Imposter Syndrome and the Chips That Built Me

I used to be confident.

Like really confident.

At 19, I took a job in the USA and lived there for six months. At 21, I left university halfway through and moved to Paris. Not for a weekend break—to live and work there for a couple of years.

No backup plan. Just guts, curiosity, and the deep-down knowing that I could figure things out.

I could walk into a room, hold my own, and get stuff done. I didn’t second-guess everything. I didn’t apologise for having an opinion. I was sharp, direct, and bloody good at what I did.

But somewhere along the way, I started to shrink.

The course that made me quieter (but not in the way they intended)

There was this one moment that sticks out—I’d been sent on a course in London, a “how to talk to senior executives” thing. I laughed when they booked it, but I went.

And despite having a memory like a steel trap, I couldn’t tell you a single thing it taught me. What it did do was plant a seed: that maybe I was too much. Too blunt. Too direct. Too… something.

It didn’t stop me from saying what needed to be said, but it was another chip out of me.

And the chips kept coming.

Be more polite.

Laugh more softly.

Don’t speak up in meetings—“because when you talk, people listen.”

(Yes, I was actually told that—as if it were a flaw.)

When did imposter syndrome start?

I don’t know the exact moment. But I know when I started to doubt myself.

After my first big burnout—the one where I ended up in hospital with oxygen starvation—I felt like I’d failed. Even though I was literally dying, I still wanted to get back to work and “sort things out.”

That time changed something in me. The exhaustion. The helplessness. The year-long recovery. It knocked the wind out of my sails.

And then, years later, I did it again.

Different job. Different office. Same pattern.

By the time I left, I was a grey-faced zombie, just going through the motions.

It was like I’d handed over pieces of myself, slowly, silently, just to survive each week.

And that confidence—the bold, globe-trotting, jump-in-with-both-feet energy of my younger self? It felt like it had disappeared.

Reclaiming my voice

But here’s the thing: it didn’t disappear. It just got buried under years of people telling me to tone it down, blend in, be less.

And I’ve had enough of that.

Now, I’m un-chipping.

Writing.

Speaking.

Building things my way.

Tuning back into who I was before the world started trying to reshape me.

And here’s what I know now:

💬 I don’t need to tone it down.

💬 I don’t need to be smaller.

💬 I don’t need to make myself more palatable.

Because I have something to say. And it helps people. And that’s exactly why I’m saying it.

If you’ve ever been told to “tone it down”...

…this is your permission slip to turn it back up.

You weren’t too much. You were likely just in the wrong room.

And if imposter syndrome is whispering in your ear right now, ask yourself:

🟡 Who told you to doubt yourself?

🟡 Were they someone you even respected?

🟡 And what would your 21-year-old self—driving across to Paris in your beat-up, dung-coloured Mini, plastered in anti-apartheid and CND stickers, no plan but a burning desire to live your life and see the world—say if they saw you now, playing small?

You get to be confident again.

You get to take up space.

You get to chip back in.

One step at a time.