For a long time I've had trouble telling a simple story about what I do, and to be honest, I still sometimes struggle with it. When people ask: “so what do you do these days?”, I notice that other people often have a good, clear story ready. Something like, “I'm a teacher”, or “I run this business”, or “I work in that field”. I usually do several different things at once, which is fairly common among gifted women, and none of them fits neatly into a sentence that sounds impressive, or even particularly clear. So instead of explaining it properly, I tend to wave the question away, or I make what I do sound smaller than it actually is, as if I'm slightly embarrassed by how scattered it looks from the outside.
Often my work didn't feel like enough to me, even when, looking back, it clearly was something. When I finished my first book, and people asked me about it, my instinct was to shrug it off, something like, “well, it's not really that big a deal”. Actually writing it had been wonderful, I loved the process, but once it was finished and I was talking about it with other people, it seemed to shrink. In my own eyes, it turned into a far less interesting project than it actually was, and I noticed I simply didn't want to talk about it much. I tried to change the subject instead, and ask people about their life, their work, their thing. If that sounds familiar to you, I want you to know that you're not alone, and you are definitely not a fraud.
Why gifted women often devalue what they've made
The term imposter syndrome gets used so often now that it has almost lost its meaning. People say it casually, as if it were simply a fixed part of who they are: “oh, that's just my imposter syndrome”, and I think it helps to separate two things that tend to get mixed together in that phrase, imposter thoughts, and imposter syndrome.
An imposter thought is just a thought. It shows up, it says whatever it has to say, and if you let it, it moves on again. For example: “I don't really know enough about this”, “Someone else could do this better”, “I don't belong here”. These are sentences, not facts, and they come and go the way weather does, without deciding who you are any more than a single cloudy afternoon decides what the whole season will be like.
Imposter syndrome is something different, and it happens when you stop simply noticing the thought and start believing it instead. When I'm having the thought that I'm not good enough quietly turns into I am not good enough, a passing doubt has become something you start building your decisions around. Learning to catch that shift matters, not because the doubt disappears the moment you notice it, but because it stops being the thing that decides what you do next.
For me, this often shows up around the absence of a clear narrative. Because my work doesn't sum up easily, because I do several different things and none of them has a neat label, it becomes very easy to conclude that none of it really amounts to much, that I'm just doing a bit of this and a bit of that without it adding up to anything worth mentioning. That conclusion isn't actually true, but it's the one my mind tends to reach for, especially compared to people who can describe what they do in one confident sentence.
There's a related pattern I recognize in myself, and I see it often in the women I coach too. You finish something, and almost immediately your mind is already reaching for the next idea. The finished thing doesn't get the attention it deserves, the sharing, the standing behind it, the simply telling people it exists, because some other project is already pulling at you.This is what happens when curiosity moves faster than follow-through, and the thing you made quietly gets left behind before it's had a real chance to be seen.
Why doubt tends to show up exactly when things matter
One thing I find interesting is the timing of imposter thoughts. They rarely appear when you're doing something familiar, something people already expect from you, or something so ordinary it doesn't ask anything of you. They tend to show up when you are actually stretching yourself, when you try something new, when you become more visible to readers or clients, when you take on more than you are used to carrying, or when you do something that genuinely matters to you. In other words, they show up exactly when you are growing.
If that is true, then the thought might not be a warning that something is wrong. It might be a sign that something real is happening, that you have stepped into territory that is not familiar yet, and that your mind is reacting the way minds tend to react to that kind of unfamiliar ground.
For me, this was certainly the case, and painting is probably the clearest example. When I organized my first exhibition and started sending out the invitations, I remember thinking, people are going to find me pretentious, they're going to think this is ridiculous. A lot of people feel some version of that before showing their work publicly, but in my case it was quite intense. I'm honestly not sure whether that has anything to do with being gifted or not, I only know that it was there, extremely strong. And even now, when I talk to people about my painting, I notice I still tend to wave it away, downplay it, change the subject, even though I'm genuinely glad I do it and love that I make what I make.
The trap of trying to get rid of them
A lot of advice about imposter syndrome focuses on how to defeat the voice, silence the critic, or overcome the doubt, and although that impulse is understandable, in my experience it tends to backfire. When you treat an imposter thought as an enemy you have to defeat, you actually give it a great deal of power. You enter into an argument with it, and the more you argue with it, analyze it, or try to prove it wrong, the more space it seems to take up in your mind.
There is a different approach, one I originally came across through Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and it feels almost the opposite of what you would expect. Instead of fighting the thought, you try to see it simply for what it is, a thought passing through your mind, nothing more and nothing less.
What it actually looks like to work with imposter thoughts
Imagine you are sitting down to work on something that matters to you, a book, a business plan, a painting, a course, and an imposter thought arrives. This isn't good enough. No one is going to take this seriously. The habitual response is either to believe it and stop working, or to fight it and spend a lot of energy on an internal argument that leads nowhere.
There is a quieter alternative. You notice the thought, and you name it, almost gently, something like there's that voice again. You try to observe it the way you might observe a fellow passenger on a train, present in the same space as you, but not the one who is driving. You can even greet it if that helps, something like hi, thought, there you are again, you're welcome to sit in the corner while I keep working. And then you keep going anyway.
This is not toxic positivity, and it is not pretending the doubt isn't there. It is really about discovering that action doesn't require certainty, that you can have the thought and still write the next paragraph, that you can feel the doubt and still send the email, that you can hear the voice and still show up. Being brave, in this sense, doesn't mean the fear disappears, it means you keep moving forward while the fear is still in the room with you.
A simple practice for the next time it happens
The next time an imposter thought shows up, you could try the following. First, name it. Instead of just having the thought, notice that you are having it, and say to yourself, or out loud if you're alone, something like I'm having the thought that I'm not good enough. That small shift in language creates some distance, because you are no longer the thought itself, you are the one observing it.
Second, write it down. Take a piece of paper and write the thought exactly as it appeared, word for word, something like they're going to find out I have no idea what I'm doing. Something interesting often happens once you see it written on the page, it tends to look smaller, more like an ordinary sentence than a fundamental truth about the universe.
Third, ask yourself one question, not to defeat the thought, but to loosen its grip a little: what would I do right now if I didn't fully believe this? And then, actually do that thing.
The question underneath it all
There is something deeper running beneath most imposter thoughts, and I think it's worth naming directly. When the voice asks who do you think you are to be doing this, it is really asking a question about worthiness, about whether you have the right to take up space, to share your work, to claim a seat at the table.
What I have come to believe, after years of sitting with this both in my own life and in the people I coach, is that this question never fully goes away, not for beginners and not for experienced creators either. The artists, writers, coaches, and entrepreneurs who look confident from the outside are usually not free of doubt, they have simply learned to act alongside it instead of waiting for it to resolve first. The goal isn't to reach a place where you never doubt yourself again. The goal is to become someone who keeps going anyway.
You chose this for a reason
If you are working on something you care about deeply, a creative project, a long held dream, what I sometimes call a heart project, then imposter thoughts are almost unavoidable. Not because you are unqualified, but because you care, and the things we care about most tend to feel the most exposed.
But caring is also exactly what makes the work worth doing in the first place. So the next time the voice shows up and asks: “who do you think you are?”, you might try answering it differently: “Someone who is learning. Someone who showed up today. Someone who decided that the dream matters more than the doubt”.
That is who you are, and it's enough to keep going.
Warmly,
— Simone
