Impostor Syndrome: Everyone’s a Fraud (But Some of Us Make It Look Professional)
Learn why impostor syndrome persists even among top performers, and how workplace culture quietly fuels this invisible crisis.
Scientists, psychologists, and managers seem to agree that impostor syndrome is a uniquely cursed condition. It’s the only psychological affliction where the symptoms are actively rewarded.
High-functioning self-loathing gets mistaken for humility,
Chronic anxiety is cleverly rebranded as “attention to detail.”
The more you doubt yourself, the more others entrust you with leadership responsibilities. It’s capitalism’s favorite mental illness.
And success is not the antidote. In fact, it makes things worse. You can ascend the ladder two rungs at a time and still lie awake at night convinced you got promoted by accident. A clerical error. A glitch in the (HR) matrix. You work harder to compensate for the fraud you imagine yourself to be, which makes you seem more competent, which leads to more promotions, which reinforces the fraud narrative, and so on, until you’re an executive whispering “I have no idea what I’m doing” into your coffee mug.
Evidence doesn’t count. Praise doesn’t stick. But the fear? Oh, the fear is productive. Which is why no one actually wants to fix it. You’re useful this way.
Impostor Syndrome Strikes Only the People Who Shouldn’t Have It
Impostor syndrome seems to exist precisely where it makes the least sense. The people feeling it most deeply are often the ones with accolades, credentials, and corner offices. Statistically, yes, it’s more prevalent among women and minorities, but make no mistake: straight, white, wealthy men have also entered the chat.
Albert Einstein thought of himself as an “involuntary swindler.”
John Steinbeck, mid-masterpiece, feared he’d been conning the public.
Neil Armstrong, after walking on the moon, still looked around and thought, “What am I even doing here?”
If these guys didn’t feel qualified, what chance do the rest of us have?
And then, of course, there are the other ones.
The overpromoted.
The people who show up to a job interview with three bullet points and leave as senior vice president.
They breeze through the day with the calm certainty of someone who has never been burdened by introspection. These are the chosen few who should feel like impostors but instead run entire departments.
Impostor syndrome, therefore, is insulting in its irony. It rewards the clueless and torments the competent. The people we’d most trust to fly the plane are the ones sweating in the cockpit, convinced they faked their pilot’s license. Meanwhile, the guy with zero training is up in first class confidently suggesting they just “wing it.”
It’s reverse Darwinism, where self-doubt is a sign of fitness, and survival belongs to the most obliviously self-assured.
The Invisible Meltdown That Looks Like Success to Everyone Else
To the casual observer, someone with impostor syndrome is living a clean-cut LinkedIn fantasy.
Early promotions,
High-profile projects,
“Go-to” status on the team.
They show up, over-deliver, nod thoughtfully in meetings, and make stress look like ambition. They are celebrated. Trusted. Occasionally envied. Everyone assumes they are quietly proud of themselves. In reality, they are quietly spiraling.
Imagine being trapped in a psychological escape room, where all the clues suggest one thing: you don’t belong here. The walls are lined with certificates and glowing performance reviews, none of which open the door. You tug on the only thread available, and it reads, “Maybe you’re not good enough. Maybe Thursday is your final day.”
This is the core absurdity of the impostor experience. It operates like a bad radio signal. There are two channels.
Channel A plays the actual soundtrack of your life: praise, promotions, bonuses, success.
Channel B mutters, “They haven’t figured it out yet.”
Naturally, the brain cranks up Channel B and builds a bunker inside it.
Researchers call this attribution bias. But we’ll call it emotional tax fraud, where your brain audits all your achievements and files them under “illegitimate gains.”
And then there’s romance. God help anyone dating an impostor.
Love is mistaken for confusion.
Affirmation becomes a suspicious lie.
Support is treated as complicity.
It’s not that the impostor doesn’t believe in love; it’s that they’re convinced you’ve fallen for a carefully maintained illusion. Romantic… in the way a fire drill during dinner is romantic.
This is high-functioning emotional distortion, perfectly masked by competent behavior. And in the professional world, that kind of breakdown isn’t punished. It’s promoted.
Thriving, Suffering, or Catastrophically Imploding Together
Impostor syndrome adapts to industries, to roles, to cultures. It thrives wherever expectations are high, ambiguity is dense, and self-worth is measured quarterly. The results vary wildly depending on what kind of cultural soil you plant it in.
A. Competitive, Elite Environments: A Fertile Oasis for Self-Doubt
Drop someone with impostor syndrome into a hyper-competitive arena like finance, consulting, academia, or big tech, and you’ll witness something incredible. Their anxiety blooms.
Sixteen-hour days? No problem.
Constant vigilance? Comes standard.
The fear of being exposed as mediocre keeps them productive, responsive, and easily exploitable.
These environments love to say things like “we only hire the top 1%,” which to a normal person sounds impressive. To the impostor brain, it’s a death sentence. The message isn’t “you’re good,” it’s “we’re watching, and if you slip, you’re out.”
Every success feels provisional.
Every meeting is a chance to be unmasked.
This tension produces great work… until the crash, which is less glamorous than the résumé would suggest.
B. Supportive Cultures: Where Impostors Expand Their Wings and Panic Anyway
You’d think a warm, collaborative workplace might soothe things. And it helps, a little. These are the places where managers say things like, “It’s okay to not know everything,” and encourage psychological safety.
But impostor syndrome is nothing if not paranoid.
It hears kindness and thinks, “Trap.”
It sees support and smells performance review bait.
The result is someone sitting in an Herman Miller chair, surrounded by supportive colleagues, convinced it’s all a setup.
C. Toxic Cultures: Petri Dishes Designed by Satan Himself
Then there’s the dark side. Cultures where ambiguity reigns, feedback is inconsistent, and politics matter more than performance. In these places, impostor syndrome becomes policy.
For the impostor, every task is a test. Every meeting feels like a trial. Every email without a smiley face is read as a veiled threat. It’s a kind of low-grade professional psychosis, complete with interpretive paranoia and catastrophized self-talk.
Of course, these same environments often reward the chaos.
Productivity spikes.
Employees over-function.
The fear of failure produces a short-term brilliance that looks great in a quarterly report. And then the meltdown arrives, right on schedule. Management writes it off as a “performance issue.” HR schedules resilience training. The cycle continues.
Should We Pity the Impostors or Suggest They Get Over Themselves?
Impostor syndrome is a deeply unpleasant experience, sure. But it’s also happening, in large part, to the exact people society tends to applaud, promote, and give expensive coffee to. So the question becomes: is it worthy of our sympathy, or just self-inflicted suffering with a good narrative?
There’s a real case for compassion. Impostor syndrome is not some cute little quirk of high-achievers. It’s chronic, persistent, and tightly woven into identity, upbringing, perfectionism, and cultural messaging. It doesn’t politely exit after a few wins. If anything, success throws it into a full sprint. It’s exhausting. People with it often live in a constant state of internal warfare, driving themselves harder to “earn” what they already have, and then collapsing under the belief they still haven’t.
And yet, they are often elite performers.
High-output.
Detail-oriented.
Unfailingly conscientious.
Capitalism absolutely loves them.
They rarely ask for more.
They quietly accept too much.
They burn out on schedule.
Meanwhile, peers look on and think, “I’d kill to have their career.”
That’s where sympathy gets complicated. It’s hard to feel sorry for someone who has what others are desperately chasing.
Job stability.
Recognition.
Achievement.
It creates a perception gap: others see success, but the impostor sees fraud. One side sees a lucky break, the other sees an impending unraveling.
The deeper issue is that impostor syndrome is almost invisible. You don’t see the panic, the second-guessing, the 2 a.m. perfection edits. You see the output. And that output is often exceptional. So, we assume the person feels exceptional too. They don’t. Not even close.
They’re not broken. But they’re misaligned. Internally punished for doing well, and externally rewarded for looking fine. It’s a bad loop. And no, they can’t just “get over it.” It isn’t software you uninstall.
Impostor syndrome sits in the uncomfortable grey zone between professional fuel and psychological fire hazard.
For organizations, it’s a gift that keeps on giving: high performance, low ego, and a workforce too busy doubting themselves to demand anything inconvenient, like boundaries.
For the individual, it’s a slow-cooking existential stew. Motivating, yes. But also exhausting. And frequently laced with cortisol.
It is both wildly illogical and maddeningly consistent.
Success doesn’t kill it.
Recognition doesn’t soothe it.
If anything, the more you achieve, the worse it gets. It thrives in the same environments that love perfection, competition, and “leaning in.” It flatters capitalism with free overtime, then quietly chews through the emotional well-being of top performers.
It’s embedded. It’s systemic. And unlike its sufferers, it never questions its place in the room.
So next time someone confesses they feel like a fraud, don’t rush to correct them. Don’t say “You’re amazing!” or “But look at your résumé!” Just nod with the quiet respect you’d show someone who’s been running a mental marathon in dress shoes.
At StratEx - Indonesia Business Advisory we work with candidates to uncover strengths, reshape narratives, and make empowered career shifts. Contact us to build the confidence and strategy to move into roles that match your potential.