What Your Perfectionism is Really Trying to Tell You…

I have often shared that working with my coach has been the biggest, boldest, bravest thing I have ever done, and that coaching has changed my life in ways that I could never have imagined. I am a product of coaching. Everything I have created in my life over the past five years has been as a direct result of receiving powerful coaching. And over the last two years, I have done some of the deepest work I have ever done to release trauma that I have carried with me for most of my life.

The end result of the work I have done over the past year, is the inspiration to lead a private coaching group for eight women this year, called Living As If You Matter. For most of my life I have believed that I do not matter and that my needs, longings, desires, or wants are irrelevant or unimportant. I believed that I was not enough, and that I did not deserve to be happy. In fact, I was even running an unconscious intention to be unhappy, because I believed so firmly that I did not deserve happiness.

During 2023, I awoke to the realisation that I do matter and that my existence here on this planet is important. This was not a blissful awakening, but a painful awakening. I had a lot of internal resistance, due to deep programming that had me believe and live as if I don’t matter. Sometimes it can take a long time to unlearn something that we have believed for many years and lived as truth for many years.

Why am I sharing this with you? I will be creating a space for eight women this year that will support them in their journeys towards the realisation of the importance of their existence. And yet, I feel like it’s not enough to give this gift to these eight women only. I want to share what I have learnt in service of anyone who is stuck in a belief or thought pattern that has them holding on to the idea that they are not enough, or that their wants and desires don’t matter. I want to share what I have learnt over the past five years, in service of anyone who is hurting and who is still very much convinced that they don’t matter. So, if this is you in some way or another, then please read on.

The Truth About Life

Pain in life is inevitable. It’s part of the contract we have with Life. None of us get to have a pain-free experience of life. We will all have our share of pain in our own lifetime. And yet, suffering is optional. We don’t have to create our own suffering because of our pain. We all have a responsibility towards ourselves and those we love to heal from our wounds. If we don’t heal, we inflict pain onto those who did not cause our suffering. I saw this quote the other day that summarised it beautifully: “If you don’t heal what hurt you, you’ll bleed onto people who didn’t cut you.”

Part of why we are here on earth, is to heal as much of our pain as we can, and to live our most authentic lives in service of those we love the most. Despite the pain, Life is a precious gift, and there is much beauty to be experienced, if we are willing to release ourselves from the shackles of our own pain. So, over the next few months, I will be sharing parts of my story and the lessons I’ve learnt over the past five years. I will be sharing in service of YOUR healing and YOUR freedom, because I believe we all deserve to live free from our shackles. We all deserve to experience the wonder and beauty of Life when we are not operating under the false belief that we do not matter.

Today, I want to talk about four tell-tale signs that point towards the possible experience of developmental trauma somewhere in your life. There are four symptoms of developmental trauma that adults live with, that warrant closer inspection, because they could be signs of trauma. Why am I sharing these symptoms with you? Because awareness is the first step. You cannot heal what you are not aware of. Once there is awareness, we can choose what we want to do about what we have become aware of. And the choice is always YOURS. You get to choose whether the patterns of behaviour you have developed over time serves you or not.

I will say one thing about habits. We develop habits over time that shape who we become, and yet it’s all learned behaviour. What is learnt, can be unlearned. Even if we have had those habits for many years, we always have the choice to cultivate new habits that serve us better when we discover that a habit is holding us back from living a truly authentic and joyful life.

Four Symptoms of Developmental Trauma

I learnt about these four symptoms of Developmental Trauma in a support group called Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families (or ACA) which is a support group for people who grew up with alcoholic or addicted parents or who grew up in dysfunctional homes. The purpose of the group is to provide a safe and supportive environment where people can process the experiences they had as children growing up in dysfunctional homes. When we grow up in a dysfunctional home, we learn three rules: 1) Don’t talk. 2) Don’t feel. 3) Don’t trust. This is so, because it’s unsafe to talk about what is going on. Often, we are expected to pretend that everything is fine for the sake of appearances. It’s not safe to feel our feelings, because it can be very painful, and there is no compassion for what we might be feeling. Our parents or caregivers might not have the emotional bandwidth to give us the love, attention, and understanding that we need. In other words, they might be too emotionally immature to tend to our emotional needs. We learn not to trust anyone – including ourselves. We basically learn that the world is an unsafe place and that no-one can be trusted. Because we are cut-off from our feelings, we also don’t know how to trust ourselves, because we have been conditioned to believe that we cannot rely on our own feelings and intuition.

So, in ACA, we start by talking – in a brave space with no cross-talking. This gets us out of denial. Awareness and stepping out of denial are the first steps towards healing. We cannot heal what we are not aware of or what we don’t want to admit to ourselves and others. Talking about our experiences with others who have had similar experiences, helps us understand that we are not alone, and it helps us to start separating our stuff from the stuff of our parents and caretakers, and those who intentionally, or unintentionally caused us harm.

Over time we learn how to feel our feelings again, when we discover that feelings are not good or bad. They simply are. Feelings are data that give us information about what is going on for us.

The hardest part of the work, is to learn to trust again – trust ourselves, trust others, trust Life. That can take time. Sometimes it’s a life-long curriculum. I will share that this has definitely been the hardest part of the journey for me. I have spent so many years of my life simply relying on myself and my ability to do things on my own and take care of myself, that learning to open myself up to trusting, to being loved and supported, and to even start believing that Life loves me and has my back, is still an ongoing journey for me.

The four symptoms to keep an eye out for are, Perfectionism, People Pleasing, Controlling tendencies – i.e., wanting to control the environment, the outcome, or other people – and All Or Nothing Thinking – i.e., black and white or right and wrong thinking, with no space for any grey or any messiness…

I have shared about my experiences with perfectionism before in my writing about a Perfection Detox: Learning to trust yourself and I have shared how I battle with my P Twins – i.e., Perfectionism and Pleasing – whenever I am navigating important situations or events in my life. Perfectionism isn’t just about wanting everything to be clean and neat, or orderly. Perfectionism can take different forms, and often people who are perfectionists, see their perfectionism as a moral compass or guideline to measure their personal “goodness” as a person. In other words, somewhere they internalised the message that they are only a good person, or lovable when they are perfect. This of course sets you up for a lifetime of struggle, frustration, and failure, because there is no such thing as the perfect person who always does everything right. So, you end up living in constant fear that someone will discover that you are not perfect, and that you will be ostracised from the very groups of people you are trying to belong with.

All pleasing behaviour come from the desire to be liked or loved, and the fear that we will not be loved, or we will be rejected if we said no. People who grow up in dysfunctional homes often also struggle to know their own boundaries and those of others. Think about it, abuse is the crossing of a boundary. If you live with people who have no idea what a boundary is, how will you ever learn what boundaries are? And our fear that we will not be loved or accepted, can lead us to believe that boundaries are selfish. In fact, boundaries are there not to push people out of your life, but to keep them IN your life in a way that is respectful of both you and them.

I love what Brené Brown says about growing up in a dysfunctional home. If you haven’t read her beautiful and provocative book, Atlas of the Heart, then I urge you to read it. There is so much depth and richness in her writing, and I have found Atlas of the Heart instrumental in learning and choosing the language and vocabulary I needed to express my feelings more clearly.

Brené Brown talks about her own experiences of childhood trauma and how she developed the skill to be able to read people’s reactions and almost predict how they would respond in different situations. Here is what she says:

“What surprised me most when I was growing up was how little people seemed to understand or even think about the connection between feelings, thinking, and behaviour… Everyone, including me, seemed so desperate to feel more connected to their own lives and to one another, but no one was looking in the right places… Everyone seemed disembodied from their own inner world and disconnected from other people. Too many lonely and secret lives…”

She goes on to share how she chose to numb from the emotional pain until she could no longer numb. She shares that after her parents divorced and she watched her mom work several jobs and start therapy, she felt inspired to get help too. She got sober, and she started doing the hard inner work to heal from the trauma. She says it was “years of terrifying change, hard goodbyes and… a truckload of boundaries.” She explains that when we stop numbing and choose to start feeling again, we are forced to reevaluate everything, “especially how to choose loving ourselves over making other people comfortable. It’s the hardest work I’ve ever done and continue to do.”

I agree with Brené about that. Choosing to love yourself and learning how to do that, is some of the hardest work I have ever done and continue to do. To end off, I will share with you what Brené considers the most important lessons she has learned along the way. What she shares resonates, and I feel like she can say it better than I can.

I learned that taking the edge off is not rewarding, but putting the edge back on is one of the most worthwhile things we can do. Those sharp edges feel vulnerable, but they are also the markers that let us know where we end, and others begin.

The edges taught me that the more I used alcohol, food, work, caretaking, and whatever else I could get my hands on to numb my anxiety and vulnerability, the less I would understand my feelings, thoughts, and behaviours. I finally realised that trying to outrun and outsmart vulnerability and pain, is choosing a life defined by suffering and exhaustion.

I’ve learned that power is not bad, but the abuse of power or using power over others is the opposite of courage; it’s a desperate attempt to maintain a very fragile ego. It’s the desperate scramble of self-worth quicksand. When people are hateful or cruel or just being assholes, they’re showing us exactly what they are afraid of. Understanding their motivation doesn’t make their behaviour less difficult to bear, but it does give us choices. Subjecting ourselves to that behaviour by choice, doesn’t make us tough – it’s a sign of our own lack of self-worth.

I’ve also learned that when you hold someone accountable for hurtful behaviours, and they feel shame, that is not the same as shaming someone. I am responsible for holding you accountable in a respectful and productive way. I’m not responsible for your emotional reaction to that accountability. Sadly, I’ve also learned that sometimes, even when the pain takes your breath away, you have to let people you love experience the consequences of their own behaviour…

People will do almost anything to not feel pain, including causing pain, and abusing power. Very few people can handle being held accountable without rationalising, blaming, or shutting down.

Without understanding how our feelings, thoughts, and behaviours, work together, it’s almost impossible to find our way back to ourselves and each other. When we don’t understand how our emotions shape our thoughts and decisions, we become disembodied from our own experiences and disconnected from each other.

Conclusion

Healing from past pain and trauma is not easy. It is hard work – it might be some of the hardest work you will ever do. And it is also the most rewarding, most live-affirming, most self-empowering choice you could ever make. It’s only when we choose to heal from our pain and trauma, when we choose to learn to love ourselves, when we choose to hold others accountable for their actions in a loving way, that we can truly live a life where we feel deeply connected to ourselves and others. No more loneliness. No more secret shame. Freedom from self-created shackles. Freedom to express our true selves in the world, and love fiercely and unconditionally. From where I’m standing, that is the greatest contribution we could ever make to the world – i.e., to live a life unencumbered from self-created shame and self-loathing, judgments, and suffering. Pain is inevitable, but suffering is a choice.