Overcoming Impostor Syndrome: Why 'Fake It Till You Make It' Is Terrible Advice

Fernanda: If someone has ever told you to just fake it till you make it, I want you to know they mean well, but they were wrong. That phrase has been repeated so many times that it feels like wisdom.

However, if you're a high-achieving woman who has ever sat in a room and thought, "I don't belong here; they're going to figure me out," you already know that pretending didn't make the feeling go away. It just gave you one more thing to manage on top of everything else.

Today, we are talking about impostor syndrome: what it actually is, why it hits hardest on the people who are most qualified, and what actually works instead of faking it.

Hi, I'm Fernanda. I'm a people development consultant, and I work with organizations to develop their leaders and teams, with a soft spot for women's leadership challenges. Impostor syndrome is one of the topics I come back to again and again.

I came to it when I was leading women's ERGs, developing my team, and mentoring young women, and it still comes up today when I'm coaching professional women. I want to be clear: I'm not talking about people who are underprepared. I'm talking about the women who are over prepared, over-credentialed, and still quietly convinced that they don't deserve to be in the room. Let's get into it.

First, let's define what we're actually talking about, because the term gets misused a lot. Impostor syndrome was first identified in 1978 by psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes.

They were studying high-achieving women with advanced degrees, strong track records, and real accomplishments. They kept finding the same pattern: these women believed that their success was due to luck, timing, or charm—not based on their skill, effort, or inherent capability.

Impostor syndrome is a persistent internal experience of feeling like a fraud despite external evidence of competence. It is not across-the-board low self-esteem. People with impostor syndrome often function at a very high level and aren't necessarily insecure in every area of their lives.

They can be warm, confident, and socially at ease, yet still feel completely exposed the moment someone questions their expertise or evaluates them. It's also not a clinical diagnosis; it is a pattern, a psychological experience, and it's remarkably common.

Here's the part that surprises people: impostor syndrome is more common in high achievers, not less. When you're highly capable, you're usually also highly aware. You see the complexity of what you don't know, understand the gap between where you are and true mastery, and set the bar exceptionally high while measuring yourself against it constantly.

Meanwhile, someone with less self-awareness doesn't share that internal calibration and may not see the gap at all. In psychology, this is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect: the less you know, the more confident you feel.

The cruel irony is that the better you are, the more you feel your own limitations, and the more you accomplish, the higher the stakes feel for getting found out. There is also a compounding factor for women specifically. Research consistently shows that women in many professional environments face a double bind: they are evaluated more harshly for the same level of performance, and they internalize that scrutiny until external skepticism becomes an internal voice. This isn't a character flaw, but an understandable response to environments that haven't always treated women's competence as a given.

I want to pause and get personal here, because this topic doesn't land the same way when it's just theory. I've experienced impostor syndrome myself—I still do sometimes—and there were two situations in my career where it hit me hardest.

The first was every time I started a new job. It didn't matter how prepared I was, how strong my track record was, or how much I knew going in. There was always a period at the beginning where I looked around at everyone who seemed so comfortable and thought, "They all know something I don't, and it's only a matter of time before they realize I'm still figuring this out."

The second was during high-stress seasons marked by pressure, uncertainty, and change. During the pandemic, that inner voice grew so much louder, as if the stress stripped away whatever confidence I had built and dropped me back at square one.

Those two triggers—transitions and stress—are exactly when impostor syndrome tends to spike for everyone. It isn't unique to me, nor is it a sign that something is wrong with me; it is a very human response to feeling exposed and uncertain.

Knowing that didn't automatically make it disappear, however. I still had to learn what to actually do with it, and that's where the advice to "just fake it" fell short. Performing confidence when I was already stretched thin wasn't sustainable; I needed something real.

Why is "fake it till you make it" the wrong prescription? First, it's cognitively exhausting. If you already feel like a fraud, performing confidence adds another layer of effort, forcing you to manage an act on top of doing your actual job in a way that drains your bandwidth over time.

Second, it reinforces the lie. Faking it is built on the premise that who you actually are isn't enough, implicitly confirming to yourself each time that your real self needs to stay hidden.

Third, it disconnects you from your actual strengths. Authentic authority comes from knowing what you know and why you know it. Performing a version of confidence that isn't grounded in real experience is brittle and cracks under pressure, whereas real confidence does not.

So, what does work? Here are three strategies you can actually use.

Strategy one: name it to tame it. When that impostor feeling shows up, recognize it as a pattern rather than the truth to create distance between yourself and the sensation. Instead of thinking, "I don't belong here," try framing it as, "There's that impostor feeling again." You aren't suppressing it; you're simply shifting from being consumed by the feeling to observing it, which allows you to choose your response.

Strategy two: build an evidence file. Keep a running document—a note on your phone or a dedicated folder in your email—where you collect concrete proof of your competence. Save emails where someone thanked you, projects that went well, moments where you navigated something difficult, and specific positive feedback.

Impostor syndrome thrives on vague fear and selective memory, obsessing over the one mistake while ignoring the thirty successes. An evidence file counters that distortion with data. Review it before a high-stakes meeting or a performance review, and be sure to build it before you enter high-stress periods when you need it most.

Strategy three: re-frame from "Do I belong?" to "What can I contribute?" When you enter a room wondering if you belong, you are stuck in evaluation mode, waiting to be judged with every moment treated as a test.

When you ask what you can contribute, you shift into contribution mode, focusing on the work rather than your worthiness. Paradoxically, that outward focus is what builds belonging. You don't have to wait to feel like you belong before you contribute; you contribute, and belonging follows.

Impostor syndrome doesn't mean you aren't ready—it often means you care deeply, possess self-awareness, and are challenging yourself in demanding spaces. The goal isn't necessarily to eliminate the feeling entirely, but to stop letting it make decisions for you.

If you are a leader working through this individually, I hope these three strategies give you a practical place to start. And if you work in HR or leadership development and see this in your women leaders, this is the exact work I help organizations implement.

If you'd like to bring these programs to your team, reach out through the link in the description. Subscribe for more content on leadership and the human side of organizational life, and let me know in the comments: have you ever experienced impostor syndrome during a major transition or stressful season? I'd love to hear your story, and I'll see you in the next one.

Fernanda Brasileiro

People Development Consultant & Strategist

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