Imposter syndrome: why you feel like a fraud at work

What is imposter syndrome, and is it a diagnosis?

Imposter syndrome describes an experience, and no diagnostic manual lists it as a disorder.

• The classification. A review published in 2025 states that the impostor phenomenon “is not classified as a psychiatric disorder” in DSM-5 or ICD-10.
• The origin. The same review dates the term to 1978, when the psychologists Clance and Imes described it while working with high-achieving women.
• How common. A systematic review of 62 studies covering 14.161 people found reported rates ranging “from 9 to 82% largely depending on the screening tool and cutoff used”.
• What that range means. A range that wide is no measurement, so treat any single percentage you read with suspicion.
• What it feels like. You got the job and the reviews, and you walk out certain you have got away with it again, with further to fall.

Why does success not make the feeling go away?

Success does not settle the feeling because of what you do with the result immediately afterwards. I call it a filing error: you apply one standard to everybody else and a harsher one to yourself, and then you treat the difference as information about your worth.

• The loop. The 2025 review says people “temporarily feel successful”, then “fail to internalize this success, leading to persistent feelings of fear, anxiety, and fraudulence”.
• Good results go out. You hand every good result to something outside your ability: the brief was easy, the others were weak, you worked absurd hours, they were being kind.
• Bad results come in. You hand every bad result straight to yourself.
• The empty column. Run that ledger for years and the column marked evidence of competence stays empty, because nothing is ever allowed in.
• Praise. You read praise as politeness, or as proof that the person has not seen you closely enough yet.
• Rising stakes. Each success gives you a bigger reputation to be caught out with.

Read more about struggling in silence.

Who feels like a fraud at work?

Men and women of every working age feel like a fraud at work.

• Both sexes, all ages. The systematic review found it “common among both men and women and across a range of age groups (adolescents to late-stage professionals)”.
• It travels with other things. The review reports that it “is often comorbid with depression and anxiety and is associated with impaired job performance, job satisfaction, and burnout”.
• Part of a larger picture. When you are exhausted and enjoy nothing, the fraud feeling is often one part of something wider.
• The evidence has limits. The authors state that the studies “were heterogeneous; publication bias may be present”, so take the direction and leave the decimal places.

Read more about an identity crisis.

Is it me, or is it the room I am in?

Part of it is the room, because where you sit in a hierarchy shapes these feelings.

• The word syndrome. Researchers writing in Frontiers in Psychology argue that it “gives the impression that the individuals who experience it are patients”, which “implies a medical model of dysfunction within the individual”.
• Stereotyped groups. They note that the groups most often linked to the label, “such as women and ethnic minorities”, are also “subject to persistent negative stereotyping”.
• Change the setting. They argue for changing the setting, which “might also have the benefit of preventing impostor feelings, as opposed to merely combatting them once they emerge”.
• Arriving as the outsider. A study of 221 international students in Hungary reported that 41,2 per cent had “frequent and intense imposter feelings”, and it is one study in one country.
• Language. In my clinical view, working all day in a language you learned later makes you slower, less precise and less funny, and you read that gap as proof that you are not good enough when it is evidence about words.

Read more about therapy in your second language.

What happens when the standard is all or nothing?

An all-or-nothing standard turns every ordinary gap in your knowledge into the moment of exposure.

• No middle position. You are either completely on top of this or a fraud who has been lucky so far.
• Perfectionism. In my clinical view perfectionism and the fraud feeling are joined at the hip, and the all-or-nothing rule is the joint.
• Loosen the rule. A normal professional gap stops counting as proof of anything, and the fraud feeling loses most of its evidence.
• Love tied to performing. When you learned early that being loved depended on performing, failing threatens belonging.
• An old rule. The rule that decides what counts was usually written long before this job.

Read more about anxious attachment and what your attachment style is.

How do you stop feeling like a fraud at work?

You stop feeling like a fraud by changing what you allow yourself to count as proof, and no tested method exists for it. The 2020 systematic review reported flatly: “No published studies evaluated treatments for this condition.” Anybody promising a method is going past the evidence.

• Stop arguing with achievements. You have tried that, and the achievements go into the same broken file.
• Write the plain line. For the next 2 weeks, after anything that goes reasonably well, write one line: what you did, and what happened.
• No escape hatch. Add no explanation and hand no credit to anybody else, and pay attention to the discomfort of leaving the line bare.
• Say it out loud. Tell one person who does not immediately reassure you.
• Watch the compliment. Notice what you do with praise in the moment it arrives.
• Test the standard. Ask what you would say about a colleague who had done exactly what you did.
• Read the room. Notice whether your workplace rewards certainty and punishes questions, because some workplaces produce this feeling efficiently and then call it a personal failing.

These steps fail when the plain line gets its escape hatch back every time you write it. That is what the session is for.

Questions people ask

Is imposter syndrome a mental health diagnosis?

No, the impostor phenomenon is not classified as a psychiatric disorder in DSM-5 or ICD-10. It describes an experience that many people recognise.

Why do I feel like a fraud when I am good at my job?

Competence and the feeling of competence are stored separately. When luck explains every success and you explain every mistake, the evidence never reaches the place where it would change how you feel.

Does imposter syndrome go away on its own?

Sometimes it eases as a role becomes familiar, and I would not put a timetable on it. Waiting for a big enough achievement does not help, because the pattern discounts whatever arrives.

Is imposter syndrome only a problem for women?

No, the largest systematic review found it common among both men and women and across age groups.

Does therapy help with imposter syndrome?

No published studies have evaluated treatments for it, so nobody is able to quote you a success rate. Therapy works on the rule that decides what counts as proof, and on what you do with praise and with mistakes.

Sources

• Bravata, D. M. et al., Prevalence, predictors, and treatment of impostor syndrome: a systematic review, Journal of General Internal Medicine, 2020
• Feenstra, S. et al., Contextualizing the impostor “syndrome”, Frontiers in Psychology, 2020
• Al Lawati, A. et al., Impostor phenomenon: a narrative review of manifestations, diagnosis, and treatment, Middle East Current Psychiatry, 2025
• Emeke, O. C., Gebregergis, W. T. and Csukonyi, C., Unmasking imposter syndrome: prevalence and associations with demographic and academic factors among international students in Hungary, Journal of International Students, 2026

How this article was written. I choose the subject and the angle. An AI assistant researches and drafts. Nothing is published until I have read it, corrected it and stood behind every clinical statement in it. The professional and clinical judgement is mine and mine alone.