Imposter Syndrome: Believing You're Not Worthy of Your Own Success

Imposter syndrome is what happens when your sovereign is so deflated that you can't internalize your own accomplishments. You achieve something and immediately discount it. You were just lucky. Someone else did the real work. You don't actually deserve to be here. Someone's going to figure out that you're a fraud. The evidence of your competence is right in front of you, but you can't integrate it because you've learned not to trust your own judgment about yourself.

Your deflated sovereign doesn't believe you're allowed to be successful. It learned early that success was for other people—people smarter than you, people from better families, people who looked a certain way. Not you. So even when you accomplish things, you're waiting for the other shoe to drop. You're waiting to be exposed as the imposter you believe you are.

Imposter syndrome reflects a deflated sovereign that doesn't trust its own judgment about itself or its accomplishments.