An introduction to this series can be found here.

1. Grandiose Sense of Self-Importance

• Overestimating their capabilities or holding themselves to unreasonably high standards.
• Bragging or exaggerating their achievements.

It brings me such relief to read the words “unreasonably high standards.” They are healing in and of themselves.  I have read them many times before, but here I am again, relieved to be given permission to not hold myself to unreasonably high standards.  

I have been in denial of my physical capabilities and health limitations my entire life.  I never learned how to check in with my system and work with it, to find a way for my physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and social lives to collaborate.  

The fact that it is a relief to read the words “unreasonably high standards” shows me I have slipped back into holding myself to unreasonably high standards.  It is so validating right now I feel my back and shoulders relaxing, I feel a warmth through my mid back and chest, and a small squeezing in the middle of my chest that I would guess could cry.  

My attention goes back to the words like a little puppy and I just follow it.  I feel this energy of a little puppy sniffing around it and curious, hopeful to be able to play and have fun soon.  I feel my eyebrows go up with the preciousness of this description.  

Unreasonably high standards.  I feel my stomach squeezing, more in my back is relaxing.  It is a little hard to breathe, like my airways are a little bit tight.  I feel heaviness around my eyes like I have been crying even though I have not.  

A deep breath comes.  It feels like relief again.  I might just sit here in relief for a few hours, it seems like water to a parched soul right now.  It almost feels like my experience is not mine but someone else’s, I’m so surprised and feel my disposition toward myself adjusting so much.  

I feel a settling within me down my torso with this acknowledgement that I feel almost outside of myself, and it’s like everything in me is settling to feel that I am one human and not more.  There is a sadness at the bottom of my chest that tugs at my eyes and a deep breath comes.  

I feel a painful pulling on the left side of my neck and my attention rushes to it, almost as if something in me wants to save it from unreasonably high expectations.  I feel a dense sinking through my abdomen pulling down on the middle of my chest too as I write these words.  The pain and pulling in my neck is released and I can’t find either sensation anymore.  I feel grateful for this experience and awareness.  

I feel the dense sinking, wanting to accompany it, and become aware again that I am one human and not more, that the desire to rescue me from unreasonably high expectations comes from within the same human as the unreasonably high expectations themselves.  My mid and lower back squeeze tightly.  I feel a strange sensation in my throat, like a pulling backward.  I offer all of these sensations softness and gentleness.  I feel a sense of guilt.  A recent recognition of my patterns of guilt comes to mind, that guilt becomes a spiral of trying to self-correct, and that self-doubt and more guilt perpetuate the spiral and do not help what they are trying to help.  

I feel strong sensations through my arms that are hard to describe but it is not comfortable.  Like heaviness.  I suddenly feel it in my face too, in my cheeks, a heaviness that is uncomfortable in my tissue.  This is a strange sensation; I don’t remember ever feeling anything so strongly in my cheeks in all the hours months and years of doing these exercises.  A deep breath comes to acknowledge this novel experience.

I feel dense heaviness in my chest as well.  And I recognize now that most of my body is in this response at the moment.  

My intention was to offer resource to these strong sensations, softness and gentleness and compassion, when a flash of lightning surrounded the area I am sitting in.  Thunder booms through the house, the trees, and my physical body.  And I feel into the visualization of the field that those sound waves of the thunder just covered, a huge area of land, far bigger than me.  I feel the energizing aliveness it awakens in me to hear thunder.  I feel how all of this comes from beyond me and doesn’t need me to be there, and in no way is influenced by me being here or not.  It’s amazing human experience to be needed, to have influence, and in this moment embodying these unreasonably high expectations, I feel that I have at times expected me to be thunder, have been expected by others to be thunder, when I am actually a human that will never, in and of my physical being, single handedly make soundwaves cover the area that thunder just did.  And it is comforting to feel oriented in the space that I take up with the qualities that I have without reaching to be something so … grandiose.  

I return to my body sensations and they are out of control.  Intense.  I repeat the word unreasonably high expectations, and I extend to myself forgiveness in case that will help some of these sensations.  A deep breath comes and I do feel an edge released from all of the intense discomfort I was feeling through most of if not all of my entire being.  Another deep breath comes.  I don’t remember practicing forgiveness for myself even though I have seen it suggested many times.  I didn’t even know how to do it.  Right now it is coming so organically and I feel a lot of gratitude for this moment, that it just arose and unfolded naturally.  

I suddenly have an appreciation for the drive that has come from within me to accomplish grandiose things, to want to identify with grandiose things.  Very unexpected because when I do think of this explicitly I have such disgust and disdain and my focus is on how to fix it, and how to fix it long-term.  But right now there is a settling in me of opposing forces that seem to have only ever been in conflict, and not sat and faced each other.  And to be able to do so with gratitude for what has caused so much havoc in my life feels like an unexpected relief.  

Appreciation and forgiveness.  A deep breath comes to accommodate all of the physical adjustments I feel inside.  Forgiveness feels like it is a lightweight warmth that moves like a liquid but is not heavy or imposing.  And it keeps settling from my arms and chest down through my back and abdomen.  

There is a sense of understanding, I understand why I held myself to unreasonably high standards, but this is not very detailed cognitively just yet, more of a felt experience in my body.  There is an understanding of unreasonably high standards from society, from family, and this was internalized in a way that might just no longer be needed within me.  

A deep but slow and gentle breath comes.  There is a layer of care and affection settling on top of the forgiveness that had settled.  It feels like love that is also lightweight and not imposing.  Deep breaths keep coming to accommodate.  

I feel such a warmth in my being, I realize warmth and care and love are things mostly exercised outside of me and not inside of me.  I offer these to others without having them within myself.  And it feels nice to feel this within me without any outside influence.

I feel like approaching the other words here and I’m doing it from a completely different state than usual.  I am generally a blank slate or starting from a space of foggy chaos, but this is such a warm caring supportive space, probably something I have searched for or tried to create outside of me for a very long time if not all of my life.

I hesitate to move on because I don’t want anything to change about how I feel inside right now.  But everything is settled, it just feels like I’m home and can do anything from here.  Let’s find out.

“Overestimating capabilities.”  There is a lack of clarity in me as I sense into this.  I find within me a gross underestimation of my capabilities a lot of times, and a gross overestimation of capabilities a lot of other times.  I feel this settle onto the layers within me of love and forgiveness and drive and care.  I sense it right in the center as if to get a 360 degree view of myself within and also seeing outside of me with that same 360 degree perspective, reorienting me into a settled sense of reality.  My abdomen feels more dense than the rest of me and a deep breath comes but nothing else is really moving or coming up.  This flows very much with my current theme of allowing myself to settle into the unknown and uncertainty of only acting on what I feel drawn to, from a natural peaceful next step rather than a big leap or radical change to my life or creative project.  There is something very peaceful and reassuring about feeling this within my being, like a needle identifying the center of my being and helping the rest of me orient itself accordingly as well.  I know that is a bit abstract but the feeling at this moment is trusting and a quiet humble confidence in this process.

“Grandiose sense of self-importance.”  I see kind of a self preoccupation that I have had recently and likely always.  It comes with financial uncertainty for sure, but it also comes when there is financial certainty in the form of questioning my purpose, my contribution to life.  I can sense how in a small dose it would be natural and how an obsession powered by fears leads it to preoccupation and even to a level of grandiosity.  Particularly when I haven’t known how to shut it off or take a break or come back to earth, there is nothing to deflate it except an extreme disappointment or act of God.  Seeing it like this gives me a renewed compassion for those that I have likely only felt repelled by.  I have known from people I have been close to in family and relationships that they are mentally tormented even worse than I am, but this feels like an opening to understanding and feeling compassion for myself and them and this experience that takes hold of humans.  

This all feels so important and significant.  I sit in awe and gratitude at the possibilities of this process, the hope and reassurance it brings.

“Bragging and exaggerating achievements.” This was done so much for me my entire life that nothing comes to mind as a way I have explicitly done this myself.  I sense the need to find value within myself by focusing on these too much internally, as if they are the only thing that make me me, and no internal experience is even part of me.

It stirs more a feeling of being misrepresented, embarrassed at the discrepancy between reality and the exaggerated version of my achievements.  The feeling of being unseen for who I am. 

Part 2: Entitlement & Worthlessness; Frequent Fantasies about Having or Deserving Success, Power, Intelligence, Beauty, Love, Self-Fulfillment