Internalized Inadequacy IS NOT Imposter Syndrome

For high-achieving Black women in therapy who are exhausted, overlooked, and searching for a more accurate name for what they are carrying.

If you have been told that what you are experiencing is imposter syndrome, this post is for you.

As a therapist who works with high-achieving Black women, I sit with women who are exhausted, undervalued, and quietly convinced that something is fundamentally wrong with them. They come in accomplished. Capable. Often the most competent person in every room they occupy. Yet still, underneath all of it, there is this persistent belief that they are not quite enough.

The popular answer to that belief is imposter syndrome. The idea that despite her accomplishments, she lives in fear of being exposed as a fraud. That she cannot internalize her own success.

But imposter syndrome assumes the environment is neutral. That the doubt lives inside her and nowhere else.

That is not what I see.

What Is Internalized Inadequacy?

What I see is internalized inadequacy, and the difference matters clinically, practically, and personally.

Imposter syndrome says the problem is her perception. Internalized inadequacy says her perception was shaped by something real. By environments that extracted her best thinking and returned very little. By relationships that leaned on her availability and rarely asked about her experience. By systems that handed her crumbs and called it opportunity.

How It Shows Up at Work

At work, it shows up as her ideas landing in someone else's presentation. Her solutions getting credited to someone with a louder title and a fraction of her understanding. The expectation that she build something functional out of inadequate resources, then being evaluated as if the playing field was level, and when she slows down or pushes back, she is no longer a team player. She is not going above and beyond like so and so.

So she learns. Give more. Stay later. Share freely and hope that this time it will be different. Over time she learns to associate her safety with her output, so she overgives to stay safe.

How It Shows Up at Home

At home it feels the same even though it looks different. She is the one holding the emotional weight of every room she walks into. Anticipating needs, managing dynamics, and keeping things together while her own needs sit untouched. Being the one everyone leans on with no one thinking to ask how she is holding up.

The Name She Gave Herself

And because nobody named it, she named herself instead. “Too sensitive.” “Too much.” “Not strategic enough.” “Not grateful enough for what I have.”

But that story was never hers.

Why the Distinction Matters in Therapy

In my clinical experience, internalized inadequacy is a psychological response to chronic environments of exploitation and invisibility, and it requires a different kind of therapeutic intervention than imposter syndrome. Helping her see clearly is not enough. The work is helping her accurately locate the source of that belief, tracing it back to where it actually came from, and grieving what was taken before she could protect it.

If you are reading this and something is shifting in you, notice that. Know that the noticing matters. This is the work I do, and it starts with getting the diagnosis right.

Shima Baronian, LMSW, is a therapist specializing in generational healing and financial wellness for Black women and the Caribbean diaspora.