If you suffer from "Impostor Syndrome" it's probably because in some form or fashion you're an impostor—

Michelle Obama tells London school she still has impostor syndrome |
Former US first lady returns to girls’ school she visited in 2009 to talk about self-doubt and aspiration |
Mark Brown | Arts correspondent |
Mon 3 Dec 2018 18.13 GMTLast modified on Tue 4 Dec 2018 08.02 GMT

“Michelle Obama, the former US first lady, has said she still feels impostor syndrome despite her eight years as America’s most powerful woman and her success as an advocate for women and girls across the world.”

First, why "despite"? Why "despite her eight years as (supposedly) America's most powerful woman" ... ?

Michelle Obama—and her husband, Barack, by the way— have every reason to suffer from what's known as "imposter syndrome." Why shouldn't impostors suffer from this? Don't liars—with the exception of pathalogical liars, of course—suffer from the knowledge that they're liars?

There's an immense amount of garden-variety fraud involved in just getting through an ordinary day in this modern world. That has also almost certainly been true of human society since the rise of agriculture; so this has a very long history. In order to get by day-to-day, vast numbers of people lie and misrepresent what they think, and what they believe about themselves and others, about the fairness and unfairness of their own circumstances and the circumstances of others and about their own merits and deserts and those of others known and unknown to them.

A curious thing happened not very long after I became homeless and I noticed it: I found to my surprise that with few exceptions, passers-by seemed either unwilling or unable to look directly at me and, even less, to look me in the eye. I, on the other hand, found (only slightly to my surprise) that, conversely, I was free and able to look anyone in the eye—irrespective of his or her outward-appearing circumstances as poor, middle-class or wealthy.

Now I can and do un-selfconsciously look at and speak to—when I have an inclination to do so—homeless people. I know and understand much about their basic general plight by my own first-hand experience. I often sleep reasonably well—considering the physical conditions in which I usually sleep; and if I do lose sleep, it has nothing to do with feelings of guilt about something. And I certainly don't suffer from impostor syndrome.

But I have no trouble understanding how and why a hell of a lot of people do suffer from it —and ought to. They are in some significant respect impostors and they know it.

So, to Michelle and Barack Obama and to so many others like them in certain ways, I say,

"Do not adjust your set"—the problem is not with the "reception", it's within you. You're frauds. It's only right that you ought to feel like a fraud.

And, if they'd look me in the eye, I'd tell them this to their faces.

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"Bonus" quote:

"I have been at probably every powerful table that you can think of, I have worked at non-profits, I have been at foundations, I have worked in corporations, served on corporate boards, I have been at G-summits, I have sat in at the UN: They are not that smart."
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— Michelle Obama, from an address at The Royal Festival Hall on December 03, 2018 in London.
(Source: Newsweek magazine, 4 December, 2018