In Gestalt therapy the contact cycle is the natural path along which a need is realised: from the moment it arises to its full completion through the integration of experience.

One of the key stages of this cycle is assimilation. It is the moment when we “digest” what we have lived through, make the experience our own, turn it into a part of ourselves.

Impostor syndrome is an example of a disturbance at exactly this stage.

Instead of integrating their achievements, a person devalues them or pushes them away.

It sounds roughly like this:

🔹 “I was just lucky.”

🔹 “I did not really do anything special.”

🔹 “Soon everyone will find out that I am a fraud.”

What is actually happening here?

The achievement is there — but contact with it is broken off.

There is no process of fully making the experience one’s own.

Instead of satisfaction and growth, anxiety, self-doubt and shame appear.

To put it differently: the apple has already been picked, but the person cannot taste it and does not accept that they have the right to enjoy the fruit of their own work.

💬 Put very simply: impostor syndrome is not about your being worth nothing; it is about how hard it is for you to let yourself feel your own worth.

The work here is not to “become better”, but to learn to assimilate what is already there.

And to dare to stay in contact with your achievements — without running away, without playing them down, without reducing yourself to zero.

✨ If this theme resonates with you and you would like to explore it more deeply, we invite you to the lecture:

“Impostor syndrome”

🗓 Date: 28 April 2025

🕖 Time: from 19:00 to 23:30

📍 Format: online

💳 Participation fee: 400 hryvnias

🎥 For those who cannot attend or who would like to revisit the important moments later, a recording of the lecture will be available.

Presenter: Oksana Shulha — trainer of the educational programmes of the Kyiv Institute of Gestalt and Psychodrama, facilitator of therapeutic groups.

At the lecture we will talk about:

how and why impostor syndrome is formed;

which features of the Gestalt contact cycle help us understand this process better;

which steps help to step out of the vicious circle of self-devaluation.