When The Simple Act of Existing Feels Like Imposter Syndrome

We talk about imposter syndrome like it's something that only happens at work in our professional lives. A feeling that creeps in during presentations, performance reviews, or when you're sitting in a meeting surrounded by people who seem to know exactly what they're doing. But what happens when that feeling isn't confined to your career?

What happens when the simple act of existing—just being wherever you are—feels like you're an imposter in your own life?

For as long as I can remember, I've felt like I don't belong. Not like some made for TV drama (do those still exist?), existential crisis kind of way (though sometimes it is that too), but in a weird pulsating, persistent hum that runs underneath everything. I'm at a party, and I feel like I'm performing "person at party." I'm with family, and some part of me is watching from the outside, wondering why I can't just be there the way everyone else seems to. I'm in my own home, in my own body, and still—there's this sense that I'm not quite where I'm supposed to be.

I live somewhere else in my head. Always have. There's another time, another place, another version of reality that feels more real than the one I'm physically occupying. And the gap between those two places—the one I'm in and the one I feel I should be in—creates this constant, low-grade feeling of being fraudulent.

The Imposter Syndrome That I Wonder If I’m Alone In Feeling

When we discuss imposter syndrome in professional contexts, there's usually a framework: you've achieved something, but you don't feel you deserve it. You're waiting to be "found out." There are strategies, therapies, ways to reframe your thinking. You can list your accomplishments, challenge your negative thoughts, find mentors who remind you of your worth.

But what do you do when the imposter syndrome isn't about what you've accomplished? What do you do when it's about who you are—or more accurately, who you feel you're not?

This kind of existential imposter syndrome doesn't come with a list of achievements to reference. It's not about credentials or skills. It's about the feeling that everyone else understands something about existing that you haven’t quite figured out, no matter how hard you try. They know how to exist in their bodies, in their relationships, in the present moment. They know how to belong to the time and place they're in.

And you? You're constantly translating. Constantly performing. Constantly aware of the gap.

Living in the Wrong Timeline

There's this phenomenon—and maybe you know exactly what I'm talking about—where you're physically present but mentally elsewhere. Not daydreaming exactly, though that's part of it. It's more like you're living in a parallel reality that feels more authentic than the one everyone else is experiencing.

For me, it's always been a different time or place. Sometimes it's the past, but not my past—someone else's past, or a time period I've romanticized, or a version of history that probably never existed the way I imagine it. Sometimes it's the future, but abstract and undefined. Sometimes it's just... elsewhere. A sideways step from reality where things make more sense, where I fit.

The cruel irony is that this elsewhere—this place that feels more real—doesn't exist. But the place that does exist, the one I'm standing in right now, feels fake. Feels wrong. Feels like I'm trying to fit my big butt in someone else’s skinny jeans.

The Exhaustion of Constant Translation

Living this way is exhausting in a way that's hard to explain to people who don't experience it. You're always running two programs simultaneously: the one where you're going through the motions of existing in consensus reality, and the one where you're managing the gap between where you are and where you feel you should be.

You're at dinner with friends, and you're laughing at the right times, contributing to the conversation, appearing engaged. But there's this background process running constantly: I don't belong here. I'm not doing this right. Everyone else is effortlessly being themselves, and I'm performing an approximation of a human at dinner.

You're not being fake, exactly. You're genuinely trying. But the effort that goes into simply existing in a way that reads as "normal" to others is enormous. It's like everyone else is speaking their native language, and you're fluent enough to pass, but you're still translating every sentence in your head before you speak it.

The Neurodivergent Dimension

For many neurodivergent people, this feeling is baked into how we experience the world. The social rules that others seem to absorb through osmosis, we have to study and memorize. The sensory environments that others navigate without thought, we experience as overwhelming or understimulating. The timeline everyone else is on—school, career, relationships, milestones—doesn't quite match our rhythm.

We're not just feeling like imposters; we're constantly adapting to a world that just never feels right. And that adaptation, that constant masking and adjusting and trying to fit into spaces that don't accommodate us, creates a profound sense of displacement.

I try to remind myself that maybe the problem isn't that we don't fit. Maybe the problem is that we've been measuring "fitting" by standards that just don’t quite match our way of being in the first place. It’s no one’s fault. It’s just the way it is.

When Your Internal World Is More Real Than External Reality

There's a loneliness that comes with this experience that I still haven’t found the words to explain. You can be surrounded by people—people who care about you, people you care about—and still feel fundamentally alone. Because the place you really live, the internal landscape that feels most true, isn't accessible to anyone else.

I've had relationships where I felt like I was giving someone a guided tour of my external life while my real life, the one happening in my head, remained completely untouched. It's not that I was being dishonest or withholding. It's that the part of me that feels most real exists in a dimension other people can't visit.

This is different from typical introversion or having a rich inner life. This is about feeling like your inner life is your actual life, and everything else is the performance. It's about the present moment feeling less substantial than the imagined or remembered or longed-for moments that play on repeat in your mind.

The Intersection of Mental Health and Self-Worth

It's impossible to talk about this without acknowledging the mental health dimensions. Depression, anxiety, dissociation, ADHD, autism, C-PTSD—all of these can create or intensify this sense of disconnection from present reality. Sometimes the feeling of not belonging is a symptom. Sometimes it's a cause. Usually it's both, tangled up in ways that are impossible to separate.

And when you feel like an imposter in your own existence, it does things to your self-worth that are hard to untangle. Because if you don't belong anywhere, if you don't fit in the time and place you're occupying, what does that say about your value? If everyone else seems to have figured out how to just be, and you're still struggling with the basics of existing, what does that mean about you?

The answer I keep coming back to is it means I'm having a different experience. Not a wrong experience. Not a less-than experience. A different one.

Small Moments of Belonging

I won't pretend I've solved this or found some grand answer. I haven't. Most days, I still feel like I'm living in the wrong timeline, occupying the wrong space, performing existence rather than inhabiting it.

But there are moments. Small ones. Where the gap closes, even briefly.

Sometimes it's when I'm doing something that requires complete focus—writing, creating, solving a problem—and the self-consciousness drops away. Sometimes it's in nature, where there are no social scripts to follow and I can just exist without translation. Sometimes it's with the rare person who seems to speak my language, who makes the translation unnecessary.

Sometimes it's just lying in bed at 2am, which is when the world finally feels quiet enough to match the pace of my internal one.

These moments don't fix the fundamental feeling of displacement. But they remind me that belonging isn't binary. It's not something you either have or don't have. It's something that fluctuates, something that can exist in fragments even when it doesn't exist as a whole.

What If We Don't Belong Because We're Not Supposed To?

Here's a thought I keep returning to: what if some of us aren't meant to fit seamlessly into consensus reality? What if our displacement isn't a deficit but a difference in how we process existence?

Throughout history, the people who lived partly in other timelines—artists, creators, visionaries, innovators—were often the ones who changed things. Not to say that they were any better than others (I believe we all hold equal value), but because their inability to accept the present moment as the only reality allowed them to imagine alternatives.

I'm not saying feeling like an imposter in your own life is a gift. It's often painful, isolating, and exhausting. But maybe it's also not a failure. Maybe it's just a different way of being human, one that comes with its own challenges and its own strange kinds of wisdom.

Living in the Gap

I don't have a neat conclusion because I'm still figuring this out and let’s be real, always will be trying to figure it out. I still feel out of place most of the time. I still live in my head more than I live in the world. I still feel like I'm performing existence rather than simply being.

But I'm learning to be a little gentler with that feeling. To stop treating it as proof that something is fundamentally wrong with me. To recognize that the gap between where I am and where I feel I should be is simply something I need to learn to live with.

Maybe you feel this too. Maybe you're reading this and recognizing yourself in these words. If you are, I want you to know: you're not alone in feeling alone. You're not the only one living in a different timeline, feeling like an imposter in your own existence, wondering why belonging seems so effortless for everyone else.

We're all just doing our best to exist in bodies, in places, in a present moment that sometimes feels like it belongs to someone else. And maybe that's okay. Maybe that's just another way of being human—one that doesn't get talked about enough, but is no less real for its invisibility.

We're here, even if here doesn't always feel like home. And maybe that's enough for today.

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About the Author
Gal is an autistic artist, late-diagnosed at 49, and the creator of AuRTistic Expressions—a space where neurodivergent truth meets creative survival. Through books, blog posts, printables, and coaching, Gal explores what it means to unmask safely, communicate authentically, and make art that doesn’t ask for permission. Stick around—there’s plenty more where this came from.

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Cover Photo by Mark Farías on Unsplash