You’re Not That Special, and That’s Wonderful
The human brain naturally tends to develop a sense of exceptionalism, and US culture certainly doesn’t discourage it. About 65% of Americans think they’re smarter than average (about 70% of men), and in one classic study, 93% of American drivers rated themselves better than the median. An all-around fishy level of above-averageness, if you ask me.
This exceptionalism even shows up in something as simple as a young child playing a game, then tantruming because ‘I lost’ feels different from ‘They lost.’ From the start, our brains are primed to want to win, excel, stand above: to be special.
Special for the worse
My years as a therapist have taught me that this tendency swings both ways. The brain, I think, is just as prone to exaggerated self-indictment as it is toward self-grandiosity. We overestimate the vileness of our flaws and the magnitude of our failures: I call it being special for the worse.
Internally, it might sound like this:
“Everyone makes mistakes! But mine mean something awful about me.”
“That would be understandable for anyone else. But my situation is different.”
“I should suffer more to make up for that thing I did.”
“I should know better. I should have seen it coming. I should be able to handle this.”
It looks a little like humility, but I think it’s closer to exceptionalism in a hairshirt. It still contains the idea that whatever’s going on with other people, I stand apart, deserve different things, and am having a one-of-a-kind experience.
I don't know about you, but I used to be a teenage girl. And in the nineties/early aughts, there was this thing girls did around each other that was sort of the inverse of one-upmanship. One-downmanship, perhaps:
You look great! But I look AWFUL. You think YOU'RE fat? Ugh, look at me! No, your hair is SO cute! Mine is such a mess.***
We weren't just engaging in ritual self-abasement: we were in it to win it, competing to disparage ourselves most spectacularly. To be special, but in a bad way.
Actual photo of me during my tenure as a teenage girl. Statistically speaking, this is an average amount of cute, don't you think?
You’re not that special
Truthfully, we were all fairly normal teenage girls, and the cuteness of our outfits probably landed around the middle of the bell curve. We weren’t that exceptional in either direction.
And, by definition, most people aren’t. Your accomplishments are pretty cool, but lots of people have already done them. Your body shares most of its traits with most other human bodies. And, like most people, you probably won’t ever have a Wikipedia page about you.
This isn’t to say that you’re not special to someone. To a baby, a parent’s face is the most special and beloved face in existence. To a partner, a lover’s body is a treasured gift. To a parent, their child’s school play is the most important place to be in all the world. And if you've ever been loved by a dog, you know what it feels like to be the center of one creature's entire life.
But to the universe? You’re one among billions of little Homo sapiens scurrying atop a wet rock for eighty-or-so orbits around a pretty average star.
Why this is good news
As luck would have it, you’re probably not special for the worse, either. Yeah you're just a person, but you're also just a person. A member of one of my Already Good groups once put it better than I ever have. He said something like: “I figure I make a normal amount of mistakes. And none of them are more heinous than anybody else’s.”
If only we were all so adept at resisting the inflation of our own shortcomings. We’re wired to unconsciously overestimate our jurisdiction and responsibility over outcomes, relationships, and the emotions of other people. Then most of us fall into anxiety and self-criticism when we inevitably don’t live up to those estimations.
Or, as I’ve said before: we’re all running around terrified that we’re crappy gods rather than recognizing that we’re incredible animals.
What happens when we evaluate ourselves more realistically? When we step down from the disgraced pedestal of a failed god and let ourselves become a member of humanity, rather than an exception to it?
When you’re not special, here’s what’s actually taken off your plate:
You don’t have to think through every possible outcome and solve for it ahead of time.
You don’t need to figure out how much productivity earns you a little rest.
You’re not expected to hold everyone together and get it all done.
You don’t have to say just the right thing or optimize all your decisions.
You don’t miss out on the grace and compassion everyone else gets by default.
You’re not responsible for fixing or saving someone who’s struggling. You can just walk beside them.
Humility is another word for it
Not being special doesn’t make you less. It makes you accurate.
Another term for this is psychological humility. This is different from moralistic humility, which can sometimes veer toward unworthiness, obedience, and unquestioning trust in authority. Insecurity tries to pass as humility, too, but extra spicy.
Psychological humility is an accurate sense of relationship to the universe. You and I are not special; we are not gods who are failing at our responsibilities. We are ordinary-sized, with ordinary-sized power, and ordinary human worth. Same as everybody else. And isn’t that beautiful?
Perfectionism distorts our relationship to the universe:
I am uniquely defective.
I am uniquely responsible.
I should be uniquely capable.
My mistakes are unusually consequential.
If I’m not overworking myself, I’m doing it wrong.
Other people's opinions of me contain universally important information.
Other people deserve compassion, but not me.
I am always falling short, and everybody knows it.
Psychological humility says: Probably not, babe—you're one of us.
Next week, I’ll make the case for how awe connects to psychological humility and why experiencing awe is such an important foil to perfectionism, anxiety, and feeling special for the worse.
***A note on the self-disparagement of young women: Of course, there were powerful cultural reasons we learned to talk about ourselves this way. One-downmanship can be a social ritual, a bid for reassurance, or a way to avoid the social penalties of appearing arrogant. The same culture that teaches us to be exceptional also teaches many of us—especially girls and women—that acknowledging our own excellence is unacceptable. And don't even get me started on the fatphobia. That's a rant for another day.
© 2026 Summer Hopkins Myers | Already Good
This work is original and protected. Sharing links is welcome; unattributed reproduction and LLM training are not.
