Note: the formatted version of this story is available from Blank Spaces, September 2026, Volume 11, Issue 1, p. 16.
“You would be surprised at how common this is,” Elfriede says. “You’re not alone, Martin.”
Martin is in the middle of therapy about his marriage but has just blurted out a new problem. As a Member of Parliament he is an imposter every day, relying on imitations of successful politicians to impress people and get elected.
Another one, Elfriede thinks. At least three quarters of her clients confide this, almost word for word. She wonders if it’s a kind of local epidemic. It’s the politicos like Martin, especially, making sure no one sees them creeping to her door after their pious speeches about shining a light on mental health.
On the positive side, this is something new from Martin. Their analysis of his marriage has been going nowhere lately and this may lead to a break-through.
“The good news is that imposter syndrome is very treatable,” she says brightly. She gives him the practiced smile of reassurance she learned from her clinical mentor, long ago. “Thank you for sharing this, Martin. Understanding it is the first step, understanding your feelings.”
Martin likes Elfriede’s voice, slightly husky and with an accent from somewhere in middle Europe. There she goes again, he thinks contentedly. More of her shit about feelings before she gets to the practical stuff.
Martin also likes the consultation room. It is the hushed space where he retreats, insulated from from interruptions. Two comfortable chairs face each other across a low table, close enough for relaxed communication but not too close. The room is not bare but distractions are minimal. A large dark-leafed plant by the door and an abstract painting on the wall, dark shapes barely visible in a silvery fog. Elfiede’s other personal touch: a row of pink-cheeked figures, identical except for their descending size, regarding her patients with solemn eyes from the center of the table. The contents of a matryoshka, she had explained, from the collection of nesting dolls she started on a Baltic cruise that stopped in Russia, in St. Petersberg.
Most of all, Martin likes his chair. Each week, he savours its maroon leather, its familiar softness and coolness, the feeling of safety as he sinks into its cushioned embrace. Week after week, he has relaxed in this chair, Elfriede’s voice soothing him with gentle questions and undemanding suggestions. The chair is the one place in his life where, effortlessly, he is the centre of attention.
Martin plays his part, the respectful and attentive client. He is prepared to indulge her as long as she doesn’t get too carried away about feelings. After all, her advice has been working. Her understanding of Marina, his wife, had been instantaneous. It was almost as if she had interviewed the woman. The advice has been easy to follow. Attention and spontaneous gestures. At least one moment each day when he looks into Marina’s eyes and tells her how much he needs her. It’s the need, especially, that does it. The coming election is going to be tough but at least he won’t have to worry about Marina and the photo-ops she does so well with him.
“I don’t think you have mentioned this in any of our conversations so far,” Elfriede continues. “Is it really a feeling that only comes to you about your work?”
For Martin, Marina is already a problem solved. Elfriede’s advice has also worked with the women he hasn’t told her about. Even Sophia, the golden-haired goddess he had been stealing away with until Marina had seen them and a potential election scandal had loomed. They’ve agreed to stay friends and she even volunteered to be his special set of eyes in the constituency office where he found her a job. Sophia is a problem solved and now he’ll have reliable intel on Stahlberg, a potential rival. Two birds with one stone is what strategic success feels like and Martin can’t help gloating.
“Yes, it’s my career I need to talk about,” he says. “But please know that I’ll be forever grateful, Elfriede, for what you’ve done for me. And Marina too, of course. We’re closer than we’ve ever been.”
He holds eye contact the way he’s learned to do, ensuring that she sees his gratitude, gratitude that makes it clear the marriage issues are done with. Psychologists, so desperate for anything that makes them feel like they’re helping. Elfriede will get the message and return to what he wants to talk about.
“Thank you, Martin,” she responds. Again, her trademark smile. “I’m so glad to hear that. I’m just going to refill my cup. Can I?…”
“No thanks,” he says, as she steps in the direction of the water cooler.
Politicos, she thinks. As if a complement will ensure I never go back to what he doesn’t want to think about anymore.
As Elfriede refills her cup, Martin fiddles impatiently with the cuff of his Armani dress shirt. He fights the impulse to check his phone. The election is now less than three months away. Barring a miracle, he is about to become just another defeated MP. It will be as if he never existed.
Back in her chair, Elfriede is watching him impassively. He can’t read her expression.
“Elfriede, it isn’t just a feeling,” he says. “I actually am an imposter, so there’s no syndrome. Or at least not the one that imposter syndrome is about. I’ve been doing imitations my whole life, and winning awards, jobs, you name it. And that’s what’s been getting me elected too. But now my models seem to be letting me down.”
Elfriede nods, her expression sympathetic. Then she continues talking about imposter syndrome. Martin responds by reminding her that his feelings aren’t the problem. Whatever she needs to do with him, it can’t be working on a syndrome he doesn’t have.
Elfriede sips her water. What do I do with this man? He wouldn’t talk about feelings when we were working on his marriage, not even once. He was entirely performative, just wanting to know what he should say and do. And now it’s going to be the same with this new thing.
Elfriede thinks of the belligerent dog she sometimes encounters on her morning walks. Politicos live in a world where survival depends on communication but, endlessly, people are either attacking them or tuning them out. She calms them with the same techniques she uses on the dog.
“I hear you, Martin,” she says, in the gentle voice she has learned to use. “And thank you for correcting me. If I say anything that you feel is wrong, please tell me right away.
Martin scowls when she says “feel.”
“So now,” she ignores the scowl, “Let’s go back to an early incident when you had this experience, Martin. We all carry our history inside ourselves and sometimes it has things to teach us. It doesn’t have to be the first time, but what can you tell me about one of your childhood experiences that you felt involved being an imposter?”
Martin doesn’t challenge the “felt.” He enjoys talking about his experiences and the challenge of selecting one distracts him.
Elfriede knows that if she presses him for feelings, he’ll only keep denying. We each contain our repertoire of selves. “All the world’s a stage,” is the famous line from As You Like It, with Shakespeare’s beautiful poetry about our exits and entrances, the roles we play succeeding one another as our lives unfold. Performing is not Martin’s problem. It is the way he feels about it, his focus on manipulating others and impressing them. That is what leaves him feeling like a fraud. Perhaps his past will provide a way of exploring motives from a distance that makes them less threatening.
“OK, so to set the scene,” Martin says. “It’s Grade eight and our class staged a debate in the school auditorium for some kind of parent-teacher thing. I was in it and I remember us peeking out from behind the stage curtains. The others were totally petrified. I can still see how white their little faces were. But I looked out and what I saw was opportunity. I’d just seen a leaders debate on TV. Brian Mulroney, who went on to win in a landslide, had stood there and the way he talked, the way he formed his words so that every one was so full of authority and confidence, I thought it was amazing.
“I drank the whole thing in. I absorbed Mulroney and I had his voice in me and I knew it. It was like my secret weapon ready for me to bring it out. That debate, with an audience sitting there, it was perfect. I remember strolling out and sitting calmly at a table until my turn came up. I knew my face was radiating confidence and the audience was seeing that. And then I was standing up and letting the words just roll out of me, every sound clear and full of authority, each word unhurried. Talking too fast is the way nervous people ruin speeches and Mulroney was always so deliberate. When I was finished, the parents were on their feet, applauding. So, needless to say, we won hands down. And we went on to win the provincial championship that year too.”
“Thank you Martin,” Elfriede says. “Now let’s—”
“He was good, that guy. Elfriede, I’ll tell you something about Brian¬”
“Thank you for sharing this, Martin. Let’s just stay with how it was for you, how you felt after you won these debates.”
Martin is reliving Grade 8, now too distracted to notice the “felt.”
“Well, if I hadn’t been able to channel Mulroney I wouldn’t have won. That’s just simple fact. Afterwards, there was a kind of satisfaction at a job well done, I guess. I didn’t think of this at the time but, really, it was probably the way an actor would feel after a performance when they put on street clothes and go home, you know?”
“Very interesting, Martin. What a lovely experience for you. So now let’s talk about something more recent that you’ve had. Let’s see if we can find some parallels here. What about when you first got elected, for example?”
“Well, I’d been involved in university politics as a law student and then I joined the riding association when Marina and I moved back here. That led to a job in Bill Putnam’s office. You may have heard his name, our MP for many years. That put me right in the middle of things and I did a lot of listening. There were some really impressive people. In all the parties, to be honest. You didn’t forget them after you heard them.”
He pauses, his expression distant.
“This is very useful, Martin,” she says, prompting him to continue. “I think you’re saying that you had a wonderful political education.”
“Well, yes, it was a political education. But it went beyond education, if you follow me. I was getting those voices that I’ve used over the years, taking them all in. It’s these voices that have worked for me and I can still recognize them. They are really what’s behind my political career.”
“But Martin, it’s you who is using the voices, as you call them, so isn’t it you who is having the political career? It isn’t them, clearly.”
“Well, it’s my voice obviously, when I’m the one who’s talking. But it’s their thinking and speaking that I’m channelling. It’s basically them. Not me.”
“Thank you for sharing that,” she says. “The way you talk about your political education makes me wonder if you might have an actor’s ear. So this lets you hear the voices you have absorbed, even after you have absorbed them. But once you have absorbed them, they are you, Martin. Not somebody else. Many actors suffer from imposter syndrome, because they feel they are acting all the time. But this is often because of their awareness of voices. I try to persuade them that unless they are reciting lines from a script, it’s really them. And even then, they would be the ones who are choosing to recite something, and choosing what they recite also.”
“So is this what you’re telling me? I should take up acting but make sure I don’t steal anybody’s lines?”
Elfriede laughs.
“Good one,” she says. “No Martin, that’s not what I’m saying. I think this brings us back to a big question: what were you feeling about what you were saying, and also about the people who were listening to you? The words and how you say them are just the techniques of communication, if I can put it that way.
“We all have role models. When I studied psychology, I studied clinical work with a wonderful mentor by the name of Ingrid Gattenborg. I know that I absorbed some of her methods but I don’t think of Ingrid when I am doing my work. I don’t feel I am somehow her, I just feel I learned a lot from her.”
“Well Elfriede,” Martin says. “Is that all it is? Just what you feel? So if I think my inner self is Napoleon, then I’m Napoleon?”
“No, no,” she says.
Politicians, she thinks. They’re so good at arguing, maybe that’s why they never learn anything.
She decides to shift the conversation.
“Martin, you’re saying this is a life-long issue so let’s see if we can explore that a little. I’m wondering what might have brought it to the surface now.”
“Well frankly,” he says. “We’re in trouble out there. Deep trouble. The polls are running against us, and me in my riding too. As you know, an election is coming about three months from now. I have three months to turn this thing around.
“I need to reach out to younger voters. It’s not about policies, Elfriede. It’s about hearts and minds. And image. The polls say that these voters are looking for authenticity more than anything else. They associate mainstream politicians with dishonesty and hypocrisy and, above all, with not being themselves. So that’s why I need to stop being an imposter and find my inner self. And I need to make sure voters see it.”
They sit, looking at each other.
What I feel, Martin thinks, since she keeps harping on feelings, is that I’m about to lose the damn election. Voters don’t know what you’re feeling; they only know what they see and hear. If I can’t get her off all this talk about feelings, she’s going to be useless.
“Here we are,” she says. “Out of time for today when we’ve barely gotten started on this new path. But Martin, I think that the experiences you’ve been sharing might be able to tell you more than you expect.”
Martin checks his watch. He needs to move fast or he’ll be late for his meeting with Ferguson, an important donor. He rises and steps across the room.
“And Martin,” Elfriede gives him her special smile as he departs, “It will be you who is reflecting about who you are, not somebody else I think.”
The door closes.
Elfriede sits with her notepad. He still doesn’t get it. He flinches whenever I even say the word “feelings.” He thinks his marriage is working but I wonder about them. And about him. He’s so bound up in winning, winning with his wife and winning in politics. If he’s defeated is there going to be a Martin left? Who is Martin, if you take away the winning? Perhaps that is what he really needs to be reflecting about.
Martin walks to his car. She still doesn’t get it. Feelings, feelings, feelings, she keeps slipping them in when I’m just trying to get her to focus on something concrete. Acting but not stealing lines. It was a joke but now it seems intriguing. If it’s all about acting, then what he needs now is somebody the voters think is authentic to use as a model. Maybe Elfriede has given him something to reflect about after all.
* * *
Elfriede closes the front door of their bungalow. She savours the feeling of being in her home, away from the world of work.
“Home,” she calls. “Finally.”
She hangs up her jacket on the coat-rack they found last year at a craft market near Tulum. Kicks off her shoes. Undoes buttons as she walks to their bedroom, tosses her blouse into the laundry basket and fumbles with her belt.
Ten minutes later, she steps from the shower and lazily dries herself. Luxuriating in the softness of her robe, she strolls to their sun-room. Gabriella is already there, lounging on the couch in sunlight that angles across the room, sipping her glass of wine.
Behind her, on a shelf, the matryoshkas are arrayed. World leaders occupy the upper row, above the folk heroes, pink-cheeked maids and cheerful peasants standing beneath them, each containing its hidden cascade of dolls.
“So?” Gabriella says.
“Another one,” she says. “Another politico. It’s authenticity this time around. They imagine they have inner selves that would be irresistible to voters. They think its all about performing and getting approval. They don’t see the contradiction.”
“I hear you,” Gabriella says. “Thank you for sharing.” She eyes Elfriede, her face expressionless.
Elfriede smiles at their standing joke. “Okay. I’ll put that Elfriede away. Now I just need you to bring out the Gabriella who lets me share her wine.”
She pours into the glass waiting for her on the coffee table and settles onto the couch. They sit together, sharing the gradual ebb of another day.
Behind them, on the shelf, rays from the setting sun begin to find the dolls. One by one, the nested figures stand in temporary light.
