Awareness & Imposter Syndrome
When people come to therapy for imposter feelings, they often want to jump straight to the solution:
“How do I stop feeling this way?”
“How can I finally feel confident?”
It’s understandable as feeling like a fraud is exhausting. But the truth is, we can’t change what we don’t yet understand.
That’s why the first step in the Awareness to Action Framework is awareness.
Q: Why does awareness matter?
Because you can’t interrupt a pattern you can’t see.
Most people caught in the grip of imposter syndrome describe their experience as confusing, like something that happens to them. They feel hijacked by self-doubt, anxiety, and overthinking, with little sense of when or why it’s happening.
Awareness begins to change that.
It’s like switching on the light in a dark room, the problems were always there, but now you can see where you’re stepping.
Once we start noticing when and how imposter thoughts and behaviours appear, the pattern stops being mysterious. It becomes predictable, understandable, and therefore workable.
A: The Imposter Loop
Most people don’t experience imposter syndrome as a single event; they live inside a repeating loop.
It often looks like this:
Trigger → Thought → Emotion → Behaviour → Short-term relief → Repeat
Let’s take an example.
You’re asked to present something at work.
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Trigger: The upcoming meeting.
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Thought: “I’m not qualified enough.”
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Emotion: Anxiety, fear of being exposed.
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Behaviour: You overprepare, rehearse every line, or avoid sharing ideas.
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Short-term relief: You feel a brief sense of safety but the next time, the cycle starts again.
This loop can appear in a hundred different forms, such as perfectionism, people-pleasing, procrastination, reassurance-seeking, but however it shows up, the mechanism is the same. Awareness helps us spot it in real time.
The moment you can see the pattern, you stop taking it so personally.
It’s not that you are broken, it’s that your mind is running an old, protective script.
Evidence & Perspective
Psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes first described this pattern in 1978, showing how imposter thoughts trigger anxiety and coping behaviours that unintentionally reinforce self-doubt.
In modern therapy, awareness plays a central role in change:
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CBT uses awareness to make unconscious links between thoughts, feelings, and behaviours visible.
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ACT teaches defusion which involves noticing thoughts as events in the mind rather than absolute truths.
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CFT builds mind awareness so we can understand the motives and emotions driving our reactions with compassion, not shame.
In all cases, awareness is the foundation.
As Russ Harris (author of The Happiness Trap) puts it:
“You can’t control your thoughts and feelings - but you can notice them, and choose how you respond.”
Q: What does awareness actually look like in practice?
Awareness isn’t overanalysis. It’s curiosity.
It means observing your experience with a little distance, not judging it, but noticing what’s happening.
Here are some examples clients often uncover in therapy:
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“When I get positive feedback, I immediately dismiss it.”
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“Before meetings, I feel tense and find myself rehearsing everything.”
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“After a mistake, I spend hours replaying it in my mind.”
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“I say yes to things I don’t have capacity for, just to avoid letting anyone down.”
These small observations are gold. They help you see your mind’s moves, its protective habits, and over time those patterns become familiar and predictable.
Awareness helps you become proactive, not just reflective
As awareness grows, you start to anticipate the moments that might trigger imposter feelings.
That means you can prepare for them, not by avoiding them, but by meeting them differently.
You might notice:
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When self-doubt tends to show up (e.g., before performance reviews, after praise).
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What sensations signal its arrival (e.g., a tight chest, racing thoughts, a sinking feeling).
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Which situations feel riskier and why.
This makes the problem more predictable, and when it’s predictable, it’s less powerful.
It also allows you to plan responses that are calmer and more intentional.
You can step into challenging situations already knowing:
“Okay, this is the point where my mind usually starts doubting me. I can see it happening, but I don’t have to get caught up in it.”
Awareness turns the inner critic from an enemy into something you can observe, even manage.
Awareness also means recognising impact
Part of awareness is understanding not just how imposter syndrome shows up, but what it costs you.
When people start tracking this, they often realise just how much space self-doubt has taken up:
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Turning down opportunities or promotions.
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Avoiding speaking up in meetings.
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Holding back creative ideas.
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Being physically present but mentally distracted by overthinking.
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Feeling exhausted by constant self-monitoring.
Awareness of impact helps shape treatment goals.
It tells us where the problem is limiting you, what parts of life are being sacrificed for safety.
That awareness becomes the starting point for change.
Q: What happens when you start to see the pattern?
Something important shifts.
Once you can see the loop - thoughts, feelings, and behaviours feeding each other - you have the power to pause before reacting.
This moment of pause creates what ACT calls a choice point:
the space between what shows up (thoughts and emotions) and what you do next.
You may still feel anxious, but now you can choose whether to act from fear or from values.
That’s the bridge from awareness to psychological flexibility, the skill of moving toward what matters, even in the presence of discomfort.
In Summary
Awareness is more than self-reflection, it’s the foundation of freedom.
It helps you see patterns clearly, prepare for challenges, and reconnect with what’s important.
You don’t have to take your thoughts as literal truths; you can recognise them as mental events, often predictable, sometimes misguided, but not dangerous.
When you know the pattern, you can work with it.
And that’s where real change begins.
Next in the Series
In the next part of the Awareness to Action Framework, we’ll explore Understanding - how the mind’s protective instincts create and sustain imposter feelings, and why it’s not your fault that they appear.