mental-health

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.

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.

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.