That just sounds like a lack of confidence. If you aren't an imposter, why would you call it imposter syndrome?
Couldn't you say this about the names of various psychological syndromes? "If you aren't Alice in Wonderland, why would you call it Alice in Wonderland syndrome?"
It's referring to the person's subjective experience, from their (perhaps warped) point of view.
Imagine a lawyer who is terrified to go to work every day. She went to a good law school, got good grades, passed the bar exam, is well-respected in her field, etc. But she is terrified that her colleagues will, one of these days, find out that she's not even truly a lawyer at all -- she's just someone who managed to jump through enough hoops to convince people that she's a real lawyer. Once the people around her learn who she really is, hoo boy... she's going to lose her law license and her reputation and her clients and her house... she lives in fear of being "found out" every single day and it's beginning to affect both her career and her health.
Is this lawyer an imposter? No, she's truly the lawyer everyone thinks she is, and it would be inaccurate to call her an imposter. But she is suffering from imposter syndrome.
If the lawyer feels like an imposter in her current role, that's different from feeling like an imposter in a role you don't even have. This is the distinction I'm making, and why I think the label doesn't fit. Should I feel like I have imposter syndrome because I'd be uncomfortable as a professional athlete, something I don't do? Or should I just realize I don't have confidence to do something else? To me those are very different. Recognizing I can't do everything isn't a form of imposter syndrome - if it is it makes the label completely meaningless.
I'm aware it's a psychological condition. We're arguing over something we haven't even defined yet though, so how would you define it?
I'm not trying to haggle, but we can't have a meaningful conversation about a term if you aren't going to define it.
Agree to disagree, I guess.
We aren't talking about short couch potatoes being scared to apply to the NBA. That's a justified sense of inadequacy.
We're talking about people switching from one fairly normal job to another one that probably has a lot of overlap with what a person was already doing. Imposter syndrome is the unjustified sense of inadequacy.
Its not a binary thing though. Some people would have a little bit of doubt transitioning to a slightly different role and that's normal. Change is scary to lots of people to varying degrees. However, some people are very competent, yet might be afraid to apply for a higher level position or a slightly different role because they fear that they are actually terrible and that they've gotten where they are due to luck and graft. That's imposter syndrome.
Its used to refer to people that are actually competent at what they do but they feel like they have faked everything and that the entire world is about to find out. A lack of self confidence is a core part of imposter syndrome.