Perfectionism

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Wow. For me, 2010 was a year jam packed with challenges and blessings. When radiation literally burned a hole in my breast, I was devastated. After my surgery, my breast was purple and weird, my back was discombobulated, my arm was swelled up, and I completely fell apart. Lost it. We're talking crying uncontrollably at the drop of a hat. But there is some miraculous element in human nature that wants to heal, to accept, and to move on. And I am very, very lucky that this miraculous element is strong in me. After about a week or two of "poor me, fuck this," my heart revved into gear, my head popped above the water line, and I realized that I was facing one of the greatest foes of my entire lifetime: perfectionism.

(I grabbed this fetching image from vincentstrangiostore.com, where you can find all sorts of witty animal images adorning shirts, mousepads, stationery and various other necessities of life.) Anyway, I've always found that knowledge and wisdom are great antidotes for neurosis so I immediately checked eight books on perfectionism out of the library and started to research this longstanding foe. Although I found a lot of interesting information, none of the books approached perfectionism in the same light as I saw it, so I decided that I would do some deep thinking on the subject, come up with a plan to disarm my habituated, destructive thought patterns, and hopefully pull them out at their roots.

Here is my theory. I feel that perfectionism is born from a longing to connect with Spirit. Michaelangelo said, "The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection." I believe that this longing for union with the Source is part of the fabric of the human experience, but it mutates into toxic perfectionism when we seek this ultimate fulfillment in the physical, transient world. It is then that our longing degrades into an experience of great pain instead of great inspiration. Julia Cameron, author of The Artist's Way, said, "Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough - that we should try again."

Well, I couldn't just toss out my body and start over again, like I could a painting or a poem. Battered and bruised as it was, it was the only one I had. I had to accept it. Either that, or go mad. So I decided to accept it. As our bodies age, we all have to go there eventually, anyway. We have to accept each new wrinkle on our face, each ache in our joints, and for me, each battle scar from my journey through cancer. Every once in a while my perfectionism rears its ugly head, though, and I have a hard time looking at my breast in the mirror. But then I work with accepting the tender, wounded animal that is my body, and hold it within a radiant field of unconditional love.

PS. I'm now working on a book about how to heal toxic perfectionism.

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