It's true what they say. You are your own worst critic. Tell me about it. I took this saying to the extreme, and since early childhood, I've constantly bombarded myself with waves and waves of self-imposed judgment and proposed correction. I constantly held myself accountable up to the highest bar ever known to man (and woman). This bar was called perfection.
Growing up and having no choice but to spend almost 30 years with myself, it'd be a shame if I didn't have at least a little bit of self-awareness. Naturally, my self-awareness did grow and expand as the years went by, but more recently I've genuinely began fuller realization of my true self including my true potentials and pitfalls as well. I began working on myself and analyzing my very heart, mind, and soul at a fairly young age during middle school. Since then, I've logged an infinite number of hours to recognize a fundamental truth which has stuck with me since as far back as I can remember. I am really, really hard on myself.
I sort of do and don't remember the first time I ever came to experience the word "perfect", what it means and why it exists. Thinking about it now, I'm almost positive the first time I ever conceived the idea of perfection was within the church growing up as a christian. The word was used everywhere to represent the man upstairs and his beloved son. It was used in hymnals, praise songs, sermons. Apparently the man whom I share a birthday with was labeled as the perfect man. Perfection in this context meant a man who bore no sin. Not one, not a single one. How undeserving we all must be, and how lucky we all are to be alive because the perfect man rescued us all from our own sins by dying a painful death. If it sounds like the perfect plot to plant a seed of guilt in our minds, then you're hearing right. I remember constantly comparing myself to him, asking the common question. WWJD? I remember entertaining the thought of myself being a resurrection of him and imagining what it'd be like to be him. I remember trying hard, really hard. I tried to be "perfect" and failed miserably.
I am a strong perfectionist. Hours and hours of self-analysis led to lots of realizations and re-realizations about my perfectionism. Where does it come from? Why is it there? Why can't I ever change it despite my greatest and grandest efforts to do so? Is it good, or is it bad? Does it mean I'm strong, or am I weak? Over the years and recent events, I've come to one undeniable conclusion and truth. Perfectionism is bad. Let me clarify. Perfectionism is bad, for me.
Based on the definition given by the pre-installed Dictionary app on all Macs, perfectionism is defined as the refusal to accept any standard short of perfection. What a terrible display of using the root word as part of the definition, right? Let's go one level deeper. Perfection then, is defined as the condition, state, or quality of being free or as free as possible from all flaws or defects.
I hit a giant milestone near the end of last year and finally put in some really genuine effort to find a therapist. I've thought and talked about finding one for years until one fateful day, I made a firm and adamant decision to find one. I was filled with sheer determination and will alone, and failure was not an option. After a dozen calls to a dozen therapists and session visits to half of them, I finally found my therapist and have been seeing him weekly since. A common theme consistently bubbling up during my sessions is perfectionism, how deeply rooted it lays within my mind, and how it touches just about every aspect of my life. I have a pattern of thought which he commonly refers to as black and white thinking. For perfectionists such as myself, we're inevitably training our minds to believe and think in dyads. It's either one or the other, with no in between. For any given situation, we perceive two interpretations. When engaged in conversation and hearing something ambiguous, we interpret it in two opposing ideas. She loves me always, or she doesn't love me at all. I trust her completely, or I don't trust her at all. I'm a good person, or I'm just weak. If she cheats on me, she never loved me. If he rejects me, I'm not good or deserving enough to get it. These are typical scenarios which have inevitably at one point or another ran its course through my own head.
Black and white thinking does me no good and is a very destructive way to perceive the gray world I live in. My mind splinters off and interprets high-risk situations with as little as two options when in reality, I know there are infinitely more. Not so surprisingly, this style of thinking only kicks in whenever the situation pulls in my own sense of self-worth into the picture. It's like a thick giant fog rolling in, and suddenly you don't know which way is up or down, left or right. I can assess other peoples' situations very objectively, compassionately, and empathically. I'm quite good at it, but when it comes to giving myself the same amount of grace and compassion, I simply don't. It's like a bad habit, which despite everything I know about self-worth, acceptance, deservingness, and compassion, I fail time and time again to break the spell. It's equivalent to being unable to kick the nicotine habit while knowing crystal clear without a single doubt, it is killing me. I'm my own worst critic, and I'm always fighting to break down and away from this destructive habit.
In the old cartoon show, GI Joe, the motto always was "Knowing is half the battle." Well, thank you very much Mary Jane, but shit, what's the other half? It's like telling someone a pot of gold exists somewhere without leaving them a single clue. It's true though. Knowledge does help, and there's no way you can work to obtain something if you don't even know it exists. As for the other half, I'm learning and accepting that some things are just impossible to do through sheer will alone. Will power regardless of how much knowledge I possess is just not enough to change. The answer? Practice. It takes practice, repetition, and consistency to build new habits over the old. You want to change something, change the way you perceive situations, move past old thinking patterns, and get into the new? Then practice is your answer.
The human mind is incredibly complex as is the human spirit. How can anyone believe we can classify something so complex as the human mind into just two motives? Well I obviously can, but I know it's a false perception and simply not true. I know we're all truly unique and come in all different shapes and sizes. I know I'm really hard on myself more than I am on others. I know I hold high and unrealistic expectations of myself, often ending in disappointment within myself. I know I try to be perfect while knowing perfection doesn't exist. I know.
I wanted to be perfect when I was young, and I tried to be perfect since. It's a mental fixation, similar to OCD, where I can't help but want everything I do, say, produce, create, etc be the very best, be perfect. Well, I'll say it loud and clear. I'm done trying to be perfect. I'm done trying to be in control. Practice makes perfect? I don't think so. Practice makes imperfect. I'm practicing to be imperfect. I'm ready to wake up every day, chant mantras in my head if I have to, and practice getting my mind to let go, to ultimately accept my imperfect nature. I will be late, most of the time. I will sometimes retract and be unreachable. I will have a difficult time keeping in touch with people. I will respond to emails from three to six months ago because of procrastination. I will judge myself harshly and hold myself to high expectations. This is me. I'm not perfect. I acknowledge I want to be, and I acknowledge I never will be. I am just me.
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