Special and Ordinary

An Inner Team Dialogue Case Study

Excerpt from Part of Me, (c) Paul Wyman, 2024

Soon after her promotion to an account lead role in her design agency, Vanessa made a presentation to a major client, who showered her with praise for the originality of the new designs. Vanessa deflected the praise, offering a self-deprecating deflection that the designs weren’t really that original. An awkward silence followed.

One of her colleagues pulled her aside after the meeting, angry that Vanessa had talked down their work. The client had loved it, after all. If Vanessa didn’t think it was original, why hadn’t she said something before the meeting? 

Vanessa was not only devastated by the feedback, she was also very confused about her own behavior. She was genuinely proud of her team’s work, and delighted by the client’s positive reaction. But her behavior had communicated exactly the opposite, and she didn’t understand why.

As we reflected on this incident in her next coaching session, Vanessa shared that the moment the client paid her the compliment, she had experienced both a surge of pride, and a simultaneous, overwhelming impulse to run and hide, to be anywhere but in the spotlight. How was it possible that she could have two completely opposite responses at the same time?

I invited Vanessa to consider the possibility that one part of her loved attention, while another part of her was terrified by it. She agreed, and indicated an eagerness to explore both parts.

First, we spent some time getting to know the part of her that found attention excruciatingly vulnerable. This character, known as Ordinary, demanded that Vanessa always act with humility, and never draw attention to herself. Ordinary had become an Insider on Vanessa’s Inner Team as a pre-teen after witnessing her older sister get shamed by her stepmother for dressing in a way that would draw attention to herself. Her stepmother’s words, “Who do you think you are!” still made Vanessa’s stomach churn with discomfort. She had made a decision there and then that the best way to stay safe was to become invisible.

Vanessa now had insight into which part of her had deflected the praise and produced the impulse to run and hide. If she was going to succeed in her new job, however, she had to find a way to cultivate the part of her that enjoyed receiving attention. This felt completely out of reach.

I suggested that the change she wanted to achieve would involve getting to know Ordinary’s opposite, Special. But Vanessa had ruthlessly suppressed this character, exiling it from her Inner Team. She had been so successful at this that not only did she deny that Special was a part of her, she saw it exclusively as a negative trait.  In her mind, specialness equaled arrogance, entitlement and elitism. Why on earth would she want to be more like that?

With a little encouragement that there might be more to Special than she was currently seeing, Vanessa began the work of re-establishing awareness of her Special part.  She was surprised to discover that it wasn’t some kind of attention hog who thought it was above the rules. It was the part of her that wanted to shine, to make its own unique contribution, to be seen as precious.

Vanessa’s breakthrough was the moment she realized that Special had been operating within her all along. Her Special character was the source of her remarkable design sense, the very quality that got her promoted in the first place. She’d always had an unerring instinct for what imagery matched a brand, and what rang a false note.

Once Vanessa could find Special within her and see it as a positive influence, it changed everything. No longer was she trying to become something she was not, she was simply learning to apply Special’s gifts to herself rather than to brand imagery. She set about trying to understand what made her distinctive, unique and precious. Even asking this question would have been a kind of heresy before she discovered Special as a member of her Inner Team. 

Over time, she made progress. Her first reaction to anything that sounded like praise was still to deflect and minimize, but Vanessa learned to pause this response, and stay present long enough to take it in. She decided to enlist friends to help her get more comfortable when receiving a compliment, a practice she called “micro-dosing” praise. It involved asking trusted colleagues at work to share what they appreciated about Vanessa’s work. With each “dose” of praise, she would register the familiar squirming discomfort, reassure herself that she was safe, and let the compliment sink in. Not only did the intensity of her urge to escape the praise become less intense over time, she found - to her great surprise - that she began to rather enjoy it.