Perfect is the Enemy

"Perfectionism is just fear in good shoes."
~Elizabeth Gilbert, SuperSoul Conversations

We are a family of perfectionists. And while our culture might celebrate perfectionism, my statement is by no means a brag. Perfectionists are in no way perfect. Rather we are uptight, often joyless and frequently unproductive. While others are doing, we're wringing our hands. While others are living, we're hesitating.
In my husband's case, he procrastinates because the idea of taking anything on is paralyzing. Odd jobs take, literally, years because if he's going to do it, he's going to do it perfectly and that takes time. Time he doesn't have. And so he doesn't even begin. 
My youngest would rather do nothing than do something she can't be fabulous at. And so she's avoided most extracurriculars. Even things she's good at – and she's quite talented at singing, sewing clothes, art – become a source of stress because she's not good enough. Good enough for whom? I ask. Good enough for myself, she snarls back.
My eldest gets swallowed by shame any time she isn't a superstar. She auditioned for an arts school when she was nine. The morning of auditions, she woke up with a fever of 103F and a throat that felt like razor blades. Not surprisingly, she didn't get accepted, a failure that still haunts her, a decade later. 
My son, fortunately, is the anomaly. He takes things in stride, tries a whole lot of things, some of which he succeeds at, others he doesn't. He works hard, has a zillion friends and, no coincidence, enjoys life more than the rest of us put together.
I've done a whole lot of therapy to release the shame I've felt my whole life for being anything less than perfect but I'm a work in progress. Sometimes I think I'm past it but then I'll notice that the critic in my head is loud again, pointing out how much more successful other women – young than I am! – are in their careers. How much happier their marriages seem. How much more confident their children seem. How much...better they are. 
So when I was listening to the podcasts I recently downloaded – Oprah's SuperSoul Conversations – and Liz Gilbert remarked that perfectionism is just fear in good shoes, well, it hit me hard.
Because I know it's true.
Fear has ruled my life. Fear has kept me small in many ways. If there is one thing I could change about myself, it is this: To be fearless. 
Fear is a common theme on this site. So so many women, who arrive on our rocky shores, battered and bruised from betrayal, are terrified. They're terrified because suddenly the future feels uncertain to them. But they're terrified too for what they think betrayal says about them. So SO many of us are perfectionists. It's sometimes hard to see because perfectionism has somehow become conflated with achievement and with attention to detail. It's not that at all. Perfectionism isn't about working hard or about achievement. Perfectionism is fear in good shoes. It's what keeps us on the sidelines, it's what keeps us paralyzed, it's what keeps us hiding our gifts because what if we show up for our lives, exactly as we are, and we're rejected? What if our best isn't good enough? Good enough for whom? I ask. Good enough for myself.
Which is exactly it, isn't it? We are our worst critics. There's nothing anyone can say to us that's more cruel than what we say to ourselves. And if they try, and we don't already believe it, the words won't sting. Only criticism that we agree with can hurt us. And we agree with so much of it. 
Perfectionism becomes our armour. We suit up to face the world. If we're perfect, the distorted thinking goes, then we're beyond criticism. The world will love and admire us. We can hide behind our sparkling kitchen, our flawless makeup, our starved bodies. Don't look in our eyes, where the fear lives. Look over there! At our perfect children, our adoring husband (except when he's not), our big house, our career. God help us if someone pulls back the curtain and finds us, elbow deep in the ice cream tub, belly protruding, face bare, house messy, kids whining, husband cheating. Husband cheating! Because that's what we believe, isn't it? That he wouldn't have cheated if we were perfect enough. We take HIS mistake and hold ourselves accountable for it. We let someone else's bullshit behaviour become about our failings. 
Perfectionism robs us of joy. It robs us of authentic lives. It takes our fear of rejection and holds us hostage. It can also be deadly. A recent New Yorker article cites an author's new book, Selfie, and notes that the author's chapter on suicide "blames the horror and shame of failing to meet the sky-high expectations we set for ourselves." Perfection kills, he concludes. At the very least, we're suffering under the delusion that we can somehow create perfect selves and the only thing holding us back is, well, our imperfection. 
Well, if betrayal brings with it any gifts – and I believe it can – one of them might be our chance to shake off any notion that being perfect might have spared us this pain. While I remain a work in progress, it was my husband's betrayal that led me closer to a F@#K YOU epiphany, whereby I far more than before refuse to compromise myself to make myself more palatable to other people. Don't like my cooking? F@#K you. Cook your own dinner. Think my house is messy? F@#K you. Let me introduce you to my vacuum cleaner. I'm sure you'll be very happy together. 
Perfectionism will fight like hell to continue to ruin your life. It will show up as whispers ("why can't you be as thin as your marathon-running sister?"), it will show up as shouts ("if you were sexier, he wouldn't have cheated"). It will encourage you to spend money you don't have on things you don't need. It will insist that happiness is one more diet, one more fitness program, one less cheesecake away. It will demand that you work harder, work longer, try more. And any failures of your husband, your kids or your family of origin are your fault because, well, you should be different. More easy-going. More confident. Less demanding. Anything but what you are.
And here's the thing perfectionism will never say but it's the truest thing I know: We are fine. We are worthy. We are enough.
I struggle so hard with that but in the deepest part of my soul, I know it's true. I was once asked in a course to write a six-word memoir. I wrote: Nobody could say she didn't try.
You can feel the exhaustion in that statement, can't you? The defeat. Maybe I need to give myself permission to not try so hard. To let myself just be. To find a way to like the same things I've spent a lifetime beating myself up for. 
Maybe it's time for you too. 
Perfect is the enemy of all of us. Let's conquer it. 

Wednesday Word Hug

Guess Post: Triggering Happiness

by StillStanding1

As often happens on this site, some themes keep coming up, for me and for others here. At the same time, I often notice and read things that directly relate to these themes. I think it means that there’s something to learn, something new to try, something to rumble with, or something to let go. 

I woke up with a teensy-weensy anxiety attack today. It’s cold. It’s winter and it’s the worst of the times I can recall post D-Day. The week of my body in full PTSD meltdown, heart racing, feeling like I might be dying, my world erased, nuclear blast style. If, at two years out and having to heal largely on my own, I am having a tough day and my body is saying “hey, remember this BS?”, I think I get a pass. I’m awake, vertical, breathing and writing. Sometimes I think it must be that snow or the smell of cold is a trigger for me.

And this brings me to my first recurring theme: triggers. In our post-infidelity world, triggers abound. The smallest, seemingly inconsequential thing can set off a cascade of difficult emotions: pain, anger, fear, loathing, grief (so, so much grief). The smell of cold and I’m back in that terrible shocked, numb week after just finding out. I take my daughter back to college, also my alma mater and where I met my ex and I am (sometimes, not every time) hit in the gut with memories of the beginning of my relationship. Sadness, regret, remembering adventures and hustling so hard to be worthy. So much grief and a feeling of not knowing how to reconcile my old stories just yet. A TV show about romance: blech, anger, bitterness. Doing my budget, which requires planning and thinking about my future can set of a wave of worry and anxiety and fears that after the alimony runs out, I will not be able to provide for myself; that things will be hard. My ex himself, who still seems to think he can access me for emotional support, dump his load and then leave me reeling because “he’s already spent enough time in that space today and needs a break.” What a dick. It’s a very accurate replay of our past dynamics. He takes what he needs and leaves me to deal with the rest.

I’m sure you all have your own triggers: memories, places, vehicles, words or phrases, smells, foods, people and of course the holidays. So many of us have had a challenging time the last few weeks (and thank goodness that’s over). And we’ve all got our coping strategies and we deal and survive and get through. I’ve got to be honest though, it’s getting old. I’m tired of having to sit with my sadness and grief and revisit and recycle. I prefer the places and times when it's all not so heavy and I am more in the now.

Then rather magically, in my inbox appears an article about happiness triggers. This gets my attention immediately. What if the same mechanism that triggers the negative emotional response can be used or trained to help us trigger a happiness (or peace or comfort) response? That would be pretty great, right? Our brains get trained by trauma to respond a certain way pretty quickly. This was functional for much of our early biological history. We might need to train our brains to recognize happiness when it is happening. What might this look like?

We might need to slow down and become more mindful of the present (this is a recurring theme here at BWC). Can we take the time to notice what is happening right now while we are feeling happy? What does it feel like in our bodies? What are we doing? What thoughts are in our heads? Do we generally feel happier when we have a smile on our lips? Was I enjoying having a laugh with a friend? The feel of the sun on my face? How might I conjure that feeling in the future?

Often, when we are going through a tough time, we will analyze our choices and “mistakes” in an effort to avoid unhappiness and to “do better” or improve. What if, instead, we examined our happiness? What if we pursued and nurtured it, so we could conjure it up when we are feeling blue? This might be a whole new level of self-care. Can I sit and recall a time when I felt peaceful? Breathe. Get a soft smile on my face and imagine the feel of the sun. Pause in a hectic day and spend a few minutes just savoring a cup of tea.

I found an article that outlines 13 happiness triggers. You’ll be surprised by none of them, as they come up so often here when we talk about self-care and how to go about finding yourself after his affair:

Anticipation. This one makes total sense. I enjoy anticipating my vacations or going to visit my girl at school almost as much as the event itself. You can learn to intentionally savor this too.

Smile! I know it can seem fake when you are feeling low but I learned this from meditating. My teacher often begins by telling us to bring a soft smile to our lips. Studies show it can change your mood even if it starts as fake. I also love smiling at people when I am out. Human connection is a big deal.

Service. I get more out of the volunteer work than I put into it and I am totally okay with that. I love the people I volunteer with and whom I serve. I’ve learned from this that it is as okay to receive as it is to give.

Financial savvy. This is one of those security have-your-exit-plan-lined-up kind of things. Know what is going on with your money. Know that you can earn money and support yourself. Get a budgeting tool. Plan for retirement. Just get moving on it. You will feel better. I promise. As someone who constantly struggles with the false belief that I can’t provide for myself or that I am “bad” with money, I have gotten really good ad budgeting, planning and saving. My ex can stick that in his pipe and smoke it.

Gratitude. This one is so, so important and so simple. No matter what happens in your day there is something to be grateful for (even though it can be hard to see after D-Day). I am up and breathing. I have a roof over my head. I have people who care about me and love me. I have my health. When you focus on what you have, on what’s good, you don’t think about what’s lost quite so much.

Connection. This is necessary for human survival. Take time to be with friends or family who can hear and see you. Come here where people understand. Snuggle with kids, pets, and anyone else you feel like its appropriate to snuggle with. Have a vulnerable conversation with someone. Hear someone else’s story. Don’t isolate yourself. Find ways to be with people and engage with them.

Flow. Oooh, I like this one. This is when you are really good at something and while you are doing it you get lost in doing the thing and cease to be self-conscious. It’s when you are deep in your own mastery of something.  And before you say it, everyone is a master at something good. I experience flow sometimes when running, when writing, when the lightbulb goes off while I’m doing design work.

Play. Have fun. Stop being a grown up or taking things so seriously for just a second. I’m not talking about Candy Crush Saga on your phone (but that’s okay too). Play a board game with your family. Toss a baseball around. Play tag. Have a tickle fight. Play eye spy or a word game in the car ride. Find ways to inject more fun into your day.

Relaxation. Um, yes please. Put your feet up. Drink tea. Close your eyes. Take a nap in the hammock. Stop moving and rushing and doing for a minute and sit quietly. Put everything down and do a body scan. See what might like to loosen up. Watch a dumb TV show. Have a casual conversation over coffee. Slow down and breathe.

Winning words. This I take to mean the words we use when we talk to ourselves. Thanks to Ann and Fragments of Hope for new methods of recognizing and debunking the lies I tell myself. Speak to yourself like you would a friend. Be less critical of yourself and more compassionate. 

May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I be safe. May I be at peace. 

I am enough. I am loveable. 

I am doing my best right now.

Movement. Use your body. Get some exercise. It is so good for a broken heart. Find the movement that works for you. You don’t need to be a fitness model to start moving. Run, walk, swim, swing, skip, dance, lift, do yoga, do something but get moving. You will always feel better. I can be having the “worst day ever” and feel a thousand times better by the time I hit mile 2 of a run.

Savoring. This ties to gratitude for me and relaxation. Slow down and appreciate what you’ve got. Take the time to taste all the flavors and feel the textures of your meal. Watch a sunrise. Enjoy the changing colors in the sky. Winter sucks in so many ways but it’s a great time to savor a sunrise because its not too early and the colors are usually amazing.  Do you have young children? Enjoy the warmth of them sitting on your lap or the smell of their clean hair after a bath. Do you have pets? Enjoy their unconditional admiration of you. Honestly no one will ever love me or think I’m as amazingly amazing as my dog does. I try to remember that when all 75 lbs of him wants to sit on my lap.

Purpose. I believe every one of us has a reason for being. We’re here to learn and love and take care of each other. There are things we are meant to do and work or relationships that give our lives meaning. For myself, after D-Days and a divorce, I’m not really clear on what that is so my purpose right now is to take care of myself while I figure the rest out. I have this nebulous idea of moving softly through the world and making everyone’s day just a little better because I’ve been in it. That would be plenty of purpose for me right now. A life lived with purpose is a life of happiness.

I’ve committed, after weeks of being triggered and feeling so dark and so tired, to nurturing happiness. Recognizing all the while that it is not a destination, not an end game, it can be something I aspire to while I’m here figuring things out. And the next time I’m sitting in the sunshine, I’ll pay attention and enjoy the happiness that’s been triggered.

What's Being Born in the Darkness?

"The womb is as dark as the tomb."
~Rebecca Solnit, in an interview with Krista Tippett for On Being


Though the winter solstice is behind us and our days are slowly, incrementally, getting longer again (at least here in the Northern Hemisphere), we nonetheless spend much of our time in darkness during the winter months. Historically, as the days grew darker and the nights became longer – as the field work was buried beneath snow and the collected provisions were long gathered to get us through the winter – it was a season of looking inward. A time of reflection.
And yet, for most of us, darkness has become synonymous with fear, with a lack of hope, with stagnation.
But writer and historian Rebecca Solnit sees it differently, saying, "the womb is as dark as the tomb." Darkness, she implies, can be an incubator for growth. Hope, the promise of a different tomorrow, can take root in darkness.
It comes down, as we often talk about here, to the stories we tell ourselves.
If you're here, you know suffering. And it's so tempting to turn away from it, to try to outrun it. One of the most common questions I get asked here is "when will this be over? When will the pain stop?". I can't answer that. It will be different for each woman. But I do know this: The faster you run, the more you try to bury or ignore your pain, the longer it will take. Which is why it's crucial to slow down and take some time to reflect. To look at the darkness you're in right now. To ask yourself what could possibly take root in it, where the hope is to be found within it.
It's hard work. It's incredibly uncomfortable to sit with our pain. Far more preferable to reach for the phone and log onto Facebook where we stalk the OW's profile, looking for...what exactly? More pleasant, at least in the short run, to go shopping. To bingewatch Netflix.
That's okay. Your pain will still be there when you're done. The problem is, the more you ignore it, the deeper it gets buried and the more it tries to get your attention. In aches or illness. In poor choices. In misplaced anger. In depression.
I cannot promise you easy answers in the dark. But I can promise to sit with you there. I can promise that you are strong enough to face your pain. I can promise you that, no matter what he does, you can give birth to something incredible in the dark: you can be the hero you need for this journey.
"The womb is as dark as the tomb," Solnit tells us. And what she means, of course, is that darkness can be a birthplace as much as a final resting place. Figure out what needs to die – old habits, perhaps? A harsh inner critic? And take notice of what is being born. If you can be patient and gentle with it, you'll discover it's something incredible.

Wednesday Word Hug

Guest Post: Lessons from Christmas: Getting Un-Stuck

by StillStanding1

I’ve been thinking a lot about expectations. With 2017 over (saints be praised), I find myself looking ahead with hope that things will be better, that I will feel better in 2018. Christmas was a bear. Nothing seemed to go quite right. After years of Currier & Ives-meets-Pottery Barn-level holiday execution at great expenditure of energy and money, I had kind of a shitty, half-assed, not at all Pinteresty holiday.

The tree was wonky and fell over three times before I got it sorted. I almost gave up and threw the whole damn thing out. Because of this, it wasn’t even decorated until a few days before the actual holiday. This felt bad. My daughter was low-grade angry and walking around with a chip on her shoulder, particularly where her younger brother was concerned. This also felt bad. I didn’t have the energy or desire to do the full holiday decorating to the house. My brother-in-law drank too much and my niece was a bully to her future sister-in-law at our family gathering. It was supremely uncomfortable. Money was tight and getting gifts for all the people I was somehow still responsible for (how does this happen?) was really stressful. I didn’t get to see people I wanted to, some parties didn’t happen, and I couldn’t go to a volunteer event I really wanted to. And work exploded. And… and… and… Everything just kind of sucked. And I wondered why nothing was like it used to be and why I was totally lacking in that warm fuzzy Christmas feeling. Why wasn’t I doing better?

I had promised myself that when Christmas Day came, I was just going to relax and enjoy the day however it played out, knowing that the kids were going to spend part of the day with their dad at his place. That I was going to be cooking on my own. That hordes of family weren’t going to descend on me with noise and silliness and togetherness. Knowing all that, I was going to take things as they were. And, as it turns out, I had a good day.

After Christmas dinner with just me and the kids, I sat back over a glass of wine and realized no one was going to clean up the food or do the dishes or invite me to go sit down because I had worked so hard to make everything so nice. I was sulking to myself about this. I wanted it to be different. I missed “the good old days.” And it hit me. Everything wrong about my holiday was about my expectations.

I was probably expecting too much of myself to think I’d be able to charge through the holidays with my historical energy and enthusiasm just a few weeks after my divorce was finalized while simultaneously covering some of the worst of the affair history ground. Even without those two enormous factors, this was my first year with a child in college. All the normal things we would do together leading up to the big holiday were pretty much out the window because we weren’t together.  Change can be hard sometimes. Despite thinking I was giving myself a pass and generally planning on letting myself off the hook, I was still hanging on to the idea that I had to slay at Christmas in order to prove (to who? My ex? Anyone watching? Myself?) that I was doing GREAT!

I was probably expecting too much of my daughter to think that this time of year would be any easier for her than for me. She knew her dad was cheating before I did. Why should she be okay or over it when I wasn’t? And this was new for her. The same issues around not being home to get ready for Christmas had piled stress on her and now she had somehow become responsible for buying gifts for each of her parents. Something that would have happened anyway, as she transitioned to adulthood but was additionally laden with her own perfectionist tendencies to make sure we each had a “good” Christmas, post-divorce. So not fair, goddamn it.

I was probably expecting too much of all the other people in my life who have their own shit going on, to keep things exactly as they have been or to know I could use a phone call or a hug or whatever, without me telling them.

I just wasn’t in the Christmas spirit. And why should I be? I’m nice to everyone all the goddamn time. Why do I have to be even more nice now? Why was I buying in to the pressure to spend, spend, spend? I was depressed but I felt like I shouldn’t be, just because it was Christmas. I’m not allowed to be depressed at Christmas. How was all that Chrsitmassy shit going to get done?  But wow, have I been depressed. And I was searching for the elusive feeling I used to have this time of year of doing something special, the glow of lights and magic (and there was magic. I truly miss this) and snow and stories and eggnog and wassail, and fires, and homemade shortbread, of being part of something bigger, a family, of being loved.

And there it was. I was not feeling loved. Probably because I had fallen off the self-care wagon a couple of miles back and hadn’t noticed until that moment.  And way down deep under that was my old saw. I was not being loved because I was not lovable. No one is ever going to love me. There’s always something more important or more worth choosing than me. I know it's bullshit. It still gets me when I’m not paying attention.

Every time I get stuck it comes back to that. And that stuckness is why I’m telling you my Christmas expectations story. Because I think those expectations for ourselves and for others – that we should be over it, that we should be feeling better, that we should be stronger, that we should still be able to do and think and be like we used to “before” it all went down – that they should be able to understand how we are feeling, that they should know we need help even if we don’t ask, that they should just know how to help even though they have the emotional range of a filing cabinet. I think the holidays, which are so laden with expectation, brings that conflict into relief. I find I struggle most when I resist reality as it is or when I wish for or expect people or situations to be different.  (Expectation: Christmas should be magical. Reality: I am too fucking tired to Christmas this year.)

When I look closely at my own expectations, hidden deep down is the old, old fear: I am not enough. If I make this crazy, amazing Christmas, then my family will have to see I’m lovable. They’ll have to love me. My husband can’t give me what I need emotionally because I probably don’t deserve it.  Sounds crazy when you state it out loud in a complete sentence, doesn’t it? If I prove myself in these ways, they will HAVE to love me. It's nutty, magical thinking. And I think it's in there because we first learned these things when we were little kids. If you grew up in any kind of dysfunctional family system (and if you are here, chances are you did) you learned that love was conditional upon you performing in some way or that it was unpredictable or that people you cared about didn’t ever care about you quite as much. Those stories (or agreements) stay with us. We play them out over and over until we see them for what they are.

Turns out Christmas sucking and getting stuck is a gift. It’s a chance to look at the stories I am telling myself and the magical thinking I am laying on myself about my worth and maybe getting somewhere different with it. I get mad about it. How am I back here? How am I still fighting this? When will I finally be over this? When will I finally believe I am enough for good and all? Well. This stuff, the trauma of infidelity, the hurts from our childhood that infidelity reminds us of, the expectations of the holidays and the ways we think we’ve failed are all pointing to the soft spots, the wounds we need to tend.

Christmas isn’t the same. That’s ok. I can make new traditions. I can still remember that I have people in my life who love me and value me, even when I don’t do that so well myself. My marriage, my life isn’t the same. That’s OK. I can make a new path for myself. I can still remember that I have people in my life who love me and value me. I’m not that same.  That’s OK. In fact, I think that’s a really good thing. That goes for you too. Things are not the same. If you are rebuilding, your marriage will not be the same. You are not the same. He’s not the same. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that this is ok. That it is, in fact, a good thing. And don’t forget that there are people in your life who love you and value you, who see you, even when you can’t do that so well yourself.