False Empowerment: When Empowerment Becomes Entitlement in Relationships

I remember being a young mother, overcome with entitlement.

I didn’t know that’s what it was at the time, but it is plain as day to me now. For that, I apologize—to my children and to the rest of the world who had to put up with me.

When my oldest was born, I became convinced he was the most precious creature to ever enter the planet. Taking him to the grocery store felt like a high-stakes operation. Even returning the shopping cart required what I can only describe as my transformation into an Olympic sprinter—difficult to do with a nursing body—just to get back to his side as fast as humanly possible. Was all that necessary? I think not.

Then came the pool.

I stood next to my car with a giant pool bag at my feet and my son safely buckled into his seat. Looking around at the other moms and babies, I had a very clear thought: I’m not sure this is safe. Not because of drowning or sun exposure, but because my baby was so adorable, so magnetic, so unmistakably extraordinary that I wasn’t entirely convinced the other mothers would be able to keep their eyes on their own children.

Yikes.

That moment is funny to me now, but at the time it felt completely real. Like a quiet certainty I didn’t question. I stayed under that spell for a while—until my second child was born—and something cracked open.

Because suddenly the truth became unavoidable: every parent feels this way.

Every mother thinks her child is extraordinary. Every father thinks his kid is fascinating. Every grandparent is convinced we all need one more story.

And they’re right.

But so am I.

My children are extraordinary. And so are theirs.

Something in me quietly came down from the mountain of specialness I didn’t even know I was standing on.

Healthy Self-Esteem vs. False Empowerment

In Relational Life Therapy, Terry Real teaches that healthy self-esteem is rooted in reality.

Healthy self-esteem says: I matter.

Grandiosity says: I matter more.

Healthy self-esteem allows us to recognize our worth while remembering that other people are equally valuable. Grandiosity demands special treatment. It quietly elevates our feelings, our suffering, our interpretations, and our needs above everyone else’s.

The trouble is that grandiosity rarely announces itself. It often arrives dressed as empowerment.

We are told—often rightly—to stop abandoning ourselves, to prioritize our needs, and to no longer shrink or over-give. But somewhere in that correction, things can tip.

Because valuing yourself is not the same as centering yourself. One creates connection. The other quietly erodes it.

The Sneaky Nature of Grandiosity

As an Enneagram 4, I know specialness can be a particularly seductive trap. That’s why I feel especially qualified to remind myself of this.

It rarely sounds like “I’m better.” It sounds like “I’m different.” My experience, my depth, my sensitivity, my child—somehow set apart from the ordinary world.

But specialness is just grandiosity wearing a softer outfit and a handmade bag, and a fair trade alpaca scarf.

It still separates us from reality.

And the hardest part is this: we almost never recognize it in ourselves.

We see it in our partner, our mother-in-law, our coworker—but rarely in the mirror. From the inside, it doesn’t feel inflated. It feels obvious, reasonable, even righteous.

Of course I’m upset. Of course I’m right. Of course they should understand.

How It Shows Up in Couples

In couples work, grandiosity often shows up as an inability to take in our impact on the person we love.

We become so focused on what our partner is doing wrong that we lose sight of our own participation in the pattern. We become the hero of the story, and our partner becomes the problem to solve.

This is why Terry Real names grandiosity the enemy of intimacy. Intimacy requires something almost countercultural: the willingness to see that we are not the only truth in the room.

Not less important—just not the whole story.

The work of healthy self-esteem is not climbing higher into specialness. It is coming back down into contact.

Not because we are less than we thought—but because everyone else is more real than we were remembering.

The Gift of Reality—and Why We Can’t Do This Alone

This is not something we reliably see on our own.

That’s why relationships matter. And why feedback matters. And why we need people who can gently interrupt our certainty and bring us back into contact with reality.

This is one of the gifts of therapy.

Not to tell you that you are the problem. And not to make you smaller.

But to help you build a kind of self-esteem that is grounded enough to stay in relationship.

One that can say: I matter. And so do you. I have impact. And I want to see it. I can be right—and still be wrong about how I am landing.

The goal is not to become less important. The goal is to become more relational.

Because intimacy doesn’t begin when we finally become special enough to be loved well. It begins when we become willing to come back into reality together.

wrapping up

If you find yourself stuck in recurring conflict, feeling misunderstood, or struggling to take in feedback from the people closest to you, therapy can help.

Together, we can uncover the patterns that keep you disconnected and build a form of self-esteem that strengthens your relationships instead of straining them.

The deepest freedom isn’t found in being exceptional.

It’s found in belonging.