Month: April 2026

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.