Lately I have become aware of this energy that lives inside of me which has been a faithful
companion for most of my adult life (whatever that means ;).
I should probably say I have become more aware of it because I knew it was there before, it’s just that recently I have begun understanding it better and realising how it came to be.
It’s the energy of the inner perfectionist, the reason I am always trying to control everything…
Let me explain.
I often compare this energy to that of a dog who thinks it needs to lead the pack but is very ill-equipped to do so. You can witness this dynamic easily in a city park or basically any place where people have dogs that aren’t allowed to run free. Picture a stressed out dog owner with an insecure and/or nervous dog. The dog is in front, which is the leader of the pack position, and so the dog feels it is its job to protect its human but because this dog is not naturally a pack leader this can lead to any number of unwanted behaviours from just barking to lunging and maybe even attacking another dog or dog owner. Imagine the stress this poor animal feels! This is further aggravated by the fact that its human won’t let it do “its job” and might even get angry at little Coco (or big Roscoe, who looks terrifying but if you let him off the lead would probably turn out to be a total sweetheart) for “being aggressive”…
Forgive my digression but I just love dogs so much and it breaks my heart that their humans so often don’t seem to have a clue what their waggly tailed companion really needs!
Back to the inner perfectionist.
I compare this energy to that of an insecure dog being put in the pack leader position because, like the dog, it feels responsible for our safety and well-being but it really isn’t capable of taking care of us at all.
I feel like this is a childlike energy which has innocently decided it needs to try very hard to control everything to keep us safe in a world it didn’t understand and found so very confusing.
A world in which the adults around it didn’t seem to know how to keep the child or themselves safe either and the way they dealt with feeling unsafe was to desparately seek to control life in any way they could find. There are a myriad of ways in which we seek to “control” life.
A favourite and one I am very familiar with myself, is trying to understand everything.
It’s quite simple really, feeling unsafe is a feeling, it lives somewhere in the body. When you try to understand things, when you analyse, you go up into the head, away from what you are feeling in the body.
Maybe your inner perfectionist is now thinking: “This is not perfectionism!” and maybe I should have called this energy the inner control freak or something like that but I think they are all the same thing really, a desperate attempt to somehow keep us away from these scary feelings of unsafety and vulnerability. After all, a perfectionist is only trying to do everything perfectly in order to avoid the pain of failure and rejection, which is just another way to try to control things so we don’t have to feel discomfort or pain….
Just after writing that I was sitting here thinking about those words…discomfort and pain.
What a strange and often strained relationship we have with those words and how they show up in our lives. Doesn’t it strike you as kind of bizarre that we work so hard to avoid the very thing that none of us can actually avoid whilst having this human experience?
Popular belief says that human beings are hardwired to avoid pain, which may be true on some level but aren’t we, somehow at the same time, also built to be able to handle pain and discomfort and isn’t the fact we got taught that pain and discomfort are bad and to be avoided at all costs the very thing that creates all the stress and tension around them?
Just look at how we view disease. The word literally means discomfort: dis-ease. But rather than seeing it as such and allowing the body to do what it’s made to do, to heal, we completely tense up and try to control any changes the body might be going through.
I see how I do this in my own life, I know how I feel about my body, I don’t trust it. I don’t trust that it knows how to be in this world. I don’t trust that it knows exactly what it needs not just to survive but to thrive and so I tense up and try to control what happens to it. I try to control my physical reality, which than ends up controlling me, which in turn makes me feel more unsafe.
So what can I do with this little controller who causes such a big mess and so much stress?
As always, the answer is love.
Knowing where this energy of the inner perfectionist or controller comes from, how it came to be, how can I feel anything but the deepest love, compassion and appreciation for this part of me? Knowing that it is a trauma response to anything painful or confusing I experienced and had no control over as a young child and understanding that this energy emerged to make sure I would never have to experience that pain or confusion again, maybe I can now start to help this part of me relax a little by gently explaining that it doesn’t have to work so hard to stay on top of everything. It doesn’t need to frantically scan my inner and outer landscapes for possible threats that might take the shape of other people’s judgements about me (possible rejection) or my judgements about other people (again possible rejection because my judgement might hurt them).
God forbid I might have a “bad” thought about someone…I might have to say no….I might not be perfect…people might not like me….
Maybe I can allow Love to take over and say:
“It’s ok little one, it’s not the end of the world and I will always be right here for you.
It’s all right, you don’t have to hold on so tight.
Relax, I got your back.”