Over the years, I’ve worked closely with many meditation practitioners and Buddhist authors, some of whom have been clients, and my own practice has grown alongside those relationships. Being surrounded by people with such depth of experience can be inspiring, but it can also quietly raise the bar for where you think you should be in your ability to navigate life’s difficulties.
One of the most humbling moments for me came during a trip to the emergency room related to complications from my autoimmune disease. I was in excruciating pain when a close friend, who also has a long meditation practice, asked, half joking, “Are you able to outsmart your pain?”
We both laughed. The joke landed because another friend of mine, physician and meditation teacher Dr. Christiane Wolf, is a colleague and former client who has written about working with chronic pain through mindfulness in her book Outsmart Your Pain.
I remember telling her at one point, almost defensively, that I meditate every single day. I had this quiet, competitive edge about it. I did not want to miss a day, even in the hospital. Missing a day felt like a failure.
I remember telling her at one point, almost defensively, that I meditate every single day. I had this quiet, competitive edge about it. I did not want to miss a day, even in the hospital. Missing a day felt like a failure. In hindsight, that belief feels a little ridiculous, but at the time, it carried real weight.
At that moment, I was not able to outsmart my pain.
My response was immediate: “No. I’m not able. I’d like the pain meds.”
Even as I said it, a small part of me felt inadequate. I was feeling like a fraud. If I had spent years around mindfulness practitioners and teachings about working skillfully with pain, shouldn’t I be better at this?
Health challenges have given me many moments like that, moments when I questioned my ability to navigate difficulty in the way I believed I should.
What I didn’t understand at the time was that practice does not always show up in the exact moment of distress. Sometimes it shows up in how we move through the experience afterward.
Christiane later offered a perspective that shifted something for me.
“Angela,” she said, “if you’re not meditating when you’re hospitalized, it doesn’t make you a failure. Your practice to date has prepared you to navigate these moments. That’s what the practice is for.”
“Angela,” she said, “if you’re not meditating when you’re hospitalized, it doesn’t make you a failure. Your practice to date has prepared you to navigate these moments. That’s what the practice is for.”
It was a simple reminder, but an important one. I realized how quickly I had turned a moment of human vulnerability into a judgment about whether I was doing the practice “well enough.”
Around the same time, I was helping a menopause telehealth company develop educational content and share mindfulness practices for women navigating perimenopause and menopause. I had no trouble guiding others through meditation or creating resources that helped people access the practice.
Yet privately, I sometimes struggled to apply the same steadiness to my own life.
That tension, between helping others access mindfulness and questioning my own ability to embody it, was incredibly revealing. It showed me how quickly self-judgment can creep in, and how easily I hold myself to impossible standards. More importantly, it helped me see where I still have work to do, on the cushion and off.
Naming the Experience
As months passed, I became more curious about what might be happening beneath the surface of my experience. I understood the stress and anxiety tied to my health challenges. Those had been part of my life for years. But this felt deeper.
I began to question my beliefs about how I was supposed to handle difficulty. Clearly, I had internalized an idea of what this should look and feel like, especially for someone with as much mindfulness experience as I had. After more than 15 years working in this space, I had unconsciously decided that I should not be struggling at all.
I began to question my beliefs about how I was supposed to handle difficulty. Clearly, I had internalized an idea of what this should look and feel like, especially for someone with as much mindfulness experience as I had. After more than 15 years working in this space, I had unconsciously decided that I should not be struggling at all.
Psychologists have a term for a similar pattern in professional life. The impostor phenomenon, first described by Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes in 1978, refers to the persistent feeling that we are falling short of a role we are supposed to inhabit, even when there is ample evidence that we belong there.
While this concept is often discussed in career settings, a similar dynamic can arise in contemplative practice.
Experienced practitioners are still human. We can be just as overwhelmed by everyday stressors as anyone else, and often, the mind is quick to judge that experience. Mine tends to sound like, If you were truly a mindfulness practitioner, you wouldn’t be feeling this way.
In those moments, the mind takes a very human experience and reframes it as failure. You’re an impostor.
Part of what makes this so challenging is that we begin looking for evidence to support that belief, convincing ourselves we are failing at something we were never meant to perfect.
Part of what makes this so challenging is that we begin looking for evidence to support that belief, convincing ourselves we are failing at something we were never meant to perfect.
What About Stress?
To be alive in these times is to experience sustained levels of stress. It does not take much, turning on the news, scrolling through headlines, or navigating daily responsibilities, to feel the weight of political unrest, global uncertainty, financial pressure, social division, and personal strain.
The nervous system absorbs all of it.
So how do we regulate ourselves in the midst of this? And what does this have to do with mindfulness impostor syndrome?
Research in stress physiology shows that when the brain perceives a threat, the body shifts into survival mode. Heart rate increases, breathing changes, and attention narrows toward potential danger.
In these states of activation, it can feel much harder to access the awareness we have worked so hard to cultivate. This can create a confusing internal signal: If I have these tools, why can’t I use them right now?
For mindfulness practitioners, this can easily be misinterpreted as a failure of practice.
But the nervous system is not malfunctioning in these moments. It is responding exactly as it was designed to.
This misunderstanding is where self-doubt can quietly take hold.
Clear Seeing
One of the most widely cited insights from psychiatrist Carl Jung is, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
As mindfulness practice deepens, awareness expands. We become more attuned to our internal landscape, our thoughts, emotions, and reactions. As a result, we often begin to notice reactivity more clearly than we did before. What can feel like regression may actually be increased awareness.
As mindfulness practice deepens, awareness expands. We become more attuned to our internal landscape, our thoughts, emotions, and reactions.
As a result, we often begin to notice reactivity more clearly than we did before.
What can feel like regression may actually be increased awareness.
You might notice yourself getting triggered in situations where, in the past, you would have reacted automatically without even realizing it. Now, there is a pause. A recognition. A moment of seeing what is happening.
That shift can feel uncomfortable, not because something is going wrong, but because something is being revealed.
Research on mindfulness suggests that practice strengthens meta-awareness, our ability to observe our own mental and emotional states.
The reactions themselves may not be new.
What is new is our ability to see them.
Expectations and Shame Are Here!
Most of us carry an internal narrative, one that quietly projects expectations onto our daily lives. In mindfulness practice, this often takes the form of how we think we should feel when we sit.
Calm. Patient. Equanimous. Grateful.
We tend to measure success by the presence of these states, while overlooking the full range of human emotion, fear, anger, grief, uncertainty, that are equally part of our experience.
We tend to measure success by the presence of these states, while overlooking the full range of human emotion, fear, anger, grief, uncertainty, that are equally part of our experience.
When our lived reality does not match that internal expectation, shame can arise.
During the months leading up to menopause, I found myself navigating unfamiliar sensations in my body. Many of my tools seemed to disappear. I felt reactive, scared, and uncertain about what was happening.
And the narrative that followed was harsh:
You should be handling this better.
Who are you to guide others if you cannot manage this yourself?
Instead of simply noticing stress, I added another layer: self- judgment.
At times, mindfulness concepts themselves can become a form of pressure. Psychotherapist John Welwood described this dynamic as “spiritual bypassing,” using spiritual ideas to avoid or override difficult emotional realities.
In practice, this can show up in subtle ways, but the result is often the same. We begin to feel guilt or shame about what we are experiencing.
Dealing with Dysregulation
Our ideas about mindfulness can sometimes work against us. If we believe the practice should make us calm and less reactive at all times, we set ourselves up for disappointment.
Mindfulness is not about performing calmness.
Mindfulness is not about performing calmness.
As Allen Ginsberg once said, the task is simply to “notice what you notice.”
When we cultivate awareness, we begin to see our reactions as they arise. Maybe you notice yourself getting triggered in a conversation. Maybe you pause instead of immediately reacting. Maybe you recognize, even afterward, that you were overwhelmed.
These moments matter.
Mindfulness meets us exactly where we are.
It does not require that we arrive in a particular state.
It asks us to meet whatever state we are in with a bit more awareness, and when possible, a bit more kindness.
Research on self-compassion suggests that responding to difficult emotions with care rather than criticism supports emotional resilience and regulation.
When we approach our experience this way, the narrative of failure begins to soften.
Anyone who has spent time meditating knows that emotions will always arise. What changes is not the presence of emotion, but our relationship to it.
Instead of asking, Why am I still reacting like this?
We might ask:
What is happening in the body right now?
What is this reaction trying to tell me?
These questions reopen the possibility of practice, even in the middle of difficulty.
Anyone who has spent time meditating knows that emotions will always arise. What changes is not the presence of emotion, but our relationship to it.
Moments of reactivity do not disqualify us from the practice.
They remind us why we practice. Awareness is not something we perfect. It is something we return to, again and again.
