The congratulations arrive first. The doubt usually shows up a few weeks later, often around 5 a.m., as one quiet question: what if they made a mistake?
If that question has followed you into a bigger job, you are in good company. A 2026 CEREVITY report, 67% of High-Achievers Peak During Peak Strain, reviewed 287 high achievers who sought therapy through the CEREVITY network; 67 percent said their strongest stretch of work came during their highest internal strain. From the outside, the promotion looks like proof. From the inside, it can feel like a test you are failing in secret.
What imposter feelings are
Psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes first described the imposter phenomenon in 1978, in a paper about high-achieving women who could not believe their own success. The simplest way I can put it: imposter feelings are the persistent sense that your success is a clerical error someone is about to correct.
It is not only a women’s experience. A 2020 systematic review in the Journal of General Internal Medicine pooled 62 studies of 14,161 people and found these feelings in men and women alike, at rates from 9 to 82 percent depending on how they were measured. The same review linked them to depression, anxiety and burnout.
Why a promotion sets it off
A new role quietly removes your evidence. In the old job, you knew you were good because you had years of proof. In the new one, you are a beginner again, only now more people are watching. Peers have become your team, the rules are less written down, and the feedback you relied on gets thinner the higher you go.
None of that means you do not belong. It means you are new. Imposter feelings tend to confuse the two.
Ordinary nerves or a pattern wearing you down?
Ordinary nerves fade as you collect proof. A pattern worth attention looks different:
- Wins do not land. You credit luck, timing or a good team, never yourself.
- You over-prepare for everything, including meetings that do not need it.
- The dread before presentations is still there months in.
- Your sleep, appetite or patience at home has started to slip.
Steadying yourself in the first months
- Keep an evidence file. Once a week, write down one thing you handled well. Imposter feelings erase the record, and a written one is harder to argue with.
- Ask for specific feedback early. At 30 and 90 days, ask what is working and what to adjust. Vague silence feeds doubt; specifics starve it.
- Find one peer at your new level. Someone outside your reporting line can tell you which struggles are normal.
- Name the beginner phase out loud. “I am three months into this role” is a fact, not a confession.
- Treat over-preparing as a signal. When you rehearse a five-minute update for two hours, the update is not the problem.
When to talk to someone
If the doubt is shaping your decisions, your sleep or how you show up at home, it is worth working on directly. Therapy for imposter syndrome helps you separate the real learning curve from the old story that you were never supposed to be in the room.
You earned the promotion. You are allowed to grow into it.
Martha Fernandez, LCSW, is a licensed clinical social worker and co-founder of CEREVITY, a private-pay concierge network of independent licensed clinicians built for high achievers. She is the author of Wired to Burn: A Therapist’s Guide for High Achievers Running on Fumes (2026). Learn more at cerevity.com
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