Grandiosity and limited personalities

You know how you can circle around something and not quite land but you're close? The reality show is doing that to me.

So I went to google with the idea of searching "Grandiosity and low self esteem" to see how much these two traits are paired. I typed in "grandiosity and", and low self-esteem auto-filled, so it's right up there.

Some quotes:

Grandiosity, or the delusion that you’re special and/or don’t have to follow the normal rules, underpins nearly every aspect of perfectionism

Tessa has spent how much time telling us about her perfectionism? Usually that's meant to trigger empathy - she's hard on herself, she's self-critical = humble, never good enough. But we've seen with Jessica, who also loves the label, that it can be a pretty histrionic, self-dramatizing self-description.

This next writer is a little florid and precious for me in the adjective department, but her descriptives do evoke what we see from Tessa and Scott, what they project and what's missing. I think I'll highlight what we see missing in Scott and Tessa.

And mostly, it got me thinking about the difference between grandiosity and self-esteem.

Grandiosity is a cover, an attempt to divorce yourself from pain through self-elevation. Self-esteem is an acceptance of your pain, your strengths and weaknesses, because you understand the incredible value of your very Being.

With grandiosity, you pursue your vision to the exclusion and detriment of your dear self and others. With high self-esteem, you cultivate your dream and garner the resources to make it happen.

Grandiosity makes you feel special, and separates you from others. Self-esteem connects you to others through your humanity.A grandiose brag is designed to impress, but merely turns others off. A high self-esteem brag is a celebration of one’s gifts.

The one thing we can CLEARLY see with Scott and Tessa, however we choose to armchair psych/spitball it, is a desire to separate themselves from others. Others as in - the common horde. There is no arguing that. We can see it from space.

On the ice, they've separated themselves. That's a given. They're extraordinary talents.

However, they and their community have an equivalent drive to separate themselves from others off the ice, and what they end up proactively doing is alienating themselves from others.

Alienation is one way of separating yourself out off ice and it's the easiest way. The 'elevation' part seems to be built-in due to their status as celebrity athletes and the public's lower status as fans,

I think the part that I'm not so on board with is the "pain" part. Who knows what they're compensating for, but a healthy personality isn't grandiose. I do know Moirville projects itself as having very restricted personalities. BIG doesn't mean full personalities. They have narrow-spectrum personalities that appear to be fixed. There's no development.

Tessa goes on and on about the wonder that is Kate, her mother, as if we have Kate to thank for all that Tessa has become. I don't think Kate does Tessa's skating for her, but she was influential in the development of Tessa as a person, to which I can only say, mother of fucking God. I don't think anybody has to wonder about the Virtues in this anymore. They produced Tessa. That's all we need to know.

I also went googling for the difference between "nice" and "kind" as I think Scott and Tessa both make no distinction, and there's a big distinction.

This is a second hand compilation of the difference I found on the web - it's schematic but it gets the point across:

Nice: adj; pleasant or pleasing or agreeable in nature or appearance; socially or conventionally correct; refined or virtuous

Kind: adj; having or showing a tender and considerate and helpful nature; used especially of persons and their behavior; characterized by mercy, and compassion

A “nice” person is one who conforms his behavior to what he believes society sees as “nice.” A “kind” person doesn’t necessarily care about what “society” thinks of him; he acts out of a deep-rooted love for his fellow living beings.

On the surface, this might not seem to be a very important distinction. However, when we look deeper at the roots of these two behavior patterns, we see two very different human beings.

The nice person is focused on himself – he does nice things in order to be perceived (by others and by himself) as a “nice person.”

The kind person is focused on others – all he wants is to relieve the suffering of the living, conscious creature in front of him.

When we dig deeper into these two “personalities,” we will find some extremely intense differences.

The core of a “kind person” is love. The core of a “nice person” is fear.
The kind person is strong. The nice person is weak.

P.S. - reading descriptions of the reality show below, it looks like Virtue Moir can't maintain internal logical consistency even inside a single episode of their own fan fic'd reality show. To wit: apparently Tessa goes on about how she's bad at flirting and she needs coaching from their choreographer about how to look at, touch, and respond to Scott (all of that, btw, sounds like Scott and Tessa have decided to use themselves as masturbatory aids for their fan base. NICE.).

FF to their poignant dinner and Tessa is rubbing her red stilletto flat against Scott's leg. Which is it, lady?

She's not good at flirting.