Impostor Syndrome is a personality pattern that is characterised by pathological lying in the form of fabricating an identity or a series of identities in order to get recognition and status.
Too often we talk about it in the individual. A religionist can have it as a religionist. But so can a church. God talk is really man talk. You put what is in you into a God instead of admitting that it is in you. Sure enough, religion has a God who is himself suffering from Impostor Syndrome.
Think of his promise that he will rescue the widow and orphan of faith. Yet they die in degradation.
Think of how he claims to be all love while giving a Bible riddled with snuff porn rites in which animals are slain and "sinners" are brutally stoned to death.
Think of how he offers signs that evil spirits cannot replicate. The answer to, "God alone can raise the dead and Jesus rose" is, "But evil spirits can make it look like he did." So he is a proper cheat.
Think of how even if he does make these claims, what matters is to us that we make them for him. We don't do very much for widows or orphans. We do enough to look good. We don't really want a good God but one who does evil as long as he is good to us. We want superstition and to call it faith.
If God is an impostor so is his servant. Birds of a feather, flock together.
God and religion can get you to step outside of the rules of the world so you can have your inner world with him and the supernatural based on lies and to get recognition and status FROM THEM! It is an outlet. Some people are solipsists. Each individual thinks they alone exist. It is like, "Only I exist. The world I see around me is constructed for me and is about me even if it feels otherwise. My mind has the power to create this simulation." Religion may not go that far but there is a solipsism there between God and the individual.
It is common to feel that despite your good deeds and great achievements that you are an actor and a fraud. Religion adds to this problem for it gives you a god to worry about not just what is natural. It gives you all those sins to load on you. For example, God is supposed to come first at all times but who can manage that? That reverse form of Impostor Syndrome is very persistent and can be hard to treat.
It can force a good person to just stop doing what they do.
It can force a person to hate and shun rewards and praise.
Clance and Imes declared in 1978 article that the phenomenon afflicts women more than men.
It is as likely to happen with ordinary good women as much as with high achieving and successful women.
The notion that there is a God who sees evils in your heart that you don't even know are there could be a catalyst. That is obvious. But it needs empirical investigation as well.