"I used to get paid more somewhere else." That was the sentence. Almost an afterthought, dropped near the end of an offer negotiation that had gone beautifully. And it was enough to make my client spiral in doubt. Here’s the coaching I gave her.

I had “Gold Star” credentials and was multilingual, yet I had neither the language for advocating for my own potential nor the confidence to do it.

In hindsight, I saw I was caught in Chronic Overachiever Trap (aka the Good Girl Trap).

Feeling like a "fraud" is super normal, even for me. The more I coach subject matter experts and executive women, the more I see that imposter syndrome is never an indicator of actual competency but a hypnotic spell induced by a society steeped in bias against women and minorities. We can break the spell of this terribly boring hypnosis by co-opting its language. So there, I'm a "fraud."