What Is Imposter Syndrome and Why Does It Hit Hardest at the Top

Imposter syndrome is far more common than most high achievers assume. An often-quoted estimate suggests around 70% of people experience it at some point (Sakulku & Alexander, 2011) — though that figure is best treated as an estimate rather than a hard measurement. The most rigorous review to date, a 2020 systematic review in the Journal of General Internal Medicine covering 62 studies and 14,161 people, found prevalence rates ranging from 9% to 82% depending on how it is measured (Bravata et al., 2020). Among senior leaders the figures run higher still: a 2020 KPMG study of 750 executive women found 75% had experienced imposter syndrome in their careers, and 81% said they put more pressure on themselves not to fail than their male peers (KPMG, 2020).

It matters because it rarely travels alone. As the Journal of General Internal Medicine review concluded:

“Impostor syndrome is often comorbid with depression and anxiety and is associated with impaired job performance, job satisfaction, and burnout among various employee populations including clinicians.”

Bravata et al., Journal of General Internal Medicine, 2020

The five types of imposter syndrome

Imposter syndrome is not one thing. Building on the original 1978 research by psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes, Dr Valerie Young identified five “competence types”, each with a different hidden rule for what counts as good enough:

Framework: Dr Valerie Young, Impostor Syndrome Institute.

Sources

• Clance, P. R. & Imes, S. A. (1978). The Imposter Phenomenon in High Achieving Women. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice, 15(3), 241–247.
• Sakulku, J. & Alexander, J. (2011). The Impostor Phenomenon. International Journal of Behavioral Science, 6(1), 73–92.
• Bravata, D. M., et al. (2020). Prevalence, Predictors, and Treatment of Impostor Syndrome: A Systematic Review. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 35, 1252–1275.
• KPMG (2020). KPMG Study Finds 75% of Female Executives Have Experienced Imposter Syndrome.

The term was coined in 1978 by psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes, who observed a specific pattern in high-achieving women: despite objective evidence of success and competence, these women consistently attributed their achievements to luck, timing, or the perceptions of others rather than to genuine ability, and lived with a persistent fear that they would be “found out.”

Subsequent research extended the observation to include men, and across a wide range of high-achieving populations. Estimates vary, but studies suggest that between 70% and 82% of people experience imposter syndrome at some point in their lives, with higher rates in high-achieving, high-visibility professional environments.

What the original research identified, and what subsequent decades of clinical work have confirmed, is that imposter syndrome is not a reflection of actual competence. It is a psychological pattern that operates independently of the evidence. This is what makes it so persistent. The evidence does not resolve it. The next achievement does not resolve it. The next promotion does not resolve it. The wiring does not update on the basis of results.

Self-doubt is normal and in many contexts adaptive. When you are doing something genuinely new or genuinely stretching, some degree of uncertainty about your readiness is appropriate. It keeps you learning. It keeps you preparing.

Imposter syndrome is different. It persists in situations where genuine uncertainty is not warranted. It fires in the high-stakes meeting where you have more expertise than anyone in the room. It surfaces before the client conversation where your track record speaks for itself. It shows up precisely in the contexts where it is least accurate, because it is not a reading of the current situation. It is a wired pattern that was built long before the current situation and is now being applied to it regardless of fit.

This distinction matters practically. If your self-doubt is accurate, addressing it means building skill. If it is imposter syndrome, addressing it means changing the wiring. Confusing the two produces the wrong intervention.

There is a paradox at the heart of imposter syndrome that is particularly pronounced in business owners and senior executives.

The higher you have climbed, the more you have to lose. The more visible your success, the higher the perceived cost of being found out. And the further you are from the early stages of your career, when uncertainty was expected and contextually appropriate, the more conspicuous the internal experience of doubt feels.

There is also a specific dynamic in people who have driven their success through relentless effort. When you are the kind of person who compensates for doubt by working harder, preparing more thoroughly, and over-delivering on every commitment, success arrives partly through that compensation. And because it arrived partly through over-effort rather than through relaxed confidence, the unconscious mind attributes it to the effort rather than to the capability. The doubt that produced the effort gets reinforced rather than resolved by the result.

High achievement, in this way, can be the very thing that sustains imposter syndrome rather than eliminating it.

The most common experience of people with imposter syndrome is exactly this: they know, rationally, that the syndrome is not an accurate reflection of their competence. They have had the insight. They have been told they are good enough. They have compiled the evidence. And none of it changes the pattern.

This is not weakness. It is neuroscience.

Imposter syndrome operates at the subcortical level. The unconscious mind, not the conscious, thinking brain. The pattern fires automatically, before conscious thought can evaluate it. By the time you are aware of the imposter response, it has already happened.

Conscious reasoning, insight, reassurance, and cognitive challenge all operate at the cortical level. They can add new information to the conscious mind’s understanding of the situation. They cannot reach and change the subcortical programme that is producing the response.

This is why the approaches that produce the most durable change in imposter syndrome are those that operate at the unconscious level: NLP, clinical hypnotherapy, and the integration of both within a process like the REWIRE Method™. And it is why the approaches that produce the least durable change are those that work primarily through insight and conscious reframing.

Understanding imposter syndrome does not remove it. That is the honest and important thing to say about this guide and about every book, article, and podcast on the subject.

Understanding helps. Knowing that what you are experiencing has a name, a pattern, and a cause, and that 70% of high achievers experience it, reduces the shame and the self-criticism. That is not nothing.

But understanding does not change the wiring. What changes the wiring is intervention at the level of the wiring.

Imposter syndrome coaching through the REWIRE Method™ uses NLP and clinical hypnotherapy to access the unconscious programme producing the imposter syndrome response and change it at the neurological level. The change is not a shift in how you think about imposter syndrome. It is a shift in the automatic response itself.

If you are ready to find out what that change would look like in your specific situation, the Pressure and Performance Diagnostic Reset Call is the place to start.

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