Where My Imposter Syndrome Started

When I reflect on my imposter syndrome as a therapist, I don't think about all my qualifications. I think about my core training.

I can trace it back to very ordinary moments.

Walking out of skills practice and replaying everything I'd said. Listening to someone else in the group and thinking, They sound like a real therapist. Sitting in supervision convinced I'd missed something important.

No one told me I wasn't good enough.

But somewhere along the way, I started telling myself that.

And the strange thing is, it didn't feel dramatic. It felt professional. It felt like humility. It felt like I was taking the work seriously.

That's absolutely essential.

But what I didn't realise at the time was how easily reflection can slide into self-criticism.

If a session felt awkward, I assumed I'd handled it badly.

If a client was quiet, I assumed I'd done something wrong.

If supervision challenged me, I took it as confirmation that I wasn't ready.

Looking back, I can see what was happening.

I had equated questioning myself with being inadequate.

And because self-questioning is so normal in therapy, imposter thoughts hid in plain sight.

In not speaking up when I had a different perspective.

In assuming others were more certain than they actually were.

In waiting to feel fully confident before trusting my instincts.

I kept thinking confidence would arrive one day, maybe on qualification day!

It didn't.

Because confidence in therapy doesn't come from a certificate.

It comes from repeated moments of:

Confidence builds through experience.

But imposter syndrome builds through comparison.

And training environments can make comparison very easy, especially when there are embedded biases, prejudices and other potential power dynamics at play. But that is another article!

I wish I'd known that self-doubt isn't proof of incompetence.

It's often proof that you care.

The therapists who worry about doing harm, about missing something, about getting it wrong; they are usually the ones most committed to doing good work.

The problem isn't self-doubt.

It's when self-doubt becomes the loudest voice in the psyche. There's a difference between:

"I'm reflecting so I can grow."

and

"I'm doubting because I think I'm fundamentally not capable."

One builds you. The other shrinks you.

The shift for me wasn't eliminating self-doubt. It was learning to hold it alongside self-trust.

To think:

"I might not have done that perfectly. But I am capable of learning."

"I can reflect on this without collapsing."

"I don't need to disappear just because I'm still developing."

Over time, that became a quieter internal stance:

Not arrogance. Not certainty. Just steadiness.

Because clients don't need perfect therapists.

They need genuine ones. They need someone who can hold uncertainty without becoming uncertain.

If you're in training, or recently qualified, and wondering when the imposter feelings will finally leave, I want to offer something different.

They might not leave entirely. And that's okay.

What changes is your relationship with them. You learn that self-doubt and capability can coexist. That questioning yourself doesn't mean you're not ready. That the very thing that made you feel like an imposter; your care, your attention, your refusal to be careless, is actually what makes you good at this work.

The confidence you're waiting for? It's already building. Not in the moments you feel certain, but in the ones where you show up anyway.