--- title: "The Imposter Syndrome: Feeling Like A Fraud" url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/7/27/the-imposter-syndrome-feeling-like-a-fraud.md" canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/7/27/the-imposter-syndrome-feeling-like-a-fraud.html" published: "2003-07-27T18:47:00" updated: "2003-07-27T18:47:00" tags: ["Off Topic"] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "I can't say these words any better: \"My shameful secret is out: I cannot write. I have been sitting for two hours now, my pen idling over my page. My mind is barren of fresh ideas, my thoughts are cranky and resistant.…" usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # The Imposter Syndrome: Feeling Like A Fraud By Roy Osherove July 27, 2003 In [Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic) **Historical article** · Originally published July 27, 2003; technical details may be outdated. I can't say these words any better: _"My shameful secret is out: I cannot write. I have been sitting for two hours now, my pen idling over my page. My mind is barren of fresh ideas, my thoughts are cranky and resistant. I have been calling to the winds for inspiration but it hasn’t come. It’s almost noon and my writing boat hasn’t even left the shore._ _A secret voice hisses in my ear: “Call yourself a writer? Ha, you have nothing to say, everything you want to say has been said before. You got assigned this column because you smart-talked your way into it, but now you’re caught. Your time’s up, you fraud....”_ _"...Research into the “**imposter syndrome**” first began in 1978 by two psychotherapists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes who studied a group of successful, high-achieving women. They found that these women had high levels of self-doubt and an inability to internalise their success. They believed they were “fooling” other people, that they got where they did because of contacts or luck — even when a reality check proved that the exact opposite was true. External proofs of excellence — academic degrees, awards, promotions — were routinely dismissed. As researcher Dr Valerie Young put it: “Rather than offering assurance, each new achievement and subsequent challenge only serves to intensify the ever present fear of being...found out.”_ \[[The Imposter Syndrome: Feeling Like A Fraud](http://fecolumnists.expressindia.com/full_column.php?content_id=32033)\] **(if you totally get what this is saying, you should read the whole article.)** I bet many of you have felt like this, god knows I have You know what? it's **normal**. this article changed my point of view so much, that I couldn't help but share it. So although it may seem off topic, it really isn't.  ## More in Off Topic [All posts in Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic) - Jul 28, 2003 ### [What's up with BlogShares?](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/7/28/whats-up-with-blogshares.html) - Jul 28, 2003 ### [Geekier than thou](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/7/28/geekier-than-thou.html) - Jul 27, 2003 ### [Expand the desktops gallery](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/7/27/expand-the-desktops-gallery.html) - Jul 27, 2003 ### [MSDN VB blog section](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/7/27/msdn-vb-blog-section.html) --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/