There has been a lot of commentary on the video that was posted by motivational speaker/ influencer Rachel Hollis earlier this month. This video is so cringey, that I can’t watch it without my face contorting into the shape it would also make if I saw someone ride their bike straight into a pole. If you can’t bring yourself to watch it, the 57 second video captures Hollis responding to a comment about her being unrelatable for having a house cleaner. She appears to draw the argument that through her hard work of waking up at 4 AM and failing publicly, that she has earned the “unrelatable” life that she has. Naming the likes of Harriet Tubman, Oprah Winfrey, and Malala Yousafzai–all women who are unrelatable in their success and fortitude– in the caption. Hollis sticks the awkward landing with, “Literally every woman that I admire in history was unrelatable. If my life is relatable to most people, I’m doing it wrong.”
The video displays racial microaggressions, a complete lack of awareness of her privilege, and somebody sucking pretty hard at saying sorry (her book “Girl, Stop Apologizing” might need a title re-write).
But, I want to move away from dissecting one woman’s tone-deaf pep talk, and more so use it as an example to talk about what healthy self-esteem is, and what it is not. Spoiler: it is not about being as unrelatable as possible.
Healthy self-esteem is an understanding that we all have fundamental worth as human beings. We all have our flaws and our strengths, but we are inherently valuable simply for being alive—and this worth can never be taken away. Doing your crunches, writing best-selling books, or being able to afford someone to clean your toilets twice a week won’t change this fact.
No matter how enlightened we become, we will still have moments where we drift into maladaptive states of self-esteem. I like to use relationship therapist Terry Real’s conceptualization which places the two polarities of unhealthy self-esteem: grandiosity and shame. Healthy self-esteem is viewed as the middle, grounded state where we have a stable sense of our self-worth and view ourselves at this level to be no better or worse than anyone else.
Grandiosity is a sense of superiority over others. When we’re in a place of grandiosity, it actually feels fantastic. We feel competent, confident, and powerful. But, it typically pushes people away or makes them feel like shit (think about how you felt watching Rachel Hollis’ video). We usually reach this feeling by drawing on external measures of success like our performance, approval from others, or things we own. It’s important to note that on its own, there’s nothing wrong with external validation, however when it’s our only source of self-esteem we make ourselves vulnerable to criticisms and our shortcomings. When we don’t practice healthy self-esteem, we typically ping pong quickly between grandiosity and shame because we don’t have that core positive sense of self to latch onto.
The counterpart to grandiosity is shame. This is where we believe we are unworthy or fundamentally worse than others. It’s a terrible feeling, where we may feel embarrassed, self-critical, guilty, or physically in pain. Shame is also a distancing emotion, it leads us to self-isolate, engage in numbing behaviours, and draw our focus inwards to view ourselves negatively.
Interestingly, shame and grandiosity are actually two sides of the same coin. People who demonstrate grandiosity typically experience covert shame, and those who outwardly express shame, often have a hidden inflated sense of self. It’s probably easy to conceptualize the secret shame of grandiosity because it is the stereotype of the over-compensator: the bald guy with the Ferrari, the insecure bully, or the braggadocious person with a paralyzing fear of failure. The undercover grandiosity within shame is a little harder to spot. When we are in the “less-than” position of shame we overestimate our influence on others—we feel that everyone will judge us if we underperform, slip-up, or misspeak. In shame, we cannot hold ourselves accountable for our actions in a relational way. If you’ve ever tried to repair conflict with someone stuck in shame, you’ll understand how ineffectual it is when the other person is just verbally beating themselves up like Dobby the House Elf from Harry Potter. In shame, we take up all of the space with our own feelings of insubordination without leaving room to support the person we hurt.
Whether we shift into the one-up (grandiose) or one-down (shame) location, in order to build healthy self-esteem, the aim is to bring ourselves back into centre. Let’s return to Hollis for an example of what these shifts in position look like, and how we can come back to healthy self-esteem.
Imagine you wake up at 4 AM (just like Hollis) and have the thought: “This is a time of day little have seen! I am the hardworking queen. I am so much better than everyone.” While, this little confidence boost may be a passing thought that no one else will hear (unless you cement it in a TikTok video), thoughts such as these do shift where we focus our attention. If our inner dialogue continues to look something like this—where we build ourselves up through comparison to others—we are setting ourselves up for a fragile sense of self-worth (like Gamestop stocks – up $100 one day, down $150 the next). And, when our self-worth depends on being better than others, we are building a brick wall between ourselves and any possibility of true connection.
Notice When You Go One-Up or One-Down
Shifting these little moments can add up to making huge strides towards cultivating a more stable sense of self-worth. One strategy I find helpful in doing so is to use your breath. If you’re in grandiosity, slow it down, and visualize breathing yourself down to being level to whomever you are comparing yourself to. Then, imagine sending compassion to others, and also compassion to yourself. If you’re in a private space, it can even be helpful to say “compassion to you, and compassion to me,” with your hands on your heart.
If you fall down into shame, you can often feel this sensation in your body—you may feel heavy, slumped over, or like you need to avoid eye contact. In our Rachel Hollis example, I think we see glimpses of covert shame in her since deleted first apology. Instead of apologizing or holding space for where she screwed up and caused harm, she shifts focus to where her “team” dropped the ball and explaining how the internet’s interpretation of her post and its caption was “ludicrous.” At some point before, during, or after posting this (or maybe when she deleted it) I think it’s safe to guess that she felt some shame internally.
Breathe Yourself to Centre
If Hollis had a healthy practice of self-esteem before posting this apology, it could have been a powerful opportunity to hold space for those she had hurt and model self-accountability. If you find yourself similarly in a place of shame, whether more generally or in response to hurting someone you care about, try breathing yourself back to centre. Imagine picking yourself up off the floor to be level with others and physically sit yourself up with a tall posture. Remind yourself of the common humanity we all share. Show yourself empathy and compassion, saying something like: “Even though I am a flawed human with a lot still to learn, I fully and completely accept myself.” Then if you’ve caused harm to others, it’s time to start your work of repair and accountability.
When I introduce this topic to my counselling clients, one of the biggest pushbacks I hear is the “What about Hitler?” question. Meaning, aren’t there some people who are just worse than others? To this question, my answer is that we do certainly need to hold people responsible for their behaviour. And I do believe that we can separate someone’s behaviour from their worth as a person. I think that we always have the opportunity to redeem ourselves, should we be willing to do the difficult work of taking ownership for the hurt we have caused. With that said, it is true that I have zero ability to prove the inherent value of people as a fact. What I do know is that the more I engage in the practice of breathing myself into centre, and building healthy self-esteem, the more I see myself and my clients step off the self-esteem rollercoaster, and experience more present and genuine connections with others.
I also see radical self-acceptance: the belief that we all share inherent, never-changing value as the secret to systemic change. When we, and particularly those of us with more privilege (white lady wellness professionals I’m looking at us) can stay steady when we fuck up, and know that we all share inherent, never-changing value, we can actually listen to the people we have harmed and have the capacity to do the important work of holding ourselves accountable and doing better.
Change is an Inside Job
Systemically, grandiosity is how the forces of oppression function in our society: it is the belief that one group needs to be better than another in order to be “good” and hold power. If you’ve claimed to be a feminist who wants to “burn it all down”— start within. What ways have you built up your sense of self-worth that depends on being better-than others? Does it show up in your Bumble matches? Your half-marathon time? Your GPA? In what ways can you unlearn the ways you have been told you need to prove your worth to know that this is already inside of you—a fact that is pretty freaking relatable.
