If you grew up feeling like you must always exhibit greatness ....
Many of the professionals I work with describe a similar internal experience – an uneasy mix of achievement and self-doubt. Even when you succeed, there’s a whisper that it isn’t enough.
You may have grown up hearing that you were special, gifted, or destined for greatness but at the same time, you may have also been told that you were never quite measuring up. This may have been through outright criticism or more subtle communication – from parents, teachers, coaches.
Over time, this can become an internal voice you carry around within you. It makes for exhausting inner pressure:
“I have to be exceptional – the best – and if I’m not, something is wrong with me.”
That internal pressure becomes a companion, shaping how you approach work, relationships, and your sense of self.
This isn’t just a memory – it’s a pattern that lives in the body and nervous system, influencing your choices long after childhood.
As an adult, you might see the pattern clearly – and understand intellectually that these rigid expectations are not yours – they are someone else’s – but you still feel stuck inside.
Part of you wants to move forward and build your own life , your way – but another part freezes, avoids effort, procrastinates, or feels overwhelmed by shame or fear of failing.
It’s a pattern learned in childhood as a coping strategy. It can make you feel pulled in 2 opposite directions.
Expectations that are difficult to release
In my experience, many clients think they’ve “tried everything”, but their nervous system still carries pressure – expectations that feel enormous and unachievable.
Sometimes clients will express that they feel they are living someone else’s life, striving to please and live up to expectations – all the while with the underlying feeling that they may not actually be “good enough” . There is a sense of foreboding that this “terrible truth” may one day be exposed.
They may also carry with them the idea that striving or working hard to achieve a goal will in itself reveal their inferiority – with the inner voice telling them that if they were in fact so talented they wouldn’t need to try hard at all.
They can intellectually understand that this pressure does not help them, in fact it actually holds them back. Yet, in spite of this conscious awareness, they cannot seem to shake the feeling
How Accelerated Resolution Therapy can help
There is one therapeutic strategy called Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) that I’ve found can be helpful for clients stuck in this double bind.
Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) is a gentle, structured therapy approach that helps your brain process emotional memories and old identity messages that still live in the body – especially the ones shaped by childhood expectations.
It works at a level of the nervous system that is below the level of verbal expression and cognitive awareness. We use memories of childhood experiences that helped to form the double bind. For example, a client may recall a sports coach being exceptionally critical or demeaning.
We will then systematically then work with a limited selection of:
mental images or memories from meaningful moments
the emotions or sensations that arise with them
the old “rules” you had to live by to keep approval or closeness
Through guided sets of eye movements or bilateral stimulation, your brain is able to release the emotional charge from those experiences and create new, healthier meanings – without reliving their entire past.
Accelerated Resolution Therapy can work especially well with high functioning clients who at a cognitive level can see that certain inner beliefs are not helpful to them, but still feel heavily influenced by them.
Many clients express the relief and release they feel like this:
“I already knew this logically — but after ART, I can finally feel it.”
How ART Supports People Who Grew Up Needing to Be “Great”
If your self-worth was tied to achievement – being impressive, talented, or exceptional, effort itself may have started to feel risky – as if trying hard or struggling would prove you were never really “special” after all.
Your nervous system may still be carrying that pressure – even if you (logically) disagree with it now.
ART can help you:
loosen the belief that your value depends on your potential or performance
reduce the fear and shame that shows up when you try to start something, but then often procrastinate
release the pressure to live out someone else’s story about who you should be
experience effort as safe, human, and self-directed
softening the childhood expectation that your worth equals your potential
reducing fear that effort will prove you’re “not special after all”
releasing loyalty to the parent’s narrative about who you were supposed to become
allowing effort to feel safe, self-directed, and human
Instead of pushing yourself from unconscious motivations based on fear or self-criticism, or living inside someone else’s story – you can begin to respond through choice, groundedness, and self-respect.
Instead of living inside someone else’s story, ART supports you in reconnecting with your own values, pace, and direction.
What You May Notice as Therapy Begins to Work
In my experience, clients often describe that they experience:
feeling less frozen or overwhelmed when beginning tasks
- reduced procrastination
less self-attack or collapse when things aren’t perfect
more compassion for your younger self and the pressures you lived under
being able to take action without it feeling like you need to live up to someone elses’s standards
a sense of relief that your life no longer has to be about “proving” yourself
You don’t lose your goals, drive, or ambition –
you gain the freedom to pursue them on your own terms.
“It isn’t about performance, drive or ambition – it’s about de-coupling worth from achievement.”
What ART Is Not
It isn’t about forcing change or pushing you to “do better.”
It isn’t motivational coaching or willpower training.
It won’t erase your past – but it can loosen its grip on your present.
Accelerated Resolution Therapy doesn’t make you less capable or less ambitious.
It helps remove the emotional pressure that makes effort feel unsafe, so progress becomes steadier and more sustainable.
If you feel like you must achieve to be worthy....
Some successful people feel that their self-worth is tied to achievement.
If this resonates with how you think about yourself – especially in roles where you need to perform constantly – therapy can help you rediscover your own internal compass rather than chasing external worth.”
“If you find yourself holding your breath before starting something important, or equating effort with personal deficiency – that’s your nervous system talking. The work isn’t about fixing you; it’s about re-learning what safety feels like inside your own life.”
You don’t have to keep living according to someone else’s expectations.
And you can still be as ambitious and achievement oriented as you please. The difference is defining success on your own terms, and being worthy no matter what.
With ART, we work together to help your system release the old burden of needing to be “great,” so you can experience self-acceptance, emotional freedom, and the ability to build a truly great meaningful life that truly belongs to you – according to your own values and desires.
