Imposter Feelings in Rooms You Were Not Raised In

Imagine a family photographer named Linnea Quist who usually shoots families in parks and in their living rooms. Gemma Carrington books her for a portrait of three generations at the family’s house on the lake. It is for her parents’ 50th anniversary. Her email ends, “Park on the drive, and come to the side door.”

Linnea spends two evenings getting ready. She prints three albums and a 12-page guide to what the family should wear. She writes out her training and the two magazines that have printed her work, in case anyone asks. When she drives through the gate, her stomach tightens. The front hall is bigger than her apartment.

At the side door, Mrs. Carrington says, “Come in. And please, call me Gemma.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Carrington,” Linnea says. In the kitchen, Mrs. Carrington offers her a stool at the counter. Linnea stays standing, with the albums held against her chest. “I’m so sorry, I parked on the drive. Is that all right?” she asks. “And sorry, I know you’re busy. I’ll be quick.”

Mrs. Carrington asks whether the garden room has good light at four o’clock. Linnea says it does. Then she opens the first album and starts on the guide to what to wear. When Mrs. Carrington asks the price, Linnea says, “It’s $1,800 for the afternoon. Sorry, I know that’s a lot.” Mrs. Carrington says that she will talk to her husband. A week later, she books the photographer her sister used. “She was lovely,” she tells her sister, “but so nervous in the house that I kept wanting to tell her to sit down.”

Suppose instead that Linnea feels the same tight stomach at the gate. This time she knows what it is. The house is bigger than her clients’ houses usually are, and the portrait is the same work as ever. She has brought one album, the one she shows every family, and her calendar.

At the side door, she says, “Thanks, Gemma,” and takes the stool she is offered. She asks to see the garden room, and they walk there together to look at where the sun falls. When Mrs. Carrington asks the price, Linnea says, “It’s $1,800 for the afternoon, and the photos come three weeks later.” Mrs. Carrington books her for the last Saturday in May. Linnea’s heart is still going fast when she drives out through the gate.

Linnea felt out of place both times. What changed was what she did with the feeling. In the first version, it came out as three extras that the job did not need. She prepared far more than a family portrait calls for. She stayed more formal than Mrs. Carrington asked her to be. She said sorry three times, and nothing had gone wrong. In the second version, she knew the feeling for what it was, and she left the extras out.

So feeling out of place in a wealthy client’s house is not a sign that the work is wrong for you. It is a common response to a difference in standing. Learn the extras it makes you add, and drop each one when you catch it. Here is why the feeling is so common, and what each extra looks like.

Feeling like a fraud is common among people who are good at their work

In 2011, Jaruwan Sakulku and James Alexander reviewed the research on what psychologists call the impostor phenomenon. The psychologist Pauline Clance first described it after working with women who had done well in their fields. These women had clear evidence of their success. Even so, they believed that they were frauds, and they were afraid that someone would find them out.

Later research found the same feeling in men as well as women. It turned up in many occupations, from students and medical students to managers, and in different cultures. The review concludes that the feeling seems to be widely shared.

A wealthy client’s house adds a reason of its own. Feeling below someone makes a person reach for whatever shows standing. The client may have more money, a bigger house, and a title at work far above yours. None of that is part of the job you were hired for, and all of it is in the room.

That is why the course calls the feeling predictable. It comes with the difference in standing, so you can expect it in any house where that difference is large. It is not a judgment on your work, and the course’s reason is simple. The feeling arrives before you have done any work at all. The racing heart that often comes with it is your body getting ready for a client who can judge you.

A trainer felt small in a CEO’s house until he saw what the client needed

Alex McBrairty is a personal trainer. In a post on his newsletter in November 2024, he wrote about a client from early in his career. Derrick was the CEO of a major construction equipment company, and he earned millions a year. He lived in a mansion in “an ultra-wealthy neighborhood, the kind of place you drive past and think, Wow, who lives here?”

McBrairty was 25. As he pulled up to the house for the first session, he thought, “What on earth does this guy need me for?” He walked in “feeling small, out of place, and honestly, a little intimidated,” he writes.

The feeling showed in how he worked. “I found myself second-guessing my instructions, feeling hyper-aware of every move I made,” he writes.

After a few days, he noticed what his client could not do. “He could manage billion-dollar projects and lead massive teams, but he needed me to help him squat properly without hurting his back.” From then on, McBrairty writes, “I stopped feeling inferior and started seeing the value I brought to the table.”

What settled McBrairty was not a pep talk. It was a look at the job. The house and the title had told him that he did not belong there. The squat told him what he was there to do. So when the feeling comes, turn your attention to the job the client hired you for. The size of the house does not change how a squat is taught.

A private chef found that the feeling came back with every new family

Maddy DeVita is a private chef in New York. In a post from January 2025, she wrote about her first private job, which began weeks after she finished culinary school. She could not believe that “these wealthy, successful people, ACTUALLY wanted me to cook for them.” For the first few weeks, she was “sick with nerves every day.” Every day she thought that today was the day they would find out she did not know what she was doing.

She stayed six months and cooked five days a week, including large dinner parties every month. She left, in her words, “infinitely more confident as a chef.” A month later, she found her next client, and the same voice crept back in for the first few weeks. When she took a summer job with a family in the Hamptons, “the same voice hitched a ride” on the train out.

She has no cure for it, she writes. What has changed is that she expects it. “I can now find comfort in knowing she’s gonna creep back in at the beginning of every gig, say what she always says, and I can actively choose not to pay attention to her.”

DeVita’s six months of good work did not keep the feeling from coming back. Sakulku and Alexander describe the same pattern. For people who feel like frauds, a run of success tends to make the feeling stronger, not weaker. So the feeling is not a measure of how good you are or how far you have come. Expect it at the start of each new household, and then decide not to do what it says.

The feeling shows as three extras

The client does not see the feeling itself. The client sees what it makes you do. The course sorts what it makes you do into three extras, because each one adds something the job did not ask for. The three are preparation, formality, and apology.

Extra preparation is preparing far more than the job needs. Sakulku and Alexander describe a cycle in people who feel like frauds. A new task brings worry, and the person answers the worry with over-preparation. The review adds that Clance saw the effort as a problem once it went past what a good job needs.

In a client’s house, extra preparation looks like Linnea’s three albums and her notes on her training. Putting the facts the meeting depends on on paper is preparation for the job. So is writing out your answer to the question about price. The extra is preparation for questions about yourself that nobody has asked.

Extra formality is staying more formal than the client has asked you to be. In 2013, Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil and four colleagues studied how politely people write on Wikipedia and Stack Exchange. On Stack Exchange, the people with the highest standing on the site wrote less politely than the people with the lowest. On Wikipedia, polite editors were more likely to be elected to a higher role. Once elected, the same editors wrote less politely.

Those were people writing on websites, and the step to a client’s kitchen is the course’s own. Here is the step. When you feel that you stand lower, you add courtesy the other person did not ask for. A client sets how formal the two of you are, and Mrs. Carrington set it when she said “call me Gemma.” After that, “Mrs. Carrington” and the stool left empty kept a distance that she had tried to close.

Extra apology is saying sorry when nothing has gone wrong. Linnea apologized for parking where she was told to park. She apologized for taking time she had been invited to take, and then for her own price. A client hears the softening as doubt about your work. Each of those phrases has a plain statement that replaces it. A real apology stays. “I’m sorry, I’ve tracked mud into your hall” is true, and the client needs to hear it.

All three extras feel like good manners while you are adding them. They feel like respect for a client who has more than you do. To the client, they look like nerves. Mrs. Carrington did not tell her sister that Linnea was respectful. She said that Linnea was nervous. So the course’s test for each extra is one question. Does the job need this, or only the house?

Why covering the feeling with a show of ease goes wrong

Imagine an interior designer named Annika Oyen who has felt out of place in big houses before. This time, she decides, she will not let it show. Thomas Bramwell has written to her about his apartment on the top floor of a building by the park. His email calls her “Ms. Oyen,” and he signs it “Thomas Bramwell.”

At his door, Annika says, “Hi, Tom! What a view.” She puts her bag on his sofa and sits on its arm. In the kitchen, she laughs and says, “I could live in here.” Inside, she feels as small as ever. Mr. Bramwell answers her questions in short sentences, and he calls her Ms. Oyen for the whole hour. He hires the designer who did his office.

Annika’s mistake was fighting the feeling instead of the extras. She covered the feeling with a show of ease, and the show was an extra too. It went below the level Mr. Bramwell had set, which is as far off as going above it. The feeling itself was not the problem, because Mr. Bramwell could not see it. The version that works leaves the feeling alone and the extras out. Annika says, “Good morning, Mr. Bramwell,” because that is the level his email set. She sits where he points, and she asks which room he uses most in the evenings.

Feeling out of place does not mean you are not ready

Many professionals take the feeling as a sign that they should stay with the clients they have. If a house makes them feel small, perhaps that kind of house is not for them yet.

The two accounts say otherwise. DeVita had six months of dinner parties behind her, and the feeling came back at the next house anyway. A feeling that returns after a success is not measuring whether you are ready. McBrairty felt it most in his first sessions, before he had seen what his client needed. A few days of work showed him what he was there to do. The feeling arrives before the work starts, so only the work can answer it.

How to catch the extras in your next meeting

1. Think back to your last first meeting in a wealthy client’s house. Write down everything you prepared and everything you called the client. Write down where you sat or stood, and every time you said sorry.
2. Next to each item, write whether the job needed it. Mark each item the job did not need as preparation, formality, or apology. The mark that comes up most often is the sign to watch for. For example, a tutor might mark the degree certificates in her bag as preparation, and “Sorry to keep you” at the door as apology.
3. Before your next meeting in a house like that, expect the feeling. Write one sentence to say to yourself when it arrives, about the house and the job. For example, a dog walker can say to himself, “This is the size of the house, not the walk. Wendell needs the same hour he always gets.”
4. Pack for the job, the way you would for any client who wanted the same job done. Leave behind anything that answers questions about you that the client has not asked. For example, a florist brings the sketch, the color samples, and her calendar. She leaves the folder of press cuttings in the car.
5. At the door, call the client what they asked to be called, and sit where they offer. Do not go more casual than the client to cover the feeling, either. For example, a personal stylist whose client says, “I’m Fran,” says, “Good to meet you, Fran,” and takes the chair that Fran points to.
6. Say sorry only when something has gone wrong. When you hear a sorry coming for nothing, stop, and say the sentence without it. For example, a caterer who starts to say, “Sorry, I know it’s a lot,” after her price says instead, “It’s $3,400 for the dinner, with the staff included.”

Next: You will see which kinds of preparation settle you before a high-stakes meeting, and which kinds wind you up.