Blog Three: Imposter syndrome in your 50s — yes, it still shows up, and here's what I do with it

My daughter is approaching her Law exams, and she came to me over the weekend about a dream she had.  She'd forgotten to write notes, sat in the exam room, and wrote nothing.  A blank page in her final exam.

It reminded me of a dream I have occasionally.  I’m disappointed by my HSC mark and need to sit it again, not as an 18-year-old, but as myself, now, at 51.

Imposter syndrome is defined as a psychological experience of feeling like a fraud, where high-achieving individuals doubt their accomplishments and fear being exposed as incompetent, despite all evidence to the contrary.  Persistent self-doubt.  Fear of exposure.  The quiet, persistent belief that your success came down to luck, timing, or charming the right people rather than anything you earned.  Seventy percent of people report experiencing it at some point in their careers.

I wanted to write about how imposter syndrome has shaped my career; in Big Law, through the years I spent primarily in tax law, when I started my own firm, and if I'm honest, in the very decision to become a lawyer at all.  Because at 50 I am more confident in myself than I have ever been, but in a profession like law, imposter syndrome has a way of finding the cracks even now.

I'll be transparent about something: I was hesitant to write this at all.  In law, in finance, in banking, there's a long-held assumption that admitting to self-doubt signals weakness.  That the people at the top don't wobble.  But what I've come to understand, and what age has genuinely given me, is the ability to look back honestly and name the moments where I doubted myself.  And with 70 percent of people having been there, I know I'm not alone in it.

So.  Why did I become a lawyer?

Don't get me wrong, I've never shied away from an argument, have always had a fiery personality, was a humanities girl at school, and have loved both the complexity and the advocacy that a career in law involves.  But when I was young, I mean primary school young, I was considered dumb.  I was in the lowest classes.  My biggest fear was being asked to read aloud.  When my family moved from Sydney to Tamworth in Grade 4, my parents decided to hold me back a year.

By high school, I was determined to prove something.  And the thing is, I was never actually dumb.  At primary school, "smart" meant how quickly you rattled off your times tables and how accurately you clapped syllables (and I would not back myself on either of those today, frankly).  But real intelligence, the kind that involves reasoning and argument and nuance, has always been there.  I just didn't know it yet.

By Year 10, I decided I wanted to be a lawyer.  Because, in my mind then, that’s what "smart" people did.

Then I got into law school, and the imposter syndrome grew.  The ranking of your marks and the sense that everyone around you had always known they belonged there and you were the only one still working it out.

I began my career at a top-tier firm and while it was one of the most formative experiences of my career, one I wouldn't trade for anything, I never truly felt like I belonged.  Not because I didn't want to be there.  But because there was a voice, quiet and persistent, telling me I wasn't good enough.  Every paper that came back covered in red pen took me straight back to that nine-year-old girl who thought she was the dumb one in the room.  I had the HSC mark.  I had a law degree.  I had a position at one of the most respected firms in the country.  And still, it wasn't enough to silence it.

Then came motherhood, with an entirely new category of imposter syndrome.  The balancing act of being what people called a "working mum", a term I've always disliked, because you rarely hear "working dad" said with the same weight.  The sense of judgment from colleagues.  The judgment, perhaps more painfully, from other mothers.

Two children, a senior associate title, and still: not enough.

Then came Dormer Stanhope, and the idea of starting my own firm terrified me.  I'll give credit where it's due, without my ex-husband's encouragement, I don't think I would have done it.  Because I didn't believe I could.  For a long time, the firm focused almost entirely on tax law.  Partly because I loved the complexity.  But partly, I suspect, because tax was what "smart lawyers" did, and I still needed the credential of seriousness.

I worked late into the night.  I raised two children as a single mother.  I built something real.  And still, sometimes, I felt like I was one moment away from being found out.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the old head on young shoulders, and I can say honestly that at 50, with nearly 18 years of running my own firm, the imposter syndrome has largely lost its grip.  But I would be lying if I said it never visits anymore.

Recently, I heard through the grapevine that a colleague had said, "I don’t think Justeen is that good."

One sentence.  And for the first time in years, I felt like that nine-year-old girl again.

I don’t fully understand why a single comment can do that, reach past everything you’ve built and land exactly where the old wound is.  But I think that's precisely the point.  Imposter syndrome isn't rational.  It doesn't respond to your CV or your track record or the years of evidence stacked in your favour.  It goes looking for the earliest version of you that ever felt insufficient, and it speaks directly to her.

Here is what I've come to understand about it.

The people who succeed in this profession are rarely the most naturally gifted in the room.  They are, almost without exception, the ones who kept going despite the voice.  Imposter syndrome, at its core, is a misfiring of the same instinct that makes good lawyers careful, the instinct to question, to pressure-test, to never assume you've got it right.  The problem is when that instinct turns inward and becomes chronic self-erasure.  The antidote isn't arrogance.  It's the ability to distinguish between genuine gaps in your knowledge, which deserve attention, and the emotional residue of old stories, which do not.

When you feel the imposter creeping in, ask yourself: is this pointing to something real that I need to address, or is this the nine-year-old showing up again? Most of the time, it's the latter.  And she deserves your compassion, not your compliance.

I watch so many talented women entering this profession and I see the same pattern.  The hesitation before speaking.  The qualification before every opinion.  The waiting for permission to take up the space they've already earned.  We doubt ourselves in ways that hold us back, often without even realising it.  And what I want to say to those women is this: the confidence you're waiting for is not coming before the action.  It comes from the action, and then the next one, and then the one after that.  Do not wait until your 50s to figure that out.

Which brings me back to my daughter, sitting her Law exams.  The girl who dreamed about a blank page came to me worried.

What I didn't tell her, what I sat with after she left, is that I recognised myself entirely in that dream.  The same fear, dressed in different clothes, across 30 years.  And the moment I recognised it, something shifted.  Because she is not that blank page.  She never was.  And neither was I.

The conversation I thought I was having with her was about exams.  What it turned out to be was a mirror.  And what I saw looking back was not someone who had finally outrun the imposter, but someone who had learned, slowly and at some cost, to keep moving anyway.