Imposter Syndrome in Dubai: Why the City’s Top Performers Feel Like Frauds

By Coach G  |  February 2026  |  8 min read

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He’d just closed a $2 million funding round. His team was growing. The press was calling. And he was sitting across from me in a DIFC coffee shop, hands slightly shaking, saying: “I keep waiting for someone to figure out that I have no idea what I’m doing.”

He wasn’t failing. He was succeeding — by every external measure. And the success was making it worse.

This is imposter syndrome. And in Dubai, it’s an epidemic hiding in plain sight behind polished LinkedIn profiles and perfectly curated lives. Research suggests up to 82% of people experience it at some point. Among high-achieving executives, the prevalence is even higher.

The cruelest irony? The more you achieve, the louder the voice telling you you’re a fraud.

What Imposter Syndrome Actually Is

The term was coined in 1978 by psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes, who studied high-achieving professional women and discovered a persistent internal experience of “intellectual phoniness” that was completely disconnected from external reality. These women had degrees, accolades, and impressive track records. They still felt like frauds.

Imposter syndrome is not a clinical diagnosis. It’s a psychological pattern — a deeply embedded loop where accomplished people believe their success is undeserved, temporary, or the product of luck rather than competence. It follows a predictable cycle:

You achieve something significant. A promotion. A deal. A major win. For a brief moment, there’s relief. Then the anxiety returns — not about whether you can do the work, but about whether this is the moment everyone discovers you shouldn’t be here.

Each new accomplishment raises the stakes. More visibility means more exposure. More success means a bigger crash when “the truth comes out.” So you work harder. Not to get ahead, but to stay ahead of the exposure you’re certain is coming.

The evidence doesn’t help. You can look at your CV, your results, your testimonials. Intellectually, you know you’re competent. But imposter syndrome doesn’t live in the intellectual mind. It lives in the subconscious — and the subconscious doesn’t argue with evidence. It runs its programme regardless.

Why Dubai Amplifies Imposter Syndrome

Imposter syndrome thrives in specific conditions, and Dubai provides nearly all of them.

The comparison engine never stops

Dubai is the most curated city on earth. Your Instagram feed is a highlight reel of business class flights, brunch at Atlantis, and seven-figure business announcements. The colleague next to you just sold his startup for eight figures. Your neighbour drives a car worth more than most people’s homes.

Comparison is a documented accelerant for imposter syndrome. And Dubai doesn’t just invite comparison — it demands it. When everyone around you appears to be winning effortlessly, your internal struggles feel like proof that you’re the only one who’s faking it.

You were exceptional. Now you’re surrounded by exceptional.

Most professionals in Dubai were top performers in their home countries. That’s why they’re here. But when you move to a city full of other top performers, the reference frame shifts. The competence that made you exceptional back home suddenly feels ordinary here. You went from being the smartest person in the room to wondering if you belong in the room at all.

Success is extremely visible

In London or Sydney, you can be quietly successful. In Dubai, success has a billboard. Your apartment building signals your income bracket. Your table at a restaurant signals your network. Your children’s school signals your tier. Every public marker of success is another piece of evidence you’ll need to defend when “the truth” comes out.

The social mirror keeps shattering

Dubai’s expat population is inherently transient. Friends leave every few years. Social anchors shift constantly. In a stable community, long-standing colleagues and friends mirror your competence back to you. They remember your wins. They know your history. In Dubai, that mirror is perpetually being reassembled — and without it, the internal narrative that says “I don’t really belong” goes unchallenged.

The Five Masks of Imposter Syndrome

Not all imposters look the same. After 15 years and 500+ clients, I’ve identified five distinct patterns:

The Overworker

You compensate by outworking everyone. Your logic: if I’m the hardest worker in every room, nobody can say I don’t deserve to be here. The cost: burnout, resentment, and a growing terror that if you slow down for even a week, the illusion collapses.

The Expert

You won’t speak unless you’re certain. You collect certifications and qualifications like armour. The thought of being asked a question you can’t answer makes your chest tighten. The cost: missed opportunities, delayed decisions, and a career spent preparing for a level of scrutiny that never actually arrives.

The Natural Genius

Things always came easily to you. School, early career, social intelligence. So when something is genuinely hard — a new market, a difficult leadership challenge, a skill you can’t master immediately — you interpret the difficulty as proof you’ve hit your ceiling. The cost: you avoid everything that stretches you, and your comfort zone slowly shrinks.

The Soloist

Asking for help means admitting you can’t do it alone. And if you can’t do it alone, you’re a fraud. So you refuse to delegate, build everything yourself, and run your team like a one-person operation. The cost: bottlenecks, exhaustion, and a team that feels untrusted and disengaged.

The Perfectionist

A 95% result feels like failure. You fixate on the 5% that wasn’t flawless and dismiss the 95% that was exceptional. Every small mistake is evidence that confirms the fraud narrative. The cost: chronic dissatisfaction, paralysed decision-making, and an inability to celebrate anything you’ve built.

Most executives in Dubai carry a blend of two or three of these. They reinforce each other — and when combined with the pressures of this city, they create a prison of performance that looks like success from the outside and feels like survival from within.

What Doesn’t Work (And Why the Usual Advice Misses)

“Keep a success journal.” You’ll write the achievement down and immediately attribute it to timing, luck, or having the right team. The programme that dismisses your wins doesn’t stop operating because you wrote them in a notebook.

“Fake it till you make it.” Possibly the worst advice ever given to someone with imposter syndrome. It literally confirms the core fear: you are, in fact, faking it. Every act of “faking” deepens the belief that the real you isn’t sufficient. It reinforces the wound it claims to heal.

“Remember your accomplishments.” You can recite your CV in your sleep. The information isn’t the problem. Imposter syndrome doesn’t live in the thinking mind — it lives in the subconscious, where evidence is irrelevant and the programme runs automatically.

“Talk to someone about it.” Temporarily helpful. A trusted friend or therapist can offer a reality check. But the relief is transient because you haven’t changed the underlying code. Tomorrow, the voice comes back.

All of these approaches target the conscious mind — the 5% of cognition you have direct access to. Imposter syndrome lives in the other 95%: the subconscious beliefs about worthiness, belonging, and identity that were installed decades before you had the vocabulary to question them.

What Actually Rewires Imposter Syndrome

Imposter syndrome is not a confidence problem. It’s an identity problem. And identity problems need identity-level solutions.

This is what the R.I.S.E.™ Method was designed for:

REVEAL: We trace the programme to its origin. When did “I’m not enough” get installed? Usually it maps to childhood — conditional love, environments where value was tied to grades or performance, formative moments where you learned that belonging required proving. You can’t delete code you can’t see.

INTEGRATE: We process the emotions you’ve been suppressing beneath the overworking and the perfectionism. The shame. The fear. The grief of having spent years performing a version of yourself that doesn’t feel real. This isn’t about positive thinking. It’s about confronting what you’ve been running from.

SHIFT: Using neuroscience-backed subconscious reprogramming, we replace “I’m going to be found out” with “I built this. I belong here.” Not as an affirmation you repeat — as a felt, embodied reality your nervous system recognises as true. Research on neuroplasticity shows this kind of identity-level rewiring is achievable in 21–45 days of targeted practice.

EMBODY: You stop performing confidence and start being it. Not the loud, performative kind. The quiet, unshakeable kind. You walk into rooms differently. You make decisions without the paralysing second-guessing. Not because you’re trying harder, but because the operating system underneath has fundamentally changed.

“The confidence isn’t fake. It’s hardwired.” — That’s how one client described it after four months of working together. He’d raised $2M, built his first leadership team, and for the first time in his career, felt like he belonged in his own success.

That’s not motivation. That’s installation.

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Ready to Stop Feeling Like a Fraud in Your Own Success?

The voice telling you you’re not enough is running old code — programme that was written before you had any say in the matter. It can be rewritten.

The free 30-minute assessment is where we identify the specific pattern of imposter syndrome running your life, trace it to its source, and determine whether the R.I.S.E.™ Method is the right tool to dismantle it. If it’s not, I’ll tell you what is.

➡ Book Your Free Assessment at coach-g.com

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is imposter syndrome a mental health condition?

No. Imposter syndrome is not a clinical diagnosis in the DSM-5. It’s a psychological pattern — a way of relating to yourself and your accomplishments.

However, when severe and prolonged, it can overlap with and intensify anxiety and depression. If your imposter feelings are accompanied by persistent mood disruption that interferes with daily functioning, working with a licensed therapist alongside a coach is recommended.

Do really successful people experience imposter syndrome?

Disproportionately so. A KPMG study of female executives found that 75% had experienced imposter syndrome during their careers.

Broader research puts the number at up to 82% across high achievers generally. It’s especially common among executives, founders, and professionals in competitive markets like Dubai.

Success doesn’t cure it. Success often amplifies it.

How is coaching for imposter syndrome different from therapy?

Therapy typically explores the emotional roots of imposter feelings and helps you understand and process the underlying anxiety. This is valuable. The R.I.S.E.™ coaching approach goes further by actively reprogramming the identity-level code that produces the pattern.

Therapy helps you understand why you feel like a fraud. Coaching installs a new identity where you don’t.

Can imposter syndrome actually be overcome permanently?

The goal isn’t to eliminate self-doubt entirely — healthy doubt keeps you sharp.

The goal is to stop self-doubt from running your decisions, shrinking your ambitions, and undermining your lived experience of your own competence.

That shift is absolutely achievable. Most clients report a fundamental change in their relationship with self-doubt within 6–10 sessions.

How do I know if what I’m feeling is imposter syndrome?

Key indicators:

1. you attribute success to external factors rather than your own ability.
2. You fear being “exposed” despite a consistent track record.
3. You overwork to compensate for a perceived lack of talent.
4. You dismiss praise and fixate on criticism.
   
   If three or more of these are familiar, you’re likely dealing with imposter syndrome. The free assessment can help clarify exactly what’s driving it.

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About Coach G

Coach G is Dubai’s expert life coach for executives and high-achievers, with 15+ years of experience transforming lives across four continents. Creator of the R.I.S.E.™ Method (Reveal • Integrate • Shift • Embody), Coach G combines quantum psychology, Jungian depth work, neuroscience, and NLP to deliver identity-level transformation in weeks, not years. Executive MBA. 500+ lives transformed.

➡ Learn more: coach-g.com/about-coach-g