From High Achiever to “Imposter”? Here’s Why It Happens & How to Fix It Fast
That Nagging Feeling of Fraudulence
"Despite the promotion, the awards, the positive feedback... deep down, I’m convinced it’s only a matter of time before they find out I don’t really know what I’m doing."
If this inner voice sounds familiar, you might be experiencing Imposter Syndrome — the persistent belief that your success is undeserved, that you’ve somehow “fooled” others into thinking you’re competent. While not a clinical diagnosis, it’s a psychologically valid experience tied to anxiety, perfectionism, and unresolved emotional patterns.
It affects high-achievers across industries — from students and scientists to CEOs and creatives — and often goes hand-in-hand with burnout, chronic stress, and self-sabotage. But what causes this distorted self-view? And how can we resolve it when it’s rooted in past emotional experiences? A new therapy called Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) may offer answers—fast.
Part 1: Where Imposter Syndrome Really Comes From
Imposter Syndrome (IS) isn’t just self-doubt or humility gone too far. First described by Clance & Imes (1978), IS often originates in deeper psychological patterns, including:
1. Family Dynamics
High parental expectations, conditional praise, or a childhood focus on achievement over effort can cause adults to link self-worth with flawless performance¹. Over time, even genuine accomplishments feel hollow.
2. Personality Traits
People with IS often exhibit perfectionism, neuroticism, or a deep need for external validation². They might feel they must earn love or respect through constant overperformance.
3. Faulty Attribution Style
Those with IS tend to attribute success to luck or timing (external, unstable factors), while internalizing failure as proof they’re incompetent³. This reinforces self-doubt even in the face of achievement.
4. Systemic & Social Pressures
Being part of an underrepresented or marginalized group—such as women in STEM, first-generation professionals, or people of color in predominantly white industries—can intensify IS due to stereotype threat, microaggressions, and lack of representation⁴.
5. Underlying Anxiety or Trauma
IS can be reinforced by unresolved negative memories: public failures, critical teachers, bullying, rejection, or high-pressure environments. These aren’t always “traumas” in the clinical sense—but emotionally charged memories can fuel chronic anxiety and self-doubt.
Part 2: Traditional Treatments Are often Helpful, but Can Be Slow
Common strategies to address imposter syndrome include:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): Helps identify and reframe distorted thoughts like “I’m a fraud.” Strong evidence supports CBT for anxiety and self-esteem issues⁵.
Self-Compassion Practices: Based on the work of Kristin Neff, these techniques help individuals treat themselves with kindness instead of harsh judgment⁶.
Mentorship & Peer Normalization: Sharing experiences with others who also struggle with IS can reduce shame and create perspective.
Reframing Mistakes: Viewing failure as feedback rather than proof of incompetence.
The Limitation
These approaches are helpful but often take weeks or months to reach the root emotional drivers—especially if past experiences (like shame or rejection) are still emotionally charged. They can feel like managing the symptoms, not resolving the source.
Part 3: How ART Reaches the Root — and Fast
Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) is an emerging, evidence-based psychotherapy developed to rapidly resolve symptoms linked to trauma, anxiety, and negative memory associations.
Here’s how ART applies directly to imposter syndrome:
1. Memory Reconsolidation
ART works by accessing memories that hold strong emotional and physical responses—like shame, fear, or failure—and “reconsolidating” them with new emotional content during a neurologically sensitive window⁷. The event isn’t erased—but its emotional charge is reduced or eliminated.
2. Voluntary Image Replacement
Clients are guided to voluntarily replace disturbing imagery associated with distressing memories. For example, a memory of freezing during a presentation can be replaced with an image of confidently delivering it. This disrupts the emotional grip of the original memory⁸.
3. Bilateral Eye Movements
Like EMDR, ART uses side-to-side eye movements to stimulate both hemispheres of the brain. Research suggests this helps process emotional material more efficiently and reduces physiological stress responses⁹.
4. Somatic Relief
Imposter syndrome often involves physical anxiety: tight chest, nausea, racing heart. ART directly reduces these somatic symptoms by calming the nervous system and reprogramming emotional responses to triggers¹⁰.
5. Speed of Treatment
ART often produces results in just 1–5 sessions¹¹. This is significantly faster than traditional talk therapy, especially for high-achieving individuals with limited time and high urgency for relief.
Why ART Works So Well for Imposter Syndrome
✔ Targets the exact memories that fuel your internal “fraud” story
✔ Reduces the physiological anxiety associated with performance pressure
✔ Weakens the emotional grip of early rejection, shame, or criticism
✔ Strengthens new mental narratives that reflect your actual competence
✔ Builds emotional resilience to future high-stakes challenges
By reducing the emotional sting of key past experiences, ART helps people internalize their achievements, rather than intellectually understand them but emotionally reject them.
Conclusion
Imposter syndrome isn’t just about negative thoughts—it’s often about how we’ve emotionally encoded past experiences of failure, fear, or not belonging. While CBT and mindfulness offer valuable tools, they sometimes miss the deeper emotional material driving the belief that we’re “faking it.”
Accelerated Resolution Therapy offers a way to change the emotional memory itself. In doing so, it frees people from the reactive patterns that keep them doubting their own success.
You don’t have to manage your inner imposter forever.
You can resolve it—faster than you thought possible.
Footnotes
Sakulku, J., & Alexander, J. (2011). The Impostor Phenomenon. International Journal of Behavioral Science.
Bravata, D. M., et al. (2019). Prevalence, Predictors, and Treatment of Impostor Syndrome. Journal of General Internal Medicine.
Want, J., & Kleitman, S. (2006). Imposter phenomenon and self-handicapping. Personality and Individual Differences.
Cokley, K., et al. (2017). The Roles of Gender Stigma Consciousness and Ethnic Identity in Impostor Phenomenon. Journal of Counseling Psychology; Bernard, D. L., et al. (2018). Imposter syndrome and mental health in marginalized groups.
Bravata et al. (2019), op. cit.
Neff, K. D. (2003). The development and validation of a scale to measure self-compassion. Self and Identity.
Kip, K. E., et al. (2013). Brief Treatment of PTSD with Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART). Journal of Traumatic Stress.
Kip, K. E., et al. (2022). Multisite evaluation of ART for PTSD. Military Medicine.
Christman, S. D., et al. (2003). Bilateral eye movements enhance episodic memory retrieval. International Journal of Neuroscience.
Kip, K. E., et al. (2019). ART and changes in physiological stress responses. Journal of Behavioral Medicine.
Waits, W., et al. (2022). ART for trauma and comorbid anxiety. Traumatology.