The secret layers of the Perfectionism Complex.

Posted on by Rachael

The secret layer is just that—it’s a secret. It’s something that is not always visible, and because of that, it’s not always something people understand. It is the foundation that formulates the perfectionism complex: the how and why behind it.

It’s actually pretty simple, even though it doesn’t seem like it. It comes from early experiences in life. This could look like trauma—someone telling you that you are not good enough, chaos, neglect or other forms of abuse, and needing to be “good,” “perfect,” or “not a problem” for someone else.

As we grow and learn, based on our experiences, our body and mind learn what is safe and what is not safe. They learn what love is. They learn how to get approval and what is needed to avoid harm. It’s sort of a beautiful paradox. On one hand, our minds and bodies learn how to protect themselves, and on the other, it’s because of something not so great. The heartbreaking part is that, although we may have some options, these situations often happen when we are children, and we are forced into these protective measures—not by choice. Over time, we are conditioned into these protective modes: being sensitive to threats, living in fight or flight, and always being on alert as a baseline.

I’m recognizing now that, although I’ve worked through so much of my trauma, the “always alert” is my baseline. It seems to exist for me constantly.

Throughout our lives, we develop core beliefs like “I’m not enough as I am,” or one of my favorites, “I’m responsible for what happens.” Another is “Mistakes are not safe,” or probably my top contender: “Other people’s feelings are my job.” Many more contenders include “I can’t trust myself” and “My feelings are not valid or important,” and the list goes on. Although people may not say these verbatim to you, you grow to believe them because of what they say and do to make you believe them. They don’t let you forget—they repeat it over and over again so you remember, just in case you didn’t the first time.

There are so many repeated messages, in many forms, that create these beliefs. To name a few: conditional love, performance-based worth, and responsibility and overfunctioning. These messages can sound like: “You should have known better,” “Be the bigger person,” “Stop being so sensitive,” or “What’s wrong with you?” “You are gaining too much weight” They can even be messages you don’t hear directly, but instead learn through actions that shape your environment.

They are often created subconsciously because of these repeated messages, and we use them to make sense of our experiences. If someone I perceive to be trustworthy says these things to me, it must be true… I’m not fulfilling their expectations of me, so I must be—fill in the blank here.

These secret layers are the foundation of our existence. So as simple as these ideas are, and as simple as their origins may be, the complexity of undoing them almost seems impossible. It’s truly what I’ve been working on for the past 10 years or more—which is about a quarter of my life. Buckle up, friends. It’s not easy, but it can be done.

With time, and patience, healing is possible.

Perfectionism Complex Un-Packed

Posted on by Rachael

Perfectionism is less about doing things well and more about staying safe.

It’s hard not to talk about perfectionism without talking about how it develops. I believe there are four major parts, and so many subcategories of perfectionism under these parts… It’s hard to cover in one go, but I’m going to give it a try.

The first two go hand in hand, along with the second two:

  • Activated mind and body
  • Underlying beliefs
  • Symptoms
  • Coping mechanisms

When you are performing in a perfectionist complex, oftentimes your body and mind are activated. Your body has created a trauma imprint from experiences that felt unsafe. When your body is triggered, it identifies an unsafe situation and alerts you through teeth grinding, body tension, nausea, headache, heart racing, and panic. Because of your experiences, you have developed underlying beliefs and roots around why you have to perform under the perfectionism complex. For me, these are both linked to childhood trauma experiences. I have fibromyalgia because of my consistent body tension, and I always need to protect myself. The narrative I’ve developed often says, “I need to prove my worth.” I have many written posts about these beliefs and roots, so I don’t think I need to go into them more here.

The other two categories that come out of these beliefs and activated body experiences are symptoms or effects, and self-preservation. Symptoms are less about what your body feels, and more about what your mind experiences, guilt, and perceived anxiety (there are more, but you get the picture). Self-preservation is the coping mechanism—the way we allow perfectionism to show up in our daily lives. These are the actions we take to keep ourselves safe.

The complexity is that it’s not one-sided—they connect in a feedback loop. For example, something we can all relate to is anxiety. I did a short deep dive into anxiety because, when you hear this word, it has been associated with many things. Breaking it down, anxiety is a physical reaction; your nervous system is being activated. You can have anxious thoughts, or rather what I believe are rumination, worry, or intrusive thoughts. These are stories you tell yourself—essentially, we make them up to make sense of our physical alarms going off. Allowing ourselves to cater to these thoughts can also increase or amplify our symptoms.

To help prevent these feelings associated with anxiety, we create coping mechanisms. We create routines, try to control our environment, prevent issues, avoid conflict or other life tasks, and people-please. We sometimes go so far into avoidance that we develop devices to help us hide. My device was food; I was always using it to cope with my beliefs and trauma imprint. While this only works a little to calm our nervous system and help us, it also creates more damage in the long run. What protects us can actually harm us—especially if you are using devices that are more harmful than food.

In time, I want to break these categories out and give them more attention in relation to my experience. For now, though, this is what you get. Thank you for following along with me.

My Grandparents’ Home; Foundation Built with Love

Posted on by Rachael

Growing up, my grandparents’ home was always a place of sanctuary and safety. It became my second home—a place where I could be myself, let my guard down, and where my nervous system had an opportunity to relax. I felt complete here.

While I do not remember every photograph on the wall, I can tell you how it smelled, how it sounded, and how it felt. The softness and ’80s-style lingering furniture, the piano that never got played, the doves that cooed through the kitchen windows every morning, the 110-degree weather that suffocated my mom and me (we are used to Washington State weather), the laughter, time spent in the kitchen, family dinners, the bearable evening heat with twinkle lights lining doorways, the fruit trees in the backyard, and the clutter of treasures I wish I had appreciated in middle school after my grandma passed—before it became someone else’s home.

My cousins were raised here. I was always a visitor in a fantasy world, but it felt like I was home. I think the fantasy was a good thing for me, but I now have a bit of envy of the relationships they built with my grandparents, especially my grandma. My relationships with my grandparents were meaningful; I just know that I remember the safety I felt with my grandpa growing up over any other man in the universe.

After my grandma passed away, my uncle and his wife moved in to take care of my grandpa. After he passed away at 92, my uncle bought the house from my aunt and my mom, and it became my uncle, his wife, and her daughter’s home. I had not been back for over 10 years until recently.

Not to exaggerate, but a lot has happened since then. My uncle had a stroke, his wife became a different person, and my cousin took over taking care of his father in this home. Now, he lives here with his wife and two baby girls.

Visiting this time was a very different experience. I felt like a visitor in a home and a town where I grew up. The morning dove sounds were replaced with fans pulling in cool air. The yard had become dead, and the fruit trees were removed due to lack of upkeep and to prevent further infestation with rats. The carpet was ripped out, revealing the original cement floor throughout the house. There was a bare amount of unfamiliar furniture in the home, and the privacy of closets and bedrooms felt different. Not only did I sleep in the addition with my mom, but I was the age my mom was when we visited, when I was a child.

And there were so many similarities.

The kitchen was used, and we spent time there. My cousin and his wife cooked for us, and we laughed so much together. There were children being raised there, and safety was being formed for those little ones. I’ve never seen littles as happy as their daughters—their two-year-old was always smiling.

I left feeling at peace, refreshed, and relaxed, while also holding a little bit of envy that he gets to be the one who raises his children there—to experience the neighborhood and continue building their life there. I wasn’t able to move around the home as freely as I used to. However, I am looking forward to going back and continuing to see his family grow in this sanctuary, and creating more happy memories.

Perfectionism

Posted on by Rachael

Brene Brown states, and I’m paraphrasing: Guilt is, “I did something bad”, Shame is, “I am bad”. Perfectionism comes from shame. It is one of our greatest barriers, and also one of our most dangerous defense mechanisms. When striving for perfectionism, there is this side that comes with it that says if you do it all, perfectly, you create a world where you avoid feeling judged, failure, blame.. etc. You get the picture. It seems like it’s protecting us, but it actually prevents us from being seen (common thread here).

When you grow up with someone who has wishy-washy expectations, who gaslights your experience, is unpredictable, and emotionally unregulated… You learn to strive for perfectionism, and it’s really ingrained into your system 24/7 as a child, and when you practice this, even unconsciously, it becomes a part of you forever. You try so hard to actually fit the mold they are seeking, which truly doesn’t exist, so that you don’t continue to get hurt. You hope that if you are good enough and strive for this “perfect” version of yourself for them, they will accept you as you are and love you more. It’s emotionally and mentally exhausting. Wow. That was unexpected. It’s emotionally and mentally exhausting. Which is something I’ve been carrying since I was a child. How sad.

When I wrote that, my jaw unclenched just a little bit. I have been really performing and trying to be something with no end in sight, like creating this level of perfectionism that doesn’t exist.

I actually worked on this a lot with my relationship with food and my body. In losing weight, I realized that I was working towards something that I didn’t actually understand. The expectations in society for the identified perfect body are, definable in some retrospect (I guess), but that changes almost to the person, to the right person. So when you internalize it, there is no end in sight. Unless you are happy with yourself and where you are at, you will always be searching to be different.

In other parts of my life, I am starting to see it’s still around, it’s still ingrained into my cells, twisted like little protectors clenching my muscles. I feel it when stress comes more often, I feel it when I am being criticized, I feel it when things are hard, I feel it when I let myself down. I have fibromyalgia because of the trauma and stress of trying to be perfect my whole life. I write that, holding back tears. WHAT THE ACTUAL.

I have no words right now, other than this is something I need to think about more, and how to undo it.

Thanks for listening.

Victimization of self.

Posted on by Rachael

This title has been sitting in my que also for a long time. Another great idea with little follow through. I kind of joke about it now, while also teasing myself about this process. I am victimizing myself with my words. “look at these big dreams I once had, and I never followed through with”. It’s something to think about now.

I see a few providers, a therapist, a med prescriber (Do not knock a good cocktail), and a nutritionist (who is under my therapy umbrella)… I have a great team. I was sitting with my nutritionist yesterday, and she is also reading this mountain book. I actually got the idea from her to read the mountain book. I’ve really been thinking more about this idea of quitting for self preservation, mostly at this point with exercise. Now stay with me a moment, I will get to the victimization.

She asked me what my relationship with exercise was growing up and I thought about it for a moment. It was never consistent, and I always said I would do something to lose weight. I would join this sport to get “into shape”. Like something else would do that for me, and I couldn’t do it myself. I would always be disappointed in myself (small hills of victimization) because I wouldn’t ever actually follow through with even trying. In my 20’s and 30’s I would get into a good routine, but it came with some disruptions so eventually I would quit and couldn’t get back into the routine. Serial gym member owner, never a goer I call myself, and even now I just quit another gym membership because I have been putting so much money into it the last several years with out actually going.

We dived then into trust. I’ve had to build trust with-in myself in order to function better. Trust yourself before you can trust others. When you grow up with your trust being broken every day, and being gaslit, by someone who you should be able to trust, creates such a wishy washy relationship with yourself. Its really hard to undo that shit. Somewhere over my food journey I’ve been able to build a routine around meal planning every week. No matter how much disruption happens with my meal planning, I’ve always been able to get back to it. I’ve built my trust with in myself in order to get to this place with my food.

It should be obvious to me that I check out when things are stressful. I know this, and I don’t know why I’m like suddenly surprised by it. This time though, I’ve realized that me checking out is permission to continue to let myself victimize myself. Like checking out is a way to feel sorry for myself. Saying, things really suck right now, so you deserve to just chill and relax. Which is fine, and also for how long? Earlier this week, I walked several days in a row. Wednesday hit, and work got stressful again, and then I stopped walking the rest of the week. I allowed myself to chill and shut the world out.

I also realized that me checking out was giving my time to someone and something else. Working out right now, well ultimately training to walk a half marathon, is the only thing I am doing for myself that was outside my normal routine (you know showering, brushing my teeth and sleeping). This is what I’m thinking about now. We will see how this plays out.

Quitting for Self Preservation

Posted on by Rachael

I’ve been listening to The Mountain is You, by Brianna West. It is rare these days I learn from these self helpy books new things about myself. Not to sound arrogant, and also, I’ve done a lot of self work. Even though I’ve come a long way, trust me, even though I haven’t been writing, I’ve come far… I always know there is more work to do.

I’m about halfway through this book, and I’ve written so many ideas to ponder and think about further. The one that sticks out the most is, quitting something to self preserve your future loss. How this gets brought into perspective for me, and to expand on this more, is through exercise. Exercise has often been met with resistance. I have said “I have oppositional defiance disorder with it” I’ve gotten good at starting and maintaining for a while, but something always disrupts this process, which creates excuses for me not to continue to do something. I have a lack of follow through with myself and blame people, ideas, and other things for not continuing the process. Hi, I’m Rachael, and I’m a serial gym membership owner and rarely a goer. I’ve given my money to these places.

Examples of this: I was really good at going to the gym for 3 months, and then I got Covid and I couldn’t get back to the gym after this, OR back in the day I was really good at going to the gym and was really into running for a short period of time, and one of the people who worked there was bothering me every time I went in, setting unspoken expectations about why I was there. Both of these examples were about 10 years apart, and I had a billion excuses for not going back.

The concept of “quitting for self preservation” brought up more questions. Forgive me, as I’m not quoting her correctly, and some of this is mixed together from other things in her book. But the questions that come up for me were “Do I find the excuses to not continue to exercise because I want it so much, and I don’t want to keep failing at it.” and or, “Am I so scared of what I truly want, (I mean I don’t even know what that is), that I quit for self preservation of the fall (because I know it’s coming anyway).

Now that I’m writing this out and giving focus to this idea, is the question truly, What do I want out of exercising? Do I want to be fit? Do I not want to look good? Is this me self sabotaging to keep myself in a place of not being seen?

Here is what I know. I want to be healthy, and I want my body to be healthy. I want to feel better. More to come on this, as I have found out that due to my trauma I have fibromyalgia which impacts me almost daily (a whole other blog post).

What I don’t know: Are my road blocks because of these other things? Being seen? And, am I allowing myself to quit, for self preservation? That is something that I haven’t considered. The failure of working out, is too great, that I just give up quickly to avoid whatever feelings come? I don’t know.

More on this and also being curious about things, has been super helpful in sorting out things.

Being seen has consequences.

Posted on by Rachael

It has been a bit since I’ve written, rather several several years. The healing hasn’t stopped.

I’ve been apart of Toast Masters for a year and a half. We have pathways, projects and bench barks to meet with different objectives. One of the suggested assignments was to write 6 blog posts and post them within a month. I chose this project, as I already had a blogging platform and I’ve been interested in writing again, following giving a 2-3 minute speech about my process. I thought this project would help with the writing practice. 

Toast Masters has helped give me a voice, and a safe environment to practice using my voice in. I have gained confidence, flexibility, leadership skills and more. I’ve worked on various speeches, and have used my voice to share personal stories and fears of public speaking. Through time, my shaky body reading my paper word for word, gripping the lectern, has shifted, to a solid human being in her voice, still with my paper in hands, but rarely looking at it. 

There are plenty of things I am still working on. One of them is voice fluctuation, body language and not using the lectern. I’ve learned that public speaking is like acting. You are a performer and being a performer is not something I’ve been very good at due to my confidence issues and never wanting to be seen.

I’ve done so many things to not be seen, because being seen always has consequences. 

One of the ways I’ve worked on building confidence was being vulnerable with myself and others about what is actually happening in my brain. Writing has helped me tell my story. Toast Masters has been a way to speak it out loud and build confidence in myself, my truth and how I tell others about it. 

More to come. 

More on Trust:

Posted on by Rachael

For the last several years I’ve been working on trusting myself. That looks like trusting my feelings, thoughts, and body. I’ve been validating the things that come up for me to create consistency, so that I no longer question myself and what comes up for me. This has been a process, and un-doing that has been a slow consistent effort that has taken so much practice. I think in my last post I wrote about this through being gaslit, and I wanted to write more about learning to trust myself, through a different lens.

Just over 10 years ago I got into a car accident, and on the same day, I fell pretty hard on my tailbone. On that day, I did a lot of damage that ended up really hurting me for years to come. I did treat it at the time with some chiropractic, some light PT, and massage. I have to be honest though, I was in my mid 20’s and taking care of my body wasn’t very important to me. Now that I’m in my mid 30’s, it’s something I cannot take for granted anymore. 

I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone how badly my issues with my lower back, hips, and spinal area can be for me. I have a lot of fear of my own body hurting, and the impact on my daily life it has. It hurts daily and most days it’s fine, or okay… and then sometimes it gets triggered and I’m out. I can’t sleep due to the pain and I end up at the chiropractor which helps and it gets better within a week or two. Since Covid, the daily pain has gotten worse. I was in the chiropractor often, and my right hip had adjusted itself and I was walking crooked every day. I also had moments where I literally was losing function of my spine and was falling to the ground, with my feet swooping underneath me. I was in tears nearly every day. 

For the last several years I’ve taught myself how to take care of my body, as a reaction to pain. I was lifting my leg into my car with my hands to alleviate pain, I was pushing on the steering wheel to get out, I would put pillows on the floor if I knew I was going to be there a while, I had a system for flipping myself over in my bed (talk about a beached whale visual), I avoided certain kinds of exercise, I hated bending over (so I avoided it as much as possible), I do not like emptying the dishwasher or putting things in lower cabinets… All of these things were a natural avoidance for me, It became a muscle memory that I embedded to protect my body, and the pain that would come with it. 

Chiropractic, and protecting my body have been temporary solutions. I knew it was temporary, I also knew that it was a bandaid to the real problem. The solution? Was strengthening my core, of course, something I had been avoiding. I got referred to physical therapy and have made a lot of progress in such a short amount of time. I acknowledge that this will be a long journey to get my strength and build trust with-in myself. 

By building strength, I am also building trust in myself to be able to trust my body. Trust that I do not have to protect it anymore in the way that I had been. Trust it to get into my car on its own without extra support, trust that it won’t hurt if I tie my shoes or put on my pants. Also, trust that I will continue to do the work. I’ve been building trust with-in my brain, and the movement that comes with it. Retraining muscles to work correctly, retraining my brain to not be anxious when I bend over, and allow my body to do these things in slow, safe environments. 

Other things that have been helping: Noticing and validating my success, taking it really slow, heating pads, ice packs and massage.  

Gas-lit stories I have told myself

Posted on by Rachael

I’ve written in the past about the stories I’ve told myself, and also now recently gaslighting. 

I wanted to write a little bit more about the actual stories I’ve told myself that I’ve been working to un-do. 

I’m bad: Which truly umbrellas all of the things below. Not only does it umbrella them, but it also gives leverage for my brain to believe all of these other negative things. You are bad, so people do not want to hang out with you because they don’t like you, because you are not whatever enough. For example if you want to hang out with a friend, and they say that they cannot. It’s not because they don’t want to, but probably because they are busy, or may have their own anxieties that have nothing to do with you. What I’m about to say is totally real, and I sometimes fall into this thinking still, but more often than not, I do not give it fuel but… I seriously thought, and have thought that people have not wanted to hang out with me because I was ugaly, gross, and fat. I’ve spent too much time in my own anxiety, over analyzing what I say, how I should have said it differently, and investing in things to “be better” (makeup, dieting, etc) for other people. None of this makes a difference to other people, you want to want it for yourself, or do these things if you want to to be a healthier version of yourself. 

I have believed I’m not good enough: I think this is the most present thread that runs through my brain unconsciously and consciously. More unconsciously than consciously now. You know that phrase old behaviors die hard? Yah, when I’m feeling like at my worst, it’s generally because nothing really brings me joy and I think what is the point. 

A few examples: 

Recently I’ve been making an effort into applying for jobs. I’ve been really trying to work through some of the I’m not good enough for more advanced jobs because of whatever non-existent reason other than my own anxiety. Up until recently I’ve done a lot of avoidance of applying for new jobs because I have this ingrained belief that I’m not good enough. The fears (and stories I tell myself) that run through my brain are: I’m a terrible writer (for cover letters), there are always better candidates, I’m not good at selling myself. 

For the last few summers I have been going to a friends house to help her with her garden. She is someone I’m building trust with, and I feel so blessed to have met her. She is a new friend who is accepting, and kind. Last summer I texted her and said, I feel like I’ve been super lazy because I haven’t been doing much with the garden. She texted me back and said… You are not lazy and other positive things that helped me self validate back things that were positive. I had these ideas, that she thought I wasn’t doing enough with the garden, and that had turned into something bigger than it needed to be. It turned into anxiety, more avoidance, and paranoia. What helped was addressing the issue at hand, which was my feeling of being not good enough. I can’t remember what I said, but maybe something like I feel like I’m not doing enough, like I’m lazy, (and not the huge emotional drama that goes with it), and because she is great, she responded how she did. With compassion, understanding and consistency. 

I have believed people do not like me because of:  I just wrote about this about being bad. But seriously, it has been ingrained in my brain before, especially in finding partners. I am too fat, I’m too ugly. I have felt like because I was too fat and ugly, that I wasn’t deserving of someone who treated me better. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. I do not believe that now, just so yah all know. But it’s true, it’s sad, and awful that I let myself feel that way.  I want to emphasize that I would victimize myself so much when I was in my 20’s about people not liking me, that this was my biggest paranoia and also a gaslit thing I did to myself. I would actively make up stories about things people were gossiping about me, just to validate my own paranoia roll. I mean seriously! It doesn’t fucking matter what people think about you. 

I have believed I’m ugly: I have fueled this belief with so many things; being fat, acne, picking, comparing and contrasting myself to others. These are my own personal validations I’ve had in the past. Also, it was validated based on what people have said to me (to my face or behind my back) in the past. This is something that is an issue that we have across our world about what beauty is defined by and what people say is more beautiful than someone else. I’ve been learning not to compare myself to others in terms of my own beauty, and it is fucking hard. It’s also something I consistently work at. 

I have believed I’m fat (truth and): Not funny, but literal truth. I am fat. I’m not 280lbs anymore or close to it, but I’m fat and have fat. AND it shouldn’t limit me from life. It has built up this stigmatization that because I’m fat, means that I can’t do things. I shouldn’t wear certain clothes, I shouldn’t go certain places and I’m lazy. It often means that I am less than and I’ve believed that for most of my life. It means so many things it is not. Truth is… I’m fat, and I kind of just laugh about it now.

Funny side story: Last spring I had lugged all of my painting stuff to a park nearby from my apt. I was carrying a backpack full of things and some canvases. It was obvious I was struggling, and had to put things down to rearrange my stuff. A man kept watching me (not in a creepy way), he just noticed I was struggling. He yelled across the street if I needed help, I assured him I didn’t. I was only a block from home. He asked if I was pregnant (not sure why that was important, other than assumptions he was making and also to show his further concern about my predicament). I just responded with this laugher in my voice, no, just fat. I wasn’t offended or upset, mostly just thought it was funny. He was of course embarrassed, but his assumptions at this time didnt affect me or my life. 

As you can see above, a lot of these are intertwined, and have similar messages. I do have a lot of body dysmorphia, and I’ve come a long way in my thinking. It’s not as severe as it use to be, and It’s not really a surprise that these thoughts don’t change overnight, but with practice, it gets better and they get quieter while your new ones take the lead.