The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown (the first half)

[flamingsword]

I have a sinus infection but probably not Covid? And I am reading a really good book about how to be my authentic self more so that I can bring my whole self into my life and relationships. So far, these are all the places that I have written the word "ouch" in the margins:

4. What's the most courageous thing you could do for yourself when you feel small and hurt?

Answer: I have no idea. And that itself makes me feel small and hurt.

Perfectionism is the belief that if we live perfect, look perfect, and act perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment, and shame.

... and I blame myself for not literally predicting the future, still, even though I am getting better at catching myself doing it. I still feel like the weight of the moral universe is on me for doing everything right, even though my head knows how ridiculous that is.

"foreboding joy", and "I'd rather not be joyful than have to wait for the other shoe to drop."

I do not let myself get caught up in joys stronger than a medium contentment because I am so convinced that if I get used to joy and don't have my defenses up, something terrible is going to happen while I am unarmored and it will shatter me. (And then I will blame myself for that like I blame myself for every other thing I "should have seen coming". Ugh. Why do my insecurities have to interlock with each other?)

So, let's talk strategies! What do you do instead of these things? Did you used to have any of this and got over it? DM's are welcome if stuff is super personal.

I think the most courageous thing I can do about the current dumped-by-friend hurt is probably to just feel the hurt and sadness already. I have had the anger trickling out but have not been letting myself cry or feel rejected, and it's probably time for that. Other situations what is brave may not always line up with what is effective, but in this instance they both apply.

Comments

[dewline]

To a large extent, this is the mindset I am currently living in. For the moment, I am reaching out for mental-health supports to whatever degree I can, and still working on putting one foot in front of the other. Just...keeping on slogging. As fast or as slow as I can.

good luck with mental health stuff. it's such a trek, isn't it?

[flamingsword]

Brene Brown has some good points on how we talk to ourselves having a huge effect on all our other mental health difficulties. I recommend signing up for The Latest Kate's newsletter if you are not familiar with gentle/positive self-talk. The art is super cute, also, and it's a little pick-me-up in your daily email inbox. It helps keep me from wanting to just block everyone who sends me email.

[genderjumper]

I recognize some of these feels. There was a point when I was healing from burnout when I dreaded being "too" healthy, because I associated that time with being overconfident and devastated by minor oversights in a perpetual cycle. Honestly, though, that was probably from being low-key (sub-clinical, at least so far) bipolar.

I appreciate a lot of readings (mostly via Twitter) that have conveyed perfectionism as a product of colonialism. I've spent much of the past year thinking about how stability is so irregular for the human condition and yet a (if not the) foundational value of capitalism, consumerism, and democracy. Those with resources sacrifice the stability of lower classes in order to sustain their profits, their popularity, and their products (in that order). I think a lot about how much they want us to dread anarchy, when we actually have no evidence that a less structured/contextually governed society would be any less stable for the vast majority of people.

Oh yeah, I guess one of my strategies is to brainhack my harsher thoughts by contextualizing them to macro phenomena. Another one is to invert pain: I'm hurting not because so-and-so doesn't love me any longer, but because I am filled with love for them and nowhere to direct it. For me, at least, this tends to be more accurate, since I care deeply about the consent of others toward my affections.

I'm confronting a series of unhealthy assumptions myself at the moment that may be tangentially related, but I should post to my own feed for that. Thanks for finally getting me on this site!

Hey, genderjumper!

[flamingsword]

Your patter was familiar to me, but I could not place it until the very end! Hi hi!

The pain inversion trick may not work as well for me. I’m pretty copacetic with loving people from afar, but the loss of a friend-level connection is grief-worthy to me. It’s like breaking a bone for the first while. The pain from the perception of being judged sets off my weird need to blame myself for stuff that wasn’t even my doing, and the break-up sets off my abandonment trauma which is a whole bunch of fear/desperation/pain/helplessness that I don’t even know how to disentangle. But I’m gonna try.

Re: Hey, genderjumper!

[genderjumper]

Yeah, don't I know it. I haven't found a lot helpful for any kind of break-up other than time and trusting that the other person was (trying to) take care of themself.

Re: Hey, genderjumper!

[flamingsword]

💙💙💔💙💙

[flamingsword]

Also, the perfectionism as a form of colonialism is going to give me the thinkies when I am not busy hacking my own mind. We hustle for our belongings under capitalism so many different ways, and I think that may go back all the way to European feudalism. The king ruled by divine right, everyone else had to prove their worthiness.

[genderjumper]

Oof, that's an interesting parallel to everything I read/think around childhood trauma, and how some of us learn to avoid pain by trying to discern and meet others' expectations.

[flamingsword]

Right? The Divine Right of parents to raise their kids however they feel like causes a lot of competition among siblings and anxiety/hustling in kids. We don’t just belong with our parents. We belong to them, according to Western standards. You can trace that directly back to Rome.

[flamingsword]

I don’t trust moments of joy and connection or any intense feeling. I fear them, because I have in the past been blamed for being distracted by them.

Mom and especially Aunt Rhoda taught me to not trust my feelings, and never to be less than perfect on the first try, though I’m pretty sure that wasn’t their intent. Sometimes when something bad happened after I’d tried something new one of them would say, "Well, what did you think was going to happen?" (Which may be part of why I constantly blame myself for not seeing the future).

I’m pretty sure they just wanted me to think ahead and plan out my steps the way that they did. I was impulsive and unaware of danger, and often reckless even when made aware of it, after my peers had passed those developmental milestones. They probably just wanted me to be safe, and I know for a fact that they both often expressed fear as anger. The kinda hilarious thing is that they did a bunch of damage that took way longer to heal in the service of trying to protect me from a few broken bones and some heartache that was going to happen anyway. Case in point: the current clusterfuck.