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Imposter Syndrome Systemic Issue Essay

Prefer to read? Here’s the transcript of how imposter syndrome in women professionals may actually be a systemic bias.

When I first read the KPMG Women’s Leadership Summit Report, I nodded my head affirmatively to the finding that 75% of females reported experiencing Imposter Syndrome at certain points in their career.

It’s true because I experienced it too. I’ve shared my story of imposter syndrome when a colleague questioned my ability to take on a major role and how I felt I would not make the grade.

Self-belief helped me to overcome that feeling of not being adequate.

I now feel there’s a truth that needs to be told to high achieving women professionals who question themselves.

Hi, I’m Vatsala from Karmic Ally Coaching and if you want to know more about my perspectives then please subscribe to my channel.

Having mentored and coached many talented women professionals, my message to every woman is that you’re not an imposter. It is not self-doubt or confidence gap.

It is definitely not a personal defect that you need to fix before you can lead.

You’re just remembering where it wasn’t safe to belong. A reflection of the world you’ve had to survive in.

And that’s the part most people miss.

Because what we call imposter syndrome isn’t born from lack of talent or skill.
It’s born from repeated exclusion.

From micro aggressions that told you, quietly, but persistently that
“You don’t quite fit.”
“You’re capable, but not quite credible.”
“You’re confident, but a bit too much.”

And over time, your brain learned to read the room before it spoke.
To watch before it claimed.
To measure itself before it moved.

That isn’t weakness. It is wiring.

The Chemistry of Doubt

Now Neuroscience has a way of stripping illusions bare.

It doesn’t care for motivational slogans or tidy boxes labelled mindset.
Instead, it looks at what’s real -the electric, chemical, physical truth beneath behavior.

When you experience subtle exclusion like a joke that cuts, a meeting where your voice goes unheard or a promotion that somehow slips away again, your brain doesn’t label that office politics.

It labels it threat.

When women face these chronic subtle bias the amygdala, the brain’s alarm system lights up.

The HPA axis, which is your body’s ancient stress system flares alive. Your cortisol floods and vigilance takes over.

It’s not just a mood; it’s a message to the body: “This space isn’t fully safe.”

And when that happens not once, but again and again, micro aggression by micro aggression, doubt by doubt, the pattern becomes encoded.

The hippocampus, your brain’s archivist, rewires how self-perception forms.
Caution becomes safety.

Your body begins to anticipate rejection, even before it happens.
Vigilance feels true.

So when you walk into that boardroom and your pulse spikes?

That’s not irrational fear.

That flicker of “maybe I’m not good enough” isn’t a moral failure.
It’s neurobiology doing its job of protecting you from invisible danger.

So, your body isn’t broken. It’s brilliant at remembering what it took to stay safe.

The Psychology of Survival

And here’s the truth most people miss:
What’s labelled imposter syndrome is, for many women, not a pathology but a pattern of protection.

When your environment withholds validation or when authority looks like someone else, when feedback softens instead of strengthens or when competence is constantly re-auditioned, your brain stops assuming belonging.

Doubt becomes a defense mechanism because in unpredictable systems, certainty can be punished.

So women internalize vigilance.
They over-prepare, over-deliver, and over-think.
Not because they don’t believe in themselves but because their nervous systems learned anticipation equals survival.

And then, cruelly, that adaptation is renamed a flaw.

Culture points to it and says, See? You don’t believe in yourself enough.

We are told,

“Women just need more confidence.”
“Lean in harder.”
“Silence the inner critic.”

As if doubt is a glitch, not data.

The lie is that imposter syndrome is an internal defect.
The truth? It’s an external design.

A mirror of systemic bias reflected inward.

Let’s be honest.

Self-doubt often sounds like your own voice but it’s speaking in someone else’s accent.

The one that told you, that you had to earn your belonging.
That leadership required perfection or that being likable mattered more than being right.

So you start performing certainty instead of living it.
You smile when you want to speak.
Over-prepare because you’ve been under-seen and nod through moments that deserved disruption.

And yet, even as you doubt yourself, you deliver.
You lead with precision, hold space for others and you get things done that others only plan.

But the system rarely mirrors that back to you.
So your nervous system stays in a loop:
Perform. Prove. Pause. Question.

This point of view is supported by others. In a 2021 Harvard Business Review article titled Stop Telling Women They Have Impostor Syndrome, the authors argue that “impostor syndrome puts the blame on individuals, without accounting for the historical and cultural contexts that are foundational to how it manifests.”

In other words: it’s not a failing, it’s a response. It’s what happens when high-performing people are continually asked to prove they belong.

The Architecture of Bias

So, you see, systems are clever. They make individuals feel responsible for collective design flaws.

The “fix yourself” narrative keeps the structure intact.

But look closer.

The myth that women must “lean in” harder, be tougher, be louder rests on the illusion that the playing field is level.

It’s not.

Bias is not just attitude; it’s architecture.
It lives in who gets mentorship.
Who’s called “ambitious” versus “aggressive”, whose mistakes are forgiven and who’s become warnings.

It’s invisible until you hit it. And when you do, the shock ricochets inward — turning structural friction into personal shame.

This is how systems manufacture imposters. Not out of malice, but repetition.

It is through the daily training of women’s nervous systems to self-monitor just to belong.

I agree with Shari Dunn in her analysis that to move beyond imposter syndrome, we must reframe it as a systemic issue rather than an individual failing. Workplaces must become environments where micro aggressions, implicit bias, and inequitable opportunities are actively dismantled. Women must recognize that self-doubt often reflects competency checking, not their actual abilities.

The Philosophical Reframe

Let’s rewrite the story.

What you’ve called imposter syndrome is actually imposter conditioning.

A conditioned survival response. Not a flaw to fix, but a signal to decode.

It says, “You’ve been adapting.” Not “You’re failing.”

In that reframe, self-doubt isn’t weakness. It’s awareness. The body’s reminder that safety was never guaranteed.

Confidence isn’t the absence of doubt. It’s the ability to hold doubt and move away.

The goal isn’t to silence that inner voice. It’s to teach it context. To remind it that fear once served a purpose, but doesn’t have to run the show anymore.

The question isn’t “How do I stop feeling like an imposter?”
It’s “Who taught me to question my belonging in the first place?”

Once that shift lands, everything changes.
The narrative moves from shame to sovereignty.
The shift goes from self-fixing to self-understanding.
From I’m not enough to I was never the problem.

The New Leadership Paradigm

Imagine if organizations stopped diagnosing imposter syndrome and started treating it as data.

If entire groups feel like outsiders in the same rooms, the problem isn’t confidence but context.

Meetings would shift.
Mentorship would deepen.
Leadership pipelines would widen.

Women could lead not by fighting for belonging, but by embodying it.

You can’t rewire confidence without addressing context.
And you can’t call adaptation a flaw just because it makes others uncomfortable.

Now imagine if leadership wasn’t about commanding presence, but regulating presence.

If our influence came not from our asserting authority, but modelling calm coherence.

That’s where mirror neurons come in.
Those remarkable neural networks that fire when we see others act, feel, or express emotion.

They’re empathy’s infrastructure.
And research shows they tend to be more active in women during social interactions.

That means your state—your tone, your energy, your emotional steadiness doesn’t just affect how you feel.
It literally shapes how others feel in your presence.

Your calm becomes contagious.
Your courage becomes viral.
Your presence becomes the nervous system other people borrow when they’ve lost their own.

The Liberation

So maybe the question isn’t, “How do I silence imposter syndrome?”

Maybe it’s, “How do I build environments where my nervous system doesn’t have to defend itself?”

That’s leadership in its purest form.

Not a top-down command but the invisible choreography of human nervous systems syncing to one steady signal.

True influence isn’t asserted—it’s absorbed.

Liberation becomes with recognition.

Your doubt was never proof of deficiency. It was proof of resilience — the body’s way of staying alert in spaces not yet designed for your comfort.

So let that sink in.
Let it dismantle the shame.
Let it rewrite what you think strength looks like.

Then rebuild.

Rebuild confidence as presence, not performance.
Rebuild leadership as resonance, not reaction.
Let your nervous system finally exhale.

Because nothing commands a room like a woman who understands there was never anything wrong with her. Only with the mirror she was forced to look into.

Here’s the reframe most women never hear:

Your doubt isn’t evidence of lack.
It’s evidence of sensitivity.
And sensitivity is a leadership advantage when guided, not suppressed.

You don’t need to “fix” your confidence. You need to anchor it in awareness.

Stop fighting your nervous system and start leading with it.

The Next Step

And if this truth stirred something awake in you, don’t leave it at awareness.

Take five days to retrain your self-perception and rebuild your inner signal of confidence.

👉 Join my 5-Day Confidence Kickstart for Aspiring Women Leaders

Five days.
Five focused shifts.
One new way of being seen.

Because the world doesn’t need women who doubt less.
It needs women who finally realize their doubt was never the problem. It was the evidence they were awake.

That’s what I teach in the 5-Day Confidence Kickstart for Aspiring Women Leaders.

Five days of resetting the way you relate to yourself through neuroscience, emotional intelligence, and practical exercises designed to help you regulate, reframe, and rise.

No hype.
No hustle.
Just grounded confidence built from the inside out.

Because when your inner chemistry stabilizes, your outer credibility skyrockets.

So, step into your next level of presence here.

Final Thought:

In closing, remember that your self-doubt was never the problem.
It was proof that you were awake in an environment that rewarded numbness.

Now it’s time to rewire that awareness into power.

Because women who understand the science of their own brilliance don’t just lead differently, they change what leadership feels like for everyone else.