels familiar, you're not alone in it.

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Read the full series again

Start from the beginning:
→ Why High-Achieving Women Struggle to Ask for Help

Keeley Matthews

The RelationSHIFT Counsellor

Keeley Matthews is a relational psychodynamic counsellor holding a Post Graduate Diploma in Psychodynamic Counselling and is a member of the BACP. She works with high-achieving women in Loughton and online across the UK — and has lived experience of the patterns she writes about. She knows what it is to build defences that work, and what it takes to understand what they cost you.

In brief: Imposter syndrome persists even after success because it isn't an evidence problem — it's a pattern rooted in how self-worth was formed early in life. For many high-achieving women, the internal sense of not being enough developed alongside the role of being capable and reliable for others. Understanding where that pattern began is usually what shifts it — not self-help strategies or positive thinking.

Relational psychodynamic counselling in Loughton, Essex and online across the UK offers a way to understand and work through these patterns at their root.