Mindful Magazine: Feeling Like a Fraud in Your Own Mindfulness Practice

Even after years of practice, we can still have moments that leave us feeling like a fraud. Mindful contributor Angela Stubbs asks, What do we do with our Mindfulness Imposter Syndrome?

March 30, 2026 | Angela Stubbs

Photo by Haneen Krimly on Unsplash

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.

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