Too Perfect Tuesdays - Chap 3 - Critiquing the Critic & Better Than Perfect

This post continues with CRITIQUING THE CRITIC and Better Than Perfect from Chapter Three.

This series will look at a small snippet of The book on the Perfectionist Personality, aka The Obsessive Compulsive disordered Personality, aka OCPD, each week. Please follow along, leave your comments, engage more on the FaceBook website... whatever your heart calls you to do.

Too Perfect, When Being in Control Gets Out of Control by Allan E. Mallinger, M.D. and Jeanette DeWyze was published by Random House in 1992.  If you believe you are dealing with OCPD or someone who is "Too Perfect," whether that's you or a loved one, please buy a copy of the book and read it for additional insights that will not all be covered in these excerpts.

CRITIQUING THE CRITIC

<snip>  As with any habit, the key to change lies in increasing your awareness.  A habit survives by being sneaky - an automatic part of you that you don't even notice.  Don't let it continue being automatic.  <snip> Change it!

First, catch yourself as often as possible thinking judgmental thoughts about your spouse, child, or employee.  Notice how unpleasant the feeling is - the disappointment, resentment, or disgust you are experiencing.  Even the momentary self-righteous boost to your own self-esteem is hollow and painful.  Acknowledge that your assessment might be accurate: that your child, for instance, really does bite his nails, or have a slight lisp.  Then notice that having made the observation is doing you no good whatsoever; that this habit hurts and it has few redeeming qualities compared with the devastation it causes.

<snip>  [Various techniques to snap out of it detailed here]

One thing that perpetuates the bad habit is the fact that you have erroneously come to equate intelligence with your ability to find fault, so the fault-finding is hard to give up.  <snip>  ironically, one of your biggest faults - your pickiness - is painfully obvious to everyone, and it pushes people away.

Keep asking yourself what good your hypocritical nature is doing you versus what it costs.  Your child or spouse may be imperfect, but that doesn't mean you have to do anything about it, nor will your being upset change anything.  You are making yourself unhappy unnecessarily.  If you have a legitimate and constructive gripe, fine.  Express it.  But don't cripple your relationships out of a need to be preoccupied with what's wrong; with effort, it becomes just as easy to focus on what's right.  <snip>

Better Than Perfect

<snip>  You don't have to know everything or perform according to some mythical specification in order to be worthwhile, loved, or happy.

Who ever taught you otherwise?  What genius convinced you that you should never make mistakes?  Or that making mistakes proves something is wrong with you?  <snip> And who is doing that to you now?

***

In some cases, if someone has have asked for your help, it may be okay to help them.  "Sally, please look at this grocery list and see if I've forgotten anything," or "Can you read this short story and see if if makes sense to you?"

When you are always ripping people a new one, or jumping in to "help" when they have not asked for your assistance, it doesn't result in making them emotionally closer to you.  How do you feel about the people who find fault with you?

If you want people to feel close to you, to respect and perhaps, even love you, being critical is not the way to go.  It's like gargling with garlic to freshen your breath.

Unless you are The Critic, who is sort of adorable, but even he'd be hard to take 24/7.

As Too Perfect points out, who is telling you that if you're not perfect you won't be loved? Is it someone outside yourself (who, perhaps has distorted thinking)?  Or is it your very own critic you've fed, raised, and cared for inside your head?

 

Time to tell the inner critic to STFU, or give him/her an eviction notice.

Have you ever gotten in the bad habit of criticizing others 
to distract from your own faults?

Thoughts on this post?  (Feel free to click a Reactions button.)

Stuck in the Amber with You, Babe

Insects in Amber via Wikimedia

Have you ever had a moment that you wished could last forever?

When you really unpack that idea, of course, that's ridiculous.

A moment that always stayed the same - never better, never worse - would be life as a big blank sheet of paper.

The whole reason anything feels wonderful is because we have other moments to compare it to which are less wonderful.  Some of them feel downright awful - because we compare those to the good or great moments.

The insects here were trapped in resin that hardened into amber over many many years.  I don't know what a bug thinks or feels when it's immobilized, before it actually dies.  But I'll go out on a limb here (checking carefully for resin ahead of time) and guess that being unable to fly, crawl, slither or what-have-you, is probably not a comfortable, fun, or happy experience.  Even if the end result is becoming virtually indestructible.

 I found some of the most interesting musings on stasis, growth, and change, in this article by Dara Marks for the Writers Store: The Fatal Flaw - The Most Essential Element for Bringing Characters to Life, and which seemed especially apt to those with OCPD - and those who try to live with them.

First, it's important to highlight the fundamental - organic - premise on which the fatal flaw is based:

* Because change is essential for growth, it is a mandatory requirement for life.

* If something isn't growing and developing, it can only be headed toward decay and death.

* There is no condition of stasis in nature. Nothing reaches a permanent position where neither growth nor diminishment is in play.

Is there ONE "Right Way" for a rose to be?
Bud, barely open, full bloom, turning to rose hip...
All have beauty and value.

We human beings, are also always growing and changing.

Much about that process I'm not 100% enamored with.  I don't like it when I get sick.  I don't like it when I leap get out of bed in the morning experiencing various aches and pains.  Though I'm not going to have poison injected into my face to erase my wrinkles, the truth is, if I could simply choose to have fewer of them, I probably would.  I'm not thrilled with the effect that aging and gravity have had on various body parts, not to mention a changing metabolism.

Sometimes I've gotten injured, and I will undoubtedly be injured again in the future.  Sprains, bruises, even broken bones.  Sometimes I'm forgetful about where I put something, or perhaps only thought I paid a bill.  I have a harder time remembering names now, than I did a few years ago.  This, too, is part of how aging works.  Sucks, but that's how she rolls.

One of the saddest things to me about OCPD was the panic (often expressed as anger) felt when a loved one did become ill or injured.  One woman's husband was furious with her when she broke her arm.  Another went off the rails when a set of house keys was temporarily misplaced.  To OCPD, accidents/the unforeseen = immediate death.

Actually, they mean we are still alive.

The only way we, as human beings, could be safe from the process of getting hurt, injured, sick, and growing old, is if we too were trapped in amber.  Because the inevitable outcome is death for everyone, which is way too frightening to face, OCPD tries to fend it off by his/her obsession with cleanliness, safety precautions, and other worries.  They seem to be trying to wrap their loved ones - or themselves - in virtual bubble wrap.  To freeze a "perfect" moment in time forever.

And it doesn't work.  They can't do it, we can't do it... the only way a living creature can be held in stasis is if it's no longer a living creature.

Continued from The Fatal Flaw:

As essential as change is to renew life, most of us resist it and cling rigidly to old survival systems because they are familiar and "seem" safer. In reality, even if an old, obsolete survival system makes us feel alone, isolated, fearful, uninspired, unappreciated, and unloved, we will reason that it's easier to cope with what we know than with what we haven't yet experienced. As a result, most of us will fight to sustain destructive relationships, unchallenging jobs, unproductive work, harmful addictions, unhealthy environments, and immature behavior long after there is any sign of life or value in them.

Change is always scary, especially if we're not sure what it's going to look like on the other side, but NOT-change means death.

The FATAL FLAW is a struggle within a character to maintain a survival system long after it has outlived its usefulness.

In It's a Wonderful Life, George Bailey has committed himself to a survival system that operates under the assumption that if he takes care of everyone else, somehow, magically, his own needs will be met as well. There was a time in George's life when developing his ability to care about the needs of others helped George grow into a more loving and less self-serving human being. Powerful feelings of self-worth accompanied these actions. He felt good about himself because he was getting as much as he was giving. His life had a balance to it. But there came a point of diminishing returns when the value of what was coming in was no longer equal to the value of what was going out. As more and more demands were made on George to put the needs of family and community above his own, his identity as a caretaker became fixed. Other aspects of George's nature were suppressed or ignored and the only things that grew in their place were anger and resentment. The system of putting everyone else's needs before his own was breaking down and George felt unhappy and unfulfilled, but he continued to heave all his energy outward until the day when there was absolutely nothing left. That was the day he decided to jump off a bridge.

The flaw in George's limited perception of his own identity was about to prove fatal. Therefore, the real drama of the story centered on his ability to expand this self-perception by reclaiming his greater value before it was too late.

I found the passage above very interesting, both in terms of writing (fiction) and what sometimes happens to the co-dependent (like me).  I had never really considered that George had a character arc - I always thought it was the town that had to come to appreciate him, not the other way around.

Or was it?  He poured himself out for other people, inwardly resentful, expecting they would psychically know when he needed, instead of asking for it, or even requiring it.

Back to the main point - living things grow and change.  If we want to be full human beings, we must accept that stasis is neither healthy nor desirable.

People, plants, animals, relationships - it grows, it moves, it changes - or it's dead.  Freeze tag is a children's game, not a sustainable lifestyle.

Do you have a stasis story?  Have you tried to freeze or turn back time?

How's that workin' for ya?

Too Perfect Tuesdays - Chapt 3 - Rising Above Perfectionism Aim for Average, Overcoming Work or Study Blocks

photo by tanakawho at Flickr 
Call on the power of the duck to help you work

This post continues with AIM FOR AVERAGE & OVERCOMING WORK OR STUDY BLOCKS from Chapter Three.

This series will look at a small snippet of The book on the Perfectionist Personality, aka The Obsessive Compulsive disordered Personality, aka OCPD, each week. Please follow along, leave your comments, engage more on the FaceBook website... whatever your heart calls you to do.

Too Perfect, When Being in Control Gets Out of Control by Allan E. Mallinger, M.D. and Jeanette DeWyze was published by Random House in 1992.  If you believe you are dealing with OCPD or someone who is "Too Perfect," whether that's you or a loved one, please buy a copy of the book and read it for additional insights that will not all be covered in these excerpts.

AIM FOR AVERAGE

If certain tasks daunt you because you dread having to meet your own standards of perfection, it may help to imagine what a B-minus student, writer, attorney or radiologist would accomplish.  Force yourself to perform only that well, in the interests of accomplishing the task.  You'll be amazed not only by the amount of work you'll produce, but also by its quality; it won't suffer as much as you think.  You're not a B-minus worker, and that will show through, no mater what you do.  And with fewer trivial details to obscure them, your main points will carry more force and be clearer.

You may find it useful to give yourself as many little exercises as you can in being B-minus.  Take letter writing.  Instead of watching your unanswered correspondence pile up while you wait for the time and inspiration to produce missives to rival Lord Chesterfield's, give yourself fifteen minutes to produce a brief, very average letter.  You'll receive two immediate benefits; you'll have one less letter to write, and your correspondent will be glad to know you're alive and thinking of him or her, however briefly and ineloquently.  <snip>

In similar fashion, try being a faster, B-minus Christmas shopper, housekeeper, painter, cook, landscaper.  And before you insist that you don't want to be a B-minus anything, try it a few times.  <snip>

OVERCOMING WORK OR STUDY BLOCKS

If perfectionism is inhibiting your progress on certain tasks that require concentration, besides working to change your attitude ("They must be done perfectly!"), you might also try changing the way in which you organize your work time.

Prepare to tackle the troublesome work in short, very structured periods, instead of long, open-ended sessions which create the illusion that you have unlimited time, and thus can dawdle and focus endlessly on details.

Plan a two-hour work session,  If you feel you'll need some breaks, schedule them; for example, allow yourself five minutes off between the twenty-fifth and thirtieth minutes of each half hour.  <snip>

As you fine-tune this method, you'll find that even though you're spending less time working, you'll be much more productive than you were when faced with dreaded, interminable sessions.  <snip>

***

I, too, hate to think of myself as B-minus anything.

Sign available via PopArt UK

Except perhaps a B-minus housekeeper.  That would prolly be a step up.

And yet, when I think about the hugundous time and energy investment required to be an A+ everything, that little voice inside me screams, HELL, no!  Doesn't yours?

I'm choosing to strive for A+ in the things that really, really matter to me, and allow myself to be a B-minus in those that don't.  I can certainly testify that while I enjoy receiving long chatty letters and e-mails, I'd rather get 1-2 short ones every year than one volume of War & Peace every ten.  Really, how do you answer one of those?

And speaking of two-hour sessions... Been blogging much too long, today, time for a break.

I do tend to work in marathon session, then get so burned out I dread the next one.  So, breaks for me today, the better to work into the night!

Do you too think you must be A+ rather than B-minus at everything?

Have you gotten over it?

How about working in increments, and taking regular breaks?